Vanity, Vengeance And A Weekend In Vegas (A Sophie Katz Novel) (10 page)

“You…you drugged me?” I slurred.

“You’re just going to fall asleep
for a little while. I can’t have you following me.”

“Wha…” I could barely think.
There was something I should do now…something…I needed to….do something very,
very bad to Anatoly.

 
“Go back to San Francisco,” I could hear him say as he eased
me back on the bed. “I’ll call you when things are taken care of. It may take
awhile but I
will
fix this.”

“Anatoly,” I whispered as my eyes
fluttered close, “when I wake up…”

“Yes,” I heard his voice through
the haze, tender…even loving.

“I am going to kick your ass.”

When I woke up Dena was sitting
by my side shaking me and Leah was leaning over me flicking water into my face.
Behind her I could see the slightly fuzzy figure of Marcus and…someone
else…probably Mary Ann, a little further behind him.

“Look, look! She’s waking up!”
Leah said, flicking so much water in my face I had to turn away to avoid
drowning. “She’s not in a coma!”

“What…where…” I blinked several
times until the room came back into focus. “Is he here?” I asked groggily.

Marcus shot Dena a worrying glance.
“Sweetie, are you okay?” he asked. “We were just about to call 911. We’ve been
trying to wake you up for several minutes now.”

“He drugged me,” I mumbled.

“Wait,” Dena sat up a little
straighter. “Someone was here and they drugged you?”

“You mean like, with a roofie?”
Marcus gasped.

“Oh my gosh, I know what a roofie
is!”
Yes, that
was definitely Mary Ann in the background.
“There was this Lifetime movie
and this woman was given a roofie and…oh, Sophie! What did they do to you?”

“I don’t’ know if it was a
roofie,” I muttered. “Maybe.”

“Oh dear God,” Leah whispered.

Marcus kneeled down by the bed.
“Sweetie, who did this and…do you know if they…did anything--”

“It was Anatoly…he…he was here
and we had sex.”

“What!” Dena was on her feet now.
When she stood without her cane she always seemed slightly off kilter, her
weight never exactly distributed evenly. But at that moment I could see that if
Anatoly had been on the other side of the room she would have had the
wherewithal to slam his head into the window.

“No, no,” I corrected quickly,
alertness beginning to come back to me. “I mean we
did
have sex but he didn’t have to drug
me for that. He drugged me because I wasn’t going to let him leave.”

Marcus paused for a second and
then let his head fall into his hands.
 
“You tried to kidnap him?” he groaned. “And he had to drug you to
escape. Sweetie, I’ve seen this storyline play out on General Hospital.”

“Don’t be melodramatic.” I rubbed
my eyes. The haze hadn’t fully cleared yet. “I didn’t kidnap him. He came to
me! I just tried to hold him hostage.”

Dena stared at me for what might
have been a full minute before she exploded. “Have you lost your motherfucking
mind?!”

Leah was clearly on Dena’s side
because she stopped flicking me with water and just dumped the whole glass of
water on my head. As I sat up sputtering she paced the room. “You could already
be a suspect in a murder investigation, Sophie!” she snapped. “Isn’t that
enough!”

“He made love to me and then he
told me he was going back to his wife! I had to do it!”

“No, you
really
didn’t.”
 
Leah countered.
 
“You know I came here to make sure you
didn’t marry some random idiot, but getting yourself shot might actually be
worse!”

“
Might
be worse?” I asked. I raised my
fingers to my temples. My head was killing me.

Marcus sighed. “I think it
depends on the idiot in question.”

Dena was tapping her cane on the
ground…actually it was a little more than a tap…if the people in the room below
us were in they were bound to register a complaint shortly. “You should be
trying to get away from Anatoly,” she said. “Far away. No man is worth all
this. Let’s buy you some adult bath toys and get the hell out of Vegas.”

“It’s worth considering,” Marcus
agreed.

“Excuse me, guys?” Mary Ann
stepped forward almost timidly. “Sophie seems to have a pretty big headache.
Why don’t you leave me with her and you can go out while she recovers.”

“I can’t leave her alone again!”
Leah spat. “Every time I do she does something insane!”

“Um, Leah?” Mary Ann said softly,
“you told me we were coming here for my bachelorette party but there was never
a party planned. Even if everything had gone the way you wanted it to you still
would have been lying to me. You sort of owe me?” She phrased it as a question
although there really was no question about it. Leah looked appropriately
chastened.

“And,” Mary Ann continued, “the
rest of you sort of owe me for not wanting to include me in the weekend to
begin with. I mean a sex toy trade show in Vegas?” She shrugged. “Leah’s right.
This really should have been my bachelorette weekend.”

Dena stopped banging her cane.
“Mary Ann I—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” she said,
holding up her hands to stop Dena’s impending apology. “You can all make it up
to me by giving me some alone time with Sophie.
 
Would that be okay?”

There were a series of shrugs and
muttered apologies.

“You could go get dinner or
something?” Mary Ann suggested.

“Dinner?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you
guys be having lunch?”

Dena gave me a sideways glance.
“We did, four hours ago.”

“What!” I twisted toward the
bedside clock. Sure enough it was after 6.

“We came in here to check on you
a few times,” Marcus confessed sheepishly. “But you seemed to be sleeping so
peacefully we didn’t try to disturb you. But when we came back this last time
and you were still zonked out we knew something was wrong.”

“So you’ll give us some time?”
Mary Ann pressed.

“Puppetry of The Penis starts in
two and a half hours,” Dena pointed out.

“Puppetry of…” Leah’s voice
faltered.

“It’s a show where men turn their
penises into puppets,” Marcus explained. “But we only have three tickets.”

“I’m really not up for it
tonight,” I said. There was only one dick I wanted to look at and he had just
gone back to his wife.

Leah sucked in a deep breath. “If
you and Mary Ann really want some time together maybe…maybe I should go to the
show in your place.”

“You?” Dena took a step back and
gave Leah a quick once over.
 
“Have
you been possessed by some demon who actually likes having fun?”

“I just don’t think we should
waste the ticket,” Leah said defensively. “And we…we have to keep up
appearances.”

“By going to a penis show.”

“Of course I have no interest in
seeing men wave their…their peckers around but--”

“Excuse me,” Dena interrupted,
“but we’re not talking about woodpeckers here. They’re cocks. It’s a cock
show.”

“I don’t know, Dena,” Marcus
mused. “When in action they do use the same motion as a woodpecker banging a
tall, dark and sturdy piece of bark.”

“Whatever!” Leah snapped. “If we
don’t use the tickets we already bought it will look suspicious!”

“Leah’s right,” Mary Ann said.
“Have fun at the pecker show.”

Dena looked like she wanted to
protest but apparently she couldn’t think of anything to say, so with a heavy
sigh she led the way out. “I can’t believe I’m going to see Puppetry of the
Penis with The Church Lady.”

“Yes, that’s right, Dena, I’m the
Jewish Church lady,” Leah hissed as she walked out behind her.

Marcus flashed us an apologetic
smile. “Call when you want to join the party,” he said and closed the door
behind him.

Mary Ann sighed and went over to
the mini bar. “There’s a bottle of Advil here…did you leave these out?”

I shook my head.

“Anatoly must have done that for
you. That was nice of him.” She opened the bottle and took out two pills for
me. “He left out some pretzels too.”

“Mini-bar pretzels?” I asked.

“I don’t think so…oh and I think
he left a note!” She unfolded a piece of paper by the Advil, took a second to
read it and then dumped a third Advil into her hand before handing them to me
along with the pretzels and a bottle of water.

“What does the note say?” I asked
as I downed my three pills.

“It’s a boarding pass,” she said
as she took a seat by my side. “You have a seat on Southwest’s 10:00 pm flight to
Oakland…and he left a little note on the bottom saying he charged it to your
Capital One Visa.”

“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled as I
started snacking.

“He’s just trying to protect
you,” Mary Ann assured me. “Dena, Marcus and Leah…they don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“What it’s like to be madly in
love.”

I thought about that for a
second, nodded my agreement and handed Mary Ann a pretzel as a reward for her
astute observation.

“Dena thinks it’s silly that I’m
so excited about my wedding but she doesn’t understand…Monty he’s like…like my
everything
now!
He’s my world!”

I smiled and offered her another
pretzel. Anatoly wasn’t my everything. But he was a large percentage of my
everything so I understood her point.

“If I thought someone was going
to take my world away from me,” Mary Ann continued, “I’d do anything…I’d risk
my
life
to
get it back. That’s what you do for true love.”

“Sooo,” I said after washing down
the pretzels with a little water, “are you saying I shouldn’t leave Vegas?”

I spent the next twenty minutes
clearing my head. Whatever Anatoly had given me it was wearing off quickly…if
you could count four and a half hours as quick. Now I wanted to see Alex.
 
But I didn’t want to wait until 9ish as
he had requested. I wanted to take him off guard. In fact, if I could get to
that address before he left work I might have a chance to do some
reconnaissance.

“I want to go with you,” Mary Ann
pleaded.

“You can’t. I need you at the
Hotel Noir.” I did a quick image search for
Alex Kinsky, Hotel Noir GM
on my Android and
showed her a photograph of Alex. “That’s what he looks like. You remember where
I told you his office is?”

Mary Ann nodded.

“Okay, but he might not be in his
office.
 
He might be just walking
the casino or something.
 
Go to the
front desk first and ask for an application for employment. Ask a few casual
questions about the hotel, ask about the GM and ask if he’s still there. Again,
make it casual. You’re just trying to get a sense of the place. If they say
he’s left text me. If they say he’s there, find him, spy on him and text me.
And then, when he
does
leave the hotel, text me, wait a half hour and then go to the
address in a town car.
 
Park…maybe
a block away or so. Wait there for no more than an hour and a half. If I don’t
come out to you by then call and if I don’t pick up…call the cops. Oh, and we
should have a code word in case I pick up but still need help…like I’ll say
see you later
gator.
If I say that call the cops.”

“But you never say that.”

“That’s the point. If those words
come out of my mouth I’m in serious distress.”

“But…didn’t you say you needed to
keep the cops out of this?”

“I do. But if I can’t get out of
there by then I’m in the kind of trouble that the police can’t make worse under
any circumstances.”

“I don’t know about this…” Mary
Ann hedged as she studied Alex’s picture.
 
“You don’t know what this address he gave you is…”

“That’s why I’m going early, to
find all that out before anyone’s prepared for me. And yes, it’s a little risky
but I’m going to great lengths for the man I love. You approve of this kind of
stuff, remember?”

Mary Ann nodded. It was obvious
she was having second thoughts but not enough to get in my way. She looked at
the picture on my Android again. “Okay, I’ll look for him...you’ll be careful?”

“Totally,” I said. Of course
careful meant different things to different people.

And as if to prove it, I
carefully
put
my MacBook in its carrying case and draped it over my shoulder. This was coming
with me.

“New studies suggest that,
contrary to popular wisdom, IQ scores can change over the course of one’s lifetime.
I’m pretty sure mine drops twenty points every time I fall in love.”

--Death Of The Party

My Jamaican cab driver was all
smiles and chatter as he drove me away from the strip and toward Alex’s
home.
 
I liked the sound of his
accent. At that moment any accent that wasn’t Russian was comforting.
 
 

The address took us outside the
main part of town. Way out of it. We passed rows of houses, half of them in
foreclosure. God I missed San Francisco. I missed the smell of the sea air, the
tightly packed houses...hell at this point I even missed the homeless and the
hookers in the Tenderloin. Anything familiar would have been comforting. But
this was a suburban desert inside a city. I didn’t know anything about this.

I got a text from Mary Ann:

He’s here.
He seems to be having a meeting with someone at the café.

I texted her back a
thank you
and
stared out the window.
 
As we
continued our journey the houses got nicer.
 
The foreclosure signs were replaced by For Sale signs and
soon even those became less prevalent.
 
With each block the homes got bigger. There wasn’t enough land for
places like these in San Francisco. But here? It was as if they had so much
land they felt the need to fill up as much of it as possible.
 
So they just kept adding pools and guesthouses.
One house even had a tennis court. The home we pulled up in front of was modest
by comparison but would still shame most houses in Pacific Heights. It also had
a security gate.

Was this Alex Kinsky’s home? My
$250 wouldn’t even pay for his air conditioning.

“Do you want me to drop you off
here or should I give a name,” the driver asked waving at the little box where
we were supposed to announce ourselves.

“Drop me off here,” I said. I
reached into my bag and took out the fare plus $50. “I don’t think anyone will
ask if you saw me but if they do…”

“I didn’t,” the driver said with
a wide smile as he took the money. “Always happy to help a sister out.”

I smiled nervously.
 
It was tricky this instinctive
communality between people of the same minority group.
 
Sometimes it held up. Other times it
encouraged a level of trust that hadn’t been earned or deserved. Just ask the
Jews who invested with Bernie Madoff.

I stood on the side of the road as
the car drove off and then carefully walked up to the gate. Could I climb it?
It seemed unlikely.
 
Still, I was
anxious to peek inside the windows before Alex arrived. He said there were
things he could tell me, but at the moment I was more interested in what he
wouldn’t
tell
me.
 
I walked along the sidewalk as
if just going for a stroll. No one in the front yard that I could see. It was a
little hard to tell because it was dark, the only illumination coming from the
streetlights and…from what I could tell, a porch light. Plus the yard was…well,
huge.
 
Neatly trimmed trees shaded benches
nestled between rose bushes. It was right out of a Jane Austin novel.

I turned and started to walk
along the side of the house.
 
My
cell phone beeped. It was Mary Ann again.

He’s done
with his meeting. I think he’s going back to his office. I’ll tell you if he
takes off.

Again I thanked her and continued
my exploration of the perimeter. Everything was enclosed within a tall iron
fence but against the fence at one spot was a bench and on my side of the fence
there was a large rock. I could climb up on the rock pull myself over the top
and then, if I was really careful, I could drop right down on the bench so it
wouldn’t be such a big fall.

I hesitated a moment. The consequences
of breaking into the home of a possible gangster were pretty big and I didn’t
even know what I was looking for. But it seemed that no matter what I did my
life was in danger. One look inside the windows might give me a sense of who I
was dealing with and if there was anyone else living there...or even an ambush
being set up.
 
These were good
things to know before walking into a private meeting.

I leaned my MacBook against the
iron bars. If I got over I could easily pull it through. Then I took my shoes
off and slipped the straps over my wrists.
 
I climbed up on the rock, which didn’t quite give me as much
leverage as I had hoped. The rock’s ridges pressed into my feet, not enough to
cut them but certainly enough to cause considerable discomfort. I stretched my
arms over my head and grabbed the iron bars. They were slick. But if I could
just somehow pull myself to the top…

I crouched slightly and then
leaped up, grabbing the bars with both hands, my whole body banging against the
gate.

I missed grasping the top of the
gate by about a foot. I tried to move my hands up the bars. My hands did move,
as did the rest of me. I was sliding slowly down, back to the rock.

So that didn’t work.

But giving up just wasn’t an
option.
 
I leaped again, grabbing
onto the bars.

And I slipped again.

This went on for about five
minutes. I was so bruised up you would have thought I was a battered wife.
 
My phone rang in my handbag and in
utter frustration I sat down on the rock and answered it despite the unknown
number.

“What ?” I snapped.

“Why don’t you just announce
yourself at the front gate?” Alex asked.

I fell silent.

Seriously?

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m at work but I have a
security feed. I also have a panicked housekeeper who is damn near ready to
call the cops. She’s waiting for you at the front gate. Go there, tell her
you’re not a murderer and she’ll let you in and make you a cup of tea. I’ll be
there in about an hour.”

“Is this a trick?”

“Look, if you’d rather throw
yourself against the fence for the next hour be my guest. All I’m suggesting is
that there are easier ways to do this.”

“Just so you know, I have mace,”
I lied.

“Don’t mace the housekeeper.
Other than that, mi casa su casa. See you in a bit.”

Reluctantly I got off of the
stupid rock and went to the front gate where a very irritated and very,
very
beautiful
woman was waiting for me.

“Mr. Kinsky says I should let you
in,” she said. Her Mexican accent was subtle but recognizable.

Mr. Kinsky can shove it,
I thought, but out loud I said. “That would be great,
thanks.”

Hesitantly she pressed the button
that operated the automatic gate.
 
“You want something warm to drink? Mr. Kinsky has very good hot
chocolate.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

She nodded and led me to the
front door. She reached into her oversized pocket and handed me a small ice
pack.
 
Embarrassed I took the pack
and held it to my right elbow.

“I’ll draw up an Epsom Salt
bath.”

“That’s really not
necessary—”

“Mr. Kinsky insisted.” She shot
me a withering look as she opened the front door.
 
“He’s very kind to his guests. Even one’s who try to break
in.”

“I wasn’t trying to—” but
one more glare told me that there would be no convincing her of my innocence.
Chastened and in not a small amount of pain, I followed her into a foyer that
was every bit as opulent as the lobby of my four star hotel.

“Don’t touch anything.”

I nodded as she disappeared
through a door. She was speaking in what sounded like stilted English but she
pronounced each word perfectly. It was almost as if she was playing a part that
she hadn’t quite perfected.

Maybe she was.

She was only gone long enough for
me to glance around the room and take in the original artwork and dark hardwood
floor…the kind of floor that would gleam if it had been properly cleaned and
cared for which it clearly hadn’t…which once again made me wonder about this
housekeeper.

She returned with a steaming cup
of hot chocolate. It smelled heavenly and if I hadn’t been worried about being
drugged again I would have downed half of it instantly.
 
As it was I just used it to warm my
hands as she led me up a curving staircase then through the master bedroom and
finally to a bathroom that was slightly larger than my hotel suite.

I stood awkwardly in the corner
as the woman drew up the Jacuzzi bath, pouring a huge amount of Epsom Salts
into the stream. I desperately wanted to go back and take another peek at the
bedroom that we had so quickly strode through.

“You don’t like hot chocolate?”
the woman asked.

“I was going to drink it in the
bath,” I explained.

She stood and walked over to me.
“Mr. Kinsky said that if you didn’t drink the hot chocolate I should do this.”
She took the cup from my hand and took a long sip, smiled and handed it back.

Okay, that was unexpected.
“You’re proving to me it’s not poisoned?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Mr. Kinsky just
told me to do that.” She returned to the bath and turned off the water.

Tentatively, I took a sip of the
chocolate and almost choked.
 
“Rum?” I squawked when I was able to speak again.

“He said you would need a drink.”

I nodded and glanced past her to
the tub. “Look, I really don’t need a bath...I’m sorry, I didn’t get your
name.”

“I see you banging against the
gate!” she snapped ignoring my question. “Over and over again. You need Epsom
salts.”

There it was again, the stilted
English with polished pronunciation. Weird.

“When will Mr. Kinsky be home?”

The housekeeper looked up at the
wall clock.
 
“In a little over an
hour I think. You have time for your drink and bath. There’s a robe behind the
door,” she said, gesturing to a pink terrycloth robe as she walked out. I stood
there for a moment, unsure of what to do. I really was a mess. My clothes were
dirty and there was a new hole in my pant leg. My cell beeped and I read the
text from Mary Ann telling me Alex Kinsky had just left the hotel. No surprise
there but I texted back another
thanks
.

I placed my MacBook carefully on
the floor, far away from the bath, and took some time to explore. On the
counter were an electric razor, cologne and a single Sonicare toothbrush. I
opened the top drawer next to the sink gingerly.
 
Shaving cream, men’s antiperspirant, a nail clipper but no
nail polish or any other evidence of a woman living here.
 
More drawers revealed mouthwash,
aspirin, a comb and some hair gel, nothing all that interesting.
 
Not even a bottle of prescription
medication.

Which made the robe the
housekeeper lent me a bit more interesting. If it belonged to a wife or live-in
girlfriend she certainly wasn’t using this bathroom, which implied she wasn’t
using the room attached to it either.

I took another sip of my drink,
savoring the warm and pleasing effects of the rum and chocolate. It was
expected that I would immediately get in the bath. That wasn’t going to happen,
at least not yet.
 
For one thing I
wanted to make sure there wasn’t a security camera in here. I couldn’t see one
but that didn’t mean much. It seemed to me the best way of ensuring that I was
unwatched was to do things I wasn’t supposed to do and then wait and see if
this broom-wielding-super-model came back in to stop me.

With that in mind I went into the
bedroom. It was well appointed and very masculine with its dark earthy color
tone and mahogany furniture.
 
On his
nightstand was a copy of Simon Singh’s latest book about the universe and on
his desk a half finished New York Times crossword puzzle.
 
Mounted on the wall was a shotgun. I
didn’t know much about guns but this one looked old…from an entirely different era.
I stepped up to it and let my fingers touch the steel of the trigger. It was a
collector’s item…but people who collected old guns usually had new guns too. I
went over to the nightstand and there it was, a small handgun. I picked it up.
 
A quick check told me that it was still
loaded.
 
If there were a security
camera this would be the time someone should be coming up to deal with me. But
no one did.

Holding the gun in my hand I went
back to the bathroom. I placed the weapon and my drink by the side of the tub
and, gingerly, took off my clothes. With each piece I removed I found a new
bruise or tender spot. I sank into the heavenly bath and closed my eyes.