Authors: Gretchen Archer
* * *
“Crossword puzzles,” my father said, “and magnet puzzles.”
I had just enough time to check in with my father, who’d been debriefing Cyril Bunker between naps. (Cyril’s naps. Although my father has been known to enjoy a good rainy Sunday afternoon nap, too.)
“What they’re billing as cognitive therapy is nothing more than gathering the residents into a cafeteria-style room and passing out crossword puzzles.”
“What?”
“Aromatherapy,” Daddy continued, “which is one of their biofield therapies, is sitting in the same room with lit candles.”
“I’ve never even heard of a biofield.”
“It’s a category of alternative healing therapies,” my father said, “including music, same room, Frank Sinatra on the stereo, and magnet therapy, same room, magnet puzzles.”
“How are magnets considered therapy?”
“I don’t have a clue, but they categorize it as both biofield and cognitive therapies, and write it up and bill it as both.”
“Doubling their revenue.”
“Their revenues have got to be through the roof, honey. Cyril says they wake the residents from sound sleep to get them in the therapy room, and keep them in some manner of treatment until the day’s done. If there’s any grumbling or complaining,” Daddy said, “they’re moved to physical therapy. Very physical therapy.”
“Is Cyril saying they’re
abused
if they don’t go along with the all-day crossword puzzles?”
“He described it more as a constant threat over the residents’ heads. When the staff meets resistance, or insubordination, the patients find themselves in what sounds like very aggressive physical therapy until they agree to be compliant.”
“That’s abuse.”
“Yes,” my father admitted. “Yes it is.”
“I feel sick.”
“Get your ducks in a row, Davis, and turn this over to the feds.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Watch your back.”
“Always.”
TWENTY-THREE
My Double Dip handler, a six-foot-tall marketing executive named Laney Harris, clearly wasn’t a fan. Of Bianca’s. I’d never even
seen
this girl.
She led me to my dressing house—no way this amount of space could be called a room—at a cool clip, and she walked fast, too. I plopped down across from her and tried to catch my breath, in a corner of the dressing house set aside for relaxation—refreshments, Barcaloungers, every flat surface hosting crystal ashtrays, a fresh pack of Bianca’s ciggies, with gold lighters on the side.
“Have we met before, Laney?”
The woman’s dark eyes narrowed to slits.
We’d met all right, and I (Bianca) had royally pissed her off.
“You might remember firing me?” She crossed her long legs the other way. “In front of a hundred people?”
(Didn’t remember that.)
“Yet here you are!” I flashed my pearly whites.
“Your husband,” she explained.
“He’s a sweetheart.” I glazed over with true love at the very thought of him.
(And the Oscar goes to Davis Way.)
Her jury was still way out.
“I’ve got to tell you, Laney,” I leaned in, sincerely, “there are times when I go off my meds.” Cowboy, a foot behind me, tried to cover laughing with coughing. “Today’s not one of those days.” I wagged a no-no-no finger. “I’m on every color pill they make. I apologize for my behavior that day, and I’d like us to start over.” I stuck my hand out. “Bianca Sanders.” She didn’t move a muscle, and my hand was in the air. “How about a big fat bonus for having to put up with me for the next three days?” She looked at me suspiciously, and my hand was still out there. “Five thousand bucks.”
Finally, the woman shook my hand. Fifteen minutes later, she cracked a smile. An hour later, we were BFFs.
Honestly, I take decent care of myself. I wear sunscreen. I throw out old lip gloss. I exfoliate. I drink tons of water, because it takes tons of water to make tons of coffee. Fifty people came after me like I’d never picked up a hairbrush in my life. I was cuffed and shackled to a salon chair, then ambushed by Bianca’s New Orleans team from the Salon du Beau Monde on St. Joseph’s. I was pummeled, marinated, and snipped on unmercifully. A girl trying her best to chop off my fingers asked, “Do you bury bones in the backyard?” The contractor for the remodeling job was the salon’s owner, the man (?) named Seattle who did mine and Bianca’s hair, and at his elbow, tsk, tsk, tsking with him, and not discreetly, was my assistant.
“I tell to her, and I tell to her.” Seattle wore rings on every finger and bells on every toe.
“I feel ya, Seattle,” said my assistant. “She doesn’t listen to a word I say either.”
My handler, Laney Harris, in a director’s chair beside me, leaned in. “She really shouldn’t speak of you that way, Mrs. Sanders.”
“Please,” I dabbed at my stinging eyes with a linen towel, “call me Bianca.”
“What’s her name?”
Her shot me a dirty look.
“Fantasia,” I said. “And yes, she does have an attitude.”
Attitude accidentally knocked into me, almost spilling me into Laney’s lap. “Ooops.” Fantasy said. “My bad, Bianca.”
Laney scribbled.
I mouthed,
pink slip
, to Fantasia. (Fantasy!)
Laney stood. “Could we have the room please?”
Jackhammers, industrial sanders, and diesel-powered vise grips were all powered down, and the Pimp My Ride team happily took a cocktail break. Fantasy found a Barcalounger out of (within) ear shot, stretched out, then covered her head with a million-dollar dress from my wardrobe rack.
“She’s fine,” I stopped Laney, who was warming up to let Fantasy have it. “Let her stay.”
Laney passed me a guest list. “Look over this,” she said, “while I tell you a little about the tournament.”
The glossy ten-page roster gave me fifty names, accompanying photos, Bellissimo player numbers, the amount of money they had dropped/picked up here in the past six months, and where they were from. I recognized half of the faces, but not names. Blinks-too-much was actually Francine Poston from Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and Jack T. Colton, from
Romancing the Stone
, was really Ernie Fish, from Marietta, Georgia. I’d have rather not known that.
“This event is the brainchild of the late Matthew Thatcher.” Laney crossed herself, Catholic style. “And it’s an absolute cash cow.” She handed me a spreadsheet, dotted yellow in places. “The entry fees pay for the entire tournament.”
$25,000 multiplied by fifty was a very long number typed out.
“Now, the production costs are high,” she said, “but the three-day spike in casino revenue is ten times what the tournament costs.” She leaned over and pointed out a highlight. “Profits go up twenty-seven percent, handily covering the expenses, which include custom software and graphics for the tournament slot machines, labor, transportation, hotel, and food costs.”
My brain calculator was spitting out numbers all over the place.
“And just to cover all our bases,” she said, “we charge a hundred spectators twenty-five-hundred dollars each to watch.”
I had one of those pricey spectator invitations on my desk.
“We do that,” Laney said, “as a means of enticing them to participate in the tournament next year. You know,” her hands danced, “the hoopla and all. A catch-the-tournament-fever thing.”
Clever, Mr. Microphone. I crossed myself, Catholic style.
“And the spectators go to the casino between tournament events and contribute to the bottom line, too.” Laney pointed out another highlight. “Now,” she said, “I’ll let you in on the secret.”
For the next fifteen minutes, I just listened.
The first year, the tournament only drew twenty players, probably because the entry fee had so many zeros. Matthew Thatcher (cross, cross, cross) had proposed they let
two
players win, talked Mr. Sanders into it, and it paid off, because participation for the next year, and every subsequent year, including this one, was cut off at fifty players. First-come, first-serve.
The inaugural-year theme was Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The invitations were die-cut jumbo jets and the ballroom had been transformed into a ritzy airport terminal. The servers were decked out as almost-naked flight attendants, Matthew Thatcher (cross, cross, cross) the pilot. There was the guaranteed million-dollar tournament winner, the player among the twenty-five who racked up the most points, but during the last round of play a lady—not the million-dollar winner—lined up three cars on her slot machine. Surprise jackpot. She won a peacock blue Rolls Royce Phantom Bespoke. The crowd, the media, and especially the lady who won the car were thrilled. From then on, the tournament sold out before the formal invitations arrived in the mail.
The following year, the theme had been Pay the Rent. The ballroom was given a bank-lobby remodel; the servers sexy bank tellers, Matthew Thatcher a loan officer. One player won the million, and another player lined up three run-down tenement houses in his slot-machine window, winning a 2,200-square-foot penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side with a Central Park view.
The year after that, the theme was Silver Lining. The cocktail talent had to be flown in from Vegas last-minute, because while Southern girls didn’t have a problem with the silver bikinis and five-inch heels, they fell all over themselves trying to hold up the forty-pound rhinestone and silver-feather headdresses. Matthew Thatcher wore a silver tux. A thirty-year-old woman won the million and her husband lined up three gold bars on his slot machine, winning ten pounds of 2 ounce 99.99% pure Engelhard gold bars.
The press dubbed them Mr. & Mrs. Lucky.
Last year the tournament theme was City Life, the slot machines housed in a custom-built open-air tour bus, the staff dressed as cab drivers in fedoras and high heels with not much in between, Matthew Thatcher a subway conductor, and the surprise win went to the man whose slot machine lined up three palm trees on little patches of dirt surrounded by water—a beachfront mansion on a private island in the Caribbean.
“Mrs. Sanders?” Laney waved a hand in front of my face. “Bianca?”
“Cool beans.” I said it on a whoosh of air.
Laney nodded. “It’s fun.”
“Do I have to dress up as an ice-cream cone?” Bianca had already chosen every stitch of clothing I was to wear, all the way down to nude thongs and the stick-on fake bra things that felt like slabs of raw chicken. (“The only acceptable undergarments David, aside from the obvious fact that you need Spanx.”) (She’s the one who needed Spanx.)
“Well,” Laney said, “we tossed that around, and given the amount of time we didn’t have, we decided we’d like you to be your glamorous self.” She tucked the stack of photographic tournament history back in her leather portfolio. “We just need you to be beautiful.”
“What was Matthew Thatcher going to wear?” My guesses: a banana split, milkshake, or root beer float costume.
“We had him in a bright red tux,” she said. “He was going to be a maraschino cherry.”
I think I snorted.
“What’s the big surprise win?”
Her eyebrows danced. “Come on.” She actually held a hand out. “I’ll show you.”
I followed her around bends and curves to the stage entrance of the ballroom, at a much reduced pace than earlier. She paused at the door. “You know,” she said, “if you don’t mind me saying so, you’ve really changed.” Her hand was on the doorknob. “Almost as if you’re happy. About being here.”
“It’s the meds.”
She opened the door and we stepped into Candyland.
The slot machines were powered down and wearing capes. Four security guards, in rainbow sherbet tuxedoes, were on point around them.
“May I?” The lime-green security guard nodded.
Laney pushed back the lemon-yellow drape from the first machine. The play area of the slot machine was full of ice cream: single scoops, double scoops, and triple scoops. I saw one, a double dip on a sugar cone, wearing a sparkly sprinkle diamond topping. It was diamonds. The surprise was diamonds. Someone would leave this tournament with a million dollars, and someone else would leave with a really nice rock.
The welcome reception, an hour later, was held in a room adjacent to the ballroom, decked out as an old-fashioned soda shop, the servers in short skirts, halter tops, and roller skates. The soda-shop drinks they were rolling around with were spiked, and they weren’t serving burgers and fries. They were serving caviar on matsutake mushrooms.
I wore an Aidan Maddox silver beaded dress, strappy silver mirrored-leather Jimmy Choos, the chicken-cutlets bra, and a wireless microphone hidden in a small diamond brooch. Instead of a bodypack, the transmitter was a rhinestone ring I tapped off and on.
“Showtime,” Fantasy had a hand on the door.
“Have fun, Bianca,” my new BFF said.
I stepped in and within a minute, you could have heard a flea sneeze.
“Welcome to the Double Dip slot tournament.” I raised a Waterford crystal flute full of Krug champagne and promised the excited attendees the time of their lives.
* * *
At eleven that night, down in the bunker, I was busy getting out of a Stella McCartney gold brocade dress and matching platform pumps (my dogs were
barking
), while everyone else was stretched out on the gold sofas.
“Cowboy,” Fantasy said, “you haven’t been here long enough for a sofa. Move.”
“Well?” No Hair asked, when I fell into the seat Cowboy had warmed up for me wearing yoga pants, flip-flops, and a sweatshirt.
“I had a ball!” My words came out on a laugh. It
was
fun, and it was distracting. In the middle of the first round of tournament play, a mental picture of Bradley Cole popped into my brain, and I honestly felt a stab of guilt when I realized I’d been so caught up in the excitement I hadn’t thought of him in hours. My ear-to-ear smile slid off as I picked up my heart, and Cowboy, who was proving himself to be good at having my back, had jumped, thinking something was wrong.
“You were great!” Fantasy said. “Bianca’s stock rose through the roof, girl. She’ll be lovin’ all over you tomorrow.”
I could use some all-over lovin’. Not necessarily from Bianca.
“Who authorized five-thousand bucks to the marketing girl?” No Hair tapped a gigantic foot.
My good-for-nothing coworkers pointed at me. No Hair’s nostrils flared.
“So?” I changed the subject. “Did we catch anyone?”
“As of yet we don’t have anyone in or near the tournament who has any obvious connection to Beehive,” No Hair said, “including our own staff. But seven of the spectators didn’t check in for the first round, so we’ll take a hard look at them when they do. And these two players popped.” He passed out eight-by-tens. “They’re the most likely candidates for the church scam, so I’ve put round-the-clock surveillance on them. This first one, Florence Cole, age sixty-eight, is from Beaumont, Texas. She’s a widow and lost her only son in the Gulf War seven years ago. Her closest relatives are a set of nieces in the Los Angeles area and she’s from Cadillac money.”
“She’s a perfect Beehive target,” Fantasy said.
“Yes, she is,” No Hair agreed.
“What’s Cadillac money?” Cowboy asked.
“Her family owned Cadillac dealerships in Texas.” No Hair rubbed cash fingers in the air. “This is her first year in the tournament.”
“Dragonfly.” They all looked at me. “She had a dragonfly pinned on her shoulder at the tournament today. I thought it was a bug and tried to knock it off.”
No Hair took a deep breath. “The other player who could have a big Beehive bullseye on his back is this guy,” he said. “A man named Otis Cummings.”
“Hush Puppies.”
Fantasy asked if he had a dog on his shoulder.
I told her he was
wearing
Hush Puppies.
“What are hush puppies?” Cowboy asked.
“Shoes,” No Hair and I said.
“He’s sixty-six years old, from Augusta, Georgia, and his family was in the peppermint candy business,” No Hair said. “Big bucks.” He shifted his weight. The whole room slid starboard. “He wrote his three sons out of his will a decade ago.”
“Peppermint money.” Cowboy looked like he could taste it.
“Watch them both.” No Hair shifted his weight again, and the room slid port. “Stay sharp. If anyone from Beehive is here to recruit these people, we’re going to intervene.”
Aye, aye, Captain.
The room settled, then grew still, too still, except for throat clearing (No Hair), yawning (Fantasia), and eyes darting (Cowboy).
“I’ll do it.” I said it on a long weary sigh.
“That would be best,” No Hair said. “I know you’re tired, Davis. We’re all tired and we all have to be right back here bright and early tomorrow, but maybe it’ll go quickly.”
“That,” I said, “or one of you will have to get out of bed and identify my body.”
“I’m going with you,” Cowboy said. “I’ll identify your body.” He jangled car keys. “Ready when you are.”
It was a twelve-mile drive, but with Cowboy at the reins, we were there in a blink. We parked at a praying angel with a six-foot wing span.
“Stay back a little bit, Cowboy.”
The flip-flops were a bad idea. My achy feet turned to ice as I made my way through the winding concrete paths. I knelt down beside her and put my hand in the middle of her back. “Peyton,” I whispered. “Come on.”
Her lips were blue, her eyes red, her skin almost translucent. She was slack and prone on the cold ground.
“Let me help you up,” I whispered. “Come with me. Get some sleep,” I said. “We’ll get you something to eat, some clean clothes, a warm bed, then I’ll bring you back in the morning.”
Cowboy scooped her up like a rag doll.
* * *
One might think after my day, my week, my month, my
life
, I’d pass out before my head hit the pillow, but when I climbed into the empty bed, sleep wouldn’t come at all. It might have been the dull buzz ringing in my ears because of the slot-machine din earlier, but that wasn’t it. Tonight’s insomnia was brought to me by the letter B, for Bradley, and by the letter P, for Paperwork, because something I’d seen earlier had been waiting patiently at my brain door all day.
I wasn’t about to get out of bed, sneak past Peyton (in the guest room again) and Cowboy (sleeping on my marshmallow sofa again), then drive to work, but I did throw back the covers, pad across the room, and fire up my laptop.
I looked up Leona Powell’s Bellissimo player number. 8709074.
What was Leona Powell’s So Help Me God resident identification number? 008709074.
Hack, hack, hack into the church’s Senior Residence Center.
I ran the resident identification numbers against the Bellissimo player list.
More than sixty percent of the So Help Me God residents had come straight from the Bellissimo.
And while I was at it…
How much did GOBAHIP shell out to So Help Me God last year?
Hack, hack, hack. Three-point-eight million.
How much did Medicare pay So Help You God during the same time period?
Firewall one, hacked. Firewall two, hacked. Firewall three, hacked.
Three-point-eight million.
They were billing Medicare and GOBAHIP simultaneously for the exact same therapy treatments.
So Help Me God was double dipping.