For the next two days, Camarin and DeAndre precisely followed their plan, each carrying their new burner phones should they need to communicate privately. She went into work, kidded around with Rachel as if nothing was wrong, copyedited the articles Wynan sent to her in-box. Fletcher must have spoken to him because he hadn’t uttered another word about having her interview vulnerable celebrities.
What she didn’t do was try to google the Invisible Woman, The Collective, or any other clues tied to Mangel or the BBG murders, lest some hacker was monitoring her office computer and was tracking her online searches. She didn’t even search CNN or Philly.com for any additional information regarding last week’s attack. Instead, she researched topics like poisons, so if IW was watching, she’d believe Cam was following through on her directives.
In the evenings, she bartended as usual at Benji’s, the only difference being that she arrived wearing two sets of clothes. She’d peel both off in the bathroom shortly after entering and store the bottom layer in an empty liquor box in the storeroom. Couldn’t go into seclusion without several changes of clothing, after all.
Hassan came in on Wednesday night, wearing a backpack that was one burqa lighter when he departed later that evening. DeAndre said he’d hid it for her in the back of one of the food cabinets that was less frequently used. Best not to risk hiding all the getaway gear in the same spot.
When Thursday rolled around, one day prior to her murder assignment, she felt totally at the mercy of the unknown, terrified of anything that might spoil their carefully crafted plan. Everything was on target, though, starting with her iPhone. She’d transferred her important files, memos, and phone numbers onto her burner phone, and then shut the hacked one off and hid it in her dresser. It was one sure way to keep her true location safely off the grid.
Xavier had warned Carl and Diana to remain at work from Thursday night forward, accompanied by the ‘IRS auditors,’ who were part of a private undercover protection squad hired to provide maximum protection. Diana’s sister and brother-in-law would pull Carter, Jamal, and Kit out of school after dismissal for a surprise trip to Disney World.
DeAndre had even banned Rachel from Thursday’s performance, telling her Benji had threatened to fire him unless he avoided her constant distractions. It was the only way to keep her safe, while ensuring she didn’t say or do anything to impede their plans. He’d held off on informing her that dinner with his folks was canceled, just so nothing would be revealed before absolutely necessary.
Camarin entered Benji’s that evening at six o’clock, but five minutes in, things had already started to unravel. James Byrom was there, smiling and sexy as always, but his signature piano, and more critically, its shipping case, were nowhere to be seen.
“Too many people were calling me a prima donna. I got tired of it. Your subpar piano will have to do,” he explained.
Camarin shot DeAndre an imploring look. “What do we do now?”
“I was kidding, folks,” said Byrom. “I’m sure your old clunker will do just fine.”
“It’s not that,” Dee said. “It’s that…please keep it to yourself, but we need to sneak someone out of the club and into the hotel lobby, and we were hoping to use your piano case as a hiding place.”
Byrom took a swig of his second fireball and set it down on the top of the Steinway. “I see. Said person can’t be seen going in-between? Is that it?”
The two conspirators nodded.
“So why not just use the freight elevator? If this club is like every other hotel-based club I’ve ever played in, all elevators lead down to a common basement, or at worst, an underground parking area. That’s where the deliveries are made, the moving vans come to transport furniture, and so forth. You know, all the activities there’s no room for on the streets.”
DeAndre and Camarin looked at each other in shock, a virtual slap on the forehead. What morons they were! Of course that would work.
“Thanks, James,” said DeAndre, shaking the Englishman’s hand and pulling Camarin behind the stage where there was more privacy. “New plan. About halfway through your shift, you go to the kitchen, grab your burqa and your changes of clothes, put everything on in the ladies’ room, and then head down the freight elevator. I think it’s behind the door at the back of the kitchen.”
“Sounds good,” she whispered back, trying to sound positive despite their previous miscalculation.
“If Benji says anything, I’ll tell him you went home sick and to feel free to dock your pay. I doubt he’s going to say anything anyway. It’s so quiet, he might even go home early himself, like he did last night.”
She pulled back the curtain and peered out into the crowd. There were about twenty people spread out in the audience, all regulars. The convention had really killed their business for the week, a strong reminder that Benji shouldn’t rely so heavily on hotel guests as his sole source of revenue. The few people that were there seemed ready to party though. Annalise was already at the bar, waiting for Cam to come out and fill some orders. Time to get to work and pray this new plan went off without any further snags.
Unfortunately, for Camarin anyway, word of James Byrom’s appearance attracted more horny women than they had anticipated, and by ten, the place was as packed and rollicking as normal for a Thursday night. After filling an order of seven tequila shots, she knew her window of opportunity was closing fast. She tried to catch DeAndre’s eye during the pianists’ rousing rendition of Uptown Funk, but he was too preoccupied to notice.
She asked Viviana to cover for her and then snuck into the kitchen to collect her traveling clothes. Her two outfit changes were still waiting for her in the cardboard box where she’d left them. But after pulling the burqa from its hiding place, she confronted her second disaster of the evening. There was a big tomato stain on its front, no doubt the result of its recent stay on an unwashed cabinet shelf. She grabbed it and ran to the bathroom, ensconcing herself in a stall where she could deal with the problem in secret.
Scratching at the stain dislodged the stuck-on bits, but the discoloration remained, a bull’s-eye that was sure to identify her as anything but an average, modest, lobby-exiting Muslim woman. She had to think quickly, figure out how to salvage their elaborate plan, but it was almost impossible with the tomato scent romancing her olfactory glands. Memories of summer picnics kidnapped her focus—triple-decker cheeseburgers piled high with ketchup, pickles, onions, and bacon. Realizing time was fleeting, Cam forced herself to stop salivating and instead concentrate on the dilemma at hand.
She donned the two additional sets of clothes as she pondered her quandary. She needed something black. Like a magic marker. Paint. Or—wait! The answer was right there in front of her. Or at least in the general vicinity.
She needed to get something from the kitchen, and she couldn’t be seen doing it. Nor could she text anyone but DeAndre, since she couldn’t risk sharing evidence on any phone that might be hacked. She took a chance and sent him a message, praying he’d steal a look at his burner phone between songs. It worked. Within five minutes, Annalise was knocking on her stall.
“You needed this?” she said, slipping a jar under the door.
“Thank you.”
“Dee told me not to ask any questions, but I do have one. You okay?”
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Thanks for the help.”
“Okay. See-No-Evil, out. If I only had a mic, I’d drop it.”
Camarin heard the bathroom door close. She reached down and opened the jar of blackstrap molasses, the secret sauce that transformed ordinary ribs into the mainstay of Benji’s menu. Hands shaking from the anxiety of plans gone awry, she dipped in two fingers, and as steadily as she could manage, rubbed the thick, sticky goo onto part of her burqa stain, watching the red slowly transform into a dark blackish-brown. It’s not perfect, but it’ll have to do, she decided as she spread the glob over the entire blemish. Then she pulled the sweet-smelling cloak over her ensemble, covering every inch of her other than her eyes.
The smell enveloped her as completely as the outfit, again evoking memories of guilt-ridden food orgies followed by obligatory purging. How many hours had she spent over the past fourteen years vomiting into toilets like this one? She felt a shroud of self-pity descend over her but quickly cast it off. There would be plenty of time for self-castigation once she was in hiding.
She exited the stall, disposed of the jar under some towels in the garbage, and yanked open the bathroom door, praying she could make it out of the hotel without attracting every fly in Manhattan.
Once in the corridor, instead of taking a right and heading back into the club, she took a left and walked through the kitchen, ignoring the staff’s inquisitive looks, to the door at the back that Dee had assured her led to the freight elevator. To her relief, for the first time tonight, something went right. Sweating profusely—a combination of nerves and wearing four layers of clothing on a warm summer night—she hurried down the deserted hallway and pressed the elevator button. The piano music from the club drowned out the squealing of the gears.
When the door rattled opened, she entered, hit B, and put her faith in a contraption so rickety it must have been an Otis prototype. The elevator descended at a snail’s pace and stopped with a clunk that nearly made her topple over. She sprang from the death trap as soon as the doors reopened and half-walked, half-ran through the maze of massive boxes, broken tables, spare chairs, and every other discarded or not-immediately-needed item that crowded the basement level.
Spying a door at the opposite end, she pushed through the clutter toward another elevator, which she assumed led to the Laidlaw lobby. This one was even more terrifying than the last, not only because of its age but also because there was already a workman waiting inside. He gave her an odd look and took one step back as she entered and pushed the button for Lobby.
“I feel so stupid. I’m terribly lost,” she said, in her best Arabic accent, which came out sounding more Indian than authentic.
He just nodded, giving her a wide berth. The car creaked its way up one level as they rode without further discussion.
Once the doors opened again, she turned and took a chance on the little Arabic she remembered from her brief encounter with DeAndre’s girlfriend. “Which way to the hotel lobby, Sayyed?”
He pointed to the left, and she hurried off, smiling as she imagined him trying to fathom how the ditzy Muslim tourist in a molasses-stained burqa ever managed to drift that badly off-course.
The lobby was filled with a large contingent of conference attendees, and Cam easily blended in. The men were chatting animatedly in their native tongue, their wives standing silently nearby. When they started toward the exit, she joined them, walking about one step behind, heart racing faster every footstep closer she came to at last breaking free of her unwanted surveillance. One of the women turned to stare. Perhaps she had smelled the sickly-sweet aroma? Camarin nodded politely and said nothing.
She followed them about two blocks down Broadway and then veered off onto a side street. By that point, she figured she’d probably lost anyone attempting to trail Camarin Torres. Anyone else who spotted an unescorted woman in a burqa hailing a cab at eleven-thirty wouldn’t have thought twice about it, Manhattanites being as open-minded and self-absorbed as they were.
She gave the driver the address that she had memorized from Xavier via DeAndre. It was an apartment in Harlem, owned by a friend of the butler’s father, far from anywhere her enemies might have expected her to hide. Hopefully, her outfit wouldn’t garner any unwelcome attention in that neighborhood, because she couldn’t risk removing the garment until she was safely locked inside her safe house.
“It’s pretty late for a lady like yourself to be out alone on the streets,” said the driver, who continued to chat, unanswered, for the entire twenty-five-minute drive uptown.
When they arrived at 116th Street, she fished through her pockets for enough cash to pay the meter.
“This is Graham Court,” he announced, apparently happy with the sizeable tip she’d given him. “It’s Harlem’s answer to the Dakota. You know they filmed New Jack City and Jungle Fever here?”
She nodded, eager to speed up the process, get inside, and disrobe to just one layer.
The man who answered the doorbell at 7A was an elderly gentleman leaning on his cane, his leathery face framed by white hair and a beard. There was something trustworthy and comforting about him, and she immediately felt safe in his presence.
“Come on in, miss,” he said with a slight Jamaican accent. “I’m Malcolm Harvey. You call me Malcolm. I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, and I don’t want to know. Xavier Edouard’s father vouched for you, and that’s the only visa I need. You stay here as long as you like. Cockroach nuh business inna fowl fight.”
“Excuse me?”
“It means I mind my own business, stay out of yours.”
First Cockney rhyming slang, now patois. She couldn’t travel around New York without a translator.
“You are so kind to welcome a stranger into your home, especially one arriving at your door at midnight,” said Camarin, reaching out to shake his hand. “I won’t be any trouble. All I need is a mattress, a bathroom, and a computer, and I’ll pay you back when I can.”
“I wouldn’t worry about any payment.” He laughed. “Xavier sent two thousand dollars by messenger a few days ago, said I should use it to cover any food or supplies you might need. If you protested, I was told to remind you that your actions saved the lives of some people he’s very fond of, so shut up and enjoy.”
Camarin just shook her head and sent up thanks to God for putting her in the hands of such caring, loving people. “I won’t protest a peep. But if you could show me where I could take off this damned disguise, I’d be forever in your debt. I’m burning up in here.”
He pointed her to the bathroom. “I left some pajamas and a robe hanging on the back of the door. I bought them with some of that money, figured you’d need something to relax in. By the way, how do you feel about a late-night snack? I’ve got some jerk chicken wings I’d be happy to heat up.”
Malcolm’s words bathed her in calm.With the first part of their plan behind them, she was safe and in control of her circumstances. At least for tonight. “Malcolm, if your wings are as half as great as you are, this is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.”