Island of the Sequined Love Nun

matters."
    "Then tell someone who handles international matters."
    "The CIA only handles matters that affect national security, and frankly, I wouldn't embarrass myself by calling them."
    "Fuck it, then. Take me away." Tuck held out his arms to receive handcuffs.
    "Go back to your hotel and get some rest, Mr. Case. There are no outstanding warrants for your arrest."
    "There aren't?" Tuck felt as if he'd been gut-punched.
    "I checked the computer before I brought you in here." Myers stood. "I'll show you out."
    After another cab ride and another truncated telling of his story, Tuck was also shown out of the Japanese embassy. He found a pay phone and soon he had been hung up on by both the American Medical Association and the Council of Methodist Missionaries. He found Sepie curled up on the king-size bed, the television still blaring in the bathroom, three minibottles of vodka empty on the floor. Tuck considered raiding the minibar himself, but when he opened it, he opted for a grapefruit juice instead of gin. Getting hammered wasn't going to take the edge off this time, and at this rate, the money he'd left on deposit at the desk in lieu of a credit card-the money that Sarapul had found in Tuck's pack-would run out in two days.
    He sat down on the bed and stroked Sepie's hair. She had put on mascara while he was out and had made a mess of it. Funny, she'd walked into the hotel wearing one of Tuck's shirts-the first time she'd worn a top in her life-looking very much the little girl and now she had on makeup and was passed out drunk. Tuck had a feeling that coming to America was not going to be easy on either of them. He kissed her on the forehead and she moaned and rolled over. "Perfume tomorrow," she said. "You get me some, okay?"
    "Okay," Tuck said. "A woman who smells good is a woman who feels good." The phrase rattled off the walls of his brain. He snatched up the phone and punched up information. When the operator came on, he said, "Houston, area code 713…"

60 – Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
    Mary Jean sat behind a desk fashioned entirely of rose quartz veined with fool's gold and stared out the window at the Houston skyline. A brown haze had risen to the level of her fiftieth-floor office as the exhaust of a million cars huddled against the stratosphere and curled around the city like a huge rusty cat looking for a place to nap. It just made her mad as a cowpoke wearing bob-wire pants, but not mad enough, of course, to sell her shares of GM and Exxon. Blue chips was blue chips, after all, and the great state of Texas ran on oil.
    The intercom beeped and Mary Jean keyed her speakerphone, not because she needed her hands free to work, but because the phone receiver either got caught in her hairdo or her clip-one rattled against it making all sorts of distracting racket. There'd been a time, before Prozac, when she'd thought for six months that the FBI was tapping her phone line, only to find out it was a pair of twenty-carat ruby cluster earrings banging against the earpiece.
    "Yes, Melanie."
    "Tucker Case on the phone, Mary Jean. He's been calling all day. I've tried to put him off, but he says that people are going to die if you don't talk to him."
    "Does he sound drunk?"
    "No, Ma'am. He sounds serious."
    Mary Jean took a deep breath and looked up at the Monet hanging on the far wall. Twenty million dollars, depreciated as office furnishings, appreciated to twice its value and donated to a museum as a donation writeoff at full value, with no capital gains, and there it would hang until the day of her death when it would go to the museum. And it also matched the couch.
    "Put him through," she said.
    "Mary Jean, it's Tucker."
    "I was just thinking of you. How are you, sweetie?"
    "Mary dean, I'm stone sober and I need you to listen."
    "Go on, Tucker. I got more ears than a cornfield in June."
    "First, I know that there were never any criminal charges filed, and I don't blame you for trying to get me out of the way. But I could really use some help."
    Mary Jean blanched. "Can you hold one second, darlin? Thanks." She pushed the hold button and then the intercom. "Melanie, dear, would you mind bringing me a couple of number five Valiums and a little glass of juice? Thank you." She clicked back to Tuck. "Go on, honey."
    And Tuck did, for fifteen minutes, and when he finished, Mary Jean said, "Well, that's just not right. That's just terrible."
    "Yes, it is, Mary Jean."
    "We just can't have that," she said. "You