Hot Ticket Read Free

“Mickey.”
    “You’ve got the wrong number.” Hung up, finished the Scotch. After a while I told Mickey to return to the hotel: Maxine expected
     me ready for action in an hour. I had to smile as trees became streetlights and the limo fell in with police cars prowling
     the boulevards. The Queen knew the best time to get me was after a performance, when the ganglia were still smoking and. the
     brain ached for a new riddle, any riddle, to stanch the void. I was suicidally fearless now. Or I used to be … the concerts
     had resumed only three weeks ago. My first few strolls into the spotlight had been frightening. During my sabbatical, a tiny
     switch that fused brain to finger had turned off; without that switch on, I had no shield against the terror that seized performers
     seconds before they had to go onstage and string a few thousand notes, beginning to end, flawlessly. Tonight the switch had
     flicked off only a few times, an encouraging sign, but now I was tired rather than wired. Whatever little errand Maxine had
     concocted, I hoped it would be easy.
    After halting the limo in a brass alcove, Mickey unhanded me to a doorman. I went to my room and changed from flowing white
     to tight black. As the costume changed, so did my pulse: Maxine was sending me back to the razor’s edge, bless her conniving,
     pitiless heart. I packed my plastic knife, which wouldn’t ruffle any metal detectors in this security-mad town, and coiled
     my hair under a black scarf. Left the room. The doorman who had just helped me from the limousine looked twice as I returned
     to the lobby: in five minutes I had gone from goddess to buccaneer. Nevertheless, he put a whistle to his mouth. Guests of
     his hotel did not walk the streets at this—indeed any—hour.
    “No cab,” I said, sailing past.
    Headed toward the White House, where the president’s soirée, or a major fire, still raged. Lights from the East Room threw
     buttery shafts across the lawn. Tourists along Pennsylvania Avenue pressed their faces to the high iron fence, chattering
     in a stew of tongues as they photographed the distant chandeliers. By now my accompanist Duncan was either tangoing with a
     princess or puking in LBJ’s toilet. Minister Klint would be in one of those overstuffed reception rooms, sipping champagne
     as he allowed Paula & co. to think they were getting the better of him. President Marvel? Engaging a cigar or a woman: end
     result about the same. Hard to believe I had been with them an hour ago.
    Found a phone at Pershing Square, called a local number. The line fizzed and clicked. Finally Maxine answered. “Play well?”
    “I would have been a bigger hit at Arlington Cemetery.”
    “Meet anyone interesting?”
    “Was I supposed to?”
    I could hear her patiently swallowing coffee four thousand miles away. “How’s the weather?”
    “Stinking hot.” Same as two weeks ago, when Maxine had been in town rooting around the NSA computers with her five-star general.
     Maybe she had been trying to dig up some easy work for me. “Can I come back to Berlin now?”
    “Drop in on Barnard first. She’s right down the street.”
    Something wrong. Not once in all these years had one of Maxine’s other agents dropped in on me, or I on them. Now that five
     out of seven of us were dead, perhaps the Queen was relaxing her social policy. “Is she expecting me?”
    “She knows you’re in town.”
    “What’s she doing here?”
    Again I heard a quiet swallowing. “You got me.”
    Hard to say which was worse, Maxine not knowing what was going on or actually admitting so. She gave us girls a long leash,
     but we were expected to bark at reasonable intervals. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.
    “Just check her out.” Maxine told me an address: Watergate.
    “Come on, the place is a fortress!”
    “You’ll see three fountains outside the north lobby. Keys are in the middle one. Apartment 937. Her name’s Polly Mason.”
    Before Maxine could