Armed and Glamorous Read online

  The man looked him in the eyes. “My name is Martin Hadley and my story”—he straightened his shoulders—“my story is this: I’m a victim of government mind control.”

  “Mind control,” Hunt said, blinking. “Okay. That’s a new one here. Tell me more.”

  “We call it psychotropic terror.” Hadley’s voice was deep and calm. “The cutting edge of insidious governmental harassment and intimidation. So many victims. So few solutions. ”

  Hunt stifled a chuckle. “So you wear tinfoil in your hat to block it out?”

  “Some of us believe that’s effective.” Hadley wore a look of pure martyrdom. “I don’t.”

  “This a setup?” Hunt smirked. “One of the other PIs pay you to come here and yank my chain? Sure, tell me all about this mind control.”

  Mind control? Newhouse gave Lacey a “thumbs-up” sign. His sardonic expression had turned into a huge Cheshire cat grin. He was a cat with an unexpected saucer of cream, and now he could say Lacey Smithsonian had led him right to it. Damon was sitting right next to Hadley, no doubt pondering how best to exploit the poor guy. Some half-baked “exposé” of the “dark government conspiracy” behind the innocent victims of mind control, Lacey thought—and all citing Lacey as an “informed source.” She wanted to roll up a newspaper and smack him over the nose like a bad cat. She shook her head and watched Hunt, who wore his own look of pain. Pained skepticism.

  “That’s right,” Hadley was saying. “Mind control. Your skepticism is understandable, but simply put, agents of the government use a secret technology to broadcast hostile voices into my head and assault me with electromagnetic radiation, causing me pain and anguish. They are ruining my life.”

  “Ah. Right. So you’re here to learn how to bug the buggers? ” Hunt asked. “Or how to contact the mother ship so they can beam you aboard?”

  Edwina laughed again. Damon was writing down every word. Hadley suddenly groaned and grabbed his head. He doubled over in pain. The classroom went silent.

  Chapter 3

  “Are you all right?” Lacey jumped to her feet. Hadley was sweating profusely. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, took a deep breath, and straightened. He looked very pale.

  “I’m fine,” Hadley said. “This happens rather often.”

  “I’m not buying this act.” Hunt folded his arms.

  “Mind control!” Newhouse piped up hopefully. “Would that by any chance happen to be a conspiracy perpetrated by the United States government?”

  Lacey wondered what Newhouse was up to. If anybody would swallow a cockamamie story like that, she thought, it would be Damon Newhouse of DeadFed dot com. Maybe he’d planted this guy in the class? No, she thought his look of happy wonderment at stumbling upon this potential story seemed genuine.

  “That’s right,” Hadley sighed. “Our own government. And by the way, I don’t particularly care if any of you believe me.”

  Hunt made an elaborate display of eyeball rolling.

  Hadley might or might not be crazy, but Lacey felt for the guy. It was tough to open yourself up to the scorn of strangers and their callous gibes about tinfoil hats. At least he wasn’t a crime of fashion, accessorized with Reynolds Wrap like a meat loaf ready for the oven.

  “I’ve read about mind control,” Damon said. “But so far, no one’s been able to prove anything conclusively. I’d be very interested in talking to a real TI, a ‘Targeted Individual. ’ Isn’t that your terminology?”

  “Yes,” Hadley said. “I’m a TI. There are many of us.”

  “You don’t say.” Their instructor looked nonplussed. He pressed his lips together and glanced at the clock on the wall. His expression said, I get all the nutcases.

  “It’s not a comedy routine. There are thousands of us,” Hadley said in a near monotone.

  “Then what do you expect to get out of this class?”

  “Maybe nothing.” Hadley’s gaze was level. “Or maybe some ideas about how to investigate this mess I’m in. Find the bastards behind this. Ask them why, why me, what they want from me. That’s all.” He sounded calm and lucid. He wasn’t twitching or drooling. And he didn’t appear to be listening to disembodied voices. Or was he?

  Lacey wanted to laugh, but the man’s dignified carriage and serious expression stopped her. She noticed Damon slipping his card to the man. Hadley looked at it blankly and then at Newhouse.

  “I’m not laughing, man,” Newhouse said. “I’d like to talk to you. Maybe we could put your story on the Web. Let people decide for themselves.” Hadley nodded.

  A new conspiracy for Damon! A victim willing to talk! Go Hadley! This might be a promising development, Lacey thought. Maybe Hadley would keep Damon Newhouse busy and she could get through this PI course without having him Velcroed to her side.

  “What’s it like?” Newhouse asked Hadley.

  “There are voices. They come and go.”

  “Are they talking to you now? What are they saying?”

  “That you all think I’m nuts. Particularly Mr. Hunt.” The glare Hadley sent Hunt’s way sent a chill up Lacey’s spine. She made a mental note not to cross him. “That I’m a fool to be here.”

  “It’s okay.” Newhouse clapped the man on the shoulder. “I hear that all the time too. Anyway, we’re all fools sometimes. ”

  “No one believes me.” Hadley rubbed his temples in circular motions with his middle fingers. “That’s his mantra today.” Lacey was inclined to agree with the mysterious unheard voices. Hadley shut his eyes and grimaced. “He’s laughing. I hate it when they laugh at me.” Everyone stared at the man.

  “No one here is laughing,” Damon said. The others, however, were rolling eyes at each other and making faces.

  Hunt glanced at the clock and looked relieved. He clapped his hands. “Fun is fun, boys and girls, but it’s break time. Take ten. Make it twenty. Be ready to work when we come back.” He shook his head, trudged down the hall to his office, and slammed the door.

  Lacey slipped off to the ladies’ room. The stalls were painted a depressing shade of brown, and she looked green under the room’s fluorescent light. She needed a splash of makeup to combat the gray day and the beige classroom and Martin Hadley’s scary but strangely flat story. She pulled her blush compact from her purse.

  “Good God! Who decorated this hovel?” Edwina strode through the door, inspecting her manicure. She fished in her bag for lipstick. She opened her mouth wide and traced a girlish pink stain on her lips, smeared some on each cheek, and rubbed. “That’s better.” She flashed her perfect nails. “Isn’t this exciting? I’m so glad I picked this class! Everyone is so weird.” She paused and their eyes met in the mirror. “Make that interesting, not weird, and not you, of course, Ms. Smithsonian. But isn’t this fun?”

  “It has its moments.” Lacey dragged a comb through her hair. She didn’t want to indulge in girl talk in the cramped ladies’ room. She wasn’t quite sure how much she liked Edwina Plimpton, the dilettante on sabbatical from her bridge club. It was never a good idea to be too chummy too soon.

  Edwina kept chattering away. Lacey looked for a chance to escape. Willow Raynor, the invisible beige-clad woman, barged through the door and headed for the sink, nearly slamming into them. “Sorry. I just want to wash my hands.” She glanced up at the others and then returned her gaze to the floor. “Sorry.”

  “I was just saying how exciting this whole class is!” Edwina was determined to be chatty, still the Head Girl after all these years. “It’s Willow, isn’t it? Willow’s a pretty name. Don’t you think this is all just so fascinating? And such exotic characters! Like that insane Martin Hadley. And Snake Goldstein with the tattooed neck! My bridge club is going to love this.” Her eyes glowed with pleasure. “Mary Louise will be so jealous. Scuba diving! Ha!”

  “I suppose so.” Willow didn’t seem to want to chat. She washed her hands and face thoroughly and grabbed a handful of paper towels. She pushed her hair off her face, but it fell back into her eyes like
a dirty dust mop.

  “This will make fabulous cocktail conversation.” Edwina smiled at herself in the mirror and powdered her nose. “At least it will once I improve it a little, right girls?”

  “Maybe there’s more coffee in the kitchen,” Lacey said, slipping through the door to make her escape. But she wasn’t fast enough.

  “Coffee! Good idea, Lacey,” Edwina chirped. “We’ll all go.”

  What am I, the scout troop leader? Lacey led the other women down the hall into the small makeshift kitchen, which must have once been a closet. It now had a miniature stove, a small under-the-counter refrigerator, a tiny sink, and a window on the parking lot at kneecap level. Happily, there was a fresh pot of coffee. And, utter bliss, on the gold-speckled Formica countertop sat a box of fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

  Lacey silently thanked Bud Hunt. She assumed the doughnuts were his idea, being an ex-cop. Her growling stomach thanked him too. Edwina and Willow crowded into the kitchen behind her. There was barely room to breathe, let alone pour coffee. Grabbing a chocolate-iced Krispy Kreme doughnut, Lacey scooted into the reception area to have a few moments alone with her doughnut and coffee. She was just congratulating herself on having avoided any fashion chat when Edwina and Willow caught up with her. Edwina zeroed in on Lacey’s vintage burgundy jacket.

  “That’s so nice! And classically tailored! Is it one of the new vintage looks?”

  “No, it’s one of the old vintage looks,” Lacey said. “Late Forties.”

  “Pretty color,” the beige-on-beige Willow mumbled. “I love red.” Lacey nearly choked on her doughnut. “Well, not on me, but—”

  “Lacey, speaking as a fashion expert,” Edwina continued, “what do you think of the spring collections? Are dresses really back for spring? Because I’m a separates kind of gal.” She proudly indicated her own preppy outfit.

  As if I even get to cover the spring collections. It would be a kick to cover the various Fashion Weeks in New York, if the paper would pay her travel expenses. But The Eye was too cheap to send her to New York to cover fashion, an unfamiliar concept in Washington, D.C., the City Fashion Forgot. Besides, the spring collections had been shown the previous fall. Who could remember that far back in Lacey’s crazy fashion world, littered not just with waistlines and hemlines but with bodies? Death and fashion intersected oddly in Lacey’s life.

  “I don’t write much about the big fashion collections, Edwina. I rarely get to leave D.C. Besides, I write for the common woman, which is not to say she’s an unimportant woman. The average Washington woman just needs a little help, a little color, a little confidence.” Lacey took a bite of her doughnut.

  “The common woman? Really?” Edwina’s expression made it clear she didn’t know any “common women.” Edwina was obviously not a reader of Lacey’s “Crimes of Fashion” column in The Eye, Washington’s youngest and least respectable newspaper. Edwina no doubt read The Washington Post, the dowager paper.

  “It sounds very interesting, what you do,” Willow said, carefully stirring her coffee.

  “Not really. Well, sometimes,” Lacey admitted. “By accident. ”

  “I could use that kind of help,” Willow whispered shyly. “A little confidence. I never know what to wear. Maybe sometime you wouldn’t mind talking to me, giving me some fashion hints?”

  Lacey groaned inwardly. She didn’t want to talk fashion, but she also didn’t want to squash this shy woman with rudeness, at least on the first day of class. Lacey wondered what help she could really offer. Beige-on-beige people generally resisted change. Clearly Willow needed some help. Hair, makeup, clothes, style, and judging from her demeanor, perhaps a spine transplant. But Lacey couldn’t give the woman a whole-life makeover.

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked.

  “Your hair looks really pretty.” Willow fingered her own limp and dull locks.

  “Thanks, I owe it all to Stella,” Lacey said. “My stylist.”

  Willow hesitated before lifting her eyes. “Stella. Do you think she might see me?”

  “Why not?” Stella had been known to work miracles. Perhaps Willow had good bones under the pale skin and lips and colorless hair. “I’ll give you her number. She works at Stylettos at Dupont Circle.”

  Lacey found few things as life affirming as a great makeover. She wrote Stella’s information on the back of her business card. Willow took it gratefully, her eyes fixed on the floor.

  Lacey made a break for the classroom with her coffee and the rest of her doughnut. She needed to hear some guy talk after all this girl talk. Snake Goldstein wouldn’t be talking fashion, she was sure of that. The guys would be talking crime or cops or sports. Or cars, or mind control. Guy stuff, anything but fashion. As she entered, Damon Newhouse bumped into her, spilling her coffee on his pants and shoes.

  “Sorry, Lacey. I didn’t get you too, did I? I’m such a klutz. Helps to wear black.” He knew she was irritated by his appearance in her class, but Damon refused to be anything but good-natured, even wet and scalded.

  “Wear your coffee a lot, do you?”

  “Often enough,” he replied, wiping his shoes.

  Lacey checked her clothes for coffee stains. She had escaped without a spot, but now her coffee cup was half empty. Her doughnut was safe, however, which made her feel much better. She sat down in the back of the room. Newhouse followed her. A bit of the men’s conversation drifted past her. Lacey caught something about touchdowns, Hail Mary, the Redskins, and the Super Bowl. She hadn’t missed much.

  “Totally cool class, huh?” Newhouse said. “I can’t believe we’re here together.”

  “Yeah, me neither. How did that happen?” Lacey let her sarcasm drip like spilled coffee.

  “Coincidence?” he offered.

  “What are the odds? You believe in fate, Newhouse?”

  “Absolutely.” Damon ignored her dig. “And what about Martin Hadley, our very own mind control TI? Pretty radical. Crazy stuff, mind control. What a break. And I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Be my guest.” She swirled the last of her coffee in her cup.

  “Golden opportunity, Smithsonian. First day of class too.”

  “You can’t possibly believe him. It’s ridiculous.”

  “I don’t believe or disbelieve,” Newhouse said. “Not my job. But you can’t ignore the thousands of people in this country who claim to be victims.”

  “Sure I can.” I just wish I could ignore you.

  “It’s a massive conspiracy. If the U.S. government isn’t behind it, who could it be?”

  From the vantage point of an experienced journalist in the Nation’s Capital, Lacey firmly believed the government was too incompetent and too inefficient to run a massive conspiracy. A sophisticated secret program to torture Joe and Jane Average Citizen? What was the purpose? Where was the funding? Where were the headquarters? Where was the U.S. Bureau of Mind Control subway stop on the D.C. Metro? Show me the line item in the budget and I’ll believe.

  “You gotta have an open mind, Smithsonian.”

  “No, I don’t. I’m a journalist. I just gotta have the facts.”

  Chapter 4

  Bud Hunt pushed through the knot of PI students with the last cup of coffee in his hand. He left the classroom door open.

  “Break’s over, guys and gals. Take your seats. We’ve got a guest speaker today. It’s a little early in the course to be talking about surveillance, but our guest expert was, um, unexpectedly available today. He’s here and you’re here, so here we are.”

  Hunt waited, sipping his coffee. The class waited. No one entered. Hunt poked his head out the door. “We’re in here! Just leave your stuff in my office. Anytime you’re ready.” He turned back to his students.

  “Surveillance is the art and craft of waiting and watching, ” Hunt said, filling time. “There are many kinds of surveillance: walk-around, vehicle, long-term, short-term, fixed, mobile, overt, covert. Watching someone often means following someone. Some
times you do it while you’re undercover. It’s like acting—you become part of your subject’s universe. Sometimes you just sit in a car and wait and watch and pee in a cup.” He glanced over his shoulder as his guest strode into the classroom. “And this guy can tell you all about it. He’s an expert, and an old pal. They’re all yours, Greg.” Hunt and the new guy grinned at each other and shook hands; then Hunt left and closed the door behind him.

  One glance at Hunt’s so-called surveillance expert and Lacey sat bolt upright. The black ten-gallon Stetson, the bushy mustache, the close-cropped thin blond hair, the sheer size of the man, it all gave him the air of a bronco-busting cowboy from a Western movie, but Lacey knew that was just a cover. The man’s sharp features in his round face were an arresting combination, and his pale blue eyes were unreadable. He threw his big hat on a hook and perched on the desk facing the group for a moment, smiling, not speaking. His gaze crossed Lacey’s face without a flicker of recognition.

  The blue eyes belonged to a man Lacey knew as Gregor Kepelov, an ex-KGB spy and a jewel thief. Or a “jewel recovery specialist.” He was a Russian with an American dream, or so he once told her, and a cosmopolitan love of money. Danger he was not so fond of, but he could be dangerous himself. Gregor Kepelov might not even be his real name. But “Greg”?

  Lacey had met Kepelov in Paris the previous fall, under less than civil circumstances. He was a bitter burr under her saddle on a story that turned out pretty well, no thanks to him. What on earth is going on here? She felt disoriented. What was Gregor Kepelov doing here, teaching surveillance to a private investigation class? In Falls Church, Virginia, of all places?

  “Hello. I am happy to be here today for my friend Bud, to talk with you about surveillance. It is one of my favorite topics, and one of my top skills. My name? I have many names. You may call me Greg.”

  Kepelov may have gone Wild Wild West, Lacey thought, but he still hadn’t lost his slight Russian accent. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that Gregor “Call-me-Greg” Kepelov was still hanging around here under an alias. According to the Spy Museum, there were more spies in Washington, D.C., than anywhere else on earth. Lots of job opportunities for a spy, and he’d been chasing something that had ended up in Washington. She told herself not to be paranoid, that he wasn’t after her. Not again.