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Liz appeared from the bedroom.
“I don’t like it,” Foreman said. “What if it’s someone else-Geiser, for instance-trying to manipulate Liz for his own gain?”
“Making that kind of suggestion could get you in trouble, Da
He heard Foreman breathing into the phone. Foreman said, “They’re going to want her at the reception, not at some three-hour movie. You can’t let her make this play.”
Boldt had expected a similar argument from Pahwan Riz. The embezzled money had to be wired out ahead of the merger, and the chaos of the VIP reception appeared to offer the best opportunity. A person could argue that Liz should ignore the nun’s habit, the movie ticket, and head straight to the reception, due to start at 7:30. But to his credit, Riz, accustomed to the fluidity of a special operation, had so far issued no such directives.
“That’s Reece’s call, not mine,” Boldt told Foreman. “You leave it up to me, Liz stays home tonight, watches reruns, and goes to bed early.”
Riz had a good plan all worked out: Malone subbed for Liz during the most exposed part of her itinerary, from the minivan on, in case Liz was abducted. Meanwhile, Liz would be transferred under tight security to the bank-safe once inside and able to access the AS/400, through the security requiring her palm print. It was a plan Boldt could not allow to happen because of the cards Svengrad held.
“Reece has a good plan,” Boldt reminded.
“Doesn’t include this,” Foreman complained.
“We adapt, right, Da
“I’m just saying: I don’t like it.”
“So noted.” Boldt disco
“Miles6, Sarah4,” Boldt reminded her as he approached. He didn’t want her using these passwords under any circumstances but had to appear otherwise.
He stepped forward to hug her and she whispered into his ear. “Is this going to work?”
“Stay with the plan,” Boldt said into her ear.
She kissed him on the cheek. It felt strangely foreign to him. He felt like kissing her back or hugging her, but inexplicably did neither. Instead, he opened the door for her and watched as she walked toward the waiting taxi.
He had calls to make. Arrangements. His complex plan to beat his own people without breaking laws and without being discovered suddenly seemed so fragile, so easily broken. Seeing the taxi drive off, he wished he’d said something more to her, longed for a second chance before sending her off without so much as a dress rehearsal. If Svengrad or Foreman had a plan to abduct Liz, Boldt had just beaten them to it. He’d abducted his own wife by arranging the costume, by buying the ticket to The Sound of Music ahead of time. By having it delivered by taxi. However tenuous, he controlled the strings now, though for how long was anyone’s guess.
LaMoia felt awkward dressed in his black funeral suit, a white shirt, dark vest, Stewart plaid bow tie, and gray felt hat. With his hair pulled into a small ponytail and tucked down his collar, even his colleagues were unlikely to recognize him-which was, of course, the point.
Fifth Avenue, Seattle’s most posh shopping street, was crammed with traffic, the sidewalks overflowing with both the di
He stood in a line of several hundred people, families, kids, full-bodied coeds in tight, colorful shorts, all dressed from various scenes in the movie. Women in full skirts and high heels-Maria. Men dressed as boys in lederhosen with its latzbund and schlitzfleck. More nuns than in a convent. But the real shocker was the uniformed Nazis-enough to run a concentration camp. It was as if the film had given an excuse to the white supremacists to play dress-up.
LaMoia was one of only a handful of Max Detweilers, giving him the feeling that he’d chosen the least inspired costume in the bunch. For her part, Matthews, as always, looked astonishingly perfect as a rosy-cheeked Maria, turning more than a few heads as she and LaMoia had found their places in the long line that awaited a slow box office.
The earpiece from his cell phone alerted him to the arrival of Liz Boldt’s taxi just west of the theater. Pahwan Riz’s team had followed her but were scrambling to get people costumed and on the ground in order to stay with her.
“The Sarge is a genius,” LaMoia told Daphne. He pressed his hand to his ear to isolate the voice in the ear bud. “The flying nun just entered the ticket holders’ line behind us. Reece is about to blow a valve.”
Daphne said, “Get seats near the back. I’ll tell her to look for your hat.”
“You be careful.”
“It’s not me they want,” Daphne said.
“That’s what worries me,” he said. “Nothing stupid.”
“Agreed.”
LaMoia couldn’t see over a couple of Nazis ahead of them. So when they made it inside and Daphne split off toward the women’s room, he lost sight of her. Liz Boldt pushed past in her nun’s outfit, close enough for him to reach out and touch her.
LaMoia kept his hands to himself.
Liz loitered by a trash bin in front of the women’s room where a line had formed. The theater’s lobby teemed with costumed moviegoers hungry for popcorn and to be seen by friends. The din made it hard to think. Bumped from behind, she turned to face Daphne Matthews, who looked strikingly beautiful in her Maria outfit. She felt her face flare behind the emotions of looking at her husband’s former lover, an identity kept secret all these years. The sickening combination of disinfectant, perfume, and hairspray overcame her as they moved into the rest room. A strong waft of marijuana overcame the other odors. She hadn’t seen a bathroom so crowded since her high school prom, and all the women dressed as one of three or four characters. She rubbed up against the Baroness, only to see the stubble of beard through the cosmetics. Somewhere in heaven the Von Trapps were as nauseated as she.
Wall-to-wall costumed freaks, Liz realized. Some were on drugs, or boozed up, anything to lower their inhibitions and allow them to croon through the three-hour film, thinking they were Pavarotti or Sills. The volume of talk in the tiled room proved deafening, the air thick with too many conflicting odors.
Again Daphne bumped her from behind. Adrenalized, and mildly claustrophobic, she felt tempted to scream out at the woman. Instead the two pushed into a toilet stall together, and Daphne turned quickly to lock the metal door.
“You,” Liz said, not sure why it came out this way.
“He briefed you, didn’t he?” Daphne asked.
“Oh, he briefed me all right,” Liz said, finding the opportunity impossible to pass up.
Reaching behind for her own zipper, Daphne looked back at Liz curiously. “We should get started.”
Liz made no effort to undress, embarrassed beyond belief to have to show her body to “the other woman.” She said, “He told me it was you. The affair. The one-night stand.”
Daphne looked as if she’d been punched, as if she needed to lean past Liz into the toilet bowl. She said, “Yes… well… this isn’t the time.”
“All these years,” she said. “Your coming to our house. Always playing so sweet and considerate. How did I miss it?”
“Liz, whatever you two are working through, I’m not part of that. We’ve got enough going on here without this. Okay? This is designed to buy you time. We’re wasting that time.”
“It’s more insidious than what I went through with David,” she said. “You see him every day. Interact with him every single day. How can you do that without thinking about it? I don’t think you can. You don’t, do you? So you think about it, and you both share it, even though it’s years behind you. That’s kind of sick for a psychologist, don’t you think?” She didn’t understand why she clung to this, except that the last thing she wanted to do was disrobe in front of this woman, and engaging her seemed a way to stall. Daphne pulled the dress off her shoulders, revealing first her substantial cleavage and then a white bra and finally the smooth tummy of a woman who had not given birth. Flawless, like something from a magazine, and only then did Liz glimpse the depth of what Lou had gone through to suffer her own affair with David Hayes.