Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks Read online

  “I love horses, too!” exclaimed Jessica. “I’ve got a whole stable full.”

  “So did Catherine,” chuckled Towers, his eyes twinkling.

  Jasper von der Stadt swilled his champagne and reached for another glass.

  Trudy followed, amused, checking out the merchandise as she did so. The amber panels were baroque elegance with all sorts of interesting details as you looked closer, depicting things like angels, double-headed eagles, mermen riding dolphins, soldiers supporting crowns while holding the severed heads of giants, amber intaglios carved with lions, an intaglio landscape of a boat sailing up to some city with a German-style cathedral, and even more glorious garlands of cherry amber carved and wreathed like laurels. But while it would have been child’s play to pop out any of the individual pieces, or even a whole mosaic, it would be a pain to piece back together at home.

  There were also the two paintings by the windows and various ornaments of ormolu—swans, reclining muses, yet more cherubs—which were all equally lovely, but the paintings were on panel instead of canvas and too big to fit in her purse, even if she popped them out of the frames, and the ormolu looked heavy. Plus there were the four Florentine mosaics. Trudy checked them all out and realized they were on the theme of the Five Senses: Sight, Sound, Taste, and lastly Touch & Smell, together on one panel.

  Trudy rather fancied that one. It depicted two couples double-dating with their dogs by the fountain of some castle’s scenic overlook, one man plucking roses for his lady to smell from an architectural urn, the other couple touching each other’s faces just before they started necking, with their dogs combining both touch and smell because one of them was sniffing the other one’s butt. There was also a bust of Pan in the background. It was more than a trifle kitsch, but it was made out of jewels, and good enough for Catherine the Great was good enough for her.

  But there was still no way she was getting it into her purse.

  Trudy wondered if Duncan Towers had also procured Catherine the Great’s erotic furniture collection. It wouldn’t be on display in the Amber Room, of course—it would be in a different chamber requiring a private invitation from Towers at the very least—but she’d seen pictures and heard rumors of what had become of it after the war. If a bunch of corrupt Soviet officials were going to secretly fire sale the Amber Room and other imperialist treasures of their crumbling empire, why not throw in Cathy’s kinky dick table and the armchairs with the nymphs and satyrs going down on one another?

  But the Republicans couldn’t waffle on about Forces of Democracy or Safekeeping the Treasures of Humanity from the Horrors of War with that like they had with the Amber Room. If a Democrat had done questionable horse trading, backroom deals, and possibly favors for the KGB in exchange for art treasures, the GOP would tar and feather him. But when one of their own did? Then that was fine, so long as the porn stayed in the back room.

  As for souvenirs of the regular Bush campaign fund-raiser dinner, better choices were the two dozen amber knickknacks on display as centerpieces on the tables about the room: a crown of cherry amber on a butterscotch pillow, a fancy Russian Easter egg with an imperial eagle on top, a music box, an ornate jewelry chest, a bowl of fruit, a frothing sculpted overflowing beer stein, a pillared mantel clock, a tiny German cathedral, a tiny Russian cathedral, a beehive with bees, an owl, a model ship, a vase with roses, a Chinese foo dog, an orange tabby cat, a toad, a tortoise, a toy troika, a samovar, a carp, a bull, an apple tree, a bunch of grapes, and a statuette of three naked dancing nymphs. Trudy guessed the last were meant to represent the Three Graces, the classic classical art excuse for pinup girls. But they were all still bulky and it was almost impossible to pick just one. Fortunately Trudy had time to make her selection.

  “Here,” said Duncan Towers loudly from the top of the room, “let me show you my favorite piece.” Trudy perked her ears and hurried over to the table where the model ship rested. It was lovingly detailed, the planks fashioned from dark brown amber, the brass fittings in opaque butterscotch, even cunningly carved little bits of rare green amber used to make the seaweed snagged on the tiny anchor and the tail of the mermaid figurehead.

  In keeping with the sensibilities of her eighteenth-century origins, the mermaid was topless. In keeping with Towers’s sensibilities, he fingered and fondled her breasts as he picked up the ship and brought it closer so everyone could see. “There’s a secret catch here.” Towers had strangely small hands for such a tall man. He fingered the mermaid lower, and more obscenely, but then a music box tune began to play “Ach, du lieber Augustin” or “Did You Ever See a Lassie?” depending on whether your frame of reference was German or Scottish. The ship began to roll this way and that way on hidden wheels, pitching around on unseen waves, the little gold amber cannons going up and down out the cannon ports, the ship occasionally spinning around completely to point in a different direction.

  “Isn’t this the best thing ever?” asked Towers. “It was meant as a drinking game, an old version of spin the bottle. Whomever the ship ended up pointing to had to take a drink.”

  The ship finished its tune and ended up pointed at Jessica von der Stadt as a little black-and-white amber Jolly Roger hidden in the crow’s nest popped up to the tip of the mast. “It’s a pirate ship!” she exclaimed in delight. “Daddy, it’s just the right size for all my pets, too.”

  “I guess it is, pumpkin.”

  “Look!” Jessica opened the cricket cage and the frightened elephant ran out onto the amber deck, rushing up to the railing and looking down the long distance to the table before letting out a trumpet that sounded like a mouse squeak.

  Duncan Towers made a similar noise.

  “Pumpkin,” Jasper von der Stadt told her nervously, “you should put Timothy back. You shouldn’t touch other people’s toys without asking, and people will be having dinner here. What if he poops?”

  “Timothy will be good,” Jessica promised and almost on cue Timothy wasn’t. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “Tell Mr. Towers.”

  Jessica looked up at the real estate mogul. “I’m sorry, Mr. Towers.”

  “That’s okay,” Towers said uneasily. “Where did you get a tiny elephant?”

  “From my ace,” said Jessica, beaming. “Timothy was too big for Santa to fit down the chimney, so Daddy took me to pick him up and let me squinch him little.” Jessica opened her cricket cage and Jasper used his pocket square to help her coax the elephant back inside, then wiped up the miniaturized elephant dung on the deck. “I do it every morning for my pets before I go to school.”

  “They eventually grow back otherwise,” Jasper explained.

  “Such a wonderful power,” Trudy remarked again.

  Duncan Towers did not look like he found it quite so wonderful, and to be fair, neither did Jasper von der Stadt. “So,” prompted Jessica’s father, “you were saying the Russians hid the Amber Room behind wallpaper, but the Nazis found it anyway?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Towers, taking refuge in his spiel, “took it away to Königsberg. Everyone thought it was bombed and burnt up with the castle, but it wasn’t. Nazis just hid it in a dungeon or wine cellar or something. Then Königsberg became Kaliningrad, one thing led to another, and with the mess in the Soviet Union now, an opportunity arose. So I took it.” Towers gestured to the Amber Room. “Isn’t it great?”

  “It is indeed,” agreed a beautiful woman, lithe and fairylike, who almost danced across the parquet floor as she came over to clutch Towers’s arm and rest her head against his shoulder. She was wearing an expertly styled and fitted honey-blond wig done up in an elaborate German braided coiffure, bright gold contact lenses, amber jewelry, and an amber silk gown that looked like something Trudy had spied during Fashion Week. Trudy recognized the woman wearing it from the New York City Ballet. Asta Lenser, better known as Fantasy, was their prima ballerina and star ace, whose dancing fascinated almost every man and some women, too, making her solos the perfect time for Trudy to snatch anything
that had caught her eye.

  “Fantasy!” Trudy exclaimed in delight. This was an unexpected bonus.

  The ace looked at her with a fey mien and an abstracted air that most would put down to artistic temperament, but that Trudy knew, from experience, came from being high. Fantasy’s purse always contained the best drugs. Trudy wondered what was in the amber-beaded clutch the ace had dangling from her left wrist. “Have we met?” the ballerina asked.

  “No,” said Trudy, “but I have season tickets. I’m such a fan of your work.”

  “I am, too,” said David, stepping in front of Trudy. He smelled exactly like a teenager with too much access to too much unlimited champagne. “You’re the hottest woman ever. I know you’ve got a date now, but if you’re free later…”

  Fantasy laughed. “Young man, if you can’t handle your champagne, you’ll never be able to handle me.” She reached for a flute on the tray of a nearby waiter and downed it in one swallow, almost giving head to the glass as she did. “Maybe in a few years.” She set the glass on the tray and licked her gold lips slowly as punctuation.

  David turned red in the way that only pale blonds could. Diane put a hand on his shoulder, kneading his muscles like an experienced courtesan and rolling her eyes only once she’d gotten him away from Fantasy.

  Towers gloated while Fantasy fawned over him, then she said, “Oh, look, Duncan, the other guests are arriving.…”

  Trudy glanced back. Ramshead as doorman ushering in a number of well-heeled Republicans, though not so well-heeled as Latham/Strauss, who must have paid a small fortune for the early access. Diane retreated to Latham and Beth to her husband while Trudy mingled, sipped mineral water, and checked out the jewels the new ladies were wearing, along with the gentlemen’s watches, cuff links, and tux studs. Some nice pieces, but nothing she couldn’t pick up at the ballet or the opera. Or Broadway.

  Trudy watched Aurora swan in, star of Broadway and Hollywood, at least in the early seventies. Her star had dimmed, but her ace hadn’t, the shimmering light of the aurora borealis she generated above herself making the Amber Room glitter and glow even more beautifully around her and security freak out with cries of “Pyro!”

  “No,” she said plaintively, sounding both mystified and hurt as she was surrounded by off-duty police officers young enough to be her sons. “My lights are cold. Harmless. I’m Aurora.”

  They looked back, equally mystified, until one said, “You’re saying you’re an ace with fire-engine red hair who isn’t a pyrokinetic?”

  Aurora touched her signature red-gold hair. It was still lovely, but undoubtedly touched up with dye now. “That was just a movie I was in.” She bit her perfect pouting painted lips. “In the seventies…”

  Security gave one another baffled looks. Then one said, “Wait, weren’t you on Love Boat when I was a kid?”

  Aurora nodded sadly, her diamond bracelets and choker scintillating magnificently, but as Trudy knew from sad experience, Aurora favored cubic zirconias.

  Trudy moved on, accepting an hors d’oeuvre from a passing waiter, a bite of amber-tinted champagne jelly topped with crème fraîche and caviar. She hadn’t figured Aurora for a Republican, but then again, she might be dating one or she was one of the entertainment biz black sheep who’d strayed to the other side of the fence. There were always some. That, or she was just desperate for publicity.

  Trudy didn’t much care. The drugs she’d found in Aurora’s purse in the past were as worthless as her fake diamonds, nothing more interesting than headache pills and birth control. She could keep them and her lackluster career.

  More and more Republicans were coming in and the room was getting crowded. Trudy paused by the little amber corner table built into the bottom right corner of the Amber Room. A tiered dish was placed on it containing amber candies, but thankfully not containing trapped ants or scorpions. Instead, the faux fossils held borage blossoms and other edible flowers. Trudy took one and sucked on it, considering, as she watched the guests stream in.

  Latham had finished with his early meeting with Quayle and moved on to some Republican congressman who’d brought his bored-looking teenage son. The boy was talking with David. “Gary, huh?” said David, snagging champagne flutes for both of them.

  “Yeah,” said the boy, accepting the alcohol and quickly taking a transgressive sip, “but my friends call me ‘Gyro.’”

  Ah, youth … Trudy rolled her eyes and moved on, looking for something more interesting, then spied her just a bit on, over by the mosaic for Sight: Desiree Windermere, the best-selling romance novelist.

  She looked much like she did in her dust-jacket pictures: long dark hair, pale attractive face, daringly low-cut gown, which Trudy envied her still having the youth to pull off. Desiree’s dress for this evening was Renaissance-inspired, using the same color palette and basic form as the one worn by the woman with the telescope in the mosaic, the same coquelicot turban, the same sienna and russet draperies, but reinterpreted with modern twists as something suitable for an autumn formal. She’d accessorized with a full topaz parure of Renaissance design that looked authentic, a vintage Regency net reticule strung with amber beads that matched in color if not in period, and was posing for a photographer wearing a New York Times press pass.

  Trudy stayed out of the shot, as she always tried to, considering. The topaz parure, much as she admired it, was off-limits, since Desiree’s Lady Light novels were some of Trudy’s favorite reads, and if nothing else, she didn’t want to distract the author from delivering the next in the series. They featured Lucia Ravenswood, a beautiful young secret ace and even more secret jewel thief. Every novel she hooked up with some new young swain, usually another ace, who was inevitably revealed as a cad, a fraud, or someone who might be The One except for the fact that he dies at the end in a noble sacrifice.

  Lucia’s powers involved light manipulation, allowing her to dazzle foes, disguise herself with light-bending illusions, and even turn things invisible by displacing their image. Her adventures ranged from the improbable to episodes oddly reminiscent to ones in Trudy’s own life, making her wonder if Desiree was just good at research or dabbled in the business herself.

  Trudy wasn’t the only one. “So,” asked Ernie Martin, “is there a place in your next novel for a handsome police sergeant?”

  “There might be.” Desiree fluttered her lashes coquettishly. “But he’d have to be a villain. Would you mind?”

  “A little.” Ernie grinned his charming grin. “But I’m a cop. I’m used to it.”

  Desiree laughed lightly. “Lucia’s lover for this next book will be Ilya Romanov, last heir of the Romanov dynasty, who seeks the Amber Room so he can cement his claim to the throne when the monarchy is restored. But unlike my other heroes, Ilya’s not going to die. He has to marry someone of royal lineage to remain tsar, so he’s going to be looking at actual princesses. One of Queen Margaret’s daughters, or someone from Sweden, Spain, or the Netherlands. Maybe a princess from Takis. I’m not certain, but it will still be his tragic but noble duty. Lucia will be heartbroken, but she might be able to fall back to a dalliance with the handsome police sergeant.…”

  “So what’s Ilya’s ace?” Ernie asked. “Teleporter?”

  “Oh nothing so common and tawdry.” Desiree waved to dismiss the thought. “Ilya’s fantastically strong, which is common, yes, but he can also step through paintings, and Lucia leaves illusions behind in their place. My only plotting difficulty is I can’t figure out how they can quickly unbolt the Amber Room’s panels without damaging them.”

  Trudy sipped her mineral water rather than rolling her eyes. If Ilya were a teleporter, removing bolts would be child’s play.

  “We hadn’t even considered the Romanovs,” Ernie told Desiree softly as Trudy eavesdropped. “We know about some of the Russians wanting the Amber Room back, and the Germans, too, both East and West, since they want Nazi loot to trade for the art the Russians looted from them. But restoring the monarchy?”


  “It’s happened before,” Desiree pointed out.

  Trudy nibbled her amber candy and moved on. Word on the street was that there were all sorts of players in the game, and not just the West and East Germans and the Russians, but everyone ranging from the Poles to the Sultan of Brunei. The Amber Room was a huge political bargaining chip, and Towers was cementing his claim to it with the power of the GOP.

  The room was getting extremely crowded, guests getting seats at tables because there was hardly room to stand around the edges, and Trudy wondered how many others were here casing the joint. A heist could be done at any time, and Russia, both Germanies, Poland, and who knows what other countries were undoubtedly putting together crack teams of just the right aces with the information their spies fed back, to say nothing of the international art-smuggling rings and private collectors. Trudy felt like a very small bird in a large and vicious flock, but then again, it was the Bush campaign fund-raiser dinner. She knew that when she bought the ticket.

  But a clever magpie might still be able to fly off with a pretty bauble while the big birds fought for the prize.

  She spotted an empty seat at the table with the amber pirate ship, the piece she’d decided to take home. “May I join you?” she asked Beth Strauss with as much grandmotherly sweetness as she could muster, putting a hand on the empty chair opposite her, one chair down, unfortunately next to David. It was the table at the top of the room on the right, the side closest to Towers and the orange side of the chessboard, but thankfully with her back to Towers.

  “Please do,” said Beth.

  Trudy sat down, smiling as she glanced back to the dais behind her. Fantasy sat beside Towers, her goodie bag next to her, at the closest edge of the amber table. Even if Trudy couldn’t snatch the pirate ship, the evening didn’t have to be a total wash. While she made a point of never mixing business with pleasure, once she was safely back home she could indulge as she liked. Plus the goodie bag didn’t have to be a consolation prize either, since both it and the pirate ship would fit in her purse.