The caryatids, p.20
The Caryatids, page 20
The airy living room, its sea-viewing windows sprayed opaque, was full of loot.
Someone had been on some dainty feminine crime spree. Cosmetics, mostly. Sweet, tempting little beauty kits that a thieving woman could easily hide in her hands. And other loot, more ambitious: handbags, women’s boots and shoes … stockings, perfumes, jewelry exploding from small discarded plush boxes … pink-cased electronics, sexy vicuña scarves, sunglasses in crushproof cases, cashmere throw rugs, thirsty towels, thirsty hand towels, thirsty face towels … Thirsty tampons, thirsty condoms … And crates and crates of thirsty booze.
Dying of thirst from the shock of her abduction, unable to move her bound, numbed arms, Radmila stared in anguish at a wooden rack of California chardonnays.
After dark fell, Biserka returned from her busy wanderings. Biserka was still wearing the Family-Firm ninja costume she’d used when she had kidnapped Radmila, only now this fake, phony costume of hers—it was amazing how shoddy it looked now, it was a cheap, halfhearted effort like some kid’s Hollywood souvenir—it was ominously covered with freshly dug dirt.
Biserka plucked her black ninja hood off and ran her black-gloved fingers through her sweaty, smashed, blond hairdo. Biserka had six fancy emerald studs in her ears and green weepy eyeliner streaming down both cheeks. She’d been sweating like a pig inside that cheap costume.
“Time for Miss Montalban to go walkies,” Biserka remarked.
Radmila lashed out and kicked Biserka in the shin. Biserka stepped back, with a sour, tired expression. She then came around, leaned down, and pinched Radmila’s nose shut with her thumb and finger.
In moments Radmila had a scarlet agony in her lungs and fatal darkness roaring in her ears.
“You don’t do that again,” Biserka explained. She left, stooped behind the couch, opened a beautiful shoplifted Italian leather satchel. She removed a bloodstained parole breaker’s knife. It had the blackened chips, the melted plastic, and the stink.
She then seized a hank of Radmila’s hair and sawed loose a fistful of it.
She threw the hair into Radmila’s watering eyes. “Do you want to walk for me now, or will there be more attitude?”
Radmila gusted air through her nose and shook her head.
Biserka stuck her fingers through the network of cinched wires around Radmila’s chest. She hauled her upright, with an effort. Tired, she changed her mind and shoved Radmila onto an abandoned couch, which exploded with dust.
“I have a feeling we won’t see this locale again,” Biserka said, gazing around the mold-spotted walls and the damp-collapsed ceiling. “That is such a pity, but, you know, you get a sixth sense about a blackspot. I’m a girl who has a very negative rapport with ubiquitous systems.”
Biserka’s English had an odd foreign accent. It might have been French, or Chinese, or maybe both French and Chinese.
“I travel light,” said Biserka, “so we have to leave my toys here as a nice surprise for sneaky kids. Kids these days! They love to steal, because they have so little … But professional theft is over! All the smart players traffic in revenge! Vendetta. Venganza. Rache. That’s the universal language. It’s hard to steal from people—but to steal the people … Goods are trackable, but people are stalkable.”
Biserka gazed around her derelict hideout and sighed. “All my pretty toys! Should I burn the house down? You think?”
Biserka rummaged in a handcrafted box that might once have contained some fine hobject. “I do want my pearls. They’re my favorites. I’ll let you carry my pearls.” Biserka sank her clawed fingers into a mass of strung pearls and pulled them out like cold spaghetti.
“I was being funny, you know, because ‘Biserka’ means ‘Pearl.’ So I tell the jewelers: ‘I’m Mila Montalban, show me all your pearls.’ And they are like: ‘Oh yes certainly Miss Montalban! Such a pleasure to see you here in person! Would you like to see the wild pearls from the years before the seacoasts rose, or would you like to see the modern cultured pearls?’ And I reply: ‘Why not see both?’ ”
Biserka thrust the dripping mass of pearls into Radmila’s face. “So: They bring out all these for me! Little lumpy bastards—the wild pearls from the old days! And then—they bring out these really huge gleaming superperfect ones!” Biserka draped strands of pearls, one by one, over Radmila’s head.
“And I say to them, ‘What’s the damage?’ and they reply … what a fraud! These little stinking mean dirty ones cost a cut-off arm and one leg! And all these big white perfect round ones, pearls which didn’t even grow from mother oysters … they are so cheap!”
Biserka cinched the thick rope of pearls around Radmila’s neck. She hauled Radmila to her feet.
Then Biserka hauled her forward, tugging at the leash of jewels. “Where’s the justice? I hated them for that! I mean: People did that to the whole world, didn’t they? Such a pearl of a world, they had once! And now look at it!”
Biserka dragged her outside and down the stairs of the derelict building. There was a big black hearse parked in a seaweed-strewn gravel driveway. That hearse hadn’t been there before, when Biserka had first abducted her.
Radmila tried to look around, feeling jewelry bite into her throat. Tall brown palms towered over the mansion, all of them killed by rising seawater.
Biserka meant to force her into the black hearse. Radmila moaned.
“Pretty evening for a drive,” said Biserka.
Radmila snorted through her nose.
“You’re planning to kick me again and then try to run away,” Biserka diagnosed. She placed one flat hand against Radmila’s collarbone and pushed her. Radmila, her arms trapped behind her, reeled helplessly, stumbled, and fell.
Biserka pulled Radmila’s shoes off. She filled each shoe with a handful of sharp gravel. Then she daintily tied the shoes on. “So now—happy dancing girl—let’s see you run, hey?”
Radmila had to take four steps to reach the hearse. Those steps were like walking on sharp nails. Tears came to her eyes.
Biserka heaved her through the door of the hearse, then joined her on a velvet pew in the back. They sat together next to a huge, dirt-stained coffin.
“I could rip that tape off your lipstick,” said Biserka, studying her, “but you’d give me all kinds of lip for that. If you’re mean to me, I might lose my temper!”
The black hearse rolled silently into motion. The machine left the shoreline, humped and bumped over a broken patch of flattened woven-wire fencing.
In a matter of moments, they were in the indestructible LA freeway system, quietly cruising under the flashing lights.
“I know you’re wondering about this big dirty coffin here,” said Biserka, languidly kicking it with rhythmic, bongolike thuds. “Well, there’s some good news for you. The coffin is not for you. The casket has an occupant already.”
Some time passed. Biserka enjoyed a chilly sip from a cocktail thermos. “You’re not alert anymore,” she said. “Are you ignoring me?”
Radmila turned toward her, eyes burning.
“That’s better. Good. Okay, now I’m explaining tonight’s events to you. You can’t understand all this, because you are this rich-chick blond actress and you’re kind of stupid. Never mind. Because I had a long time to think about this. It’s been one of those asymmetric terror things where the enemy is very rich and has all her skyscrapers, but I always have the initiative. So: You become my hostage now. Only, Radmila: I don’t want you as my hostage, because, wow! Wow, wow! I can’t stand the sight of you!”
Biserka kicked the side of the coffin harder, with her cheap black rubber ninja boot. “This man is my hostage. This dead gentleman in his coffin. I dug him up out of a graveyard today. What an exciting day full of action for Biserka Mihajlovic!”
Radmila looked longingly at the thermos.
“You are thirsty, but you don’t want to drink this,” Biserka told her, yawning. “It would put you out flat on your ass!” Biserka rolled her neck on her shoulders, and massaged the back of her own skull.
“So, as I told you: the graveyards. I know that sounds weird to you: my dear lively sister Biserka, in the graveyards? But graveyards are blackspots! People don’t wire the graveyards, because there are no paying customers in there, and they don’t imagine that the locals would get up and leave. So there’s an imagination gap in a graveyard.”
Biserka giggled, and enjoyed another sip from her thermos. “Because I can work fine in graveyards! They never scare me! I love them! Because they’re a huge blind spot for everybody stupider than me. For people like you. Huh? So, you know, who else is in there in graveyards? Besides me. Well, your people are in there, that’s who. Every famous old family has famous dead people. Like Svetlana, Bratislava, Kosara! Half of us are dead already and we don’t even have real graves!”
Biserka wiped her mouth on her black ninja sleeve. She had a tattoo on her right wrist, a homemade tattoo, the kind of artwork people did in jail cells while afflicted by long lengths of time. “So, me and my friend the funny backhoe are working in this blackspot, and up comes this gentleman here: the former governor of California. Your husband’s dad.”
Biserka waited a patient moment. “All right: don’t get so excited. I wasn’t the one who shot him. He won’t get any deader now. When we’re done with our family business, I’ll leave him somewhere—with a beeper on him. You can come fetch him and bury him back into the ground. You can hush it all up. The Montgomery-Montalban Family hushes up so many matters and hides so many troubles already.”
Biserka rubbed her nose. Someone had broken it, years ago. “So: I don’t hold you for ransom. I mean, yes, I stole some things by pretending to be you, but that was just to be funny. That was so easy, yes, it’s boring me. No: I don’t want you as my hostage. I want your people to help me with my project! My very personal project that I have! My project is about a crazy woman in orbit. And not your crazy woman in orbit, stupid! Not your old fat actress! No, our mother. Yelisaveta Mihajlovic. The warlord’s black widow, guns and narcotics and software … Mother abandoned us, but she did some things well!”
Biserka stared out the hearse window at a passing high-rise; it had a giant ape climbing on it, but that was only a projection. “But: two crazy women up in orbit? How could you do that, Radmila? Two? That’s too much. It’s annoying me! It’s disgusting me! It’s just not right! That’s too many women who are trying to fit into the same outer space! It reminds me that Yelisaveta is still up there, flying over our heads every day, and I don’t like the way that makes me feel!”
Biserka scraped mud from the edge of her rubber boot. “I knew that you married big money. Fine, I married some money once. A bedful of money is nice! But you married people with orbital launch capacity! Wow! That means we can reach our mother, Radmila! We can put one bucket of sand, or some bolts and nuts, into Mama’s orbit. Bang! Boom! One moment, no warning, Mama’s dead in her flying coffin! And when that happens, then I give you this coffin back.”
Biserka looked out the window of the hearse at the towers along Figueroa, then back at Radmila again. “You’re not happy with my brilliant, genius plan?”
Radmila shook her head. Her heart was crushed within her. She had never felt such shame.
“You’re not happy? But imagine how much better we both feel when that old woman falls from heaven in small burning pieces! I know some people in China who have space rockets. They could help us.”
Biserka snuffled as lights flashed over her face. “Look at you, feeling so sorry for yourself … A billion people died in Asia from the climate crisis. A billion. And I helped them to die. While you never looked. Because everyone was supposed to look at you, Radmila! Black skies and starving mobs and empty rivers, and the world is supposed to watch you. And worship you! Because you might take your clothes off! Or something. You’re a dress-up doll made from plastic.”
Biserka shook her head in wonderment, then shrugged. “So you deserve to die, Radmila, but … first things first! First I drop you in a bar in Norwalk—tied up like this, in your underwear. You hop right in there, you call home, tell them you got drunk. You had a bad casting-couch date with your big-shot producer, whatever, I don’t care. You handle that. But if you screw me over—and I know that you want to, because, wow wow wow! I’d certainly do that to you—well, I’m going to kill. Not you. Someone else. Not you—because you’re too necessary to my plans. And not the governor here, because he got shot already.”
Biserka paused to laugh. “But I will kill Glyn, you know, that downmarket fat-assed clone of the superstar! That Glyn thing really annoys me. Really. Just thinking about that Glyn makes me crazy! We Mihajlovic girls, we don’t have enough trouble that you have to find her? Glyn, another clone, who loves you? She adores you? That stinks, that’s the worst!
“So I will kill your Glyn, because Glyn has no big bodyguards. So that’s easy. Your Glyn will be out for a buttered bagel in her black turtle-neck and her tummy-flattening girdle, and she will walk by some junker car and one instant, no warning, Glyn is Glynereens. She’s Glyndust.” Biserka chortled. “A smart car bomb in a world of sensorwebs! That’s one afternoon’s work!”
Biserka straightened in the hearse’s pew. “So. You can do as I tell you, Radmila, which is easy and good. Or you can try to screw me out of what I want, and I will make you die of grief. You heard that, right? You remember my great plan, right? I don’t have to beat it into you.”
Radmila moaned violently and shook her head.
“It seems that you have something important to say about my plans for our future.”
Radmila nodded.
“It must be really important, with you fussing like that so much.”
Radmila nodded harder.
“Okay, I tell you what. You turn around, give me your hands. Then I cut off the tip of your left little finger. Just the tip, not all of it! Then I take that tape off your mouth and you tell me about your objections. Your crucial input is at least that important, right?”
Radmila shook her head.
“Oh, so it’s not so important! I thought so. So: Now I tape your eyes shut. Before I kick you out of this car. Duct tape! It’s wonderful! It holds the whole universe together.”
Biserka undid the brass buckles on a splendid travel bag. She pawed inside it. Her bag held flat black rubber sandals, a sports bra, cotton pants, athletic socks, panties, an arsenal of fancy toiletries, sunglasses, tampons, chewing gum, a host of pills, and a long black rubber shotgun.
Biserka shook the bag upside down and mourned. “Oh, I left my duct tape back at my blackspot. Because I used it there. What a shame.”
There was a loud thump on the roof of the rolling hearse.
“Okay, I didn’t like that. Something hit the car. That was bad.”
Radmila rolled her eyes upward, then crinkled her brows and hunched her shoulders in silent laughter.
“All right, what?” Biserka shouted. “What?” She tucked her nailed fingers into Radmila’s cheek and ripped the tape from her face. “Tell me now.”
Radmila worked her sore jaws.
“All right, what? What hit the car? Tell me.”
“That was nothing. It was a bird.”
“That was a lie! You lied to me.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Biserka. You don’t scare me. You have killed me with the shame of what you’ve done, I will never face my Family again, I will never work in this town again … But you are small and weak. You have no business here. I never did anything to you.”
“You EXISTED!” Biserka shrieked. “Everybody who isn’t on a desert island knows I look like ‘Mila Montalban’!” She slapped the wrinkled tape back onto Radmila’s lips. Being rumpled, the duct tape failed to stick well.
Biserka opened the window of the hearse. Snakelike, she jammed her skinny torso through it, then made a desperate lunge.
She came back with a toy gripped in her hand: a flying toy made of foamed propellers and plastic blocks and nakedly exposed circuits.
“I know what this is. I used to see a lot of these.”
Radmila kept her face still. She’d never seen a flying spyplane of quite this type before, but she certainly knew what it was. Some fan had built that.
There were networks of those fans out there, happy little voyeur perverts who would swap their recipes for making spy toys and then share their spy photographs. The fans were scum. But there were always some of them around. Like mice: If you saw one, it meant a hundred.
“This one doesn’t even have a gun,” Biserka scoffed. “All it’s got is stupid pirate media and big googly eyes!” She opened the hearse, stuck the toy airplane out, and smashed it in the slamming door. Cheap plastic parts flew everywhere. A broken wad of them landed in Radmila’s lap. They were commodity pieces that had cost a few cents in a hardware store, and they’d been stuck together with hot-glue. A sloppy job. Some kid. Some fan kid with a kit-part and a bunch of other fans to egg him on.
One blurry picture, one snapshot … of a major star tied in bondage in her underwear. With a coffin, in the back of a hearse … Some fan spy must have seen that image, for at least a few seconds, a few hundred frames of stolen video.
An image like that would spread from fan to fan like ink on a towel.
So all this would be over. Not yet, but everything had to end. Those little pirate kids on networks—they’d even destroyed the movies.
Radmila stared out the window.
“Okay, princess, just for that, we go back to the safe house! No freedom for you! I wanted you free to carry my message, but now I keep you!”
Twenty minutes passed, in which Radmila said nothing. She had already lost everything.
Biserka had no safe house anymore. Her blackspot safe house was on fire. Rocket flares were flying. The glare of flames lit the dark interior of the hearse. The flames backlit capering figures, running, dancing.
“Oh Lionel, Lionel, that gangster bad boy … that tasty morsel, Lionel,” mourned Biserka. “I had such plans and hopes for him. Now he’s found my hideout and I want to kill myself. I think I will. Right now! I will ignite this hearse and I will blow both of us into little pieces and there won’t be anything left here but a cloud of your own DNA.”
