The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) (10 page)

“
Yes, but…”

“
But what, ace? You’re worried I’ll come back juiced, is that it?”

“
No, I, er, well, it’s just around the corner, actually. It’s called Billy’s Long Bar. Perhaps I could join you.”

“
Perhaps you could join the Moonies. See you in an hour, slick.”

Well-Read Ed watched her spectacular derrière slinking out of the door, his face even redder than before.

“
No wonder your books are so shit, bitch,” he said as the door closed behind her.

The woman took a seat at a table at the farthest end of the bar and settled down with a vodka and tonic. It was quiet and peaceful in there at that time of the day. She was glad. She was tired—bone weary. Her mind came back to the same question that had been dogging her for what seemed like forever. When did she start feeling like this, and why? How did she get like this? Where had she taken a wrong turn? Her life was like a ring with a stone missing. Unless you looked closely you would think it was perfect, but the stone that was missing somehow devalued all the others, and made a lesser of the whole, and although she had all the other stones, her life had become a search for the one that was missing, the one that would make her complete. Except, how can you search for something if you don’t know what it is?

Her reverie was interrupted by a large black woman who approached the table shyly. She had a very pretty, jovial face, but she wouldn’t have gotten much change out of two hundred pounds. She was wearing an old-fashioned dress and had a flower-pattern bandana tied around her head. She looked like a refugee from a Clark Gable movie.

“
Excuse me,” she said, “I don’t mean to bother you, but I was late for the signing. I missed my bus. I’m a huge fan.”

Can’t argue with you there
, the woman thought.

“
I wonder if you’d mind signing my book, and I’ll leave you in peace. I would be so grateful.”

The woman smiled. The black lady looked so earnest.

“
Sure, hon, have a pew. Care for a drink? I’m just about to get a refill.”

“
Why, yes. That would be lovely. Thank you. I’ll have a mimosa, if that’s all right.”

The woman smiled again and went to the bar. When she came back with the drinks, there was a copy of
The Spy Who Gloved Me
on the table. It was wrapped in clear plastic.

“
What’s with the cellophane?” the woman said.

“
Oh, this is a first edition. It’s going to be worth something one day. I’m keeping it in pristine condition.”

The woman held back a sigh. She knew she should be thankful. She handed the black lady her mimosa, then took up the book and studied it. How long had it been? Ten years, eleven? What happened to the girl who wrote it? Where did she go?

“
I’m sure you hear this all the time,” the black lady said, “but where do you get your stories from? They seem so realistic.”

The woman looked up. She held the other’s eyes. She just shook her head. She reached into her purse for a pen. “Whom shall I sign it for?”

“
Lucky.”

“
Lucky?”

“
Yeah,” she said with a shy smile. “It’s what people call me. Lucky.”

***

It’s not easy to turn heads at a White House cocktail party. If you wanted to show those jaded birds of paradise something they’d never seen before, it would have to be Oprah Winfrey, butt naked in rubber boots with a live octopus on her head and a picture of Jimi Hendrix tattooed on her left tit.

But the lady in question managed it. She was a real show-stopper: a dusky, voluptuous Asian lady in a shimmering silk sari, emerald green and ruby red, with eyes as dark and dirty and mysterious as the Ganges at midnight.

The bash was in honor of some eastern big shot, the hereditary prince of some benighted mangrove swamp somewhere, and since the sale of a few F15s and a missile or two was definitely in the cards, the boys on Capitol Hill had pulled out all the stops, and their wives had had their tongues sharpened for the occasion.

The princeling, who was also the supreme commander of the armed forces, was rocked up with so many medals for imaginary campaigns pinned to the lapel of his uniform that he was walking with a five-degree list to starboard, and his wife had a string of rubies the size of onions draped around her scrawny regal neck that were worth the GNP of her country.

Naturally, the princess became the center of attention, and senators’ wives, fussing and flapping like underpants on a clothesline on a windy day and as green as the grass they were standing on, were queuing up with their cutie-pie smiles and nuanced comments. Although the princess was entirely unaccustomed to North American social convention, you don’t get to be a princess in the Orient by being a sucker in a catfight, and she knew a jealous gold-digging ex-cheerleader when she saw one, and even if her English was not so hot, a barbed comment is a barbed comment in any language. So she slapped a look of self-evident superiority on her painted potentate puss and sat smiling graciously and suffering the slings and arrows of outraged envious bitches, happy in the knowledge that pangs of jealously are infinitely more painful than any remark, and happy in the knowledge that her baubles were the talk of the lawn.

Especially when they got swiped.

A couple of days later, a red phone rang on a big oak desk in Langley.

“
Hey, chief. What’s up?”

“
The word has come down from the top.”

“
The Pentagon?”

“
No, higher.”

“
The White House?”

“
No, higher.”

“
The First Lady? What happened?”

“
Seems the First Lady is embarrassed because the mama-san of some big-noise zipperhead guest at the party the other night had her gewgaws snatched. Wants us to put one of our top people on it, ASAFP.”

“
Well, with all due respect to the presidential pussy, that ain’t exactly a national security issue, there, ace.”

“
This is top priority, hoss.”

“
What, she thinks she can use the agency as her own private Boy Scout service?”

“
Why not? Nixon did.”

“
Yeah, guess so. All right. I’ll put someone on it. I got just the person.”

***

The year is 1908. The place is the gentlemen’s smoking lounge at the Hôtel du Palais, formerly the Villa Eugénie, in Biarritz. One section of the room is cordoned off with red ropes and guarded by two soldiers in elaborate uniforms. Under a big bay window overlooking the sea, two men sit smoking cigars, drinking, and playing chess. One is King Edward the Seventh, of England. The other is his nephew, Czar Nicholas the Second, of Russia. They are both more or less rat-arsed.

The chess set that they are using is unique. It is made of cut crystal with gold filigree and rubies embedded in the pieces. It is worth more than the GNP of Belgium. It has been personally crafted by Carl Fabergé for the czar. Each piece is an actual drinking glass. The color of the pieces is determined by the contents. The czar, being Russian, is drinking vodka, and therefore playing white. The king is technically playing black, but his pieces are actually green, because they contain absinthe. The idea is that whenever someone captures another’s piece, they chug the contents. The contest is fairly even because, although the czar is Russian and therefore a pretty good chess player, and the king can’t play chess worth shit, old Eddy can drink Nicky under the table any day, so it kind of balances out. Due to the nature of the game, and the circumstances, a certain formality is absent from the conversation.

“
Check, you Russian twat!”

“
My fucking borzois play chess better than you,
kuritsa
brain. Uncheck.”

“
Bollocks. Knight takes rook.”

“
Cossacks. Queen takes knight. Check,
shashlik
-face."

The king pondered his position, coolly considering his next move. He blew a huge cloud of cigar smoke into the czar’s face, and switched the position of his bishop behind the smoke screen. When the smoke cleared, the czar stared blankly at the board. Because the board now had one hundred and twenty-eight apparently revolving squares, he failed to notice the switch.

“
Bishop takes queen. How’s that for a fucking King’s Gambit, you Slavic shithouse?”

As the king was downing the vodka from the czar’s queen, the czar reflected upon the fact that the king now had him by the yarbles, and upon how it falls to royalty to make difficult decisions in a crisis. He booted the board over.

“
Oh, fucking marvelous. I’ll take that as a resignation. I win.”

“
It vas accident. Just like you, you fat bastard. Victoria tell me whole story. Albert get spurs stuck in bed linen and no can pull out in time.”

“
Well, shit. I guess that means we’ll just have to drink cognac.”

The king made a regal gesture, and a squadron of lackeys and minions came racing to clear up the mess and bring the brandy.

“
Careful with the chess set, my good man. It has set our friend here back a ruble or two. It’s a Fabergé, you know. I say, that gives me a capital idea.”

“
Vhat iz that?”

“
Fabergé. Your mate, Fabergé.”

“
Vhat about him?”

“
Well, maybe he can help me out?”

“
How?”

“
Well, I’ve gone and gotten myself into a spot of bother with the queen, see? I had a little fling with this American actress gal, and the old biddy found out about it.”

“
You iz dirty old bastard. Good man.”

“
Yes, quite. But things are a bit frosty at the palace at the minute. If your man Fabergé could knock me up a bit of jewelry, it might help the job along.”

“
Like vhat? Necklace, brooch, bracelet, earrings, vhat?”

“
Oh, I don’t fucking know. What bloody difference does it make? Just tell him to make something with loads of jewels in it that she can shove into her box.”

“
Vell, how big?”

The king held out his two hands in front of him, palms up, as if to say,
you tell me
. “Oh, I don’t know. Just tell him to make sure it’s big. The bigger the better.”

Czar Nicholas the Second nodded sagely. “Okay. I see vhat I can do.
Nazdarovya
.”

***

The woman sat at her favorite corner table at Broussard’s in the Quarter, talking to an obviously bedazzled young man half her age, who was busy shoveling oysters into his face. As she spoke she was toying with her champagne glass, moving her elegant hands slowly up and down the stem with delicate hypnotic movements. The glass reflected the delicate azure of her long nails. Her face was framed with hair the color of old honey in sunlight, fastened at the nape of her neck with a golden pin in the shape of a leopard, her eyes were a striking deep violet, and her full, classically Grecian lips were as glistening and shapely as a Stradivarius, the perfect instruments of whispers and kisses.

She was at that age when women of a certain appearance enter their final bloom of loveliness, like the rose just before it fades, which adds a certain sunset melancholy to their beauty and makes them even more desirable than they were in the full flush of youth. There were the faintest wrinkles beginning to form around her eyes, but only the most jaded connoisseur of women could find fault with her beauty. Her turquoise dress was designed to show her décolletage to perfect advantage, and the young man was having serious difficulty in keeping his eyes off the swelling, slightly freckled breasts and on his bivalves.