Chapter 11

“I had a dream.
Aw, shucks. Oh, well.
Now it’s all fucked up.
It’s shot to hell.

Yeah, yeah, my shit’s fucked up.
It has to happen to the best of us.
The rich folk suffer like the rest of us.
It’ll happen to you.”
-Warren Zevon, “My Shit’s Fucked Up“

Hi, Susan again. Since this part involves me a lot, I’ll be trading back and forth with The Masked Person for some of it. (I’ll tell you when it’s me, just to keep things clear.)

I was in the master bedroom of the La Contessa suite at the Seattle Hotel de San Finzione. The penthouse suite had been designed to Contessa Helena de San Finzione’s specifications, and so there was a system for locking the bedroom and private bath into a panic room. Rita Delvecchio was with me. You might not have heard of her outside San Finzione; she plays Helen on an SNL-type show there, and looks and acts like La Contessa well enough that Helen hires her to fill in at things like the phony STRANGERS conference that everyone in the streets, fifty stories below us, was protesting for one reason or another.

Rita and I hadn’t had an opportunity to talk yet, primarily because a Triad hit team who thought she was Helen were coming to kill her in retaliation for an attack on them two hours earlier. (Helen didn’t order the attack; it was a setup by that Whyte fucker.) Now we were watching as the elevator doors opened, Helen’s Ultimados and Mander standing with their guns trained on the door, Primo Tenente Marisol Velasquez standing in front of the elevator, hands behind her back.

The elevator contained six men in black suits with skinny ties. (I think of them as Quentin Tarantino’s “Gangster Uniforms.” There’s probably a real name for them, though.) I don’t know a lot about guns, but two of them were carrying some kind of sub-machine guns, and the other four carried pistols that weren’t as big as Mander’s Desert Eagle, but still scary-looking. Two of them had meat cleavers, as well.

Velasquez greeted them with a welcoming smile and removed the top of the string bikini she’d been wearing, her breasts bouncing free before the Triad goons’ eyes. While they stared, her foot shot up, and she kicked one of the two carrying SMGs in the face, wrapping her bikini-top around his gun and yanking it out of his hand as he staggered back into the two men behind him. The other one was still stunned when her left fist slammed into his gut and he doubled over. Marisol brought her leg back down for balance before head-butting the man behind him, then backflipping out of the elevator and the other Ultimados’ line of fire.

Mander and the others opened fire. Their own SMGs and pistols undistracted by the gorgeous Latina’s performance. My nipples were still hard from seeing it when Rita and I had to turn away from the screen. Helen must have soundproofed the suite as well, because we only heard the shooting over the TV’s speakers, rather than from outside the suite.

The explosions we heard next, however, carried through the walls. I looked up at the TV again to see what was happening. The metal fire exit doors at either end of the hall had flown off their hinges, and impacted as twisted metal on the opposing walls.

Velasquez picked up one of the SMGs and got Mander’s attention. They pulled back to the suite door, firing randomly down the halls to give themselves cover as smoke clouds formed at either end. Mander cracked the door open, Velasquez shouted something through the crack, and they both stepped into the suite, closing the door behind them.

The cameras showed them running through the suite to the door of the room where Rita and I were holed up. I found the door controls and opened it for them, then sealed it again when they entered.

“Helen said something about Ernst coming, then we got cut off.” I told them. “I’m not getting a signal. Hope nothing’s happening there.”

Mander and Rita took their phones out and checked as well.

“Nothin’ here, either. Bollocks! Whyte’s s’posed to be a phone guy, right? He must be doin’ somethin’ to the phones.”

“If Ernst is coming,” Velasquez said as she checked her gun, while Rita brought her a bathrobe to cover up. “This means that La Contessa is sending her helicopter. We must get to the roof.”

Mander looked at the monitor. The Ultimados had taken positions to watch either side of the intersecting hall. Against both walls of their position, two were providing suppressive fire while a third waited for an opportune moment to throw a flashbang toward the fire exits.

“Well, they’re between us and the stairs outta here.”

“So, we are trapped in here?” Rita asked, looking at the shoot-out taking place. “There is nowhere to run?”

Rita’s choice of words got me thinking. I went up to the walls and started knocking.

“No! That’s not how Helen thinks! This suite was built to her specifications. Helen is a runner. She wouldn’t lock herself into a room with no way out; she would leave herself some way to run. She’s got a hidden door or escape tunnel somewhere in here. Help me find it.”

Troy and Julie Equals knelt on the asphalt of the street where their house was located. Between them, the unconscious body of Contessa Helena de San Finzione lay in the street.

The Ultimados had been pulling the driver out of the car when Julie stopped them, telling them that he was a neighbor from down the street and that it was an honest accident. Helen had run out into the street from between two parked cars and wasn’t looking when she tried to tell Capitan Ortega to send Ernst and the helicopter downtown to collect Susan, Rita, and the others. Troy relayed the information to Ortega as Dr. Tenente Paul Maisson came running into the street with his field kit. Troy held Helen’s hand and looked down at her.

“Helen, Dearest One, traffic doesn’t stop for you in America. Still, I guess there are worse places to be hit by a car than right in front of your doctor.”

He let go and stepped aside for Maisson. Maisson had been one of the two Ultimados, along with Velasquez, who’d shot the assassin that stabbed Helen over a month ago. He was also a field medic, and was able to begin treating her wounds immediately, saving Helen’s life. He’d applied for his medical license, and Generalissimo Ramirez pulled some strings to get his application fast-tracked through the process that same day, so that Dr. Tenente Maisson could be on her care team at the hospital. After she’d survived, La Contessa had appointed Maisson her personal physician.

“After all,” she’d told him at the time. “You’ve already examined me quite thoroughly.”

Maisson looked Helen over, muttering in French. When he saw Troy’s curious look, he switched to English.

“No breaks ... bruise on the left leg will be enormous. Spine ok to move...” He checked Helen’s head. “No other visible injuries, but unconscious. Help me get her off the street, M’sieur Equals.”

Troy lifted Helen up in his arms and brought her over to the Greens’ lawn. Julie saw what they were doing and grabbed one of the blankets that were laying on the lawn up by the house, bringing it closer to them and spreading it out on the grass for her.

Helen was muttering something none of them could make out under her breath. Troy motioned for Julie to bring the black Prada Arcade bag that Helen usually carried from the street. She got it and ran back, so Troy could rest her head on it, once he’d made certain her airway was clear. Maisson pulled a penlight from his kit and knelt beside her again.

Contessa Helena de San Finzione sat in a chair in the dining hall of Castle Finzione. She smoked as she looked up at the three paintings on the wall that the chair had been placed a decent viewing distance from. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was playing from somewhere, but she hadn’t asked for any music. It fit, though, so she said nothing.

She wore black. It was also fitting. Helena looked at the painting on her left, dabbing tears silently as she did.

Troy Equals was looking down at her, a smile on his face. He was dressed in a nice suit, seated amongst rose bushes. Julie Andrews Roses, which reminded Helena of the first woman she ever loved, and the artist who’d painted the portrait. She sighed, a sigh that carried the knowledge that she would never see him again, but that he was in good hands. He would get over her in time.

She looked at the center painting: Propappou, his arms open. Waiting for her to run to him so he could hoist her up and kiss her and tell her he loved her and how proud he was of her. It was the picture from which the statues of him around San Finzione had been made, as well. The Medinas were a large family in Greece, and he’d lived a very long life, so she knew he had many friends and relatives with him. She hoped he wouldn’t be too busy for his Petalouda Mikro when she arrived.

A curtain fluttered somewhere as she looked over to Vincenzo, in his royal uniform. Would she find him waiting for her? Would she take him with her to visit Propappou so that her husband and father could meet at last? Or would he be happy with Contessa Sofia, his first wife, and have no need for her? Did he truly reign in his people’s hearts in the next world as well? She would know soon.

She sensed a presence behind her. She didn’t bother to look, because she knew she would see nothing. She did not run, because she knew there was nowhere to run from it. Calling to anyone would just endanger them as well. She took another drag of her cigarette. It would let her finish it. It was only fitting.

She smiled as the thought came to her that maybe she was worrying about nothing. Perhaps Propappou and Vincenzo were waiting right there on the other side for her, with Wade trussed up and stuffed into a burlap sack behind them. And she could come and visit Troy and Julie and Susan and all their children in spirit like everyone said. Would Susan want Troy’s children as well? Why not? She had, once. She finished her cigarette and bowed her head, lowering her veil.

There was a sound of something slicing through the air. For a moment, it seemed nothing happened. Then, Contessa Helena de San Finzione’s head rolled off of her body to land at her feet, still staring up at the paintings, the light fading from her eyes, Vincenzo’s pendant hitting the floor; as she saw the Nothing that had removed her head start stalking toward Maria’s room. Only then did she try to scream, but there was nothing.

It wasn’t like the dreams she’d been having of this moment, because she didn’t wake up. It started again immediately after. The music, the paintings, the invisible blade severing her head with one blow, the pendant; it was a repeating pattern playing in her head as her body lay unconscious on the Greens’ lawn in the real world.

Hey, Susan here. I’d been fiddling with stuff around the fireplace, thinking that maybe Helen used the same trick as the passage from the study to her bedroom in the castle. Of course, she wouldn’t. Nothing there.

On one of the walls was a large portrait of Count Vincenzo Ramon de San Finzione; Helen’s late husband. A brass nameplate at the bottom identified him and listed the years of his reign for those unfamiliar with the history of San Finzione. Engraved beneath was an Italian phrase that, although I didn’t know much of the language, I had learned enough from my time in San Finzione to recognize it as a saying about him: “Forever does he reign in our hearts.”

I checked the painting and found it bolted to the wall. On a hunch, I looked to where Vincenzo’s eyes were pointing in the picture, but he’d simply been looking straight ahead, and the opposite wall told me nothing.