Lethal Experiment Read online

  Tickets are sold out months in advance. I didn’t ask Callie how she obtained our front-row balcony seats, and didn’t need to. Callie gets what Callie wants.

  The show itself is hard to explain, but in general, it’s a celebration of water. There is no real plot, per se, nor is one necessary. “O” is a stunning display of athletes, acrobats, synchronized swimmers, divers and mythical characters, all of whom perform on a constantly changing liquid stage.

  The program described the music as “haunting and lyrical, upbeat and melancholy”—and they weren’t lying, it was superb. For me, the blend of music and choreography enhanced the beauty and spectacle of the experience. Sure, I’d seen other circus acts that impressed me. But I’d never made an emotional connection with the performers before. But here, sitting beside Callie, watching “O,” I found myself caught up in the performers’ world of grace, strength and art. And loving every minute of it.

  There are seventeen acts in the show, no intermissions. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Callie several times, but each time her face showed less expression than Joan Rivers after a Botox treatment.

  Until the seventeenth act: “Solo Trapeze.”

  That’s when I saw Callie’s right hand tense, ever so slightly. I turned to look at her and saw her—not crying, but tearing up. Then, amazingly, a single tear spilled over the edge of her eyelashes and traced halfway down her cheek. She didn’t notice me staring, didn’t make a move to wipe it dry. More than nine million people have seen “O” in this theater, but none were moved more than Callie. I know, because I’ve seen her in dozens of situations that would have made the toughest guys cry. Add all those events to this and you get a total of one tear.

  I opened my program and noticed the girl on the trapeze was the alternate. There was something familiar about the name.

  And then it hit me.

  It was Eva LeSage.

  I’d never met Eva, but Callie used to guard her back in Atlanta for Sensory Resources. You get attached to the people you guard, and you like to see them succeed in life. Callie was proving to be far more sentimental than I’d ever known her to be. On the other hand, she hadn’t so much as frowned while killing Charlie and his friends a few nights ago, so it was unlikely she’d be mistaken for Mother Teresa anytime soon.

  After the show I said, “There are six Cirque du Soleil shows playing Vegas.”

  “So?”

  “So that means tonight, five hundred performers will be walking the Strip—all of them limber enough to have sex without a partner.”

  She gave me a curious look. “Anyone can have sex without a partner.”

  “Not that kind of sex,” I said.

  “Thanks for the visual.”

  We climbed into our waiting limo and headed to the Encore Hotel. We had dinner reservations at Switch.

  “Did you get anything else out of the show?” Callie said, “aside from the sexual dexterity of the performers?”

  “It’s probably the best show I’ve ever seen: synchronized swimmers, acrobats, Red coated soldiers with powdered wigs riding on flying carousel horses, world-class high divers, contortionists, a man so deeply involved with his newspaper he continues reading it after bursting into flames…”

  “Anything else?”

  I smiled. “I was particularly impressed by the solo trapeze artist who made her debut tonight. The understudy from Atlanta. Eva LeSage.”

  Callie studied me a moment before saying, “When did you figure it out?”

  “Not till the very end.”

  “You think she’s good enough to get the lead?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not qualified to say.”

  I looked at Callie and sensed she needed to hear some type of personal validation from me. Something honest, from the heart. I dug deep.

  “For me, Eva had a delicate, ballet quality that went beyond special. She wowed me tonight. It was like watching poetry in motion.”

  “Poetry in motion,” Callie repeated. Her voice had a wistful quality about it.

  After a moment she said, “Did you make that up?”

  “It’s an old sixties song.”

  She grinned. “Eighteen sixties?”

  “Nineteen, smartass. Johnny Tillotson.”

  “Donovan, seriously. How do you know that—you weren’t even alive in the sixties.”

  “Some things are worth learning about.”

  “Sixties music being one of them?”

  “Music was better back then.”

  “Song titles, maybe.”

  We sat awhile in silence, feeling the tires adjust to the uneven pavement.

  The driver turned his head in our general direction and said, “Sorry about the construction.”

  “No problem,” I said. Of course there’s construction. It’s Vegas. There’s always construction going on.

  “You hungry?” I said.

  I’d wanted to try Switch because I heard they had a lobster salad appetizer and great steaks. What makes the restaurant unique, every twenty minutes the lights dim, eerie music plays, and the walls and ceilings change their theme. I heard that sometimes the waiters quick-change into totally different outfits. Touristy, I know, but it would give me something to tell Kathleen and Addie about when I got back.

  “I’m not a foodie,” she said, “but I’ll find something to nibble on while we talk about this…situation.”

  “There’s a situation?” I said. “With Eva?”

  “There’s about to be,” she said.

  Chapter 20

  Switch did not disappoint. This high-energy restaurant was all about vibrant colors, Venetian glass murals, and wild, stylish fabrics. More to the point: they had a bourbon bar that featured, among other timeless classics, my favorite spirit: Pappy Van Winkle’s twenty-year Family Reserve. I ordered us each a shot of the Pappy, straight up.

  “I’ll have a chardonnay,” Callie said.

  The waiter hesitated. “Bring her a shot of Pappy,” I said, “and a glass of your house chardonnay, just in case.”

  After he left to fetch the drinks, I said, “You remember Burt Lancaster?”

  “The actor?” Callie said. She looked around. “He’s here?”

  “Only in spirit,” I said.

  “Oh.” She thought a moment, and said, “I liked him in that Kevin Costner movie, the one about the baseball field.”

  “Field of Dreams,” I said, “his last performance.”

  “What about him?”

  “When he was sixteen, Burt Lancaster ran away from home and joined the circus, wanted to be a trapeze artist.”

  Callie looked interested. “And did he become one?”

  “He did.”

  The waiter brought our drinks.

  “Take a sip of the bourbon,” I said. “You won’t be disappointed.”

  Callie sighed. “Fine,” she said. “Cheers.”

  We clinked glasses, and I said, “Let it sit on your tongue a few seconds, until you taste the caramel.”

  Callie did as she was instructed, but quickly made a face and spit a mouthful of bourbon into her water glass.

  “How can you stand that?” she said. “Tastes like gasoline!”

  I looked at the hazy, amber liquid in her water glass, and frowned.

  “I can’t believe you just did that,” I said. “It’s like spitting in church.”

  I picked up her tumbler and placed it next to mine.

  Callie grabbed my water glass and drank furiously. When she regained her composure, she took a sip of chardonnay.

  I lifted my tumbler and took another pull.

  “‘We make fine whiskey,’” I recited. “‘At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always fine whiskey.’”

  “What’s that from?” Callie said.

  “Pappy Van Winkle’s motto.”

  “I wonder if I’ll ever get the taste out of my mouth,” she said.

  “We were talking about Burt Lancaster,” I said.

  “Right. Why w
ould he quit trapeze to become an actor?”

  “World War II broke out, he enlisted, became an elite soldier, Army Special Services. From there, he sort of backed into the motion picture industry, using his trapeze training to become one of the greatest stuntmen in Hollywood.”

  Callie picked up her napkin, placed it in her lap and seemed to study it.

  “I used to watch Eva practice every night,” she said.

  “Back in Atlanta when you were guarding her?”

  Callie nodded. “At first she had trouble being upside down. It made her dizzy and gave her headaches. I figured she’d give up, but she kept at it, forcing herself to face her fear.”

  “Takes a lot of guts,” I said, waiting to see where this was heading.

  The waiter asked if we’d like an appetizer. I ordered the lobster salad. Callie deferred.

  “Each trapeze artist has a unique style,” she said. “Some are highly structured, almost mechanical. Emotionless. Like Chris Evert playing tennis. Others, like Eva, seem to dance on air.”

  She’d said that last part as if talking to herself. I had one last factoid rolling around in my head and figured to use it.

  “He said he never lost his love for the trapeze,” I said.

  She looked at me absently, so I continued: “Burt Lancaster. He worked out on trapeze swings until he was almost seventy.”

  I looked at Callie and noticed her eyes had brimmed with tears. In the years I’d known and worked with her, I’d never seen this side of her.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “I can’t let her die, Donovan.”

  “It’s been arranged. She’s Tara Siegel’s body double. You have to step aside.”

  “I can’t. I won’t.”

  I frowned. “We need to talk about this.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Talk.”

  Body doubles are disposable people we use to cover our tracks or fake our deaths if our covers get blown. By strategically killing a look-alike—as Sal was about to do to cover Callie’s tracks back in Darnell—we can buy time to eliminate paper trails or change our appearance and get back to the business of killing terrorists for the government. Of course, the body doubles have no idea their lives are owned by Sensory Resources. The way it works, one of us notices a civilian who strongly resembles one of our top operatives. If my facilitator, Darwin, accepts that person as a match, he assigns a trainee to monitor and protect the civilian until he or she is needed. When I first left the CIA I protected a body double for almost a year. Callie guarded someone a year and a half before being promoted to my team of assassins.

  The civilian Callie guarded was Eva LeSage.

  “Who’s guarding Eva now?” I asked.

  “Chavez.”

  “He moved to Vegas to guard her?”

  Callie nodded. “He’s the one gave me the tickets,” she said.

  Eva was just twenty-two when someone spotted her at a gymnastics meet and did a double-take. That’s how it happens. We’re out in the world, we see someone who looks like one of our agents. Eva happened to look like Tara Siegel, who works out of Boston.

  You don’t have to be a perfect match to be selected as a body double. You do need to be the approximate age, same height, weight, and body style, with the same cheekbones, facial features and skin tone. When we need you, we fix you up well enough to pass for our agent, then we make the switch. Of course, it’s a fatal switch.

  When Callie moved up to assassin, Eva was passed off to Antonio Chavez.

  “All these years Antonio never got promoted?”

  “He’d rather guard,” she said. “Plus, I think he’s too stable to kill people.”

  When Eva moved to Vegas to pursue her career, Chavez could have passed her on to someone else, but according to Callie, he hadn’t. He’d chosen to follow her there instead. I wondered if Chavez had an ulterior motive. It’s pretty common to get attached to the people you guard.

  “You think he’s fallen for her?”

  “Not a chance,” Callie said.

  “You seem pretty certain.”

  “Chavez is company, all the way.”

  “You have any reason to think Eva is about to be pressed into service?”

  Callie glared at me. “You don’t have to sugar coat it, Donovan,” she said. “We don’t press people into service. We murder them.”

  “The question stands,” I said.

  She curled her lip in disgust. “Tara Siegel’s a loose cannon,” she said. “It’s only a matter of time before she fucks the pooch. Eva LeSage is not some every day, run-of-the-mill suburban housewife soccer mom, Donovan. She’s magic. I don’t care how down I am, whenever I see her, I come away happy. A person like that, who inspires so much and entertains so many doesn’t deserve to die.”

  “None of them deserve to die, Callie. It’s about the greater good. We sacrifice one to save many. Look, you already know this.”

  Now I understood why Callie had said that after seeing the show it would be a matter of her life and death. She didn’t want this body double to die, which put me in a tough spot. If I sided with Darwin, I’d have to kill Callie. And if I sided with Callie, both our lives would be on the line.

  “First of all, she looks nothing like Tara. She’s half her size!” Callie said.

  “Darwin must’ve seen something in her.”

  “He’s a moron. They need to find someone else. I’ll find someone else.”

  “Callie, there’s no way. They’ve invested years…”

  “I’m serious, Donovan.”

  This was so unlike Callie that I was having trouble wrapping my head around the conversation. I understood what she was trying to say, but she knew how the system worked. Sure, Eva’s an artist, a gifted entertainer. But that doesn’t make her life any more valuable than the literature professor I guarded, or the dozen other civilians who are going through life, completely oblivious that we’re monitoring their every move. I could see no reason why Callie should care one way or other about Eva.

  Unless…

  “Are you sleeping with her?” I said.

  Callie took a deep breath, held it a moment, and slowly exhaled. She looked away.

  “Holy shit!” I said.

  Chapter 21

  Callie suddenly had the slightest smile going. I guessed it probably felt good to share the secret.

  “I can’t let her die,” she said.

  “Give me a sec,” I said. “I’m trying to visualize the two of you doing it.”

  “What? Oh, grow up, Creed!”

  “Every man’s fantasy, Cal. Bear with me.”

  “Are you…oh, my God, you’re checking me out! Jesus, Donovan!”

  “Relax,” I said. “I’m always checking you out. You just never noticed before.”

  “Oh yeah, well, men are pigs.”

  “True.”

  “And you’re the king pig.”

  “Oink.”

  She took another deep breath.

  “I hate myself for saying this,” she said, “but I need your help.”

  “Yes you do.”

  Just then I noticed an elderly lady standing by the seafood tower. I took out my phone, handed it to Callie and nodded in the direction of the lady.

  “For Kathleen,” I said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “C’mon, you know the drill.”

  “Are you wearing panties, Creed? It starts with the panties, you know.”

  “Relax. I just don’t want Kathleen to stress, okay? She’s got trust issues.”

  “I think you need a spine implant.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind. Now come with me and do your part, okay?”

  We walked across the floor to the lady.

  “Pardon me,” I said, “but would you do me the honor of taking a picture with me?”

  “Why on earth would you want my picture?” she said. “Your lady friend is gorgeous. I should take a picture of the two of you.”

  Jumping right in as if it had b
een rehearsed, Callie said, “You look like his mother.”

  “What?”

  “Where are you from?” Callie said. “Really, you could be her sister.”

  “I’m from Seattle,” she said. “And you?”

  “Atlanta,” Callie said. “By the way, I’m Julie. This is Joe.”

  “Nice to meet you, Julie and Joe, I’m Mildred.” She pointed to an older man who was watching us from a distance. “That’s my husband. He’s also a Joe.”

  “A good man, I’m sure,” I said, “judging strictly by the name.”

  Mildred laughed.

  “Now you two scrunch in together and smile,” Callie said.

  She pointed my cell phone at us and snapped a picture. Afterward, we walked Mildred back to her husband. We all shook hands.

  “We just saw “O” at the Bellagio,” Callie said. “Have you guys ever seen it?”

  “We have,” Joe said.

  “About two years ago,” Mildred added.

  “Did you love it?” Callie said.

  They agreed it was remarkable. Then we told Joe how Mildred looked just like my mother. He asked if we knew anyone in Seattle and I told him I knew a fire chief from Montclair, New Jersey, named Blaunert who had plans to retire on Portage Bay.

  “That’s a beautiful spot,” Joe said.

  We wrapped up our conversation. On the way back to our table I flagged down our waiter and asked him to deliver a bottle of champagne to Joe and Mildred. Then we took our seats and looked at each other.

  “Well, that was fun,” Callie said, dryly.

  “You were great back there, by the way.”

  “Whatever. It’s not my first rodeo. So,” she said, “will you talk to Darwin for me?”

  “I think not,” I said. “He’ll want to know why I’m asking, and believe me, he’ll find out. When he does, he’ll end your affair with a bullet. So if you want to keep this going—and you obviously do—you can’t let Darwin know you’re involved with her. By the way,” I added, “how were you able to keep the affair going without Chavez finding out?”

  “Easier than you might think. Remember, he’s following Eva. Since I know where she’s going before he does, I’m already there.”