Hot Ticket (34 page)

“Now that’s more like it.”

“I can’t stay long.”

Bobby chuckled. “I was only expecting an hour. I know that’s my allowance.”

Three hours later, still no call from my husband. I inched through rush-hour traffic back to his place. Fausto had left an
envelope on the bed.

My sweet, something urgent has come up. I don’t know when I’ll see you next. Thanks for wearing the ring. It was my mother’s.
Your adoring F

Miraculous invention, the nervous system: mere seconds after I read the note, my hands began to shake and my stomach charred.
Dark blood hammered my forehead: stage fright was never like this. I fell onto the bed, my body so flooded with toxins that
I half expected to go into convulsions. I had been outfoxed but how how
how?
What had Fausto gained by marrying me? And where the hell had he gone? Should have listened to Maxine: follow the head, never
the heart, not even for one evening. I had been seduced by ten fingers and a tongue. Ancillary villains Brahms, dead leaves,
soul-withering solitude … bah, I was such easy prey for a clever man.

I lay there like a kicked dog. When the headache only got worse, I went down to the music room: once, a few lifetimes ago,
I had been happy here. Now it was time to get my violin and clear out. But it had disappeared along with my husband. I went
to the piano. Brahms no longer rested on the music stand. Instead I saw a Schubert duet, the same one that Fausto had been
playing one night with Bobby Marvel, before Tuna dropped in. I thought my head would crack open and a thousand reptiles, each
a writhing newborn suspicion, spill out.
Get a grip, Smith.
Presidents didn’t disappear in the middle of the day to play duets … did they? Bah, what did I know. Maybe Bobby had called
me from here, with Fausto coaching.

I rushed to the zoo. Called Maxine from the parking lot, a mess of strollers, vans, and sloppy families. “Find anything?”
I asked. “I’m in a rush.”

“Ralphine Preston leads a quiet life. The day she signed that transfer order, she got ten thousand bucks wired to her account.
Guess where the money came from.”

“Fausto?” I croaked.

“Tuna. She’s in his pocket. Why would he transfer Louis to Lorton? It’s in the middle of the country.”

No fucking clue. “What about Tougaw?”

“Nothing comes up on him. I think he’s a nobody.”

“What about the mercenary?”

“Fits the profile of James Bassinet. RAF pilot with a drinking problem. He became a jungle training instructor in the seventies.
Definitely past his prime. Does odd jobs now.”

“How odd?”

“Nothing you couldn’t handle. He’s not listed in any passenger manifest to Dulles. Has Bobby Marvel tried to contact you?”

“I’m seeing him tonight.”

“Don’t take any baths, for God’s sake.”

My brain was in tatters. Returned to the hotel. Put on my new dress and started early for my tryst with Paula Marvel’s husband,
who had a lot of explaining to do. Traffic was brutal way into Virginia, slowed even further by rain squalls. I didn’t bother
checking the rearview mirror: this time I didn’t care whether I led a caravan to Aurilla’s summer cottage. Rolled up to the
first security check fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. “Leslie Frost,” I told the guard. “Marvel’s expecting me.”

I got frisked. Thick drops of rain, tired of life in the clouds, hit the hood of my car and lay where they fell. I saw Bobby
on the porch swing, reading what looked like a term paper. He watched me cross the wide lawn. “Let’s go inside,” he said.
“It’s starting to rain.”

“Bad day?” I asked hopefully.

“It’s getting better.” He poured me a drink. “You don’t know how you cheer me up.”

“Where’s Paula?”

“At some ladies’ dinner.” He noticed my ring. “Now that’s a new bauble.”

I swallowed a belt of gin. “I married Fausto last night.”

“Jesus Christ! You didn’t!”

“I did. He didn’t tell you this afternoon?”

Bobby slowly blinked. “Was he supposed to?”

“You weren’t at his house playing duets?”

Bobby laughed badly. “Would you like to hear about my afternoon? I had lunch with a bunch of shits who contributed fifty grand
each to the party and think they own my balls now. Then I had an interview with a shit from the
Post
who’s been writing nothing but shit about me for four years. Then I had a meeting with a bunch of shits from the House who
are going to screw me on the welfare reform bill. Then I had a fight with my shit of a wife. Then I had a meeting with my
shit of a press secretary, who’s been less than worthless ever since she started screwing that shit pianist of yours. Then
I had a shitty drive out here and have been reading shitty reports about corruption in the Justice Department. Now I hear
you married the mother of all shits.”

“So you weren’t at his house?” I repeated.

“What did I just tell you?” Bobby exploded. He stalked out to the porch and flung his beer bottle into the pines. “Fuck!”

A Secret Service agent stepped into the clearing. “Everything all right, sir?” he called.

“Just dandy!” Bobby reeled back into the house and fell onto a cushion in a window nook. “Why’d you do it?”

“I love Fausto’s brains.”

“I hope so, sugar. You ain’t gonna be getting much of his cock.”

“How would you know?”

“Polly told me.” His laugh sounded like a groan. “Have you slept with him yet?”

Trick question. “We did
get
married last night.”

Bobby lay inert for a second or two before pulling me inches from his mouth. “Then what are you doing here with me?” he whispered.

There were overt and covert ways to take a woman. I had married the covert and already received my first little lashing. Maybe
I had made a mistake.
Careful, Smith.
“I thought you should be the first to know.”

“Thanks so much.” He kissed me ferociously. I almost washed over to the other side, and Bobby knew it. “Thought I was losing
my touch for a minute there.”

“You’ll never lose your touch.” I straddled him and began moving my hands under his shirt. “Last time you saw Polly was here,
wasn’t it.”

“Not her again! Forget that bitch!”

“Where’d you do it? Here in the window? Upstairs after you took a bath?”

“I hate baths. Haven’t taken one since I was in diapers.”

My hands stopped. “You were never with Polly and a bottle of champagne in that big tub upstairs?”

“She may have misinformed you, sugar. We had a nice time in this exact spot. And I hate champagne.”

A shudder in the back of my brain before a great cold splash, like ice shearing off a glacier into the frigid sea. I smiled
foolishly. “You hate baths?”

“I just said so.”

“And you don’t play the piano?”

He stroked my butt. “Your husband plays the piano. I play the cornet. Don’t be mixing us up already.”

Then who the hell was playing piano with Fausto this afternoon? My foolish smile wouldn’t go away. “When was the last time
you slept with Justine?”

“Justine? Don’t tell me you’re jealous of her, too.” Bobby’s mood was improving by the second. “About two months ago. We were
marooned in Toledo.”

Oh Christ! Should have known the minute I touched Bobby’s squishy ass that he wasn’t the guy in Barnard’s bathtub! I was stupider
than a snail: we had a double here, a good one. But Fausto could afford the best. Then
whop
everything connected and I got twenty thousand volts of insight right between the eyes: whatever the double was here for,
he was doing it
right now,
while I deflected the real Bobby. Ah, bravo Fausto.

“Forget Justine,” Marvel whispered, kissing my neck. “She’s history.”

Thoughts buzzed back to Louis Bailey’s empty house, to the picture of Bobby above the desk, the videos, autographs, his signature
traced in red pen … oh dear. Signature. Forgery. The double was going to sign something. What the hell did Bobby sign? Laws.
Proclamations for National Pickle Week. Bills. Treaties. None of the above could be forged without dozens of witnesses.
Think, Smith.
What else did presidents sign? Memos? Letters of appointment? Big deal. Didn’t need a double for that. Fausto wanted not
only the signature but a reasonable facsimile of Bobby Marvel scribbling it.
Think harder, Smith!
I started lobbing anything I had into the cold pot. Tuna: was he in on this? Only deep enough to be double-crossed. Fausto
had already duped him into thinking he had met the real president. My spouse was playing a dangerous game. Didn’t want to
think about that now so I passed on to Bendix. Forget Bendix. He saw the real Marvel too often to be taken in by a fake. Ditto
Aurilla and Chickering. How about Louis? Why would Louis need a fake Marvel? To visit him in jail? That was absurd. Presidents
didn’t go into jails. They put people in jail and got them out of jail. Stays of execution. Pardons.

Bingo.

“Something the matter, baby? I mean it. Justine means nothing to me.”

I pulled back. “I have to go.”

“Now? Don’t tell me you’re worried about cheating on Fausto. I did speak with him a few hours ago. Everything’s all right.”

Grand pause. “What do you mean?”

“He told me to take good care of you tonight.”

“Son of a bitch!” I slapped Bobby in the face since he was the same gender. While he was rubbing his cheek, I left the cushion.
“Why didn’t you tell me that first thing?”

“It was a little tough once I found out you married the guy. Damn, that smarts.” He smiled: maybe slapping turned him on.
“I tried to warn you about Fausto, sugar. What kind of husband would give his wife away the day after he was married?” Again
that boyish smile. “I think I know.”

“You don’t know shit.”

He caught up with me at the door. “Don’t run away. I’ll give you a wedding present you won’t forget.”

I gave him a knee he wouldn’t forget and ran outside. The Corvette didn’t like aquaplaning through puddles at ninety miles
an hour but I didn’t like being the last maggot to turn fly so we screamed to Lorton in twenty minutes. Parking lot quiet
as a morgue: visiting hours long over. I pulled up to the main gate. A guard with a gun looked down from the watchtower as
another came to the chicken wire. “You can’t park there.”

I pushed a little green linen through the mesh. “There’s three hundred bucks. One quick question and I’ll leave. Any special
visitors tonight?” I got that not-telling-you stare tantamount to a yes so I added two hundred to the kitty and waited. “I’m
running out of time.”

I was taking the cash back when the guard said, “Warden came out to see some friends.”

I stuffed two more bills in the diamond. “How many cars?”

“Three.”

Excellent: impostor arrives with two security vehicles, just as Marvel would. Doesn’t go in, warden comes out. Dark night,
dim lights: who wouldn’t believe that was Marvel in the backseat signing a secret executive order releasing Figgis Cole? Last
thing the warden would ask for would be ID. Fifteen minutes later, Louis Bailey walks. Fausto was probably waiting for him
out here with a bottle of champagne. Then what?
See you at Dulles tomorrow night. All clear.

All clear all right. Maxine hadn’t been able to find James on the inbound passenger lists because he hadn’t been a passenger
at all. He had been a pilot. I stuffed another hundred into the fence. “When did the meeting break up?”

“About ten.”

Fausto had a forty-minute head start on me. I was thirty miles from Dulles.
No way you’re going to catch him, Smith.
True, if one discounted a wife’s fury. “Thanks.”

Traffic was thick but rolling at a placid seventy. I did forty better than that. Screeched into a parking slot at General
Aviation, sprinted to the hangar. No private planes pulling onto the runway: either I had beaten Fausto here or he was already
at fifty thousand feet. I ran to the kid at the gas pump.

“Did a private jet just leave?”

“Piper pulled onto the runway about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Was one of the passengers a fat man?”

“A blimp.”

“How many people were with him?”

“One passenger and the pilot.”

“Could you describe them?”

“The pilot had an English accent. The passenger was tall and thin.”

Sounded like James and Louis: so they had left Bobby’s double behind. “Anyone mention where they were going?”

“No.”

“You filled the tank, right? What kind of range would that give them?”

“Three thousand miles easy.”

I looked down the runway as a 747 thundered toward us and gracefully lifted off, taillights slowly disappearing in the rain.
Every ounce of cargo on that flight was accounted for. Its path through the night would be monitored by dozens of controllers
and their computers. Somewhere a crowd of people would eventually gather, waiting for it to land. Why put up with that crap?
Nice thing about private planes was you didn’t have to tell anyone where you were going or who was aboard. You just turned
the keys in the ignition, called the control tower, got in line, and flew away.

The gas man heard the far-off tenor whine before I did. “Look there,” he said, pointing down the runway. “It was behind the
747.”

A pretty little jet stood at the head of the line. It would get clearance in another thirty seconds, when the turbulence from
the 747 had dissipated. I thought about making a mad dash for it, clinging to its rear wheels like they did in the movies.
Instead I just stood with my heart pounding as it glided past, smooth as a bullet with wings, and joined the clouds. So much
for honeymoons.

Slopped back to the Corvette and listened to the rain. Excellent job, Fausto. You got your man … and your woman, too. Rolled
the Corvette out of the lot. Could have gone to the zoo, reported to Maxine. Instead I drove to Fausto’s, to return this hideous
ring, find my violin … and leave.

His lights were on. I cut the engine, coasted to a halt at the front door. Ever so faint melody tinged the air. I slithered
through a sea of dead leaves to the windows of the music room. Fake Bobby sat at the piano mauling a Chopin mazurka. I circled
the house: kitchen lights off, upstairs dark. Let myself in, crept upstairs. The Colt, still loaded, lay in Fausto’s night
table drawer.