Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 03 - Insatiable (25 page)

“And you will do something about it,” Malina said. I turned to my window and watched trees that some gardener had shaped into perfect little balls pass by. “You will.”

“Yeah, I guess I will.”

“And that brings us back to what?” Mulberry said.

I laughed. “I don’t know.”

A silence fell over all of us. Mulberry turned on the radio and we listened to a woman singing something upbeat. I didn’t bother trying to understand the words. Mexico City passed around me. It felt like I was watching a movie screen.

“Another option, of course, is just killing her,” I said. I didn’t see anyone’s reaction to this because I was watching two garbage men load up their truck. They wore jumpsuits. One of them turned and I saw his lined face frown as he looked past me at the giant advertisement for RV rentals that graced the side of our truck. “I mean that solves the whole ‘her being a danger problem’. It doesn’t clear my name but it’s not like Joy Humbolt isn’t already a fugitive.”

“Shut up, Sydney,” Mulberry said. “We’re not killing anyone.” I looked over at him. He was exasperated with me. “We need to come up with a way to expose her, not kill her.”

I turned back to my window and listened to the music. Malina coughed and I thought she might say something but the radio continued to be the only sound louder than the traffic outside. Minutes passed and I thought about how I could expose such an incredible fake. Who would believe that the young girl who’d lost both her parents, who was crying in front of news cameras and sequestering herself in a hotel was really a killer with no conscience?

The music was interrupted for the news. The weather: good. The economy: bad. Then I heard Ana Maria’s name. “What are they saying?” I asked, turning to Izel.

“It says that-” she stopped to listen again. “That Juanita was to be the keynote speaker at a benefit for the women of Juarez. Ana Maria is giving an undisclosed contribution-” she listened again. Her eyes got wide. “And she will be giving her mother’s talk in her place.”

“Of course she is,” I said.

“Full of shit, yes?” Malina asked.

Mulberry laughed. “Yes,” I said. “She is totally full of shit.”

“Can’t we explain this to people?” Malina asked.

“I’m all ears,” I said.

Malina bit her lip. “What about if she confessed?”

“That would be great,” I said. “But I think impossible.”

Malina chewed on her lip for another second and then said slowly, “Could we record her speaking,without her knowing?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“If you talk to her, she says things that she would never say in public and then you play it for the-” she waved her hand in a tight circle trying to think of the word.

“The audience?” I said.

“Si, the audience. What if you played a tape of her to the audience?”

No one spoke for a second. “That’s a good idea,” Izel said. “I think you could do it.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Yes,” Izel said. “You could talk to her, either at the benefit or before. Mulberry you could find a way to wire her.”

“Wire her?” Mulberry said. “Where’d you learn that?”

Izel bristled. “I have a law degree.”

Mulberry laughed deeply. “All right, Izel. I’ll wire her up.”

“But how am I going to get close to her? She’s got tons of security, not to mention Blane. And it’s not like she’s some wilting flower. Hell, she might even kill me.”

“No, no,” Malina said. “I think she will talk to you. She will not kill you. She is not that good.”

“Besides,” Mulberry said, “we could sneak into her hotel room or something. We’d get the recording before the benefit and then just play it there. Hey, I like this plan. It’s got balls.”

“Balls? Don’t you mean holes? Even if we do get this recording, how are we going to play it at the gala?” I asked.

“Through the sound system,” Izel said.

“Yeah, but how are we going to get into the sound system? Any sound experts in this RV?” No one said anything. “Hell, I don’t think any of us could even program a VCR.”

“Yeah, but that’s really hard,” Mulberry said. I looked over at him giving him my best glare. “What? It is.”

“Not to mention outdated. You’re showing your age, Mulberry.”

“You brought it up,” he said.

“You think hacking into a sound system is going to be easier?” I asked him.

“I bet it would be for Dan.”

The name made my stomach lurch. “Yes,” Izel said. “He could help.”

“I don’t know how to reach him,” I muttered.

“I do,” Mulberry said.

“I doubt he will help me. I almost got him killed last time.”

“Doesn’t hurt to ask,” Izel said. “Besides, you didn’t think that Malina or I would want to help but we do.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek thinking about the explosion in the alley. The dust, the confusion, the heat. “I don’t know.”

Mulberry was grinning. “I like this plan,” he said. “I like it a lot.”

“Me, too,” Izel said.

“Me, too,” Malina said.

I turned to look at their smiling faces and grimaced back. “OK. We’ll call Dan.” They grinned.

“My cell’s in my bag,” Mulberry said. Izel jumped up and headed to the back to retrieve it.

“Right now?” I said.

“No time like the present.”

“Please, don’t start with clichés, it will kill me. This whole plan belongs in a fucking 80’s movie. Except it should be my cheating boyfriend I expose, not a child who killed her parents.”

“What?” Malina asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing, nothing. It will be fine.”

She smiled. “Yes, very good.”

Izel came back with the cell phone and handed it to me. It was a Blackberry. I imagined Mulberry bent over the thing getting frustrated by trying to hit the little buttons with his big thumbs. “Nice phone,” I said.

“I’m a businessman. I need to email on the go sometimes.” I laughed. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“It’s just funny, you being a businessman.”

“Yeah, whatever, just call him would you?”

“Where’s the number?”

Mulberry sighed and took the phone out of my hand. He scrolled through the address book, flicking his eyes between the phone and the road. “It’s dangerous to text and drive you know?”

“Shut up,” he said, but he was smiling. “Here.” He handed me the phone. It was ringing. Dan picked up on the third ring, sounding sleepy and curious. Hearing Dan’s voice made me smile and my heartbeat quicken.

“How you doing?” I asked.

“Sydney? Is that you?”

“I heard you survived St. Thomas with only a couple of scratches.”

“Yeah, yeah. What about you?”

“I’m OK.”

“I saw that Ana Maria’s parents were murdered. What is going on?”

I explained to him what happened as succinctly as possible. It sounded like the story of a crazy person, I realized, as I retold the tale of my capture and release.

“Jesus Christ,” was his first response, followed quickly by “how can I help?”

I smiled. “Let me tell you what I want and then maybe you can tell me if you can help.”

“Sure.”

I explained our convoluted plan. About how I wanted to record a confession without Ana Maria knowing it and then patch said confession into the sound system of an auditorium crawling with security. When I was done I took a deep breath closed my eyes and said, “Exactly how crazy does that sound?”

Dan laughed. “It sounds completely insane.”

I let out my breath. “Impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible. Difficult, arduous, tricky, but not impossible.”

“How?”

Dan laughed again. “You want me to explain it to you or do it for you?”

“When can you get here?”

“I’m already booking my ticket.” I could hear the tapping of keys on the other end of the phone. “All right, I’ll be on the-” more tapping. “I get in at 5am. You wanna pick me up at the airport?”

I smiled. “We are full service. See you at dawn.”

OLD-FASHIONED DETECTIVE WORK

The hotel where Ana Maria had taken up residence was modern. The sun reflected off its glass walls and made me squint. I was in the back, sitting on the bench behind the driver’s seat, leaning over Mulberry’s shoulder. I reached into the bowl of popcorn that sat on the table without turning to look at it. “What do you think?” I asked, before pushing a handful of popcorn into my mouth.

Mulberry shrugged. I struggled to chew, my mouth was so full it needed my undivided attention to figure out how not to choke. “Her security is insane,” Mulberry said. I nodded. “Not only is she guarded by the hotel’s security which is some of the best in the city, but the president has loaned her some of his presidential guard. Those are some serious motherfuckers.”

“And what’s that mean?” I asked with my mouth still half full. Blue leaned up and plucked an escaped popcorn from my lap.

“Basically we’ll never get near her,” Mulberry said.

“Really?”

Mulberry laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll come up with something. Maybe there’s a secret tunnel that leads straight into her toilet.”

Malina looked over at him from the passenger side, her brow wrinkled in a question. “He’s joking,” I explained. She looked back at me. “Because of the tunnels I found before.” That didn’t clear it up for her. “In New York I discovered tunnels left over from the American Revolution that led from a nearby park into the Mayor’s office. It by-passed his security. I don’t think we will have that opportunity here.”

“You can’t even get a room,” Malina said. Ana Maria had basically shut down one of her father’s, excuse me, her hotels. It was filled with her security (headed by Blane, of course), and the specific media she wanted around her. Any reservation made in advance of the sudden tragedy had been honored but no new ones were being offered. Malina turned back to face the hotel, I let my eyes go there, too.

I was looking at the door. I was looking at it so hard, just willing Ana Maria to walk out of it. But it remained closed. A small crowd of paparazzi, their cameras slung around their necks and cigarettes drooping from their lips waited for her, too. I wondered if when I exposed her they would want her more or less. Or maybe their passion would be unwavering for the girl.

As I worked on another giant handful of popcorn, the door opened. I leaned forward, my face almost even with Mulberry’s. The paparazzi all crowded against the metal gate that separated them from their subject. It was a woman, but she was blonde. The photographers recoiled into resting position.

The woman exited the hotel and made her way down the street. She was short and plump. One of the tourists booked into the hotel before the national uproar. Her face was pinched. Her lips a tight line just above her small chin. She wore round glasses and as she hailed a cab, I imagined her peering through them at the wonders that the National Museum held.

I reached back for another handful of popcorn and found only kernels. I turned to look into the bowl and my hand’s initial findings were confirmed. Izel was in the kitchen, doing something that looked domestic. I licked the salt on my lips and contemplated asking her for another bowl of popcorn. I looked at the clock on the dashboard and calculated that there were a hell of a lot of hours between now and when we’d pick Dan up at the airport. Blue abandoned me now that I was no longer littering food and went to sit in front of Izel.

Izel looked over at me and said, “Do you think we should change your hair?”

I heard Malina sit up, “That’s a good idea,” she said.

I heard Mulberry laughing under his breath. “You could shave it all off and dye it pink,” he said before letting out a belly laugh that Mrs. Claus might have recognized.

“I think that makes sense,” I said over Mulberry’s hysterics, “but perhaps something simpler. Just change it a bit so that I don’t look quite so much like me.”

Malina stood up and walked into the living area of the recreational vehicle. “What about,” she said “if we dye it dark brown and put in red…” she struggled to find the word, “tints?”

“Highlights?” I said.

“Yes! Highlights, and cut it a little shorter, maybe? And maybe some makeup to make the scars go away?”

“You girls better get to work,” Mulberry said, turning back to the hotel.

Malina went out to buy the hair dye and makeup while Izel made me another bag of microwave popcorn. Mulberry leaned into his seat, his chin close to his chest, and snored. When Malina came back, Izel and I both put our fingers to our lips and shushed her. She crept into the RV as we pointed at the slumbering Mulberry. Malina smiled then sat down across from me and rustling through her bags, pulled out an eyeliner.

Izel had to clamp a hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter. I took the pencil from Malina and pulled off the top. It was a liquid liner which meant that I wouldn’t have to use any pressure at all to write on Mulberry’s forehead. “What should I write?” I asked.