Trophies, page 50
And Claire read Pam the riot act.
And made the ex her bitch.
At ten-thirty, Billy rushed in, kissed his “Cookie,” then rushed to talk with the doctors and sit with his little girl.
And after he was finished, Claire grabbed his wrist. “Right this way…”
And after she was finished reading him the riot act in the nurses’ lounge, Billy locked the door and made love to her on a ring-stained Formica table.
And Claire knew that her husband was hers.
Right about the time Claire was getting coffee rings on her backside, Maya, drunk in the basement rumpus room, was calling Tom’s location hotel in Quezon City, in the Philippines.
Again.
He hadn’t checked in yet.
And Maya thought about how she’d never visited that part of the world.
The Asian part.
Because part of her was Asian. On her father’s side.
What was her father’s name again? Oh, yes, Wen. And he was tall. Some Chinese people are tall. The ones who live away from the fucking toxic factories and cities with brown air and water that stunts growth and shrinks testicles, but her father was born in Hong Kong, which is fucking polluted. His height came from an African-American basketball-player father. She was in Japan, once. She felt like a giant freak. Her father must have felt like a giant freak in Hong Kong. That’s why the Yugoslavian basketball scout on the sex holiday had seen him so easily. Wen was the result of a basketball player’s visit to a brothel in Hong Kong. Thanks to Grandma, brothels were in Maya’s blood. Which is why she’d never visited Hong Kong. Lots of basketball players and models come from Yugoslavia, so Wen must have felt more normal there.
What was she thinking, again?
Oh, yes. She’d never been to the Philippines either. She’d come close on a Victoria’s Secret shoot. How close was Australia to the Philippines? She’d have to look on a map. But since there weren’t any maps down here in the dark, she’d have to imagine the Philippines, but hopefully not the part of the country where her husband was fucking that blond, fertile, lousy actress. Maybe just the deserted parts. With grass. But what was she thinking? Australia. They have kangaroos. It is upside down from here. But no one stands on their head. Well, that one model did, but the photographer still didn’t give her better lighting. Maya knew many photographers. They had cameras…
The phone rang.
Vlad’s voice came over the speaker. “Tom is on the phone. He’s calling from Hong Kong.”
“Bullshit. Tom is fucking lousy actress in part of Philippines. I don’t want to visit there,” Maya slurred.
Vlad finally broke down the door and put the phone to her ear.
“Oh, Maya, girl!” she heard. “Hey, baby. First, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left crazy. I love you so much it was a lot to—”
Maya interrupted. “Hey, you sound like Tom! He was my husband. Once. Many years ago. But he left to fuck lousy actress. Somewhere near Australia…”
“Oh, boy. I’m so sorry, girl.”
But Maya didn’t hear him. She had passed out facedown on the couch.
Vlad picked up the phone. “I tell you she is down here long time.”
“Could you do me a favor, buddy?” Tom asked. “It’s about three in the afternoon here. Do you think you can dry her out in, say, six hours? I have some gigantic-amazing news. But she should be sober to hear it.”
“I will want bigger Christmas bonus.”
“Sure. Wait! I don’t pay you.”
“Is joke.”
“Can you do it?”
“Yes.”
“You know a part of me still can’t believe I’ve got gypsies in my cottage.”
“And another part think it cool.”
Vlad hung up and with little effort hefted Maya over his shoulder like a very long sack of grain.
A sack of grain that needed dry toast, borscht, a gallon of water, three or four espressos, and several much-needed soapy, cold showers.
He would make sure Sasha wore a cup.
While Vlad, Dudayev, and a well-armored Sasha were giving Maya her first of several soapy, cold showers, Marion Zane was watching the closing of the not-so-private Black Book sale at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. Not the bidders. The bids. The casino actually had them posted on a big board and MSNBC had provided its own set of graphics.
After 11 P.M., the field had narrowed to nine bidders: two from Dubai, rumored to be members of the Saudi royal family; two from France, one rumored to have created duty-free shopping; one from Italy (and we know who lives there); one from Thailand rumored to be royal; as well as three from the United States, two (the U.S. broker had a big mouth) rumored to be members of Skull and Bones.
By 11:30 P.M., France and Thailand had dropped out, as well as one of the bidders from the United States.
By 11:45 P.M., it was Italy, one Dubai, and one United States. The bidding ping-ponged upward from there, fast and furious.
The crowd at the Wynn was naturally rooting for the United States bidder. The section of the casino where the sale was being broadcast was so extremely boisterous that Marion had to switch to headphones in order to follow the sale. And she held her BlackBerry under one of the headphone earpieces so Patti Fink could follow the action from Los Angeles.
The bidding slowed down around $15 million. That wasn’t enough. Marion was beginning to wish she had stashed some of her big jewelry in the thumb safe at the Zane compound before the separation—but that was like wishing she wasn’t separated and believed loony because one of those Swiss bank accounts would have covered the remaining money she needed for the hospital fund, no problem.
That’s when the handsome man with the card approached her. He was tall, late forties, ice-blue eyes, and chocolate curly hair. With big clean hands and a nice ass. (Marion couldn’t help it.) He started to talk to her, but it was too hard to listen.
All she remembered were the words magazine, products, and partnership.
When Marion signaled to Blue Eyes that now wasn’t a good time (but that if he wanted to turn around, flex, and stay, it was okeydokey), he handed her a card. As she put it in her new Fendi clutch, he disappeared.
Oh, well. Back to the sale!
At 11:50, the bidding began to move. Seventeen million.
Then, in what was a complete shock to the crowd, Dubai dropped out. Marion had pinned her hopes on Dubai being capricious and illogical enough to skyrocket the price. Her heart sank as she nervously urged the Vatican (whoops!) and the United States to hang in there.
Almost midnight and not high enough—$18 million…$18.5…come on, be greedy! Nineteen million.
Ahhh! Why did she have to pay the publicist out of her own money? Because she hated asking her friends for it and they’d given enough…Maybe she could beg Ari’s mother—no, she’d given already and his brothers were cheapskates and…Ahhhh! There’s a higher bid…
Nineteen-point-five million and thirty seconds until closing and…
YES! YES! TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS!
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS JUST WON—I MEAN BOUGHT THE BLACK BOOK!
Jeez, we’ll get patriotic about anything.
Who gives a rat’s ass? We can partner with UCLA!
Marion gave her old friend a good-luck kiss and got a little misty as the armed guards representing the broker and buyer ceremoniously took possession of the Black Book and left the premises. And she said good night to Patti Fink, who was now doing damage to her inner ear (having already ruined her outer one).
And the news reporters closed in. And the interviews began.
They weren’t asking about what she was going to do with the money from the Black Book sale.
They weren’t asking about the hospital.
All they were asking was the same question:
Who bought it?
Marion wished the hell she knew.
While Marion was being interviewed, Ivan was coming up for air on Bora at Hotel Bora Bora, his favorite of the Aman resort chain.
Ibiza would have been lousy this time of year.
Having spent what he considered enough time at sea, he had chosen one of the poolside farés, the native Tahitian hutlike dwellings, rather than a bungalow built above the water. The pool farés were also more private, just in case his two lovely guests grew tired of sunbathing topless and wanted to to do it completely nude.
He probably could have checked in with Marion by now, but he really wanted Jeff to win the betting pool that the Zane-compound staff had started.
He had another week to go.
And even though he had eliminated the death sentence that had hung over his head for the past fifteen years, which meant he no longer had to be in hiding and could do as he was wished, he would be returning to work for the Zanes.
He liked his job.
Luck had brought them together. Luck had kept him alive.
After all, Gregor von Wolfen was dead. After killing the four Colombian assassins who had attempted to kidnap Crystal in Tikal fifteen years ago, he had placed their bodies outside the obnoxious Zane daughter’s hut and stripped the corpse that most closely resembled himself. Next, he donned the corpse’s clothing, charged into the Zane brat’s hut, and tied up the nanny and brat. He then left the hut and faked the sounds of a deadly scuffle outside. Re-dressing himself in his own clothes, he tucked his identification papers into the corpse’s pockets and effectively “killed” Gregor von Wolfen. Then he reentered the hut as a “hero” to free the obnoxious Zane daughter and nanny.
He didn’t take the name of the assassin in whom he planted Gregor’s identification papers. Or that of any of the other assassins he’d dispatched. They were simply displaced criminals who had stopped working for generals and chiefs of intelligence in order to work for drug lords.
Ivan Annatov had been a notoriously skilled Russian spy. He was by far Gregor von Wolfen’s most dangerous quarry and worthiest adversary. After he had stalked him for two years, and engaged him in three unnervingly vicious confrontations, it was by sheer luck that “Gregor” had finally eliminated him.
For the man who was Gregor von Wolfen, taking the name “Ivan” was a “trophy.”
At the moment, while his guests showered in their farés and unpacked their bikini bottoms, Ivan was strolling down the palm-shaded path toward the Matira Terrace for lunch. He definitely needed refueling. It had been a long night.
Hearing a commotion at the Raititi Lounge, Ivan popped his head in and saw an American family watching MSNBC and cheering because an American had “won the Black Book sale.”
Ivan’s first thought was that he was glad he’d copied that listing in Marion’s book, the one for that twenty-four-hour worldwide rescue service.
He didn’t change his departure date. But did make a few phone queries. (He could have taken the next flight out but, after all, he did have two guests whom it would be discourteous of him to abandon.)
While Ivan was making the best use of his time, and of his guests, Maya was hugging a toilet and screaming at Sasha to stop trying to blow-dry her hair while she was puking, and screaming at Dudayev that he must always read the expiration date on the container of sour cream before making borscht.
Then Vlad walked in with the phone.
It was good to know that Tom was still her husband.
It was mind-shattering to know that he was with Maya’s own grandmother in Hong Kong! Did she know, Tom asked her excitedly, that her grandfather had been a Harlem Globetrotter?
Grandma owned a casino now. Communist-sanctioned.
It was universe shattering when the heavens seemed to open and Tom said to wait a minute, there were two people who wanted to talk her, and suddenly Maya’s mother and father got on the phone. It was quite an emotional reunion, to say the least.
Maya’s parents turned out to be very much alive and living with Grandma in Hong Kong.
It seemed the Russian soldiers who had run the internment camp in which her parents had been placed liked to play basketball.
When the Russians released her parents, they had searched desperately for Maya until they traced her to the Grozny brothel. There they were told that their daughter had perished in a bombing raid.
When Wen, Maya’s father, was eventually deported from Chechnya, he was glad to have hung on to his Hong Kong citizenship. Which was now Chinese citizenship. So, he told Maya, all three of them moved in with Grandma.
Three?
(Here there was a brief interlude for stomach evacuation.) When Maya got back on the phone, she was informed that her mother was not happy to have learned that Maya and Tom had allowed gypsies to live on their property.
THREE?
Then Tom was back on the line to explain things.
The morning after Maya discovered that her husband had left, she’d called Marion in despair. Luckily, Marion remembered that Tom was going off to shoot one of Richard’s movies. On a hunch, she contacted the pilot of the Zane Enterprises’ G5 jet (who’d always been so grateful for the lovely sweaters she sent him each Christmas), and sure enough, Tom was indeed traveling on the Zanes’ plane and was willing to speak to her. Tom told Marion his version of the story, and requested that she let him work it out with his wife on his own.
Marion told Tom that from what she’d gathered from listening to both him and Maya, she wasn’t worried about their marriage. And that to her, he sounded mostly upset about learning that he’d be unable to have a child by his wife. Then she gave him two pieces of advice. Advice that she’d wished Maya had taken years ago.
Her first piece of advice was that he consider tracking down what was left of Maya’s relatives. That meant looking in Chechnya, Hong Kong, and maybe even America. Perhaps, she cryptically suggested, he could find a relative willing to provide “the next best thing” to Maya’s DNA.
Her second piece of advice was to call a wonderful private detective service she had listed in her Black Book (which she’d just happened to have lying open on her lap as she spoke).
Tom had decided to take that advice and had told the detectives that since he was going to be shooting in the Pacific, they might as well start looking in Hong Kong, because Maya had said that her grandmother—
THREE! WHAT THE FUCK DOES THREE MEAN? WHO IS THREE? MY MOTHER, MY FATHER AND WHO MAKES THREE?
That was when Tom asked, “Maya girl, would you like to speak with your sister?”
93
News Flash
Marion knew that the city council was going to rule in Richard’s favor before Zephyr had even finished her argument.
Her daughter had presented a convincing case. (Naturally, she had always been gifted.) She’d started with the convenient and compelling example of the King/Drew tragedies (with accompanying requisitely gory details), and then argued that the proposed Carita Memorial project could face a similarly doomed path. Then she gave comparative listings of overruns and defaults by a staggering number of hospitals and trauma units throughout the state and the nation—and, of course, the costs to taxpayers as a result. (Thanks, insurance industry, big-box stores, and Big Pharma!)
Next, Zephyr offered traffic reports and statistics on accidents where ambulances were involved, which, in Marion’s opinion, were not her daughter’s strongest arguments and should have been left out.
(At this point Marion felt like a latter-day version of Dr. Strangelove, as she had to sit on her hand to keep it from shooting out and brushing the hair away from her daughter’s eyes.)
Then, came the “March of the Insulted”: legions of deeply saddened and wounded reps from local hospitals, including Mercy and Angeles Hope, took the stand, beating their breasts in outrage and claiming they could easily shoulder the needs of the community and that Carita’s death, though a terrible tragedy, had clearly been an anomaly. Blah, blah, blah.
Zephyr didn’t take a single shot at her mother. Eli Volker had freed Marion’s finances from trustee control when it was revealed that some of her alleged Home Shopping Network telephone orders were had been recorded. An investigation (Ivan’s idea) by NFS & etc. revealed that they had been placed by a person with a hoarse voice that obviously did not belong to Marion Zane. (Upon hearing this, Simon Sacks actually knelt in apology.)
Still, Zephyr could have “accidentally” skipped the earlier ruling that had branded her mother “unfit” into her argument. She hadn’t.
It might have frayed down to a mere thread, but the cord was still there.
Yes, Zephyr had made a brilliant case.
But Marion’s case had been better.
(And it struck her as predictable but disappointing that after all the hoopla over the Black Book sale, there was barely any coverage of the city-council hearing. Only the same old local cable channel that covered all the city-council hearings. Did O. J. do something again?)
Marion’s case should have been a national concern.
She had packed the city-council chambers with victims of delayed care that had resulted from a lack of trauma facilities. From a lack of hospital facilities. From inane requirements from hospital lawyers and insurance providers and budgeting directors that took precedence over human life.
She had packed the city-council chambers with residents who had to live in substandard conditions in order to be able to feed their families.
She had packed the city-council chambers with former skid-row residents from other cities who’d benefited from low-cost psychiatric care and adult education programs. The hospital Marion envisioned would provide that psychiatric care. The community center she proposed would offer adult education, yoga, and anger-management courses to ease the tensions of poverty, as well as a safe day care and a sports and recreation facility for kids.
She discussed the proposed hospital clinic, supported her proposal with statistics on the benefits to taxpayers and businesses if people could receive affordable preventive care and stay healthy instead of turning to trauma centers for nonemergencies or when their health had deteriorated to a hopeless point.
She had all sorts of stats in her favor.
