“Dragged you? You were the one who—” I was getting mad all over again, and then I noted the glint of pure devilment in Labeck’s eyes.
“Sorry,” he said, trying to clamp down on a grin. “I can never resist teasing you. Are you done yelling yet?”
“No.”
He did that rubbing the back of the neck thing guys do when they’re embarrassed.
“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“Say what? This better not be the part where you tell me you’ve got a wife in Quebec.”
He shook his head. He turned his attention to the wine, trying to shimmy the cork out of the bottle with a corkscrew that didn’t work any better than a paper clip. “You know I was there, filming your trial, right? Of course you didn’t notice me; you had a lot more serious things on your mind. I remember the day the jury came back with the guilty verdict. You didn’t cry. You stood there with your chin up, like you were facing a firing squad, like you were going to ask for a last cigarette and yell Vive la France! And I just sort of . . .”
He thumped a hand over his heart. “I wanted to go up to you, wrap my arms around you, tell you everything was going to be okay. But of course, it wasn’t okay.”
I shook my head. Definitely not okay.
“I’ve never been able to let the thing go. I felt that you hadn’t been given a fair shake. I got a copy of your trial transcript and went over it word by word, trying to pinpoint what was wrong. It’s bothered me ever since. I used to wonder what it was like for you in prison. This is going to sound kind of stalkerazzi, but I once even wrote you a letter. You never wrote back.”
“I threw away most of my mail. Too many crazies.”
“When I heard you’d escaped from prison, I asked to be assigned to the crew that was covering the story.”
“Really?” I was starting to soften, but then I remembered how Labeck had treated me that first night. “Then why were you so mean?”
“Mean? I saved your skin!”
“You manhandled me, forced me to take a bath, made me think you were a sociopathic killer—”
“Self-defense, baby. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Oh, please!”
“At that point I was only half-convinced you were innocent. And I had to keep my guard up because you were going to wriggle away if I so much as blinked. Then you’d have been caught and thrown back behind bars.”
He came closer. Standing atop the bed, I was taller than him for once. My emotions were a jumbled mess, my eyes were hot with incipient tears, and my voice came out raw. I forced back the tears. “I just . . . I thought . . . what just happened between us . . . was because I was here, conveniently available—”
He put his arms around me, held me close, laid his head against my heart, spoke against my breastbone. “Nothing about this whole thing has been convenient, Mazie. My life has been turned upside down since the day you stowed away in my van.”
“I’m sorry.” I looked up at the ceiling so my tears wouldn’t drip down my cheeks.
“But convenience is very overrated.”
For a not-romantic guy, this was not bad stuff.
“Okay, I just handed you my heart on a plate. Aren’t you supposed to say something nice back?”
I wasn’t ready to serve up my heart yet. Not with my track record. So, stall. “Nice. Like a compliment, you mean?”
He laughed. “It’s a start.”
“Well,” I said. “It’s good that you turned out not to be a psycho killer.”
He wigwagged his hand. “Might go psycho on Senator Brenner.”
I took a deep breath. “And you’re an excellent doctor.”
“Thank you.” He turned my injured hand over and kissed my palm through the bandages.
“And . . . you’re really sneaky. The radon guy thing and the way you snuck me into Vanessa’s house? That was impressive, sneakiness-wise.”
“Thank you. Nobody’s ever appreciated my sneakiness before.”
Setting his hands around my waist, he lifted me to the floor. We arranged the pillows we’d knocked to the floor and drank the El Cheapo after Ben finally managed to open it. We talked, and it was nearly as good as talking to your best girlfriend. I told him about growing up on a Wisconsin farm. He told me about growing up in a town on the Canada-Vermont border, about his dad, who was a cabinetmaker, his mom, who taught history at a junior college, and his three sisters, whose main interests in life, according to Ben’s spin on it, were tormenting him. He’d gone to college in Wisconsin on a hockey scholarship and gotten a part-time job as a cameraman for the college television station. Eventually this had led to full-time jobs with commercial stations. He hadn’t wanted to admit to me that he was Canadian because he’d neglected to reapply for his visa extension and was currently a resident alien.
The Canadians among us. They talk like us. They look like us. They’re undetectable, like radon.
“What about that name?” I asked. “Bonaparte?”
He groaned. “I’m going to punch Magenta in his big fat mouth.”
“Come on. You know all my secrets.”
“It’s a family name.”
“It could be worse.”
“Like what—Mussolini?”
“My real name is Margarita. Pretty lame.”
“I like it. It’s sexy. It doesn’t go with Maguire though. That’s Irish, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You Catholic?”
“Not exactly.” I explained how I pictured God as Atticus Finch.
“Let me get this straight.” Labeck rose up on his elbow and leaned over me. “You think God is a dead white movie actor?”
“Hey, freedom of religion.”
“God is that black woman on the Law and Order reruns. The one with the funny name.”
“S. Epatha Merkerson?” We watched a lot of Law & Order in the can.
“That’s the one. She’s tough but fair. You can tell she’s seen it all. She wouldn’t be allowing any holocausts to happen, no sir. You wouldn’t want to mess with Her.”
“Well, I’m hoping S. Epatha and Atticus are on our side tomorrow night.” I rolled over, yawning. “Any wine left?”
He upended the bottle. A couple of drops dribbled out. “Gone.” His eyes had changed from Hershey’s Kisses brown to dark, decadent chocolate, the kind with 80 percent cocoa. He ran a finger from my neck hollow to the valley between my breasts and spoke in tones that sent tremors of lust sizzling along my nerves. “But I’m back.”
Escape tip #31:
Look like a lady,
fight like a fiend.
As I unwound myself from the limousine’s backseat, the driver blatantly ogled my boobs, levered to gravity-defying heights by my dominatrix-delight bustier. I was wearing the clingy silver floor-length gown with the plunging neckline, tummy control panty hose, and killer heels. My faux-blond hair was twisted up in a chignon with strands wisping down to partially conceal my face. I wore the centipede lashes and carried a beaded purse the size of a gumball.
After a week of perfect weather, the skies had opened and it was spitting rain. The limo driver held an umbrella over my head as I tottered forward on my torture-device spike heels. Labeck shambled behind, rained on and unnoticed, mere scenery as far as the driver was concerned. All around, important people were alighting from their Mercedes-Benzes and Audis and old-fart Oldsmobiles and ascending the museum steps to the site of the BodyWorks Ball.
Protesters lined the sidewalk, waving signs and catcalling. Grave robbers! Hitler did it, too! Shame on you! Would you want your grandma to be plastinated? The big shots who were shelling out three thousand dollars a plate for this event hurried past like hedge fund managers doing the perp walk.
The driver leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Good luck, hot stuff,” he said, patting my rear. Rico made a dazzling driver. Gone were the earrings, the pony hawk and the wispy goatee. He looked like a professional chauffeur in his dark uniform, snappy viso
red hat, and white gloves, all courtesy of Magenta’s Halloween costume collection. No one would have guessed that Rico’s usual mode of transport was a rip-stick. The limousine wasn’t really a limousine either, merely the biggest, shiniest Cadillac in the Hertz fleet.
“If that kid puts his hand on your ass again I’m tearing his arm off,” Labeck
growled. I wanted to tell him to shut up, but my face felt too stiff to talk. My heart pounded against the hard struts of my brassiere cage and my legs trembled in their boa constrictor casings as we walked up the steps and into the building.
The museum’s atrium was all glitzed up for the occasion. White fairy lights twinkled in a forest of small live trees. Bright, silk-screened banners the size of highway billboards hung from the museum balconies, each displaying the BodyWorks logo and the words:
Funded by the Brenner Foundation
Sponsored by Senator Stanford T. Brenner
Way to get yourself publicity, Bear, you intestinal parasite.
We followed the crowd of tuxed men and gowned women up the staircase to the second floor and into an enormous room. The suits of armor and the American Indian dioramas had been deep-sixed for the night and the room had been transformed into a banquet hall. Dozens of round tables were arranged around the room, set with porcelain and crystal and lit by glowing candles. An orchestra was tuning up on a raised platform and the Channel 13 news crew, tipped off by Labeck, were setting up their equipment in a corner.
Labeck led me to a table near the center of the room, next to the computer set up for the slide presentation. With a sleight of hand worthy of David Copperfield, he shifted the guest placards set there to an adjacent table and pulled out a chair for me. I sat down shakily, setting my dinky bag atop the table. Who was the moron who’d decreed that women had to accessorize their evening gowns with purses so useless you could barely cram a Tylenol into them?
Every female eye in the room was riveted on Bonaparte Labeck. He looked fabulous, his tux emphasizing his wide shoulders and trim waist, his white shirt setting off his ruddy skin. His hair was trimmed, he’d shaved to within an inch of his life, and his dark eyes glinted with mischief and excitement.
Phase One of Operation Payback was accomplished. We were inside and no one had recognized me.
A waiter materialized next to us. “Would you folks care for drinks?” he asked.
I looked up at a grinning Eddie Arguello. He looked splendid, too. His hair was back to its natural black, his little mustache looked like it had been hair-sprayed, and his Hombre fumes overpowered the cut flowers. He wore black pants, a white shirt, and a black bow tie he’d borrowed from a cousin who was a priest.
“Any trouble?” Labeck asked.
He was talking out of the side of his mouth, for Pete’s sake. I wanted to kick him.
Eddie grinned. He set a glass of champagne in front of each of us. “No. I just show up wearing dark pants and a white shirt, looking like all the other Mexican waitstaff, and they figure I’m legit. The lady in charge scolds me for not having my vest, so she digs one out for me.”
“You look very authentic,” I told Eddie.
Wonderful smells were wafting from somewhere close by, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat. I’d be happy if I just managed to not throw up. The museum’s kitchen was inadequate for such a large crowd and the food was being prepared by a catering staff. I happened to know this because Labeck and I had spent the last two days researching every detail of the gala, trying to anticipate problems. The biggest challenge had been finding out which computer the museum would be using for the show, how powerful its sound system was, and who’d be running the PowerPoint presentation.
Drinks in hands, people were slowly drifting toward their tables. These were Milwaukee’s elite, people able to pay six thousand bucks a couple to prove what culture vultures they were. A lot of them I recognized from my days as the little-nobody wife of a Vonnerjohn scion. Beer barons, floor wax moguls, paper diaper magnates, politicians, media people—anyone who wanted to see and be seen and could finagle a tax credit off the cost of the ticket.
Gazing around, I suddenly caught sight of Vanessa Vonnerjohn a few tables away. She angled her head in our direction and I quickly ducked behind my menu. When the seconds ticked by and she hadn’t leaped onto a table, pulled out an Uzi, and sprayed me with automatic fire, I figured she hadn’t spotted me. I risked a peek from behind the menu. She was wearing her usual bouffant helmet, freshened up with a coat of black lacquer for the occasion. What was that thing she was wearing? A sequined gold tube that flared out at the hips into swirls of spangled, poufy net. Somewhere a Christmas tree was missing its skirt. She had defied the fashion fatwah decreeing teensy evening bags in favor of a quilted klunker the size of a mail pouch. What did she have in there—a boom box? The skulls of her enemies? A grenade launcher?
The lights suddenly dimmed, the band struck up “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and a spotlight played on Senator Stanford Brenner as he jogged jauntily up the steps to the orchestra platform. The crowd rose and applauded.
It wasn’t as though this guy was donating a kidney, for Pete’s sake—all he’d done was cough up a chunk of change from the Brenner corporate coffers. He probably saved his personal piggy bank for thugs and slugs.
“Please.” Bear held up his arms to quiet the applause. “You’re embarrassing me. And I’m not easily embarrassed.”
Everybody laughed. I almost laughed, too. Hand it to him; he knew how to shovel the shit. I had to keep reminding myself that this was the guy who without a single twinge of conscience had buried me alive and when that had failed, had ordered his toadies to burn me to ashes.
“I assure you I’m not going to talk long. I’ll be quick—that’s what my wife always says, anyway.”
More laughter. Good one, Bear.
“And you can have your dinner while I’m droning on, so you can block me out
and concentrate on your lobster.” What modesty, what charm, what a crock.
He cleared his throat and spoke again, glancing down at the cheat cards in his fist. “BodyWorks is currently the top-selling museum show in the United States and Europe. Wherever it goes, people marvel at the realism of the bodies. They ought to marvel, because the bodies are real. The bodies are carefully preserved through plastination, a process similar to lamination. Each one of these marvelous sculptures is insured for half a millon dollars.”
That got the CEOs’ attention. Bear flashed a grin. “Now we’ve all had to endure that gauntlet outside, those protesters who claim these bodies come from executed Chinese prisoners. Not true, I assure you. In fact, when I die, I want to be plastinated, too. They can prop me up at the Yacht Club Bar. My staffers assure me nobody will be able to tell the difference.”
Laughter. You’re slaying ’em, Bear.
Eddie rolled a cart to our table and began handing out salads. “Everything’s set to go,” he whispered. “I switched the computer program and gave the PowerPoint guy a hundred bucks to disappear.”
“You’ll all have a chance to tour the exhibit after dinner,” Bear was saying, “but right now, here’s a little appetizer.”
Doors at the side of the room were flung open and two museum staff members rolled in the appetizer on a wheeled base. The orchestra launched into “Touch My Body,” a version so white-bread it would have made Mariah Carey puke. A startled gasp rippled through the crowd as the wealthy benefactors craned their necks, oohing and ahhing and applauding.
It was a horse and rider. Both had been skinned and had parts of their muscles and skeletons exposed. It should have been repulsive but was oddly beautiful, like a
da Vinci anatomical drawing done in three dimensions. Muscles flexed, tendons tautened, sinews stretched, bones burst from epidermis. The horse, a palomino, was reared up on its hind legs, his long golden mane and tail preserved. The skeletal rider, whose spinal column, ribs, and pelvis were exposed, was waving an arm as though he were about to lasso a runaway steer. Bl
ue glass eyeballs, set into the skull sockets, were framed by long, real eyelashes. It was beautiful and macabre at the same time; the Rider of the Apocalypse does the rodeo.
Bear was hamming it up, stepping down from the stage and sauntering around the sculpture, hands clasped behind back, playing this for all it was worth. “This looks like the nag I bet on last time I was at Arlington. No wonder he came in last.”
Laughter. The VIP bets on loser horses, just like the rest of us. What a swell guy.
“I’d like to take credit for bringing this show to Milwaukee. We beat out Baltimore, Los Angeles and”—heartbeat pause—“Chicago.”
Wild applause. Milwaukeeans hate Chicago.
“But it was our fabulous committee members who were here day and night, working with the museum staff, who are responsible for this wonderful exhibit. I think the following presentation will highlight their contributions.”
My stomach loop-de-looped and my body trembled. Beneath the table, Labeck gripped my clammy hands in his big, warm ones. Phase two of Operation Payback was about to begin.
The horse and rider rolled away at a snap of Bear’s fingers, a movie screen descended, and the room darkened. Returning to the stage, Bear started reading from a prepared script. Eddie Arguello glided to the computer and tapped keys. Slides scrolled across the screen.
“These are our hardworking committee members,” Bear narrated. Wealthy suburban women, including Vanessa Vonnerjohn, huddled around a table, smiling for the camera.
“Some of our members flew down to Miami on a fact-finding mission.” Apparently the fact they’d found was that they could charge their poolside room service to the public museum.
“Here we are, discussing our budget.” Bear and the committee members, enjoying a working lunch at an expensive restaurant.
“And here we have—” A scrawny teenaged boy next to a half-naked man, whose hand was flung up to block the camera.
The audience tittered at first, most people believing the photo was a put-on, part of the show. Bear turned to see the screen, and his face went as pale as his shirt.
The Escape Diaries: Life and Love on the Lam Page 25
