Page 39 of Hero

A telephone rang, and her grandmother turned her head quickly, as though the noise had been a shot, and then she and her parlor were gone. The room was dark. Justine rolled over in the big bed and fumbled with the hotel phone receiver. “Yes?”

“Hi, Justine. This is Marina Obermaier. I’m one of your lawyers from SDF. I’m in the lobby. Can I come up?”

“Sure. Yes,” Justine said, flustered but awake. “Come up. It’s room four-something. Just a second and I’ll tell you.”

“Four-eighty-seven,” the woman said. “See you soon.”

Justine hung up the phone. She saw the horizontal line of light coming from under the door and used it to find her way to the light switch. She pushed her hair out of her face, squinting to fight the glare as she oriented herself. Her phone screen said it was after nineP.M. She had locked the door, taken a long, hot bath, and then slid under the covers to keep warm and fallen asleep. She couldn’t stand the thought of putting the same clothes on again, so she didn’t. She put on the big, fluffy white bathrobe and cinchedthe belt around her waist. The robe seemed to have been made for a man, so it went around her almost twice and hung down to her ankles.

She listened for the sound of the elevator arriving. When she heard the faintding,she stood at the door and looked out the fish-eye lens. The woman who came into her field of vision looked about thirty and had amber hair that hung straight, with bangs cut just above her eyebrows. Her sharp brown eyes were staring into the lens.

Justine opened the door, let her in, quickly closed it again, and reset the locks and chain. Justine had not met this woman, but she had expected there would be one. Marina Obermaier was confident and relaxed. She crossed the room gripping the loop handles of some large shopping bags with each hand, not waiting timidly near the door to be beckoned ahead. She stopped at the foot of the bed and placed some of the shopping bags there and one on the desk. “I had the girls watch our office recordings of you so they could guess your sizes, colors, and tastes. They didn’t have much to go on, so I hope you like what they picked out.”

Justine peeked into the three big bags while Marina Obermaier continued. “There’s a court outfit, a kind of brown-gray twill, with a silk blouse, some shoes with a moderate heel. And there are three outfits for surviving in this hotel. Also underwear, bras, and so on.”

Justine pulled the four outfits from the bags and stretched them out on the bed. “They’re lovely. Great estimate of sizes, too. Who are the girls?”

“You didn’t see them when Aaron brought you in? They sit at the desks in the reception area. I thought you’d remember once you’d seen them. They’re all improbably gorgeous. If I wanted to, I could make a really good case of a sexist and hostile workplace just by bringing them into court together.”

“I did notice, to tell you the truth,” Justine said. “You’re not serious about the lawsuit, right?”

“Of course not. I would have moved to a different planet when I found out at puberty what this one was like, except that all my friends and relatives were here.”

“Well, thank you and them. I really like the clothes, and it’s late for you to be working, so this trip was above and beyond anything I would have wished for.”

“You haven’t even seen this bag,” Marina said. “It’s food. It occurred to me that you probably haven’t eaten since morning, so I picked this up. I could tell by looking at you that you’re high protein and never saw a vegetable that you didn’t like. The salmon is probably cooled off a bit, but there’s a little microwave mounted in the cupboard above the mini-bar in these rooms.”

“Wow. That was thoughtful.”

“More like premeditated. You’re probably going to get found here. The reporters are looking for you, and now that Aaron did his little press conference to feed them free footage that says you’re a hero, it will probably get worse. So for now, eat what I brought you. Don’t go into the hotel restaurants or any other restaurants. After this, order room service. There’s a menu on the desk. I’ve got to go back to the office, so you can eat in peace.”

“Go back? Why?”

“Strategy and tactics. We’ll be putting in a lot of hours to keep you above suspicion and immune from arrest.”

“I’m sorry. I feel awful. And your firm is going to end up eating the cost, because I can’t possibly pay for it.”

Marina laughed. “Is that what Aaron told you? He may not have known when he talked to you, but Jerry and Estelle Pinsky have alreadyvolunteered to pick up whatever your defense costs.” She went to the door and said, “Got to go,” and she was out.

Justine went to the door to reset the locks. She was already thinking about the food, since Marina had mentioned it. She took the bag to the small table at the side of the room near the big windows and unpacked it. Everything was tightly wrapped so there was a layer of plastic sealing each container. On the containers, napkins, and plastic were seals with the logo of Ample, one of the best restaurants in Los Angeles. Justine had been there a few times with Spengler-Nash clients, often working with a male bodyguard about her age, sitting with him at the next table. They had always gone in just ahead of the clients and done a quick inspection, scanning the dining area and bar, making a trip to the men’s and ladies’ rooms, and taking a quick look in the kitchen to be sure that if the worst happened, they could bring the clients out that way. It had never escaped her notice that Ample was a wonderful place.

When she thought of it that way, she realized that someday, if she lived through this, she would probably feel depressed about those losses too—not just the big, heartbreaking losses like the death of Ben Spengler or the frightening things like the serious chance that she was going to die too. There was also the certainty of the end of her access to the special places. She had been with clients in establishments that were practically unknown outside of certain circles. She had been living—not living, visiting—a fantasy life.

It wasn’t fantasy for her clients. Being in public was work for them. She had been watching over performers who would come off a stage, their fancy outfits soaked with sweat and their hair plastered to their necks, their faces showing traces of the slack muscles and wrinkles that were one day going to end their careers. The light, almost weightless steps onstage a minute ago were now stiff limps of strain andexhaustion. She had been with comedians going over their material before stepping toward the curtains, their eyes looking panicky, as though they were already on the roof of a high building listening for the cue to step off.

Most of the time Justine had ignored that part of it. She was being paid to see everything that was going on everywhere but the stage, to notice every person in sight, and to be ready to move when one of them stood up, slipped a hand into a pocket or inside a coat, looked nervous, or changed in any other way.

When they came off the stage, the performers would be revealed as what they really were, people risking everything and struggling to be good enough. Afterward the pretty masks would return, and everything was easy, natural, and relaxed. She had gone with them on their wonderful vacations, been to parties in beautiful homes, and listened to the conversations of people who had been brilliant and funny and full of knowledge. And most of the time she had been presented as though she were an actual guest. The male bodyguards with the huge muscles and serious faces were a few paces back except in the bad moments when they went to work, stepping between a client and a possible assailant, or guiding an aggressive, drunken fan into an adjoining hallway that led to an exit.

Justine’s disguise had been to be just another pretty woman in a room full of pretty women. A hostile person might speculate on what she was—girlfriend or wife or daughter of somebody, a studio executive, an agent—but bodyguard should never come to mind. She had done a few interventions herself, but they were rare and mostly subtle and quick, and the rest of those evenings were wonderful.

That was over. As she ate the dinner that Marina had brought, she remembered the rooms of Ample in perfect detail. She had studied theplace, knew the entrances and exits, even the ones some of the restaurant staff didn’t. She would never be in that place again. She couldn’t even imagine wanting to go again. The idea would just remind her that she didn’t belong, couldn’t afford it, couldn’t even call for a reservation because requests without a big name attached would be placed on a waiting list that never got much shorter.

As she ate, she thought about how useless most of the skills she’d worked to develop were, now that she had lost her job at Spengler-Nash. She wondered how she would be able to make a living—if she wasn’t killed or sent to prison. Maybe she could get a job driving an armored car for one of the big companies, like Garda or Brinks. At the moment she was still an experienced security professional with a clean record, so she was bondable. She had even taken courses in defensive driving, although she couldn’t imagine spinning one of those fat-ass steel boxes without tipping it over.

There were other kinds of trust-dependent jobs. She would make a good messenger. She could deliver documents, precious stones, even small artworks. Maybe not. There would be too much trust required from her. A messenger could easily find herself at an airport search discovering that her briefcase was full of some kind of contraband. She kept thinking. She had protected and guided some important business people, including some who would probably remember her. Maybe one of them would hire her for their company.

She closed all of the food containers, tied the bag around them, and thought about putting it in the hallway, so the room service waiters would collect it with the trays other guests left, but then realized the Ample logo might tell her killer that the person in this room was somebody who was being given special treatment. She put it in the minibar refrigerator.

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