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School Daze
There almost wasn’t enough duct tape. But by the time any of the Candy Gang members had regained consciousness, Marsha and Cardinal had the three of them taped together on the mattress.
They waited. After a few pregnant minutes, Marsha went over to the sink to wash off the sweat and compose what was left of her maid outfit. Cardinal figured he might as well make conversation.
“So how’d you know they were going to kidnap me?”
In the mirror, the reflection of her face looked up at him from the sink basin. A huge crack down the middle of it made it look like she had two cleavage lines. “I didn’t. I was going to the prison to pick up some papers for my memoir. It must have been right after the time they released you.” She splashed some water on her face and toweled it off. “As I was arriving, I saw the helicopter chasing you. I started chasing the chopper, and then saw the blast. I followed you here.”
Cardinal sniffed. “Everybody is writing a memoir these days.”
The brown-haired girl woke up first.
“So, are you going to tell us who sent you?” Marsha leaned very close.
“Do I look like a snitch to you?”
Marsha stood up and walked across the room, taking her swaying hips along for the ride. “Fine, “ she said. “Do you know what I did before I worked as a public defender? I worked for the Vice President’s anti-terrorism office. Helped write the Gitmo handbook.” She found her purse, slung some time ago into a corner, and pulled out a soft cover manual with Dick Cheney’s face on it. Dick was dressed in a sharp pinstripe suit with a lethal red tie, arms crossing his chest; he had a .38 in one hand, a pair of nunchucks in the other. “We’ll be working through this sucker cover to cover. Could be an all-nighter.”
She carries around a torture manual, Cardinal thought, impressed. Perhaps the Kama Sutra’s in there too.
Candy’s eyes opened wide. “All right, all right. I don’t get paid enough to put up with this.”
“So?”
“We work for the Department of Education, as you seem to have figured out. We are part of the Pornstar Rehabilitiation and Improvement Commission, or PRIC. It’s a faith-based initiative. The idea is to gradually rehab porn stars by getting them gainful employment.”
PRIC, eh? Now that she mentioned it, Cardinal seemed to recall the face of the redhead from Harry’s Putter and the Socket of Fire.
“You rehab from a porn career as scantily clad waitress at Chester’s?”
“It’s a graduated program. You start out at a strip club, them move up to Chester’s, then the weekend weather girl, then, if you do well, it’s on to become eithera TV news analyst or a spokesperson for the Justice Department.”
“And what does this have to do with John Cardinal? Why did you pick him up?”
“Our program director from Iowa told us to do it. He gives us missions like this every once in a while. He likes to call himself Deep Throat, but we know his name is Lawton Stone.”
Cardinal finally spoke up. “Lawton Stone? Sounds like a porn name to me.”
“No, I found his name in the Republican Party donor rolls. He’s a real guy.”
A real guy who gets paid to recruit porn actresses to serve as federal operatives. Cardinal clenched his jaw in disgust. Republican slugs. When he did that for the Clinton administration, no one paid him a dime.
Marsha stuck to the program. “What were you supposed to do with John once you got him?”
“Deliver him to the office in Des Moines.”
Marsha turned and looked at Cardinal. “Well, Johnny C, it looks like we need to pay Mr. Stone a visit.”
“I’m up for it.”
They started for the door, when Candy spoke again. “So what are you going to do, leave us here to die?”
Marsha paused. Without answering, she opened up her purse and fished out an old piece of beef jerky. She took the wrapper off and shoved it between the layers of duct tape that bound the Candy Gang together. The she kicked the wall hard near one of the holes that had been kicked out in the fight. A large gray rat jumped out.
“The rat will eat through the tape to get to the jerky. Just don’t talk or move around too much or he might chew through your face too.”
They headed out the door and back to Marsha’s car. As soon as they were in the car, Cardinal cleared his throat. “Oh, uh, by the way, I was wondering if you could spot me the cash for a plane ticket. I emptied my bank account paying your legal fees.”
Next Chapter: Filler on Flight 249