Labeck nodded. “When
I was in college, a girl OD’d on roofies. Only it was called Easy Lay
on
my campus. She popped a couple at a party, went into a coma, and died. Lay was
all over
the college scene about ten years ago. Dirt cheap, two bucks a
pop. Kids used ’em to get high at raves. But the stuff was dangerous. Sleazy
fraternity guys would dope girls’ drinks, then rape them.”
“So when Miguel
died, Luis must have blamed Bear. He told Eddie he was in Milwaukee to revenge
himself on the man who’d killed his brother.”
Labeck started to
crumple the 7-Eleven bag, then stopped. “There’s something else.” He shook out
a floppy disk. Labeck held it up, turning it in his hands. “Let’s try running
this thing on my computer.”
A few minutes
later Labeck’s up-to-the-second, bells-and-whistles Hewlett-Packard was up and
humming, spitting out file after file. Lists of transactions, coded numbers
that might have referred to bank accounts, names, phone numbers, shipment
dates, suppliers—the entire cosmos of a drug empire.
“I do not believe
this,” Labeck breathed. “I fucking don’t believe it. Brenner was making
hundreds of thousands off the pills. Maybe millions.”
Someone rapped
sharply on the front door and we both jumped. Muffin was on it instantly, a
land mine on legs, rocketing down the hall to the door.
“I’m
selling magazine subscriptions,” rasped a deep voice on the other side of the
door.
Labeck let him
in. Six and a half feet of bewigged Magenta in French maid getup was too much
for Muffin, who went into Doberman spaz attack mode. Displaying amazingly swift
reflexes, Labeck nabbed Muffin before he could sink his teeth into Magenta’s
ankle.
“Maybe you should
try adding Zoloft to his Alpo?” Magenta suggested. He tugged off his wig and
removed his platforms. This somewhat placated Muffin, who settled for glaring
at Magenta and growling out threats about what would happen to his liver and
spleen if he tried any funny business.
Labeck made
formal introductions.
“Mazie
Maguire—this is like, so thrilling!” trilled Magenta, clasping my hands
in his. “I’ve been rooting for you every moment of your escape! You look much
cuter in real life than on TV! I am your absolute number one fan!”
“Sorry, position
filled,” Labeck said.
“I’m good with
second banana. Why am I here? How did you two get hooked up? Am I supposed to
do something with Mazie’s hair?”
“I’m going to swear you to secrecy
before we tell you anything,” Labeck said.
“Cloak and dagger, I love it!”
I was putting my
life into the lace-gloved hands of a man who spent his evenings lip-synching to
a movie whose showstopper was “Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul.” But Labeck
appeared to trust Magenta, and somewhere in the past two hours I’d entrusted my
own soul to Ben Labeck. Ergo, whomsoever Labeck trusted, I trusted.
I told Magenta
everything. It was a long, involved story, and both men often interrupted with
questions. We were all starved by the time I’d wrung out the last syllable, so
we raided Labeck’s fridge and indulged in an impromptu smorgasbord that was
guaranteed to keep us awake with indigestion all night.
“What I don’t
get,” Labeck said, “is how Kip got his hands on that first snapshot, the one he
hid in the lamp. How did he know Luis?”
“No idea.” I
watched in fascinated disgust as Labeck piled potato chips, olives, and
braunschweiger onto a wheat bun, then swizzled Russian dressing over the entire
mess. “They didn’t move in the same social circles. Luis was an illegal
immigrant who worked in a pickle plant. Maybe he met Kip when he was
moonlighting on some job.”
“Is it possible
Luis did yard work for you guys?” Labeck asked.
I shook my head.
I
was the yard help.
“Where did your
husband hang out?” Magenta asked.
In motel rooms
with twenty-year-old waitresses,
I thought, but didn’t say. “He golfed a
lot. Played tennis, sailed.”
“What else?”
I tried to think,
but it required a massive effort. My eyes burned, my muscles ached, my Girdle
of Venus throbbed. I wanted to curl up in Labeck’s warm, king-sized bed and
wake up to find myself twelve years old again. But I flogged my tired brain into
action. “Strip clubs. Sports bars. His mother’s place.”
“What about
Stodgemore?” Labeck asked. “Maybe Luis Ruiz did odd jobs for her.”
“Maybe he was her
cabana boy,” Magenta suggested, wiggling his eyebrows.
Prentice in a
bikini,
muy yuck
!
How
would she hold up the top? While the guys went back once again to the Brenner
files on the computer, I started cleaning up the kitchen. We’d used paper
plates, but there were knives and plastic containers to wash up. I ran water
into the sink and squirted in detergent. I’ve always found running water
conducive to thinking; my best ideas occurred to me in the shower. I screwed
the lids back on the pickles and olives, wrapped the cheese in foil, replaced the
buns in their package. And then something shifted in my cerebellum.
“Facebook!” I
said.
“Is now the
time?” Labeck asked, but I shoved him aside, brought up Kip’s Facebook on the
computer, clicked on the wedding photos, and explained my thinking. “Eddie told
me Luis sometimes moonlighted as a waiter. Kip’s Facebook had photos from a
wedding he attended a few weeks before he was killed. Luis might have been on
the staff that night.” I hadn’t paid any attention to the waiters when I’d
looked at the photos on Kip’s Facebook. The help sort of blends into the
background at these occasions. Now, clicking from photo to photo, I scanned for
waiters who fit my mental image of Luis.
I scowled as a
photo of Brenner came up, arms around the bridal couple. And there, a few feet
away—
“There he is!”
Magenta shrieked, pointing at the photo. “Make him bigger!”
I zoomed.
Half-hidden between two women stood a small, dark man in a waiter’s uniform,
toting a tray of dirty glasses, his gaze focused balefully on Bear Brenner. His
face was flushed, his hair was falling into his eyes, and his bowtie had come
un-bowed.
“The guy is
blitzed out of his mind,” Labeck said, grinning.
“He looks like
Miguel,” I said. “If Miguel had lived to grow up.”
Leaning over me,
Labeck performed some slight of hand with the keyboard, then dug out his
cellphone.
“Now what?” I
asked.
“Texting the
president of your fan club.”
“Eddie? It’s two
in the morning. He’ll be in bed.”
Labeck snorted.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The kid is sixteen.”
It took him only
a few computer taps to find Eddie’s number, then he texted:
Dude, fvor 4 MZ
MG. ID waitr in px. Is yr cuz Luis?
I felt like
Methuselah. You could send Internet photos over a phone? Apparently while I’d
been away in prison, where we weren’t even allowed pens and had to write in
crayon, texting had become the universal form of communication. The lingo might
as well have been ancient Sumerian to me, but Eddie Arguello made perfect sense
out of it, because Labeck received a reply about thirty seconds later.
+ID. Y U need
2 no? Iz MZ OK?
“Translation?” I
asked.
Labeck smiled.
“Positive identification. Why do you need to know? Is Mazie okay?”
“Text him back,”
I said, and for the first time that day I managed a smile. “Tell him MZ is very
much OK.”
But Bear
Brenner was not going to be okay. Bear Brenner was going down.
Escape tip #29:
There’s no such thing as
too tight or too low-cut.
“You’re
going to make a spectacular blonde, hon.” Magenta swished warm water around my
head to rinse out the dying solution. “I’m thinking subtle—more Madonna
than Marilyn, know what I mean?”
More
like Marilyn Manson, I thought, judging from the gunk he’d slathered on my
hair. But he was right about the blonde dye. Doctor Richard Kimble would have
done the same thing.
“Is
she finished yet?” Labeck poked his head around the screen. He was dog-sitting.
He and Muffin were best buds now and I was jealous. Muffin wrinkled his nose at
the ammonia fumes in the air.
“Go
away,” Magenta flung a wadded-up towel at Labeck, who backed out hastily. “Get
a haircut, you bum. Rent a tuxedo—and for God’s sake don’t let them talk
you into a shirt with ruffles. Gold cuff links—not silver. If you show up
with patent leather shoes I will personally chop your feet off.”
I
was sitting with my head in the shampoo basin of Magenta’s beauty salon, which
was a single sink, a padded chair, and a cabinet, all tucked behind an
embroidered Chinese screen at the rear of his Brady Street shop.
“I’m
not even licensed to run a beauty parlor,” Magenta confided as he dried my hair
with a magenta-hued towel. “I only do hair for a few select clients.”
“Lucky
me.”
“Honey,
you are going to be my masterpiece.” We moved over to the styling counter and I
plunked down in the swivel chair. Running his fingers through my hair, Magenta
studied me in the counter mirror. “An upsweep, I think. Conceal the frizzle
where that asshole burned it. Strands falling over those fantastic cheekbones.
We just need to wait a few more minutes for the color to set.”
He
took a bottle of cranberry juice from the mini-fridge beneath the shelf, poured
glasses for both of us, and turned on the large-screen wall TV, its screen
saver the pouty lips logo of the
Rocky
show.
Bear
Brenner appeared on a local channel. My heart gave a dull, panicky thud.
Brenner was being interviewed by a fawning young female reporter in his
downtown office. No trace of dirt under his nails, no burrs on his pants today;
he wore a pin-striped suit, a gleaming white shirt, and a tie with a federal
eagle print. He looked tanned, relaxed, and senatorial. “The BodyWorks show is
a feather in Milwaukee’s hat,” Brenner was saying, flashing a boyish grin. “I’m
proud to have helped bring it to our city. We expect it to generate some
much-needed revenue for our fabulous public museum.”
“I
understand you’re emceeing the opening ceremony,” the reporter cooed. “The
three-thousand-dollar-a-plate gala tomorrow night?”
Bear
grinned modestly. “I’m not up to Jay Leno standards, but I’ll do my best.”
“Oh,
so will we, Senator,” Magenta said, his voice going hard and gravelly,
massaging my shoulders as though I were a boxer about to go into the ring.
Magenta was in civilian wear today: T-shirt, baggy white shorts, espadrilles,
and tiny hoop earrings. Turquoise eye shadow brought out his green eyes,
although I had to admit that minus the Rocky Horror makeup, Magenta was a bit
vanilla: large nose, scanty eyebrows and brown hair pulled back in a pony tail.
He claimed to be thirty-two, but I thought that was probably ten years off the
expiration date.
Scratch Magenta’s flamboyant exterior
though, and you discovered a cool, calculating tactician. He’d come up with the
most creative ideas for our plot, but had reined us in when we wandered too far
into fantasyland. We’d all stayed up until dawn last night, going over Luis’s
photos and stolen files, discussing ideas, and finally roughing out the kind of
plan you formulate when you’re punch-drunk with fatigue and the desire for
justice is the only thing that keeps you going. We had a three-pronged goal
here: to expose Brenner publicly in such a way that he couldn’t lie or bribe
his way around the truth, to find a safe venue for me to surrender, and to use
the files and photos as a bargaining chip to keep the guys on my team safe from
prosecution. Magenta and Labeck had even given the whole cobbled-together
crapshoot a code name: Operation Payback
.
Guys, I swear.
Magenta whisked
the towel off my head, blew my hair dry, finger-combed it, then spun the chair
around so I faced him. “Time to gild the lily! This is going to be the most fun
I’ve had since I showed up at my ex-wife’s second wedding in full drag.”
“You
were
married
?”
“Honey,
some gays are. I just discovered I was more attracted to my wife’s brother than
to my wife. I’m a guy with an identity crisis, know what I mean? I enjoy being
a girl, but I don’t want to wear pantyhose every day. Why doesn’t the
sisterhood get its act together and torch all the pantyhose factories?”
That would be one
parade I’d be happy to lead.
He
led me out from behind the screen into the shop, which he’d modestly named Magenta’s
.
It looked like a collision between a rummage sale and Bergdorf Goodman’s.
Gently used designer clothes originally priced in the thousands sold here for a
fraction of the original cost. Saunter around a corner and here was an Yves St.
Laurent gown layered with a Balenciaga sweater; turn another and there was a
Dolce and Gabbana beaded purse or an Hermès scarf draped over a table lamp.
Magenta began flicking through the racks, giving each beaded, sequined creation
a second of squinty-eyed consideration before sliding on to the next. Finally
he plucked a red gown off the rack. “This is a Gaultier. Let’s see how it
looks.” He gestured toward a cubicle curtained with heavy striped silk.