Service

Waycolle and Rawcliffe had been chasing the Senator’s loose hound when Helen left with the matador last evening.  In a meaner spirit than usual, the Senator had again called their competency into question and threatened to remove them from the service.  But they hadn’t been fired, so their night was spent tracking the lovers down.  They’d driven all around the Baltimore area until they got a tip they couldn’t ignore.  Now they were sitting in their black sedan parked across from the drowsy Grand Hotel of Columbia, staring at the row of glass entrances below the unlit windows set in colorless concrete. Waycolle shifted his gaze to the small yellow light on the handle of the Taser plugged into the cigarette lighter.  His taser; Rawcliffe had broken hers over the head of a thug last week when its charges hadn’t put him down.  He looked to her.  Her gaze was focused on the building, though her left hand remained steady on the steering wheel as though prepared to veer away at the last second.“They’re Spanish, right?”Rawcliffe’s jacket rustled as she lifted her shoulders slightly and let them drop.  The charcoal suit coat’s sound ruled the car for a few seconds before Waycolle spoke again.“How much do you know about matadors?”“Nothing.”Waycolle dropped back in his seat, eyes falling back to the little yellow light that seemed to be warning him of a war he had grown weary of.  To break from those thoughts he looked to the hotel ahead.  He choked his tie closer to his meaty neck, checked the morning left on his watch, then turned back to Rawcliffe.“But most of them aren’t French.”Rawcliffe had nothing to say.  She had the same information he did: the matador was invited by some film star or other in the area, their party was invited to the Senator’s party, Helen had taken off with him while they were chasing Sparky.  And he was French.  Waycolle hoped she might have a fresh insight as she sometimes did, but when she answered it was to end the conversation.“Yes.”The passenger window caught his breath in a cloud of condensation, reminding him of better times on colder days.  He wondered what would happen this time: if the lover would fight, if Helen would cry, if she would beg for them to just let her be.  Some higher ups called the Senator the hardest man in Washington, long before Cheney showed up.  At home he was even worse.  Waycolle used to curse his assignment detail.  He didn’t know how Rawcliffe handled it.  He just breathed.  His service was protection, and this service had been stretched by the senator’s demands.  “Today.  It’s going to be different.” Rawcliffe seldom let him know what she thought, but she was doing so now.  Her words were hesitant, careful, as if she was being mindful of the vehicle’s 24 hour surveillance equipment.“You want it to happen today?” Waycolle replied.“Yes.”He knew he shouldn’t say it, but it fell out of his mouth like stone through silent water.“We should have done it sooner.”There was a pause before Rawcliffe responded.  When she did it was with her typical soldier’s remove. “That’s on us.”He hoped it had been hard to her to find that composure.  From the reflection in the window, Waycolle watched the yellow light on the Taser’s matte black handle flash to green.  “It’s charged,” he announced as he turned away from Rawcliffe picking it up, turning instead to open the car door.  As he shifted he was reminded of his cologne, the one that helped him talk people down in bad situations.  It was a superstition, but as he stepped out of the car he hoped it would help him this time.The pair crossed the early morning traffic to the sunnier side of the street.  Rawcliffe was taller than Waycolle, around 5’10” with long brunette hair she wore wrapped in a tight bun.  Her cheekbones were thrust high on her face like the pommels of claymores, their blades meeting at her pointed chin.  Waycolle, 5’7” or 5’8”, sported a baldhead and meaty face that matched his bulldog body type.  They both wore sunglasses and matching suits which did not brighten as they moved from shadow into sunlight.  The hotel staff did not notice them as they entered and would pretend to forget them when they stepped into the elevator and out of sight.  The pair had made many trips like this, and knew that the ride from the lobby to the top floor was never longer than 2 minutes.  They spent this time silently staring at their tainted reflections in the gold metal of the elevator door.A blend of almond and vanilla that smelled of status or the concealment of its calamity’s stretched from the carpet into their nostrils as the walked to the room.  Below the dull hum of the hall lights, Rawcliffe was knocking her teeth together.“Rawcliffe,” he called to her in a low register as they strode past the swirls of beige, green, and sand that coated the walls. “You’re grinding your teeth.”Her jaw clenched once more, then stopped.  She nodded but continued down the hall, as if her primary mechanical functions were the only matter on her mind.  They arrived at room 3214 just as a hotel staff member rolled up from the opposite direction with a white clothed meal cart.  Rawcliffe stared at the hotel employee through black lenses and wordlessly rapped on the door.“Who is it?” a female voice called from the room.“Rawcliffe and Waycolle, Ma’am.”Their answer was met with silence.  The room service boy looked about to say something, but under Rawcliffe’s stare he shrank away from the door and back down the hall.  The two remained still as they listened to the hotel’s quiet morning hours.  Rawcliffe stood, statue of war before the door while Waycolle leaned his back on a swathe of thick burgundy wallpaper and scuffed his shoes against the black and gold carpet.“Think she told him who she is?” Waycolle asked.“She tells all of them.  She has to.” Rawcliffe replied without hesitation.They had no way of knowing this.  Of all the lovers they’d marched in on, less than half of them remained in bed or stood aside as the agents did their job.  In fact, most of them ran out of the room, scared children fleeing from hostile kidnappers.  But arguing was pointless, so Waycolle tuned into the electric buzz of the florescent hall lights, and, just below that, sounds from the room.  From inside, a man’s voice murmured something he couldn’t quiet make out.  Helen’s voice came again.“If I don’t open it, they’ll find a way to open it themselves.”The door fell into the room, and there was Helen, blonde haired with a slightly crooked nose, downcast brown eyes, wrapped in deep red bed sheets, standing just beyond the light of the hall stretching through the doorframe.“Come in.”The woman retreated into the dark hotel room as Rawcliffe and Waycolle entered.  Waycolle closed the door and turned to his partner.  In the dim bottleneck of the room Rawcliffe motioned she would check the bathroom immediately to the right of the entrance.  He gestured that he would follow the Senator’s wife.  Walking into the bedroom he nearly tripped over the bottles on the floor.  The scent of spilled wine, sweet and dry, filled his nostrils as he stepped around first the party reminders, then the piles of clothes to the drawn shades a few paces away.  He pulled them open and looked to the light filled room.The off white walls and sand colored carpet soaked in the light without reaction, as did the mountain of tan luggage in the near corner.  The olive green lounge chair seating a terrier sized lady’s purse, the imitation oak end table, and the matching dresser on the opposite wall did not blink, nor did the king sized bed with its rose-colored bed sheets and inflated pillows.  The man in the bed, however, began cursing in his guttural language.  He shielded his eyes and jumped from the bed towards the window.Waycolle stood in the clearly naked matador’s path, stopping him a few steps from the shades.  The matador blinked the eyes in the folds of his confusion-wrinkled face as he tried to see the man preventing him from blocking the sun’s bright agony.  He said something angrily in French.  Waycolle remained rooted as he responded.“Sir, I understand French is your native language, but it will be best for everyone here if you speak in English.  Please act civilly or Agent Rawcliffe and myself will be forced to restrain you.”The matador laughed as if this was a joke he didn’t understand, but was playing along with.  The laugh ended with a cold stare and a movement of his arm, but the man stopped short of action when Helen spoke.  “Please, Paul, he isn’t doing anything wrong.  He’s just confused.” She said this in a worried voice, as if Waycolle might hurt her bull-slaying lover.  She had not said anything since they had entered the room.  She was still standing wrapped in red on the other side of the bed.  Both of the men looked to Helen and saw Rawcliffe enter the room behind her.“We’re not here to quarrel, Ma’am.  We’re just here to get you home.” “Please, take off those sunglasses.  They make you both look so…bad.” Neither of them humored her request as she gathered pieces of her clothes from the floor and continued to speak. “The both of you can relax while I gather my things.  I just ordered room service.  I’ve been so hungry.  Perhaps you’d like some?” “We sent him away, Ma’am.  We’ll be leaving too soon for you to have a meal.  If you need food we can get it when we’re on the road.” Rawcliffe sounded as though she was reminding Helen of something.“What is it this time?  Does Henry have another event I’ve forgotten?”“We’ll tell you in the car, Ma’am.  For now, if you’d please be prompt, we have to get you home.”“Oh,” she said like a balloon losing helium, the air slipping out of her in a long sigh as she sat on the edge of the bed, her feet hovering just above the ground, not intent on settling back down.  The matador, who’d been watching from the opposite side of the room, now moved onto the bed with her and nuzzled her neck with his unshaven chin.“Mademoiselle, don’t go.  We have fun, no?”Pulling her head to his, the matador began to kiss her, softy at first, then very passionately.  Waycolle coughed politely, but this did not stop the matador from continuing the no longer private display of affection.  His hands moved to unbind the bed sheets from her body, but then she drew away from him.  Despite this withdrawal, he leaned to her again, this time to whisper for the whole room to hear.“Just stay little longer.”“Sir, we won’t be letting that happen.  We’ll be leaving now.”  Waycolle could tell Rawcliffe was doing less than usual to keep the anger from her voice. “Helen is grown woman, can make decision for her own.  She want, she stay.” The matador said with the smile of a gambler aided by extra cards in each sleeve.  He looked to Helen with the smile, but she was standing up and moving to the bathroom.  The matador jumped from the bed and grabbed her hand.  Holding it with both of his own, he kissed it’s back almost as passionately as he’d kissed her mouth moments ago.  Rawcliffe intervened.“Mademoiselle, ma petite amie—““Stop.”Rawcliffe gripped the man’s arm by the wrist and pushed him away from Helen with her right hand, forming a barrier between the two bodies.  Her voice remained steady as she spoke.“You’re actions are preventing us from leaving.  We will not waste time putting up with your antics any longer.  If you persist I will restrain you.”The matador turned and laughed, a black tone that tossed mockery and spittle into Rawcliffe’s unflinching face.  The man stood taller and more muscled than the secret agent, but inside her suit of pitch, behind her lenses she did not waver.  His hollow mouth smeared into a sneer as he tilted his angular face toward her.  “You think to frighten me?  I fight bulls, I face death every—“ “About that,” Waycolle cut in from behind him. “You’re French?”The matador had to twist his body to look at his questioner.  His face was dripping with the heat of his interrupted comment.  Still he answered in a civil tone.“Oui.”“Then how’d you become a bull fighter?  Isn’t that a Spanish thing?”“To have pride, to have bravery, that is not owned by one country, no?”Helen slipped away to the bathroom as the matador shifted his attentions.  Rawcliffe followed her in and closed the door behind them.“No, but that still doesn’t answer the question,” Waycolle responded, pulling the matador along his thread. “You don’t just fall upon bullfighting as an occupation.  You’re raised with it, right?  Was your father Spanish?  Your grandfather?”“My grandpa was Spanish, but he had no business with bulls.  I am the only one in my family, the proud line of—““Interesting,” Waycolle stated and moved to the windows again, checking the late morning traffic on the street below. The matador hunched over his luggage a few feet away and began to pull out clothes, muttering to himself as he rustled them on.  Waycolle did not know French, but figured it was about their room interruption.  He continued to look out the window until the he heard the bathroom door reopen.  Rawcliffe was stepping out, head down like she was searching the floor for a missing earing.“Could you say what color it is, ma’am?”“White, it was a white cocktail dress,” Helen called from the bathroom.Rawcliffe shoved items with the toe of her black Dockers as she began slowly in on the room.  Waycolle took to looking as well, but, aside from the bottles of wine, a few towels, and the matador’s recently removed clothes he saw nothing.  That left under the bed.He bent down to look, but, when the underside proved too dark, he moved his hand underneath.  Stretched along the underbelly of the standard frame, he felt around until his hand fell upon soft cloth.  He pulled up his arm and with it the white cocktail dress.  It wasn’t white any longer.  At least a glass of red wine had set into the rich fabric and one of the shoulders dangled by the hem where it had been ripped.“Have you found it?” Helen called in a hopeful voice Waycolle did not want to disappoint.  But then she stepped out of the bathroom.“Oh no…” she said, raising her hands to her mouth.She was wearing only the underwear she’d brought into the bathroom.  Her uncovered arms and legs were no secret, but the skin of her abdomen, spotted with brownish bruises the size of fists, made the Matador stand up.  Rawcliffe swept her back into the bathroom, but the matador had seen enough.“She has…” the matador began, then started moving toward the bathroom.Waycolle stepped in front of him, hands open palmed and level with his head.  Words were important now.  He had to be very careful with what he chose to say.  The matador still looked puzzled, like he was piecing together what he’d just seen and not quite sure what to do with it.“The dark…I no see…she…” the matador directed his confusion at Waycolle. “You?  You do this?”Confusion began slipping away as the matador pointed a firm finger to the bathroom.  His eyebrows narrowed and nostrils widened.  He looked like he was ready to charge.  Waycolle spoke softly as he took small steps backward, lengthening the distance between them.“Sir, there are things about Helen you don’t understand.”“No?  What I no understand?”His mind jumped to an article he’d read in the car earlier that morning.“Are you familiar with Pancreatitis?”“Pan-cre-tis?”“Pancreatitis,” Waycolle repeated, “Inflammation of the pancreas.  We’re taking her to an appointment she forgot.”The matador relaxed a little.  His hand fell to his side.  With the language barrier, if something was lost in translation and there was a certain medical term he didn’t understand, surely he would not question it.  Then a light flashed in the matador’s eyes.  He shook his head without moving his eyes from Waycolle.“She no sick.  You LIE.” Hearing his voice shake into steady rage, seeing his eyes grow in anger, Waycolle knew nothing more could be said.  He couldn’t appeal to the man’s public image or his occupation.  The matador began to move forward.“Rawcliffe, code red!” Waycolle announced.Then the matador was at him, pushing him aside.  Waycolle bent his knees to hold his ground, but the matador swung his fist and as Waycolle ducked he slipped away.  As he fell the Matador lunged past, toward the bathroom and Helen, toward the door as it opened and toward Rawcliffe’s figure, Taser outstretched and firing both charges full into his chest.  He halted mid lunge and crumpled to the carpet like a slain beast.“He was just trying to protect me!” Helen cried from the bathroom, but the agents were beyond motivations.Waycolle and Rawcliffe took to moving the unconscious matador to the other side of the room, farthest from Helen’s sight.  Through the exertion Waycolle huffed out his excuse.“I was talking him down, but—”“I know, I know.  I just don’t see how they don’t notice right away.”They set the matador down next to his luggage.  Rawcliff looked to the bathroom and back to Waycolle.“We need some of his clothes.  She can’t leave in what she’s wearing.  The lower profile the better.”They took to the luggage, sorting through bright shirts and stripped pants, digging for unnoticeable in a pile that caught eyes like a spilled bag of skittles.  Waycolle pulled up a light orange shirt and handed it to Rawcliffe, who shrugged, matched it with some tight khakis she’d found and took them to the bathroom.  After a quick change, Rawcliffe and Helen stepped out.“Is that everything, ma’am?”Helen nodded as her eyes shifted to the matador’s feet, still visible behind the bed.“What about your purse?”“Oh, that’s over in the chair by the bed.  I’ll go—“But Waycolle had already picked it up, and pushed it gently into the Helen’s hands.“Thank you,” she said in a whisper to the room.Rawcliffe opened the door to the hallway.  She slipped through first, followed by Helen, and, lastly, Waycolle.  As they stepped out of the room Waycolle thought he heard a sound like the rustle of clothes or a whispered name.  Helen paused just beyond doorway.“Did you hear that?” “It was nothing,” Waycolle lied as he shut the door behind them.“I meant something to that one,” she said quietly in the silent elevator ride.“You’ve meant something to all of them, ma’am.  That won’t prevent us from doing our job.” Rawcliffe replied.“You’re real monsters, you know that!” her sharp words cut their ears, but neither one responded and no one said another word until they reached the car.“Would you like to go somewhere before we return home, ma’am?” Waycolle asked as Rawcliffe started the car.“I would like some breakfast, thanks.” Her tone was weary, like she didn’t care anymore, like she couldn’t be hurt anymore, and was just tired to know the world was still against her.“There’s a place just down the street, Ma’am.  A Perkins I think.  Does that sound good?”Helen nodded slightly.  They drove down Miles Street for a few blocks, then turned right into its parking lot.  The restaurant was just falling off its busy hour and on a Sunday this meant heavy traffic.  They parked and entered with the bell ringing at their ears and breakfast playing at their noses.  “I have to use the bathroom,” she said as they entered.Rawcliffe remained where she stood.  Helen waited for her to turn around and guide her, expected her prompt movement, but she stood rigid and overdressed in the establishment.  Helen looked over to Waycolle, but he pretended not to notice the glance as his eyes roamed the restaurant’s cheap wallpaper, its thin brown carpet of synthetic threads, and sticky surfaced imitation-wood tabletops.  She was still waiting just behind them when the hostess stepped up to the doorway.  “How many is your party?”“Two.” Waycolle replied as he shuffled forward.“Is the woman behind you part of your group?” the hostess asked sweetly as she peaked around them to the blonde woman in the orange shirt.“What woman?”The hostess looked at Rawcliffe, confused by the response.“We’ll be with you in a moment ma’am.” She told the woman behind them as she looked at Rawcliffe and Waycolle strangely. “You two can follow me.”Rawcliffe and Waycolle sat down at the table facing the parking lot.  As they waited for their waitress, Waycolle pretended not to notice the woman wearing an orange shirt and khakis walk through the parking lot and step into a newly arrived taxi.  It was almost as easy as pretending not to notice the door by the dog’s open cage being left ajar.“Do you think she’s safe?” Waycolle murmured as he perused his menu.“As long as we can’t find her,” Rawcliffe replied in a tone Waycolle couldn’t hear as anything but hopeful.