Hitman Melodies Section 4

IV.
Maddy went straight to the men's john and started picking off plastic pimples. She figured she had five minutes. She knew when he pulled out the glove, he was on to her, and wondered why he hadn't taken her right then. "I guess my disguise was pretty good," she giggled, taking out padding and peeling rubber off her nose. Her evening gown was stashed in the last stall, and within seconds she was admiring her pneumatic bosom in the mirror, getting the emerald broach just right. She wouldn't insult him by trying to run a wire, but she couldn't meet him face to face without a self-conscious display of her signature logo. When they met (and they would meet) she would need every ounce of personality she could gain to entice his interest in her, and buy time.
She didn't figure he would fall for the poison birthday card (damn those gloves! maybe latex on her hands would have worked?), but she had to make an opening gambit with potential disaster written on it to show him she was serious. Her second move was going to be much more dangerous. She knew he would be down momentarily (he might be outside the door right now), but she had to let him catch her just at the front doors. She had to lead him out that way because she had a cop stashed on the steps.
Just ten minutes ago, she had reported a mugging and asked for a patrol car to come down at once. She had maneuvered a passing beat cop (lucky break, that) over to the front of the Met, hysterically describing a thin, hollow-cheeked man in an opera cape who had assaulted her, ("Look at my eye, ow,") and took her purse. "He just ran around the corner there. No, over there. I have to go in here for a minute, I want to see what he did to my eye." (Put dark make-up on it?) "I'll be right back. Wait for me." She ran into the lobby of the Met (she had her ticket in hand, seat up in the gallery) before the cop could react, and in about 90 seconds she was in the men's bathroom. (The 1st act was well under way, there were no men in there.) Quickly off with the dress (and furs, yes, and jewelry, and the black eye), on with the pimples, and in two minutes she was gingerly skipping upstairs in thick glasses and a pillbox hat, sporting a birthday card, held at a distance, in a gloved hand.
The whole operation had taken less than seven minutes. She was extremely lucky with the timing--she might have been off by two or three minutes, if that extra cop hadn't entered the picture. Now she had potentially three cops waiting outside, not knowing that in a few minutes she was going to yell, "Rape! Help, he's got a pistol!", and they were going to obligingly gun down Sebastian Chronic for her. It could work. Timing was everything.
In the bellboy outfit she had practically hopped up the stairs; now, in her slinky, low-cut gown, that glittering emerald fringed with fake mink, she glided out of the men's room; but not a leasurely glide--a firm, skateboard-like sweep that covered the distance without appearing rushed. She didn't see him. She's slackened her pace. She sees the cop through the glass wall. He is pacing and pissed. Good. "Still no Chronic. Is that the police car? Great. I'm almost there--ten feet from the door. Here's Chronic coming out of the elevator, his cape draped over his arm. Perfect. Here I go."
She was being carried to the door just ahead of him on the current of her self-created flow, and would have timed it perfectly except--Sebastian is a master of timing, too. With a flourish, he twirls his cape off his arm and over his shoulder. CRASH. Sebastian's cape just knocked over a huge rack of Metropolitan Opera pamphlets. They're everywhere. Maddy involuntarily turns and looks back at the ushers' fluttering outcry. That turn cost her the game, because in that two second interval, Sebastian used the diversion to cover the distance between the counter and the revolving glass door.
"Hello, Mr. Chronic. I was just waiting for you. I'd like to--"
He spun her deftly toward the door, and stuck his hand into her mink. "You know what I'm digging into your back right now?"
"It feels like a ball point pen."
"Strike two, Miss College Bowl birthday card," he hissed. "You're talking to Sebastian Chronic, infamous underworld figure, who does not bargain, and who does not bluff. I'm holding a syringe of plaxenated-poly-hypo-cystic plasma. At the moment the needle is retracted, but one deft motion of my thumb sends enough of this stuff into your spinal cord to arrest your heartbeat for two hours, about one hour and fifty-eight minutes longer than the rest of your life. Now feel this," (he jabs her viciously, she snarls and pouts), "and ask yourself if you really thought Sebastian Chronic was going to come out on the job armed with nothing but a ball point pen."
"Mr. Chronic, I think we have a misunder--."
"Miss High--that's right, into the spinning door--we have about 15 seconds before interfacing with New York's Finest. Would you rather waste it on bad acting, or listen to the man who holds your life in his hands? Now hush." She hushed--grimaced and hushed. "I can see your plan, and although it never had more than a 30% chance of success, it still shows strength of purpose, character. I admire that. But right now, we are going outside, and you are getting rid of that flatfoot. Then, you and I are going back into the opera house and listening to La Boheme. Or, we could dance through the Pearly Gates together."
They were outside.
"Ma'am, what's the big idea leaving--? Hey, your eye looks a lot better."
Oops.
"Is this the guy in the cape?"
"No officer, this is--."
Sebastian swung her around in a dramatic tango sweep. "She's my ball and chain, officer Krupke," he sang. He pranced a circular two-step around the blur-faced blue. "We just came to the opera from a Fred Astaire movie, if you can believe that! I wanted to be on time, she wanted to dry her nails, so what happens? I leave her alone in a cab for 15 minutes and she loses her wallet. What a great town. You like opera, Sergeant Krupke? You think--."
"McElvoy--."
"McElvoy--you think Fred Astaire and Puccini make a pair, in their underwear, don't stare, yes, I'm very civilizedly, opera house drunk. You ever had opera house champagne, Officer Krup-McElvoy? No champagne, no gain! Our swains commend it. Hey Offishr Krp--."
"Ma'am, you wanta--here's my back-up now, hi Lou, we got a phantom of the opera house purse snatcher somewhere around here, and--."
"Officer McElvoy, I'm calmed down now," she panted, "and I think I'll come over to the station later and fill out the report forms. Right now, we're going in--we don't want to miss any more of the opera--."
"You and your fucking nails," asided Sebastian. "I ask you what kind of a dumb bimbo polishes her nails in a fucking taxi cab on the way to La Boheme? It's so--bourgeois!"
"and my hubby here has been looking forward to this for a good 45 minutes, which is longer than he looks forward to most things," (yank, yank) she was flowing into the part, "Thank you, good night."
"Hey, wait a minute--." Mr. New York's Finest never gets to finish a sentence.
They turn.
"Ma'am--"
"Keep walking," a sober-hissing Chronic jabs and jerks, weaves for the cops. Back through the revolving glass door. Krupke's protests are muffled now. The Keystone Cops try to catch up with them, but they get tangled in the revolving door. Ten steps to the elevator's warm ding, and they are away, cops slipping and sliding on opera house brochures. In two minutes they are sitting in his box, she on the rail, he directly behind. Just in time for the septet.
"Mr. Chronic," she whispers over her shoulder.
He leans over her ear. "I know at least fifty ways to break your neck and throw you in the official Metropolitan Opera Dumpster, so turn around and shut up."
"What were you sticking in my back?"
"A ball point pen."
"I thought so."
"But I've got plenty of real fire-power aimed at your head, now, so don't test me."
"Of course."
Silence. Down on the stage, Musetta flirts and fumes. Rodolfo rises and beckons to Mimi.
Sebastian leans forward again. "Out of idle curiosity--what was written on the card?" he whispers.
"The Dies Irae."
"Ah." Pause. "Gregorian or Byzantine version?"
"New Catholic, American translation."
"Ah. Here comes the high note."

Marcello the painter sings the only really good high note in the act, although everybody gets a piece of it at the climax of the septet. Here comes the parade. Mimi follows her friends off stage, her thin cotton dress translucent in the dimming lights, a vision of spring, swaying against the martial music.