Chapter 29

Vesper let out a high-pitched, wailing cry. The squat, red-haired executive writhing on top of her arched his back, froze suddenly, and then took on a glassy-eyed, stupid stare. He grunted, dismounted, and lay on his ample stomach beside her in the absurdly large bed. Beads of sweat stood out on his wide and fleshy forehead.

He swallowed. "Was I. . .was I. . .good, Nina?"

Inwardly, Vesper giggled. She thought it a fine joke that she billed herself as "Mistress Nina," thus besmirching the name of that cow, Nina Kellogg. She fluttered her eyelashes flatteringly. "Darling, you were the best. Simply the best."

"Well, stick around, Sweetie, there's more where that came from. Just give me a little while to recover."

Vesper felt her gorge rising in her throat. "Oh, darling. . .I couldn't take it. I am positively spent." She reached for the nightstand, retrieved a cigarette and her pearly lighter. She sat up in bed.

"Darling, I have to get going."

The man sighed, and pulled on his thick tortoise shell spectacles.

"How much would it be for the whole night?"

Vesper blanched. She needed the money. . .desperately. She glanced down at the man's dimply backside, and tried to counter it with a mental image of Simon's beaming face.

"It would be. . .another $15,000."

"Whoa! Nina, I'm rich, but I'm not that rich."

"Suit yourself." You stingy bastard, she added viciously in her head. She took a long drag on her smoke, stubbed it out in a bedside ashtray, got out of bed and began to dress. Then, she paused.

"Darling, may I use your shower? I feel so messy."

The feminine-hygiene product tycoon from Michigan rolled onto his side. "Do you mind if I join you?"

Vesper dimpled. "Tempting, darling. Very, very tempting. But I need to freshen up and then be on my way."

The man looked terribly crestfallen.

Vesper strode into the black marble bathroom and turned on the shower, as hot as she could stand it. The man's stale odor seemed to clog her every pore. She climbed in and stood under the pounding spray. Her physical discomfort and the waves of nausea which had plagued her all evening began to recede as she did some mental math.

Two clients so far this evening. $20,000. By tomorrow night, assuming that the agency called her, she would have cleared $120,000 for the week. $120,000 was not that much, in the grand scheme of things, but it would help. Every penny counted at this point. With every cent she scrimped, with every tricked she turned, she could throw more money into Waterbury stock.

She had forgotten how easy this was.

Strangely enough, she was feeling better lately than she had in months. For a change, things seemed to be going well. Since the discovery of the clue at The Winchester Mystery House, weeks ago, there had been absolutely no progress in the Sooner Than Never hunt. Treasure Island casino, the Pittsburgh Pirates' stadium, and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" rides at both Disneyland and Disneyworld had been under red-alert security since the skull and crossbones unfurled itself high atop Mrs. Winchester's cupola, their owners dreading that fearless would-be treasure hunters and curiosity seekers would destroy the attractions in their fervor to find the next clue.

Simultaneously, and inexplicably, Simon Waterbury had pulled his sponsorship from Will Gilbert and Laura Dial, setting off storms of controversy in the press. Supporters of Will and Laura maintained that they had been exploited in a corporate publicity fiasco, and denouncers insisted that Waterbury had finally recognized that he had given the friends an unfair and unethical advantage. The front-running couple had had a falling out of some sort shortly after their allowance was cut off and split up: the Dial woman was living with her parents in Nebraska or Iowa or wherever the hell it was, and Gilbert was waiting tables in San Francisco. Neither of them would speak to the press. Vesper rested easy every night, knowing that her two biggest threats, both economically and personally, were no longer pursuing Simon's game.

With the sudden stalemate in the treasure hunt and Simon's image tarnished in popular consciousness, stock in the Waterbury had taken a happy and unexpected plunge. Vesper, Takamoto, and their various and sundry affiliates and associates now controlled 41% of the company's shares. If they could only gain 10% more of the company--a mere 10%!-- Waterbury would swiftly be reorganized as Waterbury-Takamoto, Vesper would be placed in charge, and Simon would be out on the street.

A month ago, when the dip in stock prices occurred, Vesper had begun selling off many of her investments and pouring her profits into Waterbury options. Her beach house in Amagansett now belonged to an irritating gay couple from Westchester; her considerable collection of jewelry and precious stones was being auctioned off in New York and abroad through private brokers; her tony penthouse on the Upper East Side had been sold, and she had installed herself, Shilah, and Chad Bismarck in a much less pricey (but much more rustic) rented loft space in SoHo.

And, she had begun selling herself. Again.

She preferred not to think of it in moral terms; she viewed it as exploiting her assets. And she had assets to exploit. Assets that many high-powered, high-profile business executives were willing to pay a great deal of money to enjoy. So far, none of her "clients" had recognized her. . .she took great care in wearing outlandish outfits and caking make-up over her exquisite features. Besides, by the time she got into bed with them, they weren't paying attention to her face.

The door to the bathroom opened, and Mr. Maxi Pad, lewd in his Napoleonic hairiness, strode into the room.

"Jesus! You growing roses in here? I haven't seen this much steam since the Continental Baths!"

"Just cleaning up, darling."

"Yeah, well, your beeper went off."

The agency was calling her. She would have another client. Tonight.

Get ready, Simon. The end is near.

******

"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

Who said that? wondered Will, as he trudged up the steep incline of Vallejo Street, chilled. Was it Mark Twain? Oscar Wilde? Armistead Maupin?

Whoever said it was darn right. Will could hardly believe that it was June. It felt like it was forty degrees. And it was so damp.

He had resolved that he could never live in San Francisco on a long-term basis. The weather drove him buggy. Eighty degrees and sunny at ten in the morning, foggy and cool at sunset, and downright frigid at night. There was simply no way to dress comfortably for the day unless you carried a mini-wardrobe with you at all times.

A faint sea breeze had sprung up, and the smell of garlic wafted into Will's nose. Though he made great money waiting tables at The Stinking Rose on Columbus Avenue, he felt as though every fiber of his being was suffused with the smell. His work clothes, no matter how many times he washed them, never were rid of the scent.

Just remember, he thought, it's only temporary.

He shivered. That was exactly what he used to tell himself while working at Translyvania Station. But this was different, he assured himself. . .this was merely a way station. His tenure waiting tables in San Francisco's garlic cafe was only temporary.

Or was it?

Since Laura's departure for Iowa over a month ago, Will had been living with his crazy college cohort, Chloe Horton. . . a shaved-headed, bisexual, natural-medicine-practicing, former arts administrator. Chloe had moved out to Everyone's Favorite City years before, to serve as the Managing Director of The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus (she preferred to call herself "Queen of 200 Queens"). After a few years with the Chorus, or perhaps because of it, Chloe had discovered her psychic ability and her natural healing powers, and had started a new life as a New Age Earth Mother feminist free-spirit pansexual activist.

That was another thing about the city that Will didn't like. It made people change. . .suddenly and irrevocably.

A long-haired man walking a skinny dog ambled down Vallejo towards Will. He looked rather piratical and almost Christ-like. Their eyes met under a street lamp.

"Hey, Mary," the man sneered contemptuously through a thick California accent, "what are you going to do now that you're not getting a free handout from Daddy Waterbury?"

"Drop dead," Will responded, through clenched teeth, and continued his ascent. Would this hill never end?

Will hated when he got comments like that. He hated even more the fact that he and Laura had sworn to each other that they would not discuss the hunt with anyone else. There was too much involved--the CIA, the homicidal maniac, the Vanishing Australian. They could get into too much trouble. . .and they didn't want to give up their lead, in case they took up the hunt again.

Will had convinced himself that soon, very soon, Laura would change her mind and rejoin him. They had invested so much in Sooner Than Never, and they had done so well.

He regretted terribly that he hadn't told her about Sebastian earlier.

He regretted terribly that he had hit Mike at The Winchester Mystery House.

He regretted that both he and Laura had terrible tempers.

He regretted, too, that they had not spoken since the day she dropped him off at Chloe's building, after they had gotten into a screaming argument.

But Laura would cave in. He knew she would. She wouldn't be able to survive for more than a month at her mother's house. Somehow, some way, she would come back to San Francisco and they would take up the hunt again. Somehow, some way, they would scrape together the money and go back out on the road together.

He opened the lych gate at 1018 Vallejo Street , and strode down the gangway which paralleled the side of the majestic house. Chloe's building, at the very crest of Russian Hill, commanded one of the most magnificent views of the city to be found. Sadly, her tiny one bedroom apartment, at the rear of the building, looked out over a steep drop to a muddy alleyway below.

He opened the door to the apartment, and Blanche, the cat, came running to greet him.

"Hello, Kitty," he said, laying down his backpack. He could hear the blender in the kitchen, where Chloe was undoubtedly whipping up one of her famous soy-carrot-apple-peach-lettuce-mango-asparagus shakes.

"Helluuuuu?" She called. "Gilbert, is that you?"

"Yes, dear," Will called.

"There's a letter on the hall table for you. I think it's from Laura."

Will rushed to the table and ripped open the letter. This is it, he thought, she's coming back.

He read the letter.

Dear Will,
I hope everything is okay in San Francisco. I saw on Access Hollywood that you're waiting tables. That really depressed me. We're both no better off than we were nearly a year ago, when I was at Waterbury and you were slaving away at the Station.

Laura

Will saw splotches of tears on the bottom of the letter, and it took him several seconds to realize they were his own.

****

Laura sat on the wide front porch of her parent's house, with a series of slips of paper laid out in front of her, Tarot-card style.

Centralia: The eternal fire and the anchor.

Chicago: The capsized passenger liner and the Carpenters.

Beaver Creek: The box car near Simon Waterbury's former estate.

Los Angeles: The mausoleum at The Huntington Library.

San Jose: The Pirate flag and cannon shots at The Mystery House.

Mike's voice rang in her head: "Total things up. . .look at the big picture."

The big picture. What was the big picture? Death. Lots of death imagery. Two monuments pointing towards a lost love. Westward progression. Earth, air, fire, water. Cannonballs, box cars, and Karen Carpenter.

It made absolutely no sense. What in the world could link all those places together?

She hated herself for giving thought to Sooner Than Never. Her mind was made up; she was moving to Nashville and attempting to resume some sort of semblance of a normal life. She couldn't take any more drama. She couldn't.

Maybe the location of the treasure was hidden in the clue location names. A jumble, or an acrostic of some sort.

That damned line from Chapter 5 in her head: "I love you as Orlando loved his Angelica. To be where you are is to be at the happiest place on earth."

The next clue had to be hidden in Disneyworld. Most likely on the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride. If only--

Laura hated challenges she couldn't master. They displeased her immensely. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't help trying to unravel Simon's enigma just a little bit more.

Inside the house, the phone rang, settling off the alarums of dozens of yipping dogs. Her mother called to her.

"Laura? Laura, it's Tom Hopeland from Nashville."

She entered the cool house and retrieved the cordless phone.

"Hello?"

"Laura! Hi! It's Tom!" her future boss drawled enthusiastically into her ear.

"Hi, Tom."

"Listen. I wanted to call you. We've got some really, really super news."

"Really? What?"

"Well, we just scored a major account here in the city. Major! I was wondering if you would be able to pull your start date back to August 1?"

Laura wrinkled her nose. She needed time to plan, to prepare, to organize.

"I--"

"Laura, we just got the Grand Ole Opry account."

Laura tried to sound chipper. "Oh, that's wonderful."

She hated country music. After the Religious Right, she hated country music more than anything else in the entire world.

"Laura? Are you there?"

"Yeah. I'm here."

"I--just a sec, Laura. . .I've got someone on the other line. Can I call you back, actually?"

"Sure."

"Thanks a lot, kiddo." The line went dead.

"Kiddo." The Grand Ole Opry. Country music.

She didn't want to move to Nashville.

But she would.

****

Vesper hated going to the Paramount Hotel in Times Square. It tried so hard to be trendy that it made her head hurt just to walk into the dimly-lit, concrete-and-neon lobby. The place was frequented by tacky Eurotrash and socially-climbing nouveau-riche Canadians, peppered with an occasional appearance by a young and hip B-movie star.

She hated it most because she feared, needlessly, that she would run into one of the hotel's owners, the always slick Ian Schrager. Schrager was one of the few people on the planet who had actually survived and profited from the existence of Studio 54, and one of the few people in the City who could possibly ruin her. He had known her (both literally and Biblically) in her younger days, when she had first become acquainted with Waterbury, and first begun insinuating herself into the tycoon's life. She assumed--or rather, hoped--that the decadence and depravity of late 1970s on West 54th Street had clouded his memory to her benefit.

She skirted across the lobby to the elevators. The silvery door slid open and she stepped inside, and noted with interest the presence of a strikingly handsome young bellman. Dark haired, wide-eyed, with full lips and a friendly smile. She thought that she had seen him in a beer commercial on television.

"What floor, ma'am?"

"The tenth."

The elevator purred upwards. She stepped off on the tenth floor, after mentally battling over whether or not to give the bellman her phone number.

She searched the immaculate, gleaming hallways and found Room 1012. The door was ajar. She pushed it open and went inside.

Her client was sitting in an ultra-mod easy chair watching television, with his back to her.

"Hello, darling. You called Golden Venus Leisure this evening?"

The man in the chair started violently, and stood up.

"Vesper, is that you? My God!"

Vesper's stomach seemed to drop the ten floors she had just ascended. Eight million people in this damn city, and he's the one who called.

She smiled bitterly. Fate would just not be kind to her. "Well, hello, Simon. Fancy meeting you here."

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