Municipal Blondes
11
Perfection
LAST NIGHT, I did something I never do: I slept in all my makeup. This morning, I woke up to see what I would have to do if I maintained a disguise overnight.
The morning after
It was hard enough to be with Angel while she flirted with me. It was scary as hell to run into Jordan and deflect his interest. The two encounters left me in such a serious panic attack after I escaped from them, I practically ran back to my car jumped in the back seat, curled up into a little ball and rocked back and forth while I panted and sobbed. It wasn’t even that important. I could have passed off the disguise with Angel if she’d caught me out. I bet her I could have a direct encounter with her and she wouldn’t recognize me. Oops. I lose the bet.
I didn’t think Jordan would understand as well.
And what was with that? Why is Jordan watching Angel’s business and poking at people who go there?
Well, duh. That’s easy. She’s helping people launder money. What she does might violate the spirit of the law but as well as I can read it, unless they can prove that she’s receiving money from some illicit source, she’s technically legal. At worst, a misdemeanor. I don’t think he was satisfied with my answers about booking travel but it was more important to him to follow Angel wherever she was headed than to keep questioning me.
My mustache was loose on one side, as was a piece of my hair on the left temple. I must have scratched at it in the night. My five o’clock shadow looked like a smear of mud on my face after my cry. I tidied up as much as I could and headed for Stevie’s place. She promised to help me perfect the disguise this morning. And believe me, it needed perfecting.
Stevie looked at my hair and makeup job critically. She made a few adjustments and then had me sit in the chair of her salon for several hours while she completely redid everything, lecturing me the entire time. The first task was to make it easier for me to get into the makeup and hairpiece. The second was making it foolproof against detection at close range. If I was going to pull the same ruse with Cinnamon I had with Angel, I would need to get close without being recognized. Even if she didn’t recognize me, if she realized I was in makeup and a costume, it would be just as much a failure.
There was no question I’d need to get more comfortable being around girls when I was dressed as a boy, too.
Here’s a bizarre question. Who do you think would be more pissed off at me: a straight girl who finds out I’m also a girl or a gay boy who finds out I’m a girl? Oh, this gets so confusing. Why do I feel so obsessed with perfecting my boy act all of a sudden? I should be sitting in my office trying to break the code of Simon’s little game or tracking down Brenda. Instead, I’m getting lectured by Stevie on stippling my five o’clock shadow, fastening my hair on, and walking like a man.
When Stevie was finished, I looked incredible. I couldn’t even recognize myself. She instructed me to leave the makeup and hair on again tonight and then bring it back to perfection in the morning. Tomorrow, I’m really going to need a shower. I can only imagine what this stuff is doing to my skin. I promised to complete the day today in disguise, seeing and talking to people as a boy. I still need to run by the office though.
Wanted
WTF? Something has gone terribly wrong and I don’t know what it is. I had lunch on the way to the office and flirted with a clueless teen waitress. It was easily two o’clock when I finally meandered down to the pier. I had in mind a couple more experiments with the thumb drive to see if there was anything on it other than the destructive virus. I had to remember it was all going to be a game of ‘Simon Says.’
Before I reached the office, I could hear voices and see my door was open. I started to hurry toward it but realized I had no Deb Riley ID and no proof that it was my office. I didn’t want to barge in on a burglary anyway. I approached quietly and listened from outside the door. The voices were from the inner office. The outer office was empty, so I slipped in to hear better.
“Nothing,” I heard a voice say. “The place is clean. I don’t find a random electrical signal or any indication there’s activity in the area.”
“It must have been cleaned out,” said a second voice. The voice sent a chill down my spine. “Dag did work in here he couldn’t have done on the little laptop he carried around. The only person who could have the server is Deb Riley—or at least access to it. We’ve got a subpoena for the server and a warrant to search the office. We need a warrant for her apartment. I hate to do it, but we’d better get a warrant for Deb as well. We can do it on grounds of wanted for questioning. She must have Dag’s research on Simon and Brenda Barnett and I want it.”
Jordan Grant was getting a warrant for my arrest? But that wasn’t all.
“No one has seen her since the funeral,” Jordan continued. “I want all the ports checked. See if you can locate her car. She might have skipped the country already.”
I got out fast. I could hear them closing the doors to the office by the time I reached the end of the pier. I thought about my car parked across the street in the Pike Place Garage. It was best to leave it there. But where was I going.
I don’t have much to hide from the police but a thorough search of my apartment will reveal some not-exactly-legal ID and all my disguises, wigs, and photos. My heart leapt to my throat. Including photos of the disguise I was wearing. I had to get there before they did.
I flagged down a taxi on Alaskan Way and gave him the address to my apartment. How much time did I have? He couldn’t move on the apartment until he had the warrants but he could have it watched. And how fast could FinCEN turn a warrant around? I had a feeling I didn’t have much time.
I did a quick drive-by on the apartment and got the cab driver’s card so I could call him back. With the $20 tip I gave him, I didn’t think he’d go far away. This was going to be fast. I grabbed two big suitcases from my closet and opened them on the bed. Everything that was Deb Riley’s had to stay in the apartment. I would be safest if Jordan thought I was still around. But my false IDs, my wigs, my makeup, and photos had to go with me. I pulled all the cash I had out of my hidey-hole in the ceiling of the closet, thinking wistfully of the pile I’d left in the vault.
It’s a long story and if I get a break sometime soon, I’ll tell you more about it but suffice it to say, I don’t have pictures of me with a happy family. You know my history. A bald kid with a drunk mother and an overprotective father doesn’t get many pictures taken. Most of them were pictures taken in photo booths in places I’d visited. About eight years ago, I discovered photo editing on my computer. I created the kind of family memories I wanted to have. I used photos of me and me in disguise to mash together a family portrait album with scenes from places I imagined we’d visited. It hurt too much to lose them—my made-up family history. I stuffed every photo I could find in my suitcase, removed all the men’s clothes, shoes, hats, and underwear from my apartment, and locked the suitcases. I called the cabby and left by the service entrance to the apartment with a hat pulled down over my eyes. I caught sight of Jordan getting out of his car in front of the building just before I saw Hassan’s cab pull up.
Where to?
I chose Dag’s apartment. It might not be safe for long but for now it was the best I could do to get the break I needed to regroup. I called Mrs. Prior and told her I had a friend in town who needed a place to stay and had given him the key to Dag’s apartment. She said it was mine to do as I wished but Maizie was often up there.
When I hung up, the cab driver was giving me an odd look. I realized I’d just made a call with a very different voice than the man’s voice I’d been using.
“It’s the phone,” I said, returning to the masculine. “It always makes my voice sound high. It will be well worth your while if you forget you ever saw me or heard me talk.” He nodded. I wasn’t sure how much English he spoke. I went back to my phone. It’s a pretty sophisticated sleek smartphone. I’d only had it a few weeks but I was going to have to get rid of it. It was Deb Riley’s phone. I deleted all my personal information, connection routine, and email from it, called the company and deactivated it, telling them I’d sold it, and pulled the SIM card. I polished it up nicely and when the cab pulled up in front of Dag’s house, I handed it to the driver along with a $50 bill.
“You should be able to activate this with either T-Mo or ATT in a couple of days,” I said. “It will be really good for your business. Keep the change and lose this address.”
He nodded and I escaped with my bags to the sanctum of Dag’s apartment. It wasn’t more than five minutes after I got there that Maizie pushed the door open and jumped into my lap.
So, what’s going on?
I’ve integrated all my men’s clothes among Dag’s and found a place to hide my pictures but I’m completely cut off from everything right now. I can’t be Deb Riley. I’m James Whitcomb. Why is Jordan wanting to arrest me? What does he think I have and why is it so valuable?
I thought that case was closed.
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