Mistress

Chapter 51

The bar is dark and hazy, just the way I want it. Just the way I need it. I’m tucked in a corner booth of a swanky lounge, but I’d rather not say which one; I’d rather not say where. For all I know, whoever’s chasing me hasn’t just tapped into my cell phone-they’re reading my thoughts, too.

I mean, they’ve managed to predict my movements, and they’ve managed to be in several places at once. And I think there’s more than one “they.” There’s the “they” who have unloaded assault weapons at me on three different occasions and sabotaged my plane. And there’s the “they” who accosted me in the Wisconsin airport bathroom, who-as Liz Larkin so eloquently pointed out-could have easily killed me instead of kneeing me in the balls and leaving me with a stern warning.

I take a sip of the Scotch and let the hot, bitter medicine warm my throat. I’m too sleep-deprived to drink very much without passing out, but my nerves are jangling and I need a brief respite. I look around at the crowd in this place-mostly people my age, dressed fashionably, worried about little in the world at the moment except enjoying the soft jazz and getting in someone’s pants later-and then look up at the television screen mounted over the bar.

On the screen are President Blake Francis, First Lady Libby Rose Francis, and Bono, the singer from U2. They are behind a podium somewhere, and though the sound is turned down, I imagine they’re talking about world debt or world peace or some global assistance initiative. President Francis has never been the most generous president in terms of third-world philanthropy, but it’s good optics to share a stage with Bono, and the president has always been about good optics.

Same for his wife, Libby Rose Francis, who seems to relish the spotlight a lot more than she relishes her husband. I always made their marriage as one of convenience; she was a wealthy heiress who wanted to marry a future president, and he was a future president who wanted to be bankrolled by a wealthy heiress. They’re affectionate enough in public, and everyone’s so plastic on camera that you can never really tell, but I never made them for lovebirds. Ron and Nancy they ain’t.

Snowflake, the Secret Service calls her. I don’t know why they make their code names public, but they do. The president is Spider. That name kind of suits him. But Snowflake for the First Lady? Well, they have the temperature about right. I’d go with Icicle for a more accurate description.

Woodrow Wilson’s wife championed improved urban housing while she was First Lady. Rosalynn Carter made mental health her cause. Nancy Reagan told us to “just say no.” Libby Rose Francis’s thing is “stay in school.” Hard to be against that, but seeing this bejeweled, silver-spoon elitist among inner-city dropouts is like watching Donald Trump milk a cow.

Now Bono, he’s a cool one. He’s reinvented himself musically twenty times over, fronted probably the best rock band of my generation, and now tries to feed the hungry and heal the sick. I wonder if I could have accomplished what he did. I think so. All I’d need is a mountain of musical talent, ambition, and balls. And a pair of those tinted glasses.

Maybe in the next life. I wonder how quickly my next life will come. Judging by the odds, my time in this life is waning.

My cell phone rings. I’m not used to it. I just bought it today at a convenience store. It has one hundred minutes on it.

“Sorry I missed your call earlier,” says Ashley Brook Clark. “Caller ID didn’t show up.”

“I’m not using my personal cell phone anymore. That thing’s dead to me now.”

“I can barely hear you. Your phone’s dead?”

“They’ve tapped it,” I say a bit more loudly, but trying not to draw attention. “I can’t use it. I’m using a prepaid phone.”

“They’ve tapped your phone? Are you sure, Ben?”

A waitress passes me who is prettier than any girl I ever dated in my life. A moment of longing courses through me, then back to the point.

“I’m not sure of anything anymore,” I say.

On the TV, Bono and the president raise their clenched fists in triumph. I would love to be so happy about something that I threw my fists into the air in triumph. In fact, screw happy-I’d settle for mildly content right now.

“So how are you doing?” she asks me.

“It’s a beautiful day,” I say.

“Yeah? Where are you? It sounds like you’re in a club. I hear jazz music.”

“I’m at a place called Vertigo.”

“Don’t know it. Where’s that? Over on U Street?”

“Where the streets have no name.”

“Where the-okay, whatever, you don’t want to tell me. How are you doing on your search for Operation Delano?”

“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

The door to the club opens. An Asian couple enters, young and handsome, looking over the whole place with blank expressions. They could be assassins. Why not? I shrink in my seat.

“I think you’re nervous,” Ashley Brook says. “You’re scared.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re quoting U2 song titles to me, Ben. You do things like that when you’re nervous. Next thing, you’re probably going to tell me which presidents liked jazz.”

“Clinton, probably the most,” I say. “The leader of the Czech Republic gave him a tenor saxophone as a gift. Otherwise, I’d have to say-”

Then I remember what Detective Liz Larkin said to me about memorizing presidential trivia as a way of bonding with Father, and I shut my mouth. No more of that. I wasn’t bonding with Father. Screw him-

The club door opens again, and two men walk in who look like they could play professional basketball, tall and wide and menacing. My stomach does a quick flip, a flurry of how-did-they-find-me’s rush through my head, and the ever-imminent sweat breaks out across my forehead before I realize that these two guys are, in fact, professional basketball players for the Wizards.

I take a moment while my heartbeat de-escalates to a human pace. I can’t keep this up much longer. I’m flinching at shadows.

“Tell me something good, Ashley Brook,” I say.

“Okay, I will,” she says. “That busted laptop you dropped off for our techies? They think they can recover the data on there. It’s going to take them a few days, but they think they can do it.”

She’s right. That is good news, the first in a long time.

“Tell them to hurry,” I say. “Because I’m running out of days.”