Chapter 9

Chapter Nine: Fight or Flight

Michele Bravo retrieved the briefcase from her bathtub, and tossed it onto her bed with a sigh. She undressed, not before taking out the betting slips and giving them a thorough glance. She was up by $3,000, not counting the $1,000 stake from the briefcase she had used. She placed her betting slips beside the case, then went into the bathroom and ran a nice hot bath.

While she waited for the bathtub to fill up, she stood in front of the full-length mirror, performing isometric exercises. She pressed her hands together to strengthen her biceps and triceps, and placed both hands on a wall and tried to press through it, to strengthen her legs.

She slipped slowly into the bathtub, enjoying the feeling of the hot water flowing over her. The bathtubs provided by the Thunder Sky Hotel were luxurious, long and canted nicely at the back to allow the sybarite to relax and soak for as long as they wanted.

Michele smiled as she looked at her nipples bobbing above the water, her flat stomach underneath it. All she needed was some bubble bath, some romantic music, and a man in a dressing gown to complete the picture.

But she had some serious thinking to do.

She had put her quandary out of her mind while playing roulette, but it had sat there, percolating, and now that she was thinking about it directly, her ideas were beginning to come to the forefront.

She was going to give up the Taran Tula persona.

It didn’t matter if the false Mr. Largo were a legitimate criminal go-between (or facilitator, as the technical term was) who had just usurped the real Largo’s mantle, or a police officer of some kind. There was something “hinky” about the situation, to use a term made famous in Tommy Lee Jones’ The Fugitive, and the only safe thing to do was disappear. She must assume that Taran Tula had been “burned,” and she was going to disappear.

It was annoying, obviously. She’d enjoyed the persona. She’d enjoyed the things her persona had gotten to do. But, needs must when the devil vomits into your teacup, as the Blackadder had commented on one memorable occasion.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have other personas. She had two others she could walk into, as well as her “real persona,” that of Michele Bravo.

“Michele Bravo, author,” she murmured. Best-selling author of erotic short-story anthologies.

Had the time come to retire completely? Give up all her personas, give up the job of protecting truth, justice and the American way (in her own inimitable fashion), and become simply Michele Bravo?

She leaned forward and ran some more hot water into the bath.

That perhaps was over-reacting.

But Taran Tula must go.

Michele rose from the tub and dried herself, feeling fresh and clean after absorbing all that cigarette smoke from the casino. She walked into her room and pulled her fat-suit back on, then took the stairs back down to the casino. She didn’t go anywhere near the bay where the roulette table was, but rather a cashier in the opposite wing of the building, so no one could catch sight of her accidently. She cashed in the slips, requesting hundred dollar bills. Once more in her room, she counted out a thousand dollars, and tossed them loose into the briefcase, which she snapped shut.

She was walking away from fifty thousand dollars. Well, hell, she was walking away from a hundred thousand dollars.

“Can’t be helped,” she told herself. “You know it’s the only thing to do.”

She chuckled…if she was really as cold-blooded as the persona she had cultivated, she’d arrange for Amanda Wright (the identity under which she’d both rented a car and registered at this hotel), to have a car accident…one that would incinerate the car and the body within. She could put several packets of one dollar bills into a briefcase and let that burn to a crisp, and in that way be able to keep those fifty thousand dollars.

But that would necessitate having a body to be found in that car as well, and arranging to have such a body was not her style.

“If I was writing a book starring Taran Tula, that’s what she’d do,” Michele murmured, “but since this is real life, and I’m not psychotic, we’re just going to disappear.”

It was 4 am. Pretty early for someone to be checking out of the hotel. But if the false Mr. Largo…or anyone else…were watching her, they would probably think she was in her room for the night. So it was the best time to leave.

She plucked a piece of paper from the nightstand, and using her right hand (she was naturally left handed) she wrote a note. “So sorry. Grandmother died. Have to withdraw from project.”

She wiped her fingerprints from the handle of the briefcase. Then she moved around the hotel room, wiping down everything. She hadn’t touched everything – she’d hardly touched anything – but she always made it a habit to be better safe than sorry.

She pulled on leather driving gloves, then picked up briefcase and her suitcase and went down to the lobby one last time.

“You have a Mr. Largo staying here, don’t you?” she said.

The night clerk punched a few things into his computer. “Yes, ma’am. I can’t give you his room number though. That’s against our policy.”

“No problem at all. I have an emergency at home and need to check out early. Could I impose on you to give this suitcase to him tomorrow? Well, later on today, actually!”

The clerk nodded. “Sure, I’ll put it in the safe down here and leave a note for the day staff to let him know its here.”

“Very good, thank you.”

The clerk printed out her bill, and she paid it in cash – some of her winnings from roulette.

She drove the car to the Minneapolis International Airport, an hour’s drive away. The sun was just rising in the sky when she pulled into the rental car parking lot. She paid that bill, also with cash, and then walked into one of the terminals, carrying her suitcase. She made her way into one of the bathrooms, went into the handicapped stall, and took off her fatsuit, folding it and putting it away in her suitcase,, replacing it with a maroon T-shirt with University of Minnesota emblazoned upon it in gold letters, and maroon shorts. She plucked the blonde wig off her head, and took out the dark brown contacts, and blinked out at the world again with her own natural baby blues.

She then exited the terminal and went into the parking garage, where she caught a bus that took her to downtown Minneapolis. She’d parked her own car at a long-term car lot there. (Even though she’d never expected Mr. Largo to turn out to be a ringer, she believed in covering her tracks. Not only to cover her tracks but also because it amused her to be labyrinthine.)

So this is it, she thought as she drove out of the parking garage in her four-door, silver, ten year-old Toyota Camry. No more Taran Tula.

No hundred thousand dollars.

That was a lot of money to give up.

Perhaps she should do something about that…