Authors: Linda Barlow
Blackthorn glanced at his watch, which read 12:39
P.M.
It was not 12:39. It was twenty to ten. He’d forgotten to set his watch to California time when he’d arrived last night.
Only 9:30 in the morning, and he wanted a drink.
Not that he had a drinking problem. That is, not anymore.
Nah, man, you’re addicted to something else. Someone
else. You’re a Jessie junkie. Hung up on a woman who’s dead and gone. And there’s no damn Betty Ford Center to treat that.
Blackthorn’s eyes flicked back to the minibar. Bound to be some Chivas in there. Chivas was just the thing to help him escape
the fact that he was back in California, where Jessie had died.
Jessie. Oh, Jesus. Jessie, Jess, Jess.
The hell with it. He picked up the key, jammed it into the lock, opened the small refrigerator, and removed a tiny bottle
of Scotch. He placed it on top of the TV, where he could admire its sensuous, dark golden color as the sun from the plate
glass window struck it.
You can look, but you’d better not touch, darlin’. You ever start drinking like those other idiots in your family and I swear
I’ll come back and haunt you.
That a promise?
You won’t like my haunting. I won’t be one of those sad, wispy little ghosts. I’ll be a demon, clawing at you, destroying
your sleep. So no booze. No sinking into the great Blackthorn Escape. Promise me.
He’d promised, of course. And kept it, too. So far. In all the months since he’d buried Jessie he’d managed to avoid cracking
open that top. Today, though
The name
Rina de Sevigny
assaulted him. That’s who he was supposed to be concentrating on. Focus on Rina. That oughtta cure you, sucker, he thought.
Come on, then, Jessie, haunt me. That’s what you’ve been doing anyway for all this time. I’m no good without you, sober or
drunk.
He reached for the bottle of Scotch. The phone by the king-sized bed interrupted him before he could break the seal. Blackthorn
smiled and shook his head. The same
thing had happened once or twice before. Maybe she
was
still around. Not his demon, but his guardian angel.
He walked over and picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”
“Blackthorn,” said a sharp female voice that he recognized instantly—Carla Murphy, who worked for him at World Systems Security.
“I’m calling from the convention center in Anaheim.”
“Hey, Carla. What’s up?”
“I think you’d better get on over here.”
“Why? I’m not due on the scene until the glitzy party this evening.”
“Well, it turns out the client is not happy about that arrangement,” Carla said. “Actually it’s her husband who’d like to
have you here. Says he’d feel safer that way.”
“Yeah, right,” Blackthorn said. He didn’t much like Armand de Sevigny.
“Listen, I sympathize,” said Carla. “The whole case is a waste of our time, in my opinion. She’s not even a particularly famous
author, as far as I can tell.”
“Actually, she
is
pretty famous,” said Blackthorn. “A little more so in Europe than here, perhaps, but she’s had a large following here, too,
ever since the release of that TV video piece that runs on cable of odd hours of the night with all the senators, astronauts,
and movie stars lauding Power Perspectives, her personal transformation program.”
“Yeah, so who wants to kill her? Somebody whose personality didn’t get transformed? Jeez. I could be at a Mafia stakeout and
here I am stuck at a goddamn booksellers’ convention.”
Blackthorn grinned. Then he sighed, eyeing the whiskey again. At his direction, Carla had done most of the work for this case
so far. She’d been the one to analyze
Rina’s needs and lay out a plan to protect her. This had been fine with Blackthorn. Perfect.
“So why do you think somebody wants to kill you?” he’d asked Rina when she’d insisted, in her imperious way, that he take
the case.
“Perhaps because I know too many secrets about too many people,” Rina had said, which had reminded Blackthorn that she knew
a few of his own secrets, as well.
“Blackthorn?” Carla said. “You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. You want to run it by me again? What exactly is the problem this morning?”
“It’s not just the husband who’s complaining,” Carla said. “Rina’s friend Daisy Tulane is concerned as well.”
“The feminist who would be senator.”
“Exactly. Apparently Rina helped Ms. Tulane get her head together a couple of years ago and now Daisy’s turned protective.
She insists they contracted with us for four bodyguards and we’ve only given her three.”
“The contract says, ‘multiple bodyguards’ and ‘sufficient protection,’ for chrissake. Two would have been more than sufficient.”
“Well, not really. It’s a tricky situation, Blackthorn. Rina insists on meeting her ‘friends,’ as she calls them— the strangers
who have bought her books and tapes and tried out her empowerment program. She’s signing autographs as I speak, in this cavernous
hall with hundreds of people crowded about.”
“We didn’t authorize that. How does she expect us to protect her if she won’t follow orders?”
“How do I know? All I can tell you is there’s a lot about this situation that’s making me crazy. This place is impossible
to secure. It’s huge, for one thing, and there are people milling all over, with arms full of books and assorted publisher
giveaways. It’d be easy as hell to slip
in a piece. You could hide an Uzi in one of those book-bags. We can’t cover her adequately with only three of us. Shit, it’d
be difficult with ten.”
Terrific, Blackthorn thought. It looked like he’d have to show up, after all.
“Blackthorn?” Carla paused, then said slowly, “I’m not interrupting anything, am I? You don’t have a date, do you? I could,
uh, call back in a little while.”
He grimaced at the eagerness in her voice. Along with all his friends, Carla was always watching for some sign that he was
ready to resume the life of a normal, red-blooded, single male. Everybody seemed to think there was something wrong with him
because he hadn’t been able to let go of his dead wife.
Well, maybe there
was
something wrong. Maybe there was a lot wrong. And maybe he was taking care of it in his own way.
“Look,” he said. “Cut off the autograph session right now. Then stow Rina in her hotel room until I get there. I’ll have a
little talk with her ladyship about what she can and cannot do.”
“I can’t stow her anywhere until after her talk. She’s conducting a session on Power Perspectives at 10:30. The seminar room’s
secure, but we can’t screen every single person who crowds in to hear her.”
“Do your best, then. I’ll be there soon.”
“Thanks, Blackthorn.”
“You bet.”
He hung up the phone and put the little bottle of Chivas back into its rack in the minibar. “Good for you, Jessie,” he said.
God, how he missed her! Out there in the real world you knew who your enemies were—the guys with the guns. You could do something
about them. But there
wasn’t a single damn thing you could do about the silent, cellular-level killer that had taken Jessie. Not even the best bodyguarding
in the world could protect you against cancer.
Still, she didn’t have to
die
of it, dammit. She might have lived, if she’d only been willing to accept the proper medical care.
Stop it,
he ordered himself. Focus on Rina de Sevigny, whose life you’ve been hired to protect.
“We’d better get moving if we want to make this seminar,” April said to Maggie. She consulted the floor plan one more time,
then led the way through the crowd in one of the more congested aisles of the main display section of the convention center.
Publishers, both major and minor, had booths lining the aisles. These areas were crammed with displays of the fall lines.
The most renowned American and international publishers had the largest allotments of floor space for their displays, some
of which were outlandishly extravagant. There were huge posters of book covers and blowup photographs of famous authors.
Celebrities—including novelists, sports figures, politicians, film and TV stars—were making appearances all over the hall,
many of them promoting their latest books. At one booth, advance-reading copies of a new work by a well-known black female
novelist had just been laid out by her publicist. The crowd buzzed as the rumor flew that the author herself was about to
make an appearance. She was hot, her books were wildly successful, and everybody wanted to meet her.
April barely glanced at the celebrities. Instead, she steered Maggie toward the large room that had been re-
served by Crestwood-Locke-Mars Publishing, Inc., better known as CLM. The room was filled with rows of folding chairs facing
a dais that was graced with life-size posters, a podium, and a large video screen. Taped music with an upbeat, energizing
tempo was playing loudly as eager conventioneers pushed into the room and settled into the rows of chairs.
Maggie hung back. “Jeez, April, you’re not going to subject me to one of those crazy human potential, seize-your-power sort
of things? I’ve heard that under all that jazzy music are a bunch of subliminal messages saying stuff like ‘pay your money,
join our team’ to sucker you into signing up for their week-long seminars in Hawaii or the Cayman Islands.”
April grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll hold you down if you start to stumble mindlessly toward the dais to testify.”
They found two seats together toward the back and sat down. April took an aisle seat, just in case she felt the need to get
out in a hurry.
A crimson banner hung over the dais. It read, Power Perspectives—the Key to Inner Strength and Outward Success. Suspended
from the ceiling just in back of the podium was a bright yellow poster with a blowup of a book jacket, a portrait of the female
author’s animated face, and several quotes in large blue letters extolling the book’s “incredible, life-transforming inspiration.”
“I know business hasn’t been so hot this year, but this is ridiculous,” said Maggie.
April barely heard her. Her gaze was fixed on the author’s photograph. Her mother was still attractive, even after thirty
years. The lines of her face were softer, somehow. But of course it was a glamour shot. There was nothing soft about Rina.
Nothing at all.
The noise of the crowd around her faded. She was in
the Port of New York in early 1965, in the cavernous hall of the steamship docks, clinging tight to her mother’s hand. She
remembered all sorts of small details—the gray-black color of the sea, the ear-splitting hoot of the steamship’s whistle,
the way the cold air fogged in front of her face when she breathed. Most of all she remembered Rina, all trim and stylish
in a red fur coat that sported a little fox head and tail around the collar. She was wearing maroon gloves and a matching
hat was coyly angled atop her spun-gold hair.
At her side was the trim, suave Frenchman who was taking her away. Armand. He was a widower with two young children. He needed
a new wife, a mother for them.
April hated him. She hated his two motherless children. Most of all, she hated Rina, who was going away.
The ship was waiting. It was huge. It was smashed right up against the dock, its black hull looming tall as a mountain. A
gangway poked out from its side and people were boarding, waving good-bye to their friends and family on shore.
“It’s only for a little while,” her mother was saying. “I’ll send for you as soon as we are married and all our papers are
in order. We’ll need to get you a visa, you see. There are certain conditions to fulfill.”
April knew she was lying. She knew she would never see her mother again.
She was trying very hard to pretend it didn’t matter.
“Come,
cherie,
make your farewells,” Armand ordered in that falsely solicitous manner of his. “We must board or we shall be left behind.”
“Sister will take good care of you until I’m able to send for you,” Rina said, nodding to the stern, bulky nun of the Convent
of the Sacred Heart Boarding School for Young Ladies where April had been enrolled. But she wasn’t
going to stay in that smelly old convent. She’d run away. She’d stow away aboard another steamer and go to Paris all on her
own. But she wouldn’t even visit her mother when she got there, oh, no. She’d find a better mother to live with. She’d find
someone who really loved her. She’d have a family, a real family.
“Come and kiss me,” Rina said, leaning down. The pointed little head of the dead fox poked April’s cheek and she slapped it
away. “Be good,” Rina whispered. “I love you. We’ll see each other soon.”
Liar, liar, liar,
April was screaming inside.
Don’t leave me, Mommy. Oh, Mommy, please don’t go.
Sister held her unresisting hand while Rina and Armand mounted the gangway together. Rina turned back at the last moment and
waved gaily. The tail of the red fox collar fluttered in the wind.
Then the huge ship swallowed her up.
She had never been sent for, not even when Rina and her new family had returned to New York.
She hadn’t seen her mother since 1965. She’d been abandoned, and horrible things had happened to her— things that she could
barely bring to consciousness. Violent, secret things that were all her mother’s fault…
“You okay?” Maggie asked, gently touching her arm.
April nodded. Her stomach was churning and the palms of her hands were slick. Get a grip, she ordered herself.
There was a stir at the entrance to the room. Along with everyone else, April craned her neck to see the group of people who
entered together. As they moved up the center aisle toward the podium, the public address system boomed out a crescendo of
music.
She saw the others first. Armand, who had aged well: an imposing, compact figure of medium height with a more youthful appearance
than one would expect of a seventy-year-old
man. His hair was silver, his skin tan and smooth, except for slight crinkles around the eyes, and his somewhat stocky build
was disguised by the expert tailoring of his thousand-dollar suit.