Hot Ticket

by Janice Weber

Genres: Literary Fiction; Spy Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

When secret agent Leslie Frost is sent to Washington, D.C. to pick up the case left literally dead in bed by a fellow agent, Frost's search for a murderer leads her to the steaming jungles of Central America, where famed ethnobotanist Louis Bailey has vanished.

Release date: June 27, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 337

Sample

IN A FEW seconds the president of the United States would begin to snore. I had been watching his eyelids droop for the last quarter
hour; too many glasses of Riesling at a state dinner, compounded by the strain of trying to see through my gown, had finally
knocked him out. Couldn’t take his inattention personally since the man didn’t know Brahms from Buxtehude. To him, violins
without bluegrass were like Novembers without elections. And the poor sod had been up since six trying to run the country.
He had probably blown the morning at the hospital with Jordan Bailey, second in command. He could have visited a mistress
on the way back to the White House, then spent the afternoon hallucinating with his spin doctors. After that, another screaming
match with wife Paula as he zipped her into that atrocious orange dress. Let him snore, I thought. It was impossible to get
mad at Bobby Marvel. He just wasn’t a serious president.


Perhaps my East Room recital was meant to help the First Lady score a few points with the German foreign minister, here to
apologize again for World War II in exchange for a few billion in trade concessions. The invitation had come to my manager
two days ago. “You’ve got a date at the White House Tuesday night,” Curtis had told me.


“Is that so? I thought I had a rehearsal in Munich.”

“Canceled.”

Ah: my boss Maxine—the Queen—was sending me to Washington. She hadn’t called in months. I would have been more flattered had
she not kicked things off by making me über-dessert at a State Department orgy. “Are you coming along, Curtis?”


“I think it’s time you headed out alone.”

A great vote of confidence. Admittedly, on my last case Agent Smith had won the battle, lost the war; but the battle had been
Maxine’s, the war mine. Other people had died, I had lived: she and I would forever interpret that outcome differently. Perhaps
the Queen was giving me another chance to even the score in that murky game called espionage.


“What’s the deal?” I sighed.

“As far as I know, you eat, play, and leave.”

Right.

I had eaten, now I was playing in a cheerful, fairy-tale room with glittering chandeliers and walls the color of lemon mousse.
No critics here; perhaps cheered by that fact, my accompanist Duncan Zadinsky opened the Brahms sonata faster than usual.
Had the honor of the occasion unnerved him? Duncan was the skittery type and I probably hadn’t given him enough time to barf
backstage before the concert. I glanced casually toward the piano bench. He didn’t look up but he slowed down: I have that
effect on certain men. Nestling into my Stradivarius, I began to play, closing my eyes as the old wood vibrated against my
shoulder and high, exquisitely pure melody rippled over the room. I had been making sounds like that for twenty-five years
and the first fluttery note was always like a kiss from the gods, tempting me to live forever. As music flew from violin to
the far wall, my brain ran myriad acoustical calculations and sent correcting data to my fingertips. I half opened my eyes
again: other work here.


Paula Marvel wore a dress with a little more bouffant than her hips could gracefully handle. Her rhinestone tiara topped a
pageboy that absorbed but did not reflect light; once again, her hairdresser had gone one shade overboard washing away the
gray. Deceptively tiny mouth, apple cheeks, everlasting smile … eyes blue and lethal as prussic acid. As I played, she memorized
the scrollwork in the ceiling. Next to her, the president slept. Gold and bow ties dominated the rest of the front row, Bobby
and Paula having surrounded themselves with the sycophants, moneybags, and movie stars who had gotten them elected. Not one
of these half-assed Machiavellis was listening to Brahms. Neither was the German foreign minister, for that matter: in half
an hour he’d be back at the bargaining table, trying to screw everyone he had just been toasting at dinner. Meanwhile, of
course, his intended victims sat figuring how to screw him even worse. The violent beta waves charging from three hundred
skulls were beginning to undermine my concentration, not to mention patience. Damn Maxine! This little put-down was her way
of reminding me that I was agent first, musician second. Human a far third.


Fine. I played my part. Fortunately, President Marvel was about to provide a little side show. I loved loud snoring at black-tie
affairs. At best, it came from the husband of the female heavy, a tight-faced woman in the front row whose jewelry should
have been fake. Her reaction to that first snort never ceased to amuse me. Aghast, she would raise an eyebrow. If the offender’s
own stertor didn’t wake him after a few seconds, her shoe would creep sideways and slowly ccrrrush his until he resuscitated. This was all done while benignly, sadistically, beaming at the sole witness—me. I caressed Brahms,
fighting back a smile: Bobby Marvel’s left shoe had five seconds to live.


Perhaps the president’s electromagnetic field changed. I saw the First Lady’s eyes disengage from the ceiling and glide to
her husband’s too still profile. Reacting with the reptilian calm that still terrified Washington after three-plus years,
Paula snuggled into her seat as one gloved hand crept into Bobby’s lap. I put Brahms on automatic and watched, entranced,
as two of her fingers constricted around the president’s testicles. His only response was a slack jaw, prelude to a snore.
So Paula squeezed harder, her biceps rising hideously from her upper arm. President Marvel opened an eye and eventually recognized
his surroundings. As Paula’s hand slithered back to her lap, he took a deep breath and recrossed his legs. The two of them
smiled lovingly at each other, as if this concert made them very, very happy. An overblown performance, even by silent film
standards: everyone on the planet knew their marriage was radioactive waste.


Brahms ended. I ran Duncan through Ravel then a bunch of Gershwin arrangements, earning us a flurry of applause. Afterward,
President Marvel gave me a gummy kiss and Paula, paradigm of hospitality, invited her guests to stay and dance. She spoke
in a deliberately somber voice so that everyone would know she was extremely concerned about the vice president’s condition
but hell, this evening had been planned months before Bailey had gotten himself terminally ill.


I took my accompanist’s arm as a few hundred cabalists rose from their seats, smarmy smiles ready for action. “Duncan, let’s
go.”


“Now?! Paula’s about to ask me to dance!”

Next he’d want me taking pictures for his mother in Cleveland. I left him near the butler with the most champagne glasses
and waded toward the exit. My manager Curtis would howl in frustration: once again I was neglecting the postconcert schmooze,
an artistic duty nowadays as indispensable as tuning my violin. But coed grazing appalled me. Always had. I was the one-on-one
type, with men who preferred lamps low and conversation soft. Too many capped teeth here and the place was verminous with
media. They had had a field day with my private life last spring, after my Grand Guignol in Leipzig. Someday I’d return the
kindness. Meanwhile I’d continue playing the role of Leslie Frost, the fiddler who rode Harleys and broke men’s hearts … if
they were lucky.


Maxine had recruited me—and six others like me—almost ten years ago. We called her the Queen not only for her imperial bearing,
but for her ability to psychologically decapitate her subjects. First she tried to break us in a boot camp that would have
made a marine mush, then she christened us the Seven Sisters. Sanitation Crew would have been more accurate: dancer, archaeologist,
or in my case, violinist, we girls roamed the planet eliminating nasty situations for an agency that did not officially exist.
Unfortunately, five of us had been eliminated in return. Maxine ran her last survivors Barnard and me—Smith—from Berlin. I
suspect the Queen’s desire to live close to me derived less from heroine worship than from a lingering apprehension that I
would someday blow her whole operation. Performing artists were fundamentally unstable and I had always been the delinquent
of the lot. Maybe my death wish was the adjunct of a desire to play the Tchaikovsky concerto perfectly in front of two thousand
people. Like the other girls in Maxine’s litter, I lived to taunt the gods. So far they hadn’t struck me with lightning, but
the bolts were dropping ever closer: five people dead last time out, two of them my lovers. All I got in exchange for that
carnage was the puny consolation that I had not yet killed anyone on purpose. I had killed by omission, by accident, in self-defense,
yes; on purpose, no. Once you crossed that line, you were good as dead. Would this be the assignment that finished me? It
had begun innocently enough. But I knew Maxine better than that. And she knew me.


I waded through a wash of executive branch handshakes and shallow smiles, waiting, observing, until a fiftyish woman with
shrewd eyes and a shrewd yellow suit blocked my way. Great knees. Primed for cameras, she wore heavy powder and enough hairspray
to deflect an F-111. On the tube, she’d look part mom, part CEO; in the flesh, one trembled before a Hun in tweed. At her
right stood a lusterless assistant, about my age, in neutral suit and prim linen blouse. At her left stood a smug, possessive
man who looked like the only person alive who could handle her.


Assuming I recognized her, the woman bypassed introductions. Daughter had been taking violin lessons. The girl was a genius.
I would be thrilled to hear her play, maybe tomorrow. Where was I staying?


Fortunately the foreign minister interrupted. “Help has arrived,” he whispered in German, kissing my hand. “You can make it
up to me later.”


I turned to the woman. “Perhaps you could send your daughter to Berlin. I’m leaving Washington tonight.”

Her glare could have melted glass. “Ah.”

Folding his arm over mine, the minister led me past a few photographers. We’d be all over Der damn Spiegel this week. “Who was that?” I whispered.


“You don’t know? Don’t you read the newspapers, darling?”

“Just the comics. The characters are more believable.”

“I see,” he lied, smiling at an actor whose career had peaked a decade before his first face lift. Hollywood intoxicated the
Marvels. “The woman in question is your next vice president. Aurilla Perle.”


Jordan Bailey, the current officeholder, had been stung by the wrong mosquito on his last trip to a rain forest. No cure existed
for dengue hemorrhagic fever. Last I heard, red spots covered his lungs and blood was beginning to swamp his brain. He lay
ravaged and comatose at Walter Reed, waiting for his heart to collapse. Even so, I would have preferred him to that neutron
bomb in the yellow suit. “I thought Bailey was improving.”


“Jojo’s history. The poor man should have stuck to whales.”

“What makes you say Aurilla’s going to replace him?”

“It’s common knowledge.”

Another woman in a suit blocked our path. At least this one I recognized: Vicky Chickering, the First Lady’s right arm. They
had known each other since eighth grade, which meant they were the same age. Paula looked years younger, but she had gotten
a lot of exercise waving to crowds while Vicky was stuffed in the back of the campaign bus with the pizzas and telephones.
No problem: a lesbian who viewed the female body as an impediment and torment, Vicky had achieved liberation by becoming a
250-pound hulk with sensible shoes. She had spent the last week testifying to a Senate panel about discrimination against
fat persons.


“I enjoyed the performance, Leslie,” she said, crushing my hand.

“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.


Counted to ten, willing strength to my dead arms. Mind gradually won over matter and I began to swing back and forth, finally
gaining enough momentum to curl knees to chest, then clamp the ankles around a balcony post. One last pull and I lay gasping,
threatening as a squid, behind Barnard’s azaleas. Acrid fumes of hundred-fifty-proof sweat rose from every pore, evaporating
along with my energy. Eventually I dragged an ear to the sliding door: Ella still sang the blues. I went back inside.


Dim light played evenly over Barnard’s bed. Her body was gone. So was the answering machine. In the living room, paintings
had been slashed, pillows disemboweled. Even the oranges in the fruit bowl had been sliced and squeezed into grotesque parabolas.
Maximum damage in minimum time, yet they had overlooked the dead weight hanging off the balcony: amateurs? Worse: zealots?
I doubted