Excitement constricted Giselle’s throat. “I’ll be ready.”
The cab, an extravagance Yasmine had paid for, dropped Geraldine Tantillo on the steeply slanting street in front of her apartment house. She almost ran up the five flights of stairs with equal feelings of excitement and near-pain. She was dying to get at the corset that had tightened her waist from its usual comfortable 35 to a compressed 28, but she felt wonderful. She was a star! Not one of the chorus, not one of the crowd.
Yasmine shut and bolted the door behind her as Geraldine whipped off the great wig of shining black hair.
“I... did... it... just as... you told me to...”
“We shall drink some wine,” Yasmine beamed, “and you will tell it all to me from hello-hello to goodbye-goodbye.”
At ten-thirty the next morning, Dan Kearny said in disbelief, “You want DKA to prepare a plan to do what?”
They were in a dark-paneled corner office at the Cal-Cit Bank headquarters in One Embarcadero Center’s glittering marble-and-glass tower. On the walls were sporting prints; through the windows were fine sun-drenched views of Market Street far below. Ornate gold leaf on the outside of the old- fashioned pebbled glass door, backward from inside the room, spelled out:
They were all wearing their power suits. Kearny wore his from Chicago, along with the tie Giselle admired. Stan Groner wore Brooks Brothers blue, Baron Herbert Von Knottnerus-Meyer a lightweight pearl-grey wool number.
“It is very simple,” Stan said. “Now Marr wants Xanadu’s defenses tested in real time. You have to come up with a plan.”
“I don’t know about real time, but I know those defenses.”
“I assure you, de fee vill be more den adequate,” said Knottnerus-Meyer. “Vere iss der problem?”
“Stan, tell him where the problem is.”
“Uh... I’m with the Baron on this one. Hell, Dan, you should welcome the challenge.”
Kearny shot Groner an angry glare. It slid right off him. Ah, where was the staid banker of yesteryear? Mired in greed. As was Kearny, of course. Besotted but cautious.
“Hell, Stan, you should be part of the challenge.”“No way!” Stan was aghast. “I’m a banker, for God sake!” Kearny felt he had scored his point. He said, “Okay, I’ve got a couple of ideas.”
Which, he knew, meant a heads-together with devious O’B.
He and O’B met at the Corner Bar, up the street from DKA, happily still a bucket of blood full of rummies despite the ongoing dot-com gentrification South of Market. After they’d been served by a squat, swarthy, foul-mouthed bartender in a dirty apron, Dan laid out the specs of the Baron’s Xanadu needs.
He finished with, “Our strategy is very simple—”
“Simple?” O’B drained his second O’Doul’s. “We gotta get through the electrified outer fence without getting fried; take out the perimeter sensors; get into the building and bypass the scanning video cameras; deactive the invisible light beams; avoid the pressure plates in the floors; neutralize the security control systems operator; release this ape from his cage and remove him from the building, put him back, and get away ourselves without being spotted or getting our butts chewed off by the dogs or shot off by a head of security who hates your guts. Simple?”
Kearny nodded. “Strategy is what has to be done. It’s always simple. Strategy is my concern. How to carry out strategy is tactics. Tactics, O’B — they’re your concern.”
Forty-one
Milagrita hadn’t seen her brother Esteban and his amigos since they chased Trin out of the Mission Street pizza joint. The less she saw of them, the more she worried. What if they, like she, had ferreted out his spare apartment key? What if his paycheck stubs were in the apartment? It preyed on her mind.
So after work that night, she worked her way through back alleys to come out behind Trin’s place in the 900 block of Florida Street. She climbed a tree to get over the fence and wormed her way through the concrete runoff to find the rock with the key under it. And came nose-to-nose with the big tortoise who had lived there for fifty years and more.
“Wish me luck, turtle,” Milagrita whispered to him.
The tortoise half-pulled in his head and feet to opt out.
She climbed the creaky wooden stairs to Trin’s back door, unlocked it, slipped in, stood in the darkened kitchen with her heart pounding wildly. She had never done anything like this before. As she passed through the connecting door to the living room fronting Florida Street, she was seized from behind, run right across the room, and rammed face-down onto the couch.
“I tell your brother I wait long enough, he will come back,” sneered Jorge’s hate-filled voice from above and behind her. “Instead, you come to meet your lover. Even better! I’ll tell Esteban I see you through the window getting undressed.”
She squirmed around to look up at him in the semidarkness. Jorge was handsome in the Ricky Martin mode, and vain about it. Curly black hair, dark expressive eyes, a shapely nose, a full-lipped, vulnerable mouth. He made her sick.
“Esteban will not believe you.”
But she knew her brother would. Thank the Virgin, it didn’t sound as though Jorge had thought of looking for something that would tell him where Trin worked. She stood up gingerly. She had never been so terrified, but she must not let it show.
“I shall leave now,” she said formally in Spanish.
But Jorge seized her and smeared his sneering face against hers, mouth open and tongue darting. Instinctively, she brought her knee up between his legs. It was mostly ineffectual, but he grunted, loosened his grip; she ran for the kitchen. He was on her from behind, spun her around, his fist broke her nose and chipped two of her front teeth. He hit her again, in the belly.
She felt darkness engulfing her. She had no breath, no strength, no will to resist. For a long time there was only him on top of her, thrusting and grunting his harsh triumph.
She was sprawled face-down on the couch. Blood from her mouth stained the fabric. She knew only pain. Jorge grabbed her long black hair to jerk her head back.
“You ain’t ever gonna tell your brother what you made me do to you tonight, little whore.” He held up his cell phone. “You just gonna call Morales and tell him you waiting for him with your legs spread. After I call Esteban and tell him Morales is coming here, you gonna leave right away, comprende?”
“But Esteban will kill him!” she whimpered.
“No, I gonna do that. Then, any time I say, you will come crawling.” He thrust the phone into her hands. “I know a little whore like you has got a secret number you can call your lover.”
She didn’t, but she knew he wouldn’t believe her. She had only one little forlorn hope. “I... all right. I... I’ll call.”
Giselle, working late, was just leaving her desk when her private phone rang. A small, pain-filled, Spanish-accented voice exclaimed weakly in her ear, “Trin! I’m so glad I caught you.”
Milagrita! In trouble! Thank God she had given the girl her private number. Giselle sat back down, grabbed a memo pad.
“Keep talking to Morales,” she said. “Where are you?”
“At your place,” Milagrita said in a sad parody of banter.
“Is someone there with you?”
“Of course. And waiting for you.”
“Jorge?” Milagrita’s silence was confirmation. “Are you hurt?” Silence. “Raped?” More silence. Giselle thought of calling an ambulance, then realized the first priority had to be getting her away from Jorge. “Can you leave there?”