hundred dollars as they would for fifteen million.' Fifteen million dollars was indeed a powerful motivator. If Sergei thought he could get his hands on that kind of money, who knew what he'd be capable of? Oksana had sensibly taken the gun from Sergei's building for protection.
'Well, if it makes any difference, you didn't lie to him,' Lucy said. 'That's exactly why I was meeting Nick. After I saw the Crawfords.' The realization dawned on Lucy's face; her fling with Claude may have saved her life. Talk about friends with benefits.
I tried to think of a way out of the hotel that would help us avoid Sergei and his men, if they were, in fact, looking for us. 'Oksana, how did you know we were back at the hotel?'
'When that bitch Rachel Page fired me I asked Helayne to put my personal things in a bag. I was picking it up and she said she saw you.' Yeah, it was hard to stay under people's radar when you were covered with blood and slime.
I was racking my brain to come up with a plan when our exit strategy knocked on the door. Lucy leaped out of her seat. Sam covered Oksana's gun with his hand. 'Let's keep this out of sight, okay?' She agreed and put the gun in her hobo bag, which looked as if it was stuffed with all of her belongings.
A young girl in heavy Goth makeup was at the door. She held a bundle of clothing, my hundred-dollar rental from Taylor, the desk clerk. She looked around the room and saw a homeless guy dressed in rags; a model-thin Ukrainian girl with tear-streaked makeup; Lucy, nervously hopping from one foot to another; and me, barefoot in tight leather pants.
'So, are you guys dressing for the party?' she asked cautiously.
'Say it again?' I said, recognizing the voice but not the look.
'It's me, Amanda.' The corpse flower had bloomed, and so, apparently, had she. The blond, blue-eyed homecoming queen who'd been recording the growth of the corpse flower was wearing white foundation, thick black eye makeup, leather wrist cuffs, and a cadaverous expression. The bicycle chain formerly used to lock the greenhouse was now doubled around her waist and tied off prettily with the lock.
'I called you,' she said to Lucy, 'but the line was busy. The whole school is downstairs. We're going to be partying all night in the lobby. Is this your cameraman?' Amanda asked, looking at Sam.
'One of them,' I lied.
'These are pretty good outfits, but it's not really Goth unless you make your faces a little whiter. I have white shoe polish if you like.'
So much for the rosy glow artfully applied to the apples of my cheeks; I asked her in.
Forty-seven
Sam showered and changed into Taylor's borrowed clothing while Oksana, Lucy, and I transformed ourselves into a trio of zombie extras from
'Do you have any idea how much this stuff costs?' Lucy asked.
'Do you have any idea how much funerals cost?'
'Good point,' she said, slathering the precious Chanel cream in the hollows of her cheeks instead of on her eyelids. She bravely put on my skanky torn hoodie and gave it a few more rents for good measure; I borrowed Amanda's bicycle chain and wrapped it around my own waist, tucking the lock and key in my pocket as if they were a grant watch fob.
Sam had borrowed a disposable razor and elastic hair band from me and when he emerged from the bathroom he looked like a reasonably attractive, if emaciated, ponytailed fifty-year-old in jeans and T-shirt. I didn't want to think about how long it had been since he'd had a shower, and I was glad housekeeping would be cleaning the tub and not me.
'You women look damn scary. Have I really been out of circulation that long?'
'It's a party,' Amanda said. 'Not real life.' She looked him up and down. 'The other outfit was edgier. You look too healthy, now.' Probably not something that Sam Dillon had heard in a while. He put on Taylor's UConn sweatshirt and we each contributed a little white stuff from our arms to smear on Sam's face. Not that anyone would have recognized him.
On the way to the party, we checked one another out. If we'd had more time Amanda said she would have painted our nails black, but as it was, we convinced ourselves we could pass for college students if the lobby was crowded, the lights were down, and no one looked too closely.
We needn't have worried. I couldn't imagine that even at the height of its popularity, Titans was any more crowded than it was when the elevator doors opened. It seemed as if the entire student body of the local UConn campus was in the hotel lobby dressed in black and drinking beer around the now-blossoming corpse flower.
Only Titans's employees were not in whiteface and Goth accoutrements and they stuck out like basketball players at a Pygmy convention. That's why it was easy to spot the Michelin Man. He'd positioned himself in the lounge and was so clearly not celebrating that the partygoers, not sensing a kindred spirit, gave him a wide berth.
'Let's not rush to the door,' I said. 'I don't want to be too obvious.'
The corpse flower was spectacular and Amanda, or someone, had opened both doors and all of the panels to the greenhouse so that the cadaverous scent filled the lobby. She disappeared into the crowd to play hostess.
Before I realized it, I'd been separated from Lucy and Sam by a swarm of Marilyn Manson and Kelly Osbourne look-alikes in chain-mail tank tops. I didn't risk calling out their names and alerting the Michelin Man.
Someone took my arm. 'Come with me.' Marat, the Michelin Man's skinny sidekick, squeezed my elbow and pressed something hard and cold into my rib cage. The squiggly lines in his eyes had brothers on his cheeks and nose and he smelled like an ashtray. Only a drunk or an idiot would think that blowing me away at a hotel party was a smart thing to do but I wasn't going to bet my life on either this guy's sobriety or his brains. I went with him.
'Where are we going?' I asked.
'Shut up and walk. My boss wants to see you.'
Who was his boss? The Michelin Man? Sergei? He led me through the lobby, past the freight elevator, and into the bowels of the hotel, where I'd been before, once with Hector and more recently when I'd visited the kitchen. I dragged my feet trying to remember which of the doors marked Employees Only led to the loading dock and which led to the kitchen.
'Can't you walk any faster?'
'It's the shoes,' I lied.
'American woman are like sheep. They wear stupid clothing and stupid shoes. If you were in my country you'd be wearing good sturdy boots.'
I was willing to bet that he hadn't seen Mother Russia for quite some time, if ever, and styles had changed, but I wasn't going to play What Not to Wear with him. Then I recognized the laundry room with its locked door. I smelled food and knew the kitchen was close by around the corner on the left.
When we made the turn I pushed my way into the kitchen with the skinny guy hanging on.
'Hey, this is my kitchen! Oh, it's you. Did you find Sam? Is he all right?' The chef looked from me to my attacker and quickly realized this wasn't a social call. The slightest tilt of his chin led my eyes to the kitchen knives on an island six feet to his right. Mine and the Ukrainian hood's.
'Can you throw a knife as fast as I can shoot?' Marat asked. 'I don't think so.' He was cackling at his own joke when one of the busboys came up from behind and hit him in the head with something shaped like a paddle. He fell to his knees and I was able to kick the gun out of his hand. It slid across the floor and wound up underneath one of the massive commercial ovens.
'Should I hit him again?' the busboy asked. He was standing over the now horizontal man ready to whack him again with a frozen Alaskan Salmon.
'No!' I didn't want him dead, just neutralized. 'Do either of you have the key to that laundry room outside?' The chef nodded and produced a large key ring.
We draped a tablecloth over the man, just in case anyone was in the corridor, dragged him out of the kitchen, and locked him in the laundry room.
