Chapter 22

By T. MaskedWriter with special guest author Susan Bailey

“Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with The Queen.
Doing the Werewolves of London.
I saw Lon Chaney JUNIOR walking with The Queen!
Doing the Werewolves of London.
I saw a werewolf drinking a Pina Colada at Trader Vic’s.
His hair was perfect.”
-Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London“

Hi, my name’s Susan. I know that’s what I usually say, so I’ve been trying to mix it up throughout things. We’d been riding to the club in the back of Helen’s limo. Since we were going a longer distance than before, Mander rode up front, leaving Julie, Helen, and I alone.

“No, Werewolves is like his Walk on the Wild Side.” Helen said, trying to avoid answering another question. “Like, they say if you love Walk on the Wild Side, you’ll hate everything else Lou Reed has ever done; and if you love all of his other work, you hate Walk on the Wild Side. It’s like that with Werewolves of London, except you can’t bring yourself to hate it, because it’s still Warren being Warren, dammit! His style wasn’t Weird Al-level esoteric, more like They Might Be Giants: You knew he was gonna totally change the mood up on the next track, and you had an idea of what he might do, but you could never be sure. A true ‘Moody Genius Artist’ like yourself, Julie! That’s why A Quiet Normal Life is such a brilliant album, and that was just a ‘greatest hits up to 1986’ one! He had another seventeen years of his career ahead of him! This is PRE Life’ll Kill Ya stuff!”

As through most of the day after lunch, we’d had a full Ultimado escort, rather than the two to four that Helen usually travels with. She reasoned that one thing we know for certain about Leonard Whyte CBE; the man who’d been out to kill her for the past two months and whom she and Troy had been financially ruining throughout the day, was that he knew how to ambush a limousine.

Troy Equals had done something called “shorting Whyte’s stock.” Even if I didn’t know he’d know how to do something with money like this for real, it had been a key plot point of the James Bond film Casino Royale, and so his obsession with 007 might have caused him to think of it anyway. At any rate, there was no way he wasn’t going to explain it to me. Since he’s the Math Boy, I’ll give you a story problem, and those of you who care can solve it or not:

Whyte’s stock is trading for $218.00 a share. Troy knows that Helen’s about to do something that’s going to cause Whyte’s stock to take an absolute shit. (This is why Le Chiffre wanted to blow up the airplane in the movie.) Troy obtains a loan of a million shares, with a promise to return them by a certain date. He immediately turns around and sells those shares. Troy now has 218 million dollars. (There are brokers’ fees throughout this process, however, let’s presume that Troy knows and has everything he needs to act as his own broker, so there are no fees and the math stays clearer.)

A bunch of hackers brag about how easy it is to sabotage all communications for a day in Seattle with Whyte brand Signal Jammers. The public learns that “certain select customers” have a way around the jammers, and Whyte stores all over the world get flooded with freaked-out angry mobs who think their 911 calls can be sabotaged at any moment (They can’t. Least not with these.) and demand “that rich white people only upgrade.” (This is what Bond stopped Le Chiffre from doing by saving the plane, leaving Le Chiffre on the hook to pay back those shares that have now skyrocketed, forcing him into the poker game which, yes, Troy, we know it was Baccarat in Fleming’s original novel.) Whyte’s stock closes for the day at five dollars a share. When the stock drops to $8.88 1/8th of a share, Troy buys a million shares, turns to Whyte, and says “Here’s that stock back like I promised. I don’t want it anymore.” How much profit has Troy made, and how completely fucked is Whyte now? Give your answer in the comments, where available. Show your work.

Troy may or may not have enough himself to do that with however many million it would take to ruin all of his companies. He does, however, have the unlimited credit of Contessa Helena de San Finzione, monarch of the Sovereign County and Nation-State of San Finzione; and CEO Emeritus of La Familia Royale de San Finzione’s international business conglomerate, Società Finzione, behind him. And with all that, he could certainly raise whatever collateral a loan of the size to drive them into the ground requires.

Whatever money Whyte has saved up, it’s never going to be enough to outbid Helen for Springheel. You’d think that would make him less dangerous, but like Helen told us, it just means she’s given him no choice now but to come at her directly. Even before I knew Helen personally or that she could control minds, I could have told you what a fucking stupid idea that is. His “Board” and “The Shareholders” will be looking to unload their shares for pennies on the dollar now, and that’s when Helen steps in and buys out the company to shut it down or start Finzione Telecom or whatever.

“Yes, Helena.” Julie answered. “Everyone loves Werewolves of London, but that doesn’t answer the question about the stuff you said we should see on that tape.”

“I know, Mistress.” Helen said, with a puff of smoke. “That would be the point of avoiding a subject. It seems that’s not going to happen, though. So, yes, I tortured those pricks. Those women were not actresses, and they had far more than what I gave them coming.”

She produced a balisong knife from a compartment in one of the armrests that looked to serve as Helen’s junk drawer and idly flicked it open and closed before returning it. (The armrest that pulls down on the other side of her usual seat is a bit of a “Lost & Found of the Rich & Famous.” It’s how I ended up with Vicente Fox’s silver monogrammed mustache comb. Helen gave it to me. She said the replacement she bought him two months before was gold and that he liked it better, so he’s OK with me keeping it. I really try to keep my head about all this power and influence that Helen has, but I know this story because SHE CALLED HIM AND ASKED AND HE FUCKING SAID MY NAME AND THAT IT WAS COOL WITH HIM!!! Then there was some private stuff with him and Helen, tell ya later. Rita’s name came up.)

“How can you be sure they weren’t actresses?” Julie asked.

Helen gave Julie a surprised look, like “Why would you even ask that?” Followed by an “Oh yeah, you’re Julie” look. She turned to me and gave me a look that said, “Will you be ok with the answer I’m about to give?” I had a fair idea what kind of thing she was going to say and nodded. She turned back to Julie.

“The same way Susan would have known if she’d been there, Julie. Between The Thing and your daddy teaching you how to kill a man with your bare hands, you’ve never been physically assaulted.” She paused, and her eyes moved to look at mine again. I nodded again and hers moved back to Julie’s. “Or worse. There are things you think you get; you can certainly empathize with them, but you can’t really get them. I’d rather die than let you get them, Julie.”

“Dad taught me to defend myself.” Julie replied, a little offended, but also seeing Helen’s point and backing down.

Helen gave a laugh that turned into a cough because she’d been inhaling at that moment. As she was coughing, she turned to me.

“The Colonel didn’t teach ... his little girl ‘self-defense.’ The man was ... Army Intelligence. What he taught her...” She reached for a bottled water, took a drink, and recovered. “Was something called the Fairbairn Fighting System! The mixed martial art developed for undercover OSS agents in World War II! It’s also known as ‘Gutter Fighting’ and ‘The Art of Silent Killing!’” She looked back to Julie. “Which he always refused to teach me, for some reason...”

Julie turned to me.

“Dad felt it’d be safer if I just looked out for Helena, rather than teaching her how to do a chin-slam takedown.”

Helen gave a little smile at that and spoke to me.

“It’s really cool to see, too. If you’ve got the fingers for it like Julie, you can nail the prick in the eyes with the same move. Even if you don’t have her reach, go for the balls AFTER that move. You have to have met the Colonel when you came to Anchorage for the wedding. You’ll have a guy his size on his knees and you’ll still have hold of the fucker by the nose.” She tried to show the move while sitting down, then turned back to Julie. “So yes, I can assure you that those pricks in the warehouse deserved far worse than anything you’ll see on the video, but I had other shit to take care of in the morning.”

Julie nodded in agreement. The discussion had been settled. Whatever Helen did to those fuckers, they had it coming.

“Well,” I said. “It’s a martial art, right? That means it’s art, so of course Julie’s going to be great at it.”

Helen patted Julie’s knee. Julie smiled.

“One of the great tragedies of this world, Susan, is that this woman has focused her efforts on the physical and graphic arts, and has never picked up a musical instrument or tried to sit down and write a poem. Because there’s no way she wouldn’t be brilliant at either of those as well. Your logic is infallible, Mr. Spock.”

I think I gave Helen the biggest smile I’d ever given her at that.

“Thanks for that.” I said. “I’m wondering, though: Why hasn’t Whyte struck back yet?”

“You guys are here.” Helen replied, taking another drink, and putting out her cigarette. “He still hasn’t mentioned you, Susan, but he’s already figured out that Troy and Julie know The Thing, too. He tried to play it off this morning as ‘it just now hit me,’ but he had to have come to that conclusion long before now. Between that and knowing I’d have some kind of protection on you all, I think that maybe he’s seen or heard your name, but hasn’t dug into their lives enough to connect you to them. If he’d sent any private eyes to watch your house or follow you, Roberto and Enrique would have immediately dealt with them and reported it to me.”

Julie nodded in agreement and spoke before I could ask what “dealt with them” might entail.

“If he came across the name Susan Bailey while snooping into Troy’s business.” Julie added. “She’d just be another one on a list of all the people Troy invests for. I’d think he’d at least notice that you’ve got the same address as us, though. Troy would either file away anything with the potential for identity theft, or shred it and hand-deliver it to the recycling plant; so he wouldn’t get much out of going through our garbage. A lot of paint and lube on his hands, maybe.”

“It’s something I’ll have to ask him about.” Helen replied, lighting a new cigarette as the limo rounded the corner where Neighbours was located.

I’d been to the place before. An all-inclusive dance club which, more importantly for our purposes than being a tolerant and friendly environment for all genders and preferences, was open and doing solid business on a Tuesday night. It wasn’t usually the sort of place where they employed red carpets and velvet rope barriers, but we were driving around for a little while before arriving, so that by the time we got there, it would be packed like someone world-famous had announced to Twitter that she was going to be there a couple of hours before. She might have also confessed to be a filthy little slut who loved it up the ass before Julie’s tweet got deleted and another was posted, with a winky-face “PSA from La Contessa” warning of the evils of handing your phone to your friends when you’re all hammered.

“You command the waitresses at restaurants and bars to bring you the mocktail version of any drink you order or someone in the place buys for you. Or you do apple juice in a whiskey glass, like Dean Martin.” I told Helen. “You haven’t had a drop since this morning at the summit. None of us have; we’ve all been staying sharp for whatever Whyte throws at us next. Why would you tell Twitter that you’re wasted?”

“For the same reason I needed you and Julie today, Susan. If I’d been doing all the stuff we did today on my own, it would have been totally transparent. The press would’ve seen what I was trying to do, said ‘thanks for the free lunch,’ and then the story would be ‘Contessa Helena de San Finzione is sucking up to us for some reason. What’s she out to distract us from?’ Butting in on a day out with my best gal-pals, on the other hand, means that they’re getting ‘the REAL me.’ Especially if those gal-pals are ‘Nobodies,’ and I apologize again for the phrasing there, but you hopefully get the idea I was going for. The illusion of intrusion is mainly for delusion, ya might say.”