“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 would 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?”