The Body of David Hayes

TWENTY-TWO

SUNDAY AT 5 P.M. BOLDT’S cell phone rang as if he’d set an alarm clock. He and Liz were sitting in the living room, the shades drawn, she on the couch, he in a chair, she pretending to thumb through a catalog, he monitoring the surveillance radio channel via an ear bud. For the past thirty minutes no words had been exchanged, as the clock moved toward the bank reception.

A thirty-year-old female officer, whose name Boldt had already forgotten, remained within earshot at the kitchen table. Liz continued scanning gift items as he answered the call, didn’t succumb to the gravity of the moment. Boldt terminated the call and said to her, “There’s a taxi out front. The driver’s on his way up to the door with a box.”

Liz checked her own phone, then glanced up at Boldt before he turned his attention to the kitchen where the officer was already receiving orders over the secure walkie-talkie.

Boldt jumped up and waved Liz into the bedroom and the backup officer out of sight, cradling his handgun behind his back and moving toward the front door. All for show. Liz knew this taxi’s arrival was Lou’s doing. He waited for the doorbell to chime, gave it an appropriate pause, and opened the door. The cab driver sounded half Indian, half Arab. “Happy birthday to the Missus,” he said. The box was wrapped in a flower-print paper, torn and untaped on one side. The driver explained, “I don’t deliver nothing without seeing what’s inside. But it’s okay. Only clothes. Forty bucks for a five-dollar fare, what the hell?” He added, “There’s a note,” pointing out the unaddressed white envelope taped to the top.

Boldt stepped back, leaving the door ajar, and told the driver to open the box. “Empty the contents.”

“Listen, Mister.”

Boldt displayed his shield and repeated himself.

The driver tore off the paper and nervously upended the box. A pile of black and white clothing spilled out. Boldt instructed him to shake out the clothing, which the driver then did. Boldt returned the gun to its holster, tipped the man ten dollars, and attempted to send him away, at which point the driver said he’d been instructed to wait for the fare.

“To take her where?” Boldt inquired.

The man shrugged. “I wasn’t told. Listen, you want me to take off-”

“No.” Boldt put on his best face of confusion for the sake of the backup officer. He sent the driver to wait in the cab and then pushed the door shut. He held up the first of what turned out to be several oddly shaped pieces of clothing. A nun’s habit.

Boldt locked the door, called the Command van and suggested they double-check the cab number to verify it was legitimate. He quickly filled in Riz on the little he knew of the situation, and promised “more to come.”

Boldt carried the box and the note into the living room, summoned Liz and the officer, and placed everything on the coffee table. Boldt handed Liz the note that he himself had printed out.

The envelope was not sealed. She slipped out what turned out to be a movie ticket.

“This is them,” she said, again for the sake of the plainclothes officer.

“Yeah. We can still call this off,” he offered, as she sized the clothing.

“They don’t gain anything from hurting me as I leave the house. They need me inside the bank. Willing to cooperate.”

The plan called for Officer Malone, already dressed identically to Liz by prior arrangement, to switch out and take her place ahead of Liz’s arrival at the bank’s merger party. There were several contingencies available to accomplish this. At present Malone remained on her stomach in the back of Liz’s minivan in the Boldt garage. That could change as needed, but those changes would take time and Boldt had the advantage now. Special Ops had expected a phone call with an account number. They’d gotten much more.

Boldt heard over the radio that the cab was legitimate. He checked the window and confirmed it remained parked at the curb, engine running.

“No minivan,” she said.

“Yeah, I know,” Boldt said.

“So we’ll have to do the switch somewhere else.”

“Right,” he confirmed, making sure the woman officer overheard all this.

Liz moved into the bedroom and donned the nun’s habit over her existing clothing, a smart black cocktail dress, sheer pantyhose, and a pair of low heels. The officer pointed out she’d have more mobility if she lost the heels but that Malone wore the same shoes and so she’d better keep them on. Liz agreed.

Boldt hung up from a cell phone call. “It’s a sing-along, like Rocky Horror. Costumes. Twenty bucks a seat.”

Trying to make light, Liz said, “I’d make a better Maria, don’t you think?”

The officer reminded her that her bra contained a tracking device and assured her that they’d never be far away. Husband and wife met eyes-a covert exchange that the officer was not allowed to see.

Liz added a starched white section over her shoulders. Boldt helped secure it in place with Velcro.

Liz donned a Flying Nun headdress. He found it odd that a few pieces of clothing could add so much innocence and virtue. Her face looked peaceful and beautiful, not a strand of hair showing. Even as pale as she’d been lately, next to the stark white fabric her skin looked Italian olive, healthy and vibrant. All lies.

They met eyes in the mirror. Boldt forced a smirk.

“If you’re thinking of making a joke, don’t.”

He grinned and nodded. “You’ll be fine.”

Boldt answered his cell phone and heard Danny Foreman’s voice. Foreman occupied his Cadillac Escalade, parked down the street from the Boldt home, riding alone. Boldt walked into the living room to take the call in private, knowing that at this same moment, Homicide detective Mark Heiman was at On-Sat, keeping track of the location of Foreman and his car. Boldt still didn’t trust Foreman despite Hayes having no recollection of who had beaten him.

Foreman asked, “What the hell is going on?”

“Some kind of attempt to spoil our game plan, I imagine.” Boldt explained the movie ticket and the nun’s costume.

“Does that sound like Svengrad?”

“Hayes, maybe.” Boldt put it out there, playing as if he didn’t know any better. He wondered if Foreman had returned to the warehouse yet, if he knew Hayes had “escaped.” He, Boldt, had to play it as if Hayes were still at large. This juggling act of lying to Foreman, misleading the surveillance team in hopes of springing Liz, tricking the officer assigned to their home by allowing her to hear rehearsed conversations between him and Liz, all took their toll. Playing several roles at once, Boldt felt scattered and schizophrenic.

Liz appeared from the bedroom.

“I don’t like it,” Foreman said. “What if it’s someone else-Geiser, for instance-trying to manipulate Liz for his own gain?”

“Making that kind of suggestion could get you in trouble, Danny. I could accuse you of the same thing.” He let that hang there. “Then where would we be?”

He heard Foreman breathing into the phone. Foreman said, “They’re going to want her at the reception, not at some three-hour movie. You can’t let her make this play.”

Boldt had expected a similar argument from Pahwan Riz. The embezzled money had to be wired out ahead of the merger, and the chaos of the VIP reception appeared to offer the best opportunity. A person could argue that Liz should ignore the nun’s habit, the movie ticket, and head straight to the reception, due to start at 7:30. But to his credit, Riz, accustomed to the fluidity of a special operation, had so far issued no such directives.

“That’s Reece’s call, not mine,” Boldt told Foreman. “You leave it up to me, Liz stays home tonight, watches reruns, and goes to bed early.”

Riz had a good plan all worked out: Malone subbed for Liz during the most exposed part of her itinerary, from the minivan on, in case Liz was abducted. Meanwhile, Liz would be transferred under tight security to the bank-safe once inside and able to access the AS/400, through the security requiring her palm print. It was a plan Boldt could not allow to happen because of the cards Svengrad held.

“Reece has a good plan,” Boldt reminded.

“Doesn’t include this,” Foreman complained.

“We adapt, right, Danny?”

“I’m just saying: I don’t like it.”

“So noted.” Boldt disconnected the call. So far, so good. Riz had not thrown up any roadblocks.

“Miles6, Sarah4,” Boldt reminded her as he approached. He didn’t want her using these passwords under any circumstances but had to appear otherwise.

He stepped forward to hug her and she whispered into his ear. “Is this going to work?”

“Stay with the plan,” Boldt said into her ear.

She kissed him on the cheek. It felt strangely foreign to him. He felt like kissing her back or hugging her, but inexplicably did neither. Instead, he opened the door for her and watched as she walked toward the waiting taxi.

He had calls to make. Arrangements. His complex plan to beat his own people without breaking laws and without being discovered suddenly seemed so fragile, so easily broken. Seeing the taxi drive off, he wished he’d said something more to her, longed for a second chance before sending her off without so much as a dress rehearsal. If Svengrad or Foreman had a plan to abduct Liz, Boldt had just beaten them to it. He’d abducted his own wife by arranging the costume, by buying the ticket to The Sound of Music ahead of time. By having it delivered by taxi. However tenuous, he controlled the strings now, though for how long was anyone’s guess.

LaMoia felt awkward dressed in his black funeral suit, a white shirt, dark vest, Stewart plaid bow tie, and gray felt hat. With his hair pulled into a small ponytail and tucked down his collar, even his colleagues were unlikely to recognize him-which was, of course, the point.

Fifth Avenue, Seattle’s most posh shopping street, was crammed with traffic, the sidewalks overflowing with both the dinner crowd and theatergoers. The 5th Avenue Theatre stood directly across the street from the WestCorp Bank Center. The Four Seasons Olympic Hotel occupied the opposite corner.

He stood in a line of several hundred people, families, kids, full-bodied coeds in tight, colorful shorts, all dressed from various scenes in the movie. Women in full skirts and high heels-Maria. Men dressed as boys in lederhosen with its latzbund and schlitzfleck. More nuns than in a convent. But the real shocker was the uniformed Nazis-enough to run a concentration camp. It was as if the film had given an excuse to the white supremacists to play dress-up.

LaMoia was one of only a handful of Max Detweilers, giving him the feeling that he’d chosen the least inspired costume in the bunch. For her part, Matthews, as always, looked astonishingly perfect as a rosy-cheeked Maria, turning more than a few heads as she and LaMoia had found their places in the long line that awaited a slow box office.

The earpiece from his cell phone alerted him to the arrival of Liz Boldt’s taxi just west of the theater. Pahwan Riz’s team had followed her but were scrambling to get people costumed and on the ground in order to stay with her.

“The Sarge is a genius,” LaMoia told Daphne. He pressed his hand to his ear to isolate the voice in the ear bud. “The flying nun just entered the ticket holders’ line behind us. Reece is about to blow a valve.”

Daphne said, “Get seats near the back. I’ll tell her to look for your hat.”

“You be careful.”

“It’s not me they want,” Daphne said.

“That’s what worries me,” he said. “Nothing stupid.”

“Agreed.”

LaMoia couldn’t see over a couple of Nazis ahead of them. So when they made it inside and Daphne split off toward the women’s room, he lost sight of her. Liz Boldt pushed past in her nun’s outfit, close enough for him to reach out and touch her.

LaMoia kept his hands to himself.

Liz loitered by a trash bin in front of the women’s room where a line had formed. The theater’s lobby teemed with costumed moviegoers hungry for popcorn and to be seen by friends. The din made it hard to think. Bumped from behind, she turned to face Daphne Matthews, who looked strikingly beautiful in her Maria outfit. She felt her face flare behind the emotions of looking at her husband’s former lover, an identity kept secret all these years. The sickening combination of disinfectant, perfume, and hairspray overcame her as they moved into the rest room. A strong waft of marijuana overcame the other odors. She hadn’t seen a bathroom so crowded since her high school prom, and all the women dressed as one of three or four characters. She rubbed up against the Baroness, only to see the stubble of beard through the cosmetics. Somewhere in heaven the Von Trapps were as nauseated as she.

Wall-to-wall costumed freaks, Liz realized. Some were on drugs, or boozed up, anything to lower their inhibitions and allow them to croon through the three-hour film, thinking they were Pavarotti or Sills. The volume of talk in the tiled room proved deafening, the air thick with too many conflicting odors.

Again Daphne bumped her from behind. Adrenalized, and mildly claustrophobic, she felt tempted to scream out at the woman. Instead the two pushed into a toilet stall together, and Daphne turned quickly to lock the metal door.

“You,” Liz said, not sure why it came out this way.

“He briefed you, didn’t he?” Daphne asked.

“Oh, he briefed me all right,” Liz said, finding the opportunity impossible to pass up.

Reaching behind for her own zipper, Daphne looked back at Liz curiously. “We should get started.”

Liz made no effort to undress, embarrassed beyond belief to have to show her body to “the other woman.” She said, “He told me it was you. The affair. The one-night stand.”

Daphne looked as if she’d been punched, as if she needed to lean past Liz into the toilet bowl. She said, “Yes… well… this isn’t the time.”

“All these years,” she said. “Your coming to our house. Always playing so sweet and considerate. How did I miss it?”

“Liz, whatever you two are working through, I’m not part of that. We’ve got enough going on here without this. Okay? This is designed to buy you time. We’re wasting that time.”

“It’s more insidious than what I went through with David,” she said. “You see him every day. Interact with him every single day. How can you do that without thinking about it? I don’t think you can. You don’t, do you? So you think about it, and you both share it, even though it’s years behind you. That’s kind of sick for a psychologist, don’t you think?” She didn’t understand why she clung to this, except that the last thing she wanted to do was disrobe in front of this woman, and engaging her seemed a way to stall. Daphne pulled the dress off her shoulders, revealing first her substantial cleavage and then a white bra and finally the smooth tummy of a woman who had not given birth. Flawless, like something from a magazine, and only then did Liz glimpse the depth of what Lou had gone through to suffer her own affair with David Hayes.

Liz felt herself an awful combination of humiliation, regret, and anger. Her emotions bubbled to the surface. The stall was so small that Daphne switched places with her, passing closely enough that their chests touched. Daphne sat down on the toilet in order to keep the dress from touching the floor, pulled down past her underwear to her knees. A waxed bikini line.

Liz asked that she be allowed to undress in private. Daphne looked at her as if she were crazy and said, “There are fifty women out there, all waiting for a stall. Liz, please… now.”

“I can’t do this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She wanted to say: You slept with him. You were naked with him. I’ve had cancer. I’ve had two children. But she understood how petty and trite that would sound-especially aimed at a woman offering to take her place in a dangerous situation and one in which Daphne was to go unmonitored; Daphne was preparing to trick her own colleagues, risking all kinds of future discipline. She said nothing, but stood paralyzed by the situation.

“Undress. Now!” Daphne said sharply.

“That’a girl!” a stranger’s voice shouted from an adjacent stall.

Daphne sat down on the toilet in bra, tights, and shoes, working to get the tights off.

Liz turned around and asked Daphne to help with the Velcro to the various pieces that made up the nun’s habit, which Daphne did.

Daphne said, “You can bunch the top of your dress at the waist. The skirt is longer than yours, so you can wear the LBD under it.” Little Black Dress.

Liz got the habit off. She felt cold fingers as Daphne unzipped the cocktail dress for her, and helped her half out of it. She would need the dress for the reception. Lou had chosen it in part because it would hide underneath the Maria dress.

“Bras,” Daphne reminded.

Liz felt nauseated. She was being asked to bare her chest in front of Daphne as they switched bras in order to move the concealed tracking device. There was nothing left to her chest, wizened by nursing two children, flattened by gravity, corrupted by the starvation of cancer treatment. She turned her back on Daphne and then passed the bra back, wiggling her arm until Daphne claimed it. The one that was handed her was a bigger cup size. She swam in it, and she found this humiliating. Liz reached for some toilet paper mumbling, “This is embarrassing.”

Daphne struggled to adjust Liz’s bra straps. The undergarment barely contained her breasts, fitting uncomfortably. “Hand me the rest of the habit,” she requested.

“I get two dresses. You get none,” Liz said, turning now as she stepped into the Maria dress.

“That’s about right.”

“That thing-a couple Velcros is all to close it. You’re going to fall out left and right.”

“Luckily, it’s dark,” Daphne said.

“How can this possibly work?” Liz asked, having trouble with the zipper and once again needing Daphne’s help.

“We switch purses-the one thing that identifies you-and I find a seat and watch the movie. The hook is baited. Everyone, our own people included, are watching for a nun leaving the bathroom with your purse. I hide the purse and they’ll never confuse me with you. You’ll fail to show.” Daphne pulled a red-headed wig from her own bag. “We get you into this. You join John near the back. The two of you leave together at intermission. Two people leaving together, not a single. A Maria, not a nun. He walks you out, by which point you’re headed for the reception-better late than never. You’re in the bank while Special Ops continues sorting through nuns trying to find you. Lou looked at this thing from every way possible. It’s not perfect, but it’s as close as we’re going to get.”

“How do I get in the bank? We’re assuming the bank is being watched, aren’t we?”

“One thing at a time,” Daphne said. “John’s got that covered.”

“That’s all you’re going to tell me,” Liz said, sounding disappointed.

They exchanged purses. Liz placed all kinds of symbolism into this act and thought that as a psychologist Daphne could probably sort through it all, but had no desire to discuss it.

“And if my cell phone rings? If they give me instructions that go against this plan of Lou’s?”

“He worked this out with you, didn’t he?”

Liz felt deflated. He had, in fact, walked her through this a half dozen times, but she’d wanted to hear it again. She now realized the absurdity of this desire, given their current location.

Daphne instructed, “Go out there and find John. That’s all you focus on right now. It’s a zoo out there. Find John and follow whatever he says. He’s at the back of the theater.” She repeated, “The back of the theater.”

Liz felt inadequate, ashamed of her behavior over the past few minutes, responsible for people putting themselves at risk-all because of her past. But she could not find it within her heart to thank the woman. She helped Velcro Daphne into the habit. Skin showed, and flashes of underwear.

They transferred the contents of the purses, Liz making sure she retained the two bank IDs she carried-one supplied by Lou-her wallet, lipstick, and mobile phone.

“All set?” Daphne asked. Daphne looked good even with just the oval of her face showing. Jealousy brewed inside her once more.

She nodded.

Daphne added, “For what it’s worth: John and I are happy together.”

“It’s not worth much,” Liz said quickly and uncharitably. “But I’m working on it.”

“Good.” Daphne indicated the stall door, and the two women spilled out into the din and clamor of the rest room, among a dozen competing odors. Women’s voices crooned off-key, “The hills are alive… ”

Daphne joined in at the top of her lungs as if having the time of her life. The back of the habit hung open slightly, exposing her bottom. She never missed a step.

A clear, perfectly pitched voice on top of everything else. Liz thought she might be sick.

She stepped into a world where people lay in wait for her, and this thought terrified her. She wanted to be home. With him. She wanted another chance at whatever it was they now called their relationship. Marriage? Companionship? Parenting? She pushed away the thought that an organized band of criminals, perfectly willing and capable of submitting to violence, needed her services first and her lack of memory second. She held off the thought that Boldt believed Danny Foreman had turned against them all and represented an uncontrolled, unchecked piece of the equation, seemingly willing to take matters into his own hands. Her feet moved forward steadily as she trained her face to look to the floor, exposing as little of herself as possible, containing her new red-headed identity. But she knew even the most well-trained man would have a hard time keeping his eyes on her given the busty nun in the loosely attached habit who split off and headed down an aisle and took a single seat in the middle of the theater. Daphne Matthews and her flashing backside had every eye in the lobby. No doubt, all part of Lou’s plan.

Liz pushed her way through the thick crowd, tolerating the close contact. Her claustrophobia began to work against her. She hated crowds.

She took up a rhythmic chant in her head, scanning the seats for sight of John LaMoia: “Only a few more minutes… a few more minutes… ”

There he was, waving a box of Milk Duds at her, his arm around the empty chair she would soon occupy, a gorgeous babe to his right spilling out of her dress while openly flirting with him: John LaMoia, in heaven. Liz felt a sense of dread sweep through her, as if a thousand eyes followed her down the row. She felt those eyes boring into her, studying her, looking to identify the face beneath the wig, and she regretted not having used the toilet while she’d had the chance.

Liz never sang a note. For an hour and a half LaMoia seemed to enjoy himself, an ear bud planted in his left ear as he monitored the surveillance team’s radio traffic. He crooned through the songs as if he’d rehearsed the parts, but she saw his eyes tracking the room like a Secret Service agent’s. Nothing got past him. He faked a few smiles for her, and she appreciated that, but he felt as nervous as she did. Lou was the only one who knew fully what was going on, and she found her trust in him the only comfort.

Within moments of the intermission announcement, just as the room erupted into applause and people jumped from their seats, throwing the auditorium into chaos, her phone buzzed and tickled her right hand, and she touched LaMoia’s shoulder to get his attention.

He nodded, and she answered it, plugging a finger in her left ear.

A low, mechanical, sterile voice said, “It’s time.” The line disconnected.

She felt all the color drain from her, all warmth. She existed in another realm where all motion slowed around her, and all sound stretched and distorted. LaMoia asked, “What’s up?” but her brain barely processed the inquiry.

“It’s time,” she managed to say.

“What about the phone call?” LaMoia asked, misunderstanding.

“It’s time,” she repeated, explaining that this had been the message delivered. The room spun. She locked on to the armrests in order to slow the carousel. She wanted the movie back. She didn’t want to go anywhere, do anything. As childish as she knew it to be, she wanted nothing more than to stay right where she was.

LaMoia leaned into her ear. “I’m going to tell the Sarge, but not until we’re out of here. This is our chance-this craziness. You gotta get up. We gotta get moving.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“I’ll carry you if I have to, but we’re outta here.”

That got her moving. She stood and followed him out into the throng. LaMoia motioned toward a side exit where a number of people were already lighting cigarettes as they stepped outside. She and LaMoia cut through a row of seats toward these open doors, and as they did she felt the eyes on her once more and the seeds of distrust and fear fought to take root yet again. Up the street the WestCorp Bank Center loomed.

“I don’t know that I can do this,” she said to LaMoia.

“I don’t think you got a choice,” he returned. “Hang with me. We’re almost there.”

But in her heart of hearts she knew this too was just another lie.

They had barely begun.