Hot Ticket (2 page)

“Thank you.” Vicky hadn’t heard one note. Each time I had looked at her, she had been scribbling on a little pad that hung
from her neck. It was as much a trademark as her Betty Boop hairdo.

Enough of me. Vicky homed in on more pressing business matters. “Minister Klint, the First Lady would like to speak with you.”

The minister’s perfect smile suggested that the feeling was not mutual. “Aren’t we meeting at ten tomorrow?”

“Before the meeting.”

My escort reverted to German. “Back to the bloody war. A drink later?” His lips lingered over my hand. Ace diplomat: hard
to say whether he was wooing me or insulting Vicky.

“Some other night.” I had almost escaped the East Room when Aurilla Perle’s escort caught up. Expensive suit, brazen green
eyes flecked with gold. Heavy black curls framed his face. He was probably ten years older, fifty times deadlier, than he
appeared. I should have recognized him. “The recital was marvelous,” he said, clasping my hand. “My name is Bendix Kaar.”

I didn’t care if he was Henry VIII. “Hello.”

“You’re not staying?” Voice cool as granite: I would not want to be this man’s enemy.

“I don’t dance.” Across the room I could see Mr. Godo, president of my record company, shaking hands with Bobby Marvel. Any
second now Godo’s photographer would be dragging me back inside for a dozen historic shots. “Good night.”

I nearly ran to the door, where a marine escorted me to the limo waiting behind the White House. We didn’t speak; I was imagining
him naked and I suppose he was watching for thugs in the shrubbery. The night was dense and paludal, throbbing with crickets.
Ahead of us the Washington Monument rose like a gigantic tack from the cushiony Mall, daring history to sit.

I entered the limousine. The marine handed over my violin. “Good night, ma’am.”

Ah, men in uniform: would that he could take a ride, let me peel off those perfect white gloves. It had been a while. “Good
night.”

The chauffeur’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “Scenic route, Miss Frost?”

Any route, as long as it wasn’t back to my vacant bed. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

We rolled past magnificent buildings, many of which people called home, judging by the slumberous bodies on their front steps.
As the limo neared the Capitol, I wondered why Maxine had sent me to Washington. She knew I disliked working in America: too
big, too diffuse, unpredictable for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t know the movies or the slang and I never wore sneakers.
Having lived so many years abroad, isolated from the stunning degeneration of the language, I now spoke a mildly archaic English.
Natives knew immediately, from my clothing and voice, that I wasn’t one of them. Maxine would be out of her mind to send me
here for undercover work. Wasn’t America Barnard’s territory? She was the agent who could pass for anything from El Paso barmaid
to Boston pediatrician.

Lightning needled the hilltops as we crossed the Arlington Bridge. Cornering like a blimp, the limo skirted the Pentagon.
I poured myself a Scotch and sank into the seat, listening to the drone of rubber on pavement. I missed my Harley. It was
a good companion after concerts, more intoxicating than alcohol, less demanding than a man. After a siege under the spotlights,
nothing recharged the batteries like a supersonic zip along the Autobahn, especially when I had the Stradivarius strapped
to the rack. Tempting fate kept one humble—and brave. Couldn’t happen here, of course, not with a speed limit of sixty-five
mph and a radar trap beyond each hill. No wonder everyone had a gun.

As we drifted into Virginia, the phone rang. A mistake—I hoped. “Hello.”

“Raoul?” asked Maxine.

I knocked on the partition, playing the hole through. “Is your name Raoul?”

He shook his head. “Mickey.”

“You’ve got the wrong number.” Hung up, finished the Scotch. After a while I told Mickey to return to the hotel: Maxine expected
me ready for action in an hour. I had to smile as trees became streetlights and the limo fell in with police cars prowling
the boulevards. The Queen knew the best time to get me was after a performance, when the ganglia were still smoking and. the
brain ached for a new riddle, any riddle, to stanch the void. I was suicidally fearless now. Or I used to be … the concerts
had resumed only three weeks ago. My first few strolls into the spotlight had been frightening. During my sabbatical, a tiny
switch that fused brain to finger had turned off; without that switch on, I had no shield against the terror that seized performers
seconds before they had to go onstage and string a few thousand notes, beginning to end, flawlessly. Tonight the switch had
flicked off only a few times, an encouraging sign, but now I was tired rather than wired. Whatever little errand Maxine had
concocted, I hoped it would be easy.

After halting the limo in a brass alcove, Mickey unhanded me to a doorman. I went to my room and changed from flowing white
to tight black. As the costume changed, so did my pulse: Maxine was sending me back to the razor’s edge, bless her conniving,
pitiless heart. I packed my plastic knife, which wouldn’t ruffle any metal detectors in this security-mad town, and coiled
my hair under a black scarf. Left the room. The doorman who had just helped me from the limousine looked twice as I returned
to the lobby: in five minutes I had gone from goddess to buccaneer. Nevertheless, he put a whistle to his mouth. Guests of
his hotel did not walk the streets at this—indeed any—hour.

“No cab,” I said, sailing past.

Headed toward the White House, where the president’s soirée, or a major fire, still raged. Lights from the East Room threw
buttery shafts across the lawn. Tourists along Pennsylvania Avenue pressed their faces to the high iron fence, chattering
in a stew of tongues as they photographed the distant chandeliers. By now my accompanist Duncan was either tangoing with a
princess or puking in LBJ’s toilet. Minister Klint would be in one of those overstuffed reception rooms, sipping champagne
as he allowed Paula & co. to think they were getting the better of him. President Marvel? Engaging a cigar or a woman: end
result about the same. Hard to believe I had been with them an hour ago.

Found a phone at Pershing Square, called a local number. The line fizzed and clicked. Finally Maxine answered. “Play well?”

“I would have been a bigger hit at Arlington Cemetery.”

“Meet anyone interesting?”

“Was I supposed to?”

I could hear her patiently swallowing coffee four thousand miles away. “How’s the weather?”

“Stinking hot.” Same as two weeks ago, when Maxine had been in town rooting around the NSA computers with her five-star general.
Maybe she had been trying to dig up some easy work for me. “Can I come back to Berlin now?”

“Drop in on Barnard first. She’s right down the street.”

Something wrong. Not once in all these years had one of Maxine’s other agents dropped in on me, or I on them. Now that five
out of seven of us were dead, perhaps the Queen was relaxing her social policy. “Is she expecting me?”

“She knows you’re in town.”

“What’s she doing here?”

Again I heard a quiet swallowing. “You got me.”

Hard to say which was worse, Maxine not knowing what was going on or actually admitting so. She gave us girls a long leash,
but we were expected to bark at reasonable intervals. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Just check her out.” Maxine told me an address: Watergate.

“Come on, the place is a fortress!”

“You’ll see three fountains outside the north lobby. Keys are in the middle one. Apartment 937. Her name’s Polly Mason.”

Before Maxine could explain how to unlock Barnard’s door, I hung up and joined the tourists cruising the Ellipse. Hard to
be invisible in this town: too damn broad and bright, zero foliage cover, and every other pedestrian carried a videocamera.
No wonder there were so few assassinations anymore. Crowds, lights, thinned after the Lincoln Memorial. Soon even the sidewalks
disappeared. I walked along the Potomac, reacquainting myself with the rhythm and insinuation of shadows as adrenaline began
seeping into my blood. It was a heavier mix than my brain had put out for Bobby Marvel’s concert a few hours ago; then again,
no one killed a violinist for bad intonation. I could feel the rush in my arms and legs. They were already in super shape;
during my time off, I had been working out. Smith had never been leaner or stronger. Odd that the less I cared to live, the
better care I took of my body.

Cut through the bushes behind the Kennedy Center. Though all was now quiet on the immense back palazzo, tonight’s opera would
end in fifteen minutes, spewing several thousand witnesses my way. Even now a few spoilsports were scuttling out before the
final curtain. Limousines crawled up the ramp, motors rumbling, masking low frequencies; a battalion of taxis would invade
any minute. Hurrying, I crossed the street to the Watergate complex, where once upon a time a few cocky amateurs had performed
the mother of all botch jobs. Careful, Smith: bad karma here.

Heard water before I saw it. Ahead of me, three oval basins tinkled into each other, exactly as Maxine had described. Three
tiny moons danced on their surfaces. I froze, horrified: my last assignment had begun in a fountain in Leipzig. Now Maxine
had brought me halfway around the earth to not one fountain, but three. Was this the Queen’s way of telling me to get on with
it? Worse, a dare: If I couldn’t make this first hurdle, she’d know my guts were still soup, my nerves steady as ice in a
desert. I’d sink to the bottom of her class, maybe for good.

On a nearby balcony, a woman laughed softly, ecstatically: stopped me dead. She was watching the moon with someone she loved.
I had laughed like that once … did that woman have any idea what was to come? If so, she laughed anyway. Goaded by her defiance,
her hopeless bravery, I stalked to the middle fountain. No fish. Just pennies, pebbles, balls of gum. I had nearly circled
the basin when the phantom of a shadow wavered beneath the water. A jellyfish with straight edges? My hand raked the slippery
bottom: keys all right. Clear plastic.

Above, I heard another low, maddening chuckle. Up the street, cars began to honk: opera
finita.
I quickly circled the Watergate complex, a hulk of jags, tiers, and curves—half yacht, half Moby-Dick. Like most buildings
in Washington, it was a tad too white. Out back, a grove of pines shielded the service entrance. Pulled on my gloves and hid
my face in the scarf. Tried one of Maxine’s keys. No alarm sounded, but up in security a little beeper had probably gone off;
armed guard would be checking in any minute. I trotted down a humid, linty corridor. Behind closed doors, machinery whined
so that folks upstairs could coast through four seasons at a comfy seventy-two degrees. I ran up the stairwell to the ninth
floor. Barnard would live near the top, of course. Ostentation was the best cover, she always claimed. But Barnard would have
stuck out in any crowd. She was a stunning six-foot blonde. Liked her hair in a high chignon and shoes with four-inch spikes:
working altitude easily six six. She could do a mile in under four minutes and after a half bottle of gin she could still
pick off a chipmunk at two hundred yards. Maxine had scooped her out of med school and somehow convinced her that squashing
bad guys was more patriotic than finding a cure for cancer. I think her love life was like mine but with a few hundred more
correspondents, thus fewer wrenching finales. What could she be doing in Washington? Rang her doorbell, concocting my spiel.
Hi, remember me? We went to camp together.
After a minute I rang again. Through the peephole, lights burned. I unlocked her door.

“Polly?” No, Ella Fitzgerald crooning from the speakers. I was looking at more art and carpet than Barnard could have afforded
after working a century for Maxine. Maybe she still did a little brain surgery on the side. The decor favored beige and live,
the colors of dollar bills. On a sideboard flared an enormous bouquet of purple orchids. Beyond the music, an ominous silence
pressed the nerves. My heart began thumping erratically: I was not alone here. Drawing my knife, I entered the bedroom.

Gloriously naked, Barnard sprawled facedown across the bed. A tattoo glowered on her left buttock. From the looks of the rumpled
bedding, she had either fought—or fucked—very hard. But no blood. And no pulse in her still warm neck. The faintest scent
of grilled pineapple lingered in the air. I was inspecting a puncture near the edge of Barnard’s hairline when the phone rang.
The answering machine picked up.

“The ice-cream man will see you at midnight.” Woman’s voice. Contemptuous, biting the
t
’s. “Don’t be late.”

I pocketed the cassette and rolled Barnard’s lush, heavy corpse over. Blue eyes bulged from a blue face. Strangled? No welts
on the throat. Pills? Drano? I pried open her jaws. Tough work, since they were beginning to mortise. Her mouth looked pink
and healthy except for a dash of white down by the tonsils. Dug my finger in: eh? String? I pulled, felt the resistance, knew,
didn’t believe but continued to tug, almost gagging when the thick, white head of a tampon loomed like a giant maggot at the
base of her mouth. Slow suffocation: what a terrible way to die.

I went to the bedroom, found a safety pin and another tampon. Sorry, friend: stabbed Barnard’s neck, near the original puncture.
She bled heavily, warmly, still so alive. I was swabbing the last beads of blood when a key slipped into the front door. In
a few seconds I’d be at a bad pajama party so I cut to Barnard’s plant-clogged balcony. No chance of winging the twenty-foot
gap between here and the neighbor’s begonias. Nine stories below I saw only trees. Damn! Where were all the swimming pools
when you needed them? Looped my scarf around a balcony post and somersaulted over the edge as a figure burst into Barnard’s
bedroom. Whoever it was stomped onto the balcony, pausing in the moonlight as I swung by the wrists a few inches below. Breathless,
we both listened to the wind, to the hum of traffic along the Potomac. Should the intruder look down, should a pedestrian
look up, I was finished. But a terse whistle inside the apartment saved me. The footsteps retreated and I was left alone to
calculate the number of seconds I could hold on before my grip melted or the scarf tore. Minutes crawled by. My wrists became
numb, white hot, numb again as I dangled in the breeze. Diversion necessary so I ran the first movement of the Brahms concerto,
note by note, through my head. Curtis had scheduled me to play it in Frankfurt next week. I was almost through when the lights
snapped out in Barnard’s living room.