Randall #01 - The Best Revenge (17 page)

On an afternoon in November, Camilla sat at her desk listening to her stomach growl over the clicking drone of the office typewriters. She checked the lighted green numbers on her new digital watch. The time was 12:47. She was ravenous, but she had agreed to have lunch with Julie, who didn’t take her lunch break until one. Julie was taking her to a local cafe called Ernie’s Joint to celebrate Camilla’s birthday.

Actually, her birthday had been two days ago, and she hadn’t told anyone about it, but Julie had apparently ferreted the information out of her personnel file.

Violet, in some mysterious way of her own, had discovered the date too. On Sunday morning, she woke Camilla from a sound sleep to take her to a birthday brunch at the Del. Over Eggs Florentine, Violet presented her with the digital watch, saying, “I hate them myself, but I know you young people love ’em.”

The large plastic instrument was truly hideous, but it did tell the time, as well as the date, and a vast number of other things she hadn’t figured out yet, and she had almost begun to get used to its hourly beeping for attention. Violet had been sweet to remember she needed a watch. In fact, Violet had been entirely too sweet, much sweeter than an old woman of limited means could afford to be. In addition to the brunch and the watch, a dozen red roses had been waiting at the apartment when they returned from Coronado. The card with the flowers read, “Have a wonderful twentieth, my only love.” It had no signature, but the telltale envelope was addressed to “Camellia”, so she found it hard to suppress giggles as Violet performed an elaborate charade exclaiming over “Jamey’s” generosity.

“I might have known there was a Scorpio hiding under that angelic exterior,” Julie said, arriving at the door to Camilla’s cube. Today’s T-shirt showed a cartoon of a weeping woman saying “Oh, my God! I forgot to have children!”

“I’m a Scorpio, too,” Julie said as Camilla grabbed her coat. “My birthday is in a couple of weeks. But I’m not exactly going to be twenty. How come you didn’t tell anybody? Nobody needs to keep her twentieth birthday a secret.”

“I didn’t want people to make a big deal,” Camilla said. “Especially Stuart. I’ve been dodging him for the past couple of weeks, but he doesn’t give up easily.”

“‘No’ is a great word. Try it sometime,” Julie said. She led them down the stairs to the street.

“But I’m the new kid. I don’t want to alienate anybody.”

“You’re not so new anymore.” Julie steered her around a corner. “So start telling off the people who bug you. Except me, of course. I write the checks.”

“And Genghis Kahn,” Camilla said with a laugh.

“Don’t be so sure. At the moment Mr. Kahn can’t afford to lose you. Our circulation has tripled in the past two months, and even though he pretends it’s all because of Bob’s Jon-Don Parker investigation, he knows the ‘Living Well’ column is drawing just as many readers.”

“Really?” Camilla had felt the column was going smoothly, and she knew that Mr. Kahn didn’t hate it, since he had kept her on after the one-month trial period, but she hadn’t dreamed it might actually be important to the paper.

“Of course,” Julie said. “In fact, you may even be up for a raise. I shouldn’t say anything, but Mr. Kahn had me pull your records today, which is a real good sign. That’s when I noticed your birth date. I hope you’re hungry.”

Julie stopped in front of an unprepossessing brick building with a few tables and chairs outside. “Here we are,” she said. “Ernie’s got an all-you-can-eat spaghetti and salad bar.” She pushed open the door and a wave of noise came from inside. “You get us a table,” she said. “I’ll hit the buffet line.”

Camilla searched the crowded room, saw a couple get up from a small table in the corner and dove for their seats, draping her coat over one chair as she sat in the other.

The patrons of the café were mostly young. A noisy group next to her had pushed a number of the little tables together and were loudly ordering breakfasts from a tired-looking waitress.

“Hey, listen to this,” said a young man in black who had just ordered three eggs and double hash browns. “The good doctor is in rare form today.” He began to read aloud in a piercing falsetto—

“Dear Dr. Lavinia—my boyfriend and I are having an argument that I hope you can settle. He said you can’t get herpes from a hot tub, but I say you can if you go in without a suit. He said that there’s no point in getting in a hot tub if you wear a suit and I’ll embarrass him in front of his friends if I do. What do you say? Also, is it true that eating garlic can help you develop an immunity to herpes?—Paranoid”

There was general laughter from the group.

“So what does the doctor say?” said a big woman with a lot of red hair.

The man cleared his throat and read again, this time in a stately English accent.

“Dear Ms. or Mr. Noid—” he began. “Dr. Lavinia is of the belief that keeping one’s clothes on is an excellent precaution against all social diseases. She welcomes your suggestion of eating garlic as a further deterrent, but is afraid the average reader might find the measure too drastic. Very Truly Yours, Dr. Lavinia.”

“The lady is awesome,” said another of the men. “Can’t you see her? Sort of a Margaret Rutherford type with a pince-nez and beige support hose.”

“Not Dame Margaret. I was doing Edith Evans.” The man in black looked injured.

Camilla couldn’t help feeling pleased. Other people had inner children, but she seemed to have gotten in touch with an inner great aunt with her Dr. Lavinia voice.

Julie emerged from the crowd with two heaping plates of gooey orange pasta “Isn’t this a fantastic place?”

“It certainly seems—popular.” Camilla gingerly tasted a forkful of the spaghetti. It didn’t taste quite as bad as it looked.

“Julie, you old snake!” said a voice from the next table. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”

The large, red-haired woman waved at Julie. “Sit over here with us. We’re giving dramatic readings from Dr. Lavinia’s column. You’ll love it!”

Julie shook her head as she swallowed, but it was too late. The red-haired woman stood over them.

“I’m Bernie Magee,” said the red-haired woman. “Short for Bernadette.” She pushed a chair between them.

“I’m…Randy,” Camilla said as she tried to shrink to make room for her.

“Bernie’s the stage manager at the ‘F’ Street Theater,” Julie said. “I’ve worked props over there on a couple of shows.”

“She’s great, too,” Bernie said. “This woman knows the inventory of every thrift shop in the county. She found us nearly a hundred toasters for
True West
.” She slapped a hand on Julie’s shoulder. “We really need you back. You wouldn’t believe the flea-brain I have to work with on this show. We close Sunday, thank God, and he’s going to some theater in L.A. How about it? We don’t open the next show for three weeks.”

“I’ve got a real job now. There’s no way I’d have the time.”

“Your paper sure has livened up. The reviews are biased, of course, but I love Dr. Lavinia—and all that great dirt about Jon-Don Parker.” She paused to pour the contents of three Sweet ’n’ Low packets into her coffee. “Hey, do you know her—Dr. Lavinia?”

Julie giggled. “As a matter of fact—”

Camilla stopped her with a kick under the table.

“The doctor is a very private person” she said, anxious to protect her new secret identity. She turned to give Bernie a full-on debutante smile. “Tell me about your theater,” she said. “What’s the new play?”

“A couple of one-acts,” said Bernie. “
You May Already Be a Winner
and
Clark Gable’s Ears
. Do you want to work props? I could sure use somebody. This production ought to be a lot of fun. Plantagenet Smith himself might show up for some rehearsals.”

Camilla’s fork fell into a pool of spaghetti sauce with a greasy plop when she heard Plant’s name. She did remember those plays of his—stuff he wrote in college.

“And who is Plantagenet Smith?” said Julie. “Are we supposed to be impressed?”

“The playwright, Julie,” Bernie said with heavy condescension. “He’s the guy who wrote
Winner
and
Gable’s Ears
. He wrote
Boadicea!
you know? Julie, for a lady who used to be an actress, you don’t know much about contemporary theater.”

“
True West
taught me more than I want to know about contemporary theater,” Julie said. “Smashing fifteen toasters and a typewriter every night. On stage. And guess who got to clean up the mess.”

“That’s nothing compared to the mess we’re going to have with
Winner
,” Bernie said. “It’s about these two gay artists who are always trying to win contests and sweepstakes, and the whole set gets covered with cereal boxes with the tops cut off, and torn up magazines, and all these plastic flamingos. That’s the only thing they ever win—one hundred plastic flamingos. Maybe we need two props people, come to think of it. We did for my college production.” She took a large gulp of coffee and turned to Camilla. “I played the landlady who found their dead bodies at the end.”

“The play sounded like a real winner, all right,” Julie said. “I don’t really think that Randy—oh, damn.” She lowered her voice. “Speaking of winners, guess who’s headed our way.”

“Ah, three lovely ladies with whom to share my repast,” said Stuart. He plunked his plate down on the already crowded table. Grabbing a chair from somewhere, he pushed in next to Camilla. “You two missed all the excitement.”

“What a shame,” Julie said in a bored voice. “Did Angela Harper bless us with one of her royal visitations?”

“Better than that.” Stuart mixed a glob of pink dressing into his salad. “Our beloved leader has just been rushed to the hospital.”

“Oh no!” Julie said, growing pale. “What happened?”

Stuart laughed loudly.

“He fell down the stairs. Or rather, Bob pushed him down the stairs. Not on purpose, of course. With anybody else, you might suspect evil intentions, but Bob was just being Bob. He suddenly had some huge breakthrough on the Jon-Don story and needed to rush off to Texas. The boss happened to be at the top of the stairs at the time, and—splat! One bad-tempered editor ended up on the ground floor.”

 “How badly is he hurt? Is he going to be OK?” Camilla said.

“He’ll be fine. He didn’t even want to go to the hospital, but his ankle hurt, so we made him go. I think Bob was more freaked than Genghis, actually. That didn’t stop him from zooming off to Texas, though.”

“What’s he going to Texas for?” Julie said. “Jon-Don was from Oklahoma.”

“Something to do with Jon-Don’s underworld connections,” Stuart said. “There was some evidence found on the body that had to do with a religious cult in Texas, and since Parker wasn’t heavily into religion, Bob thinks it’s a front for a drug ring. Besides, the police haven’t done a damn thing to follow the lead, so the drug ring may be connected with some FBI sting operation. At least I think that’s what Bob is after. You know how he can be. He speaks in a language known only to Bob—like, he kept saying he was going to Texas to look for a camel.”

“Camel?” Camilla clutched the edge of the table. “Why did he say a camel?”

“Probably meant mule,” Bernie said. “That’s somebody who carries drugs over the border. This is turning out to be a great mystery! Do you think the FBI killed him?”

Stuart chewed salad noisily. “Look, I probably shouldn’t be saying all this in front of you.” He looked at Bernie. “You don’t work for the
Sentinel
, do you?”

“‘F’ Street Theater. Bernie Magee,” she said. “Didn’t hear a thing. But what’s this about Angela Harper? You know her? What’s she like?”

“Would I like to find that out!” Stuart said with a leer. “That is one sexy old broad. When I started at the paper last spring, she was around nearly every day, but since she stopped getting it on with Genghis, she’s just about disappeared. She’s living with some pretentious writer now. Pendragon or something. Pendragon Smith.”

“Plantagenet Smith?” Bernie grinned broadly. “That explains it! Out of the blue, Angela Harper offered to finance our next production—two Plantagenet Smith one acts.”

“She’s not going to be financing us much longer, if we don’t get back to work,” Julie said. “Come on, Randy. With the boss in the hospital, I hate to think what a zoo I’m going to have to deal with over there.”

“Poor Mr. Kahn,” Camilla said, trying to maintain her composure.

“He’ll be fine,” Stuart said. “I’m not so sure about you, though. You look like you’re going to lose your lunch. Are you OK?”