The Kincaid Conundrum Pt. 8
Blogger’s Note: The Kincaid Condundrum is a serial novel about Reuben Kincaid III, the son of the Partridge Family’s manager. Reuben Kincaid III is also a rock manager, but, as former Navy Seal and as a man locked in mortal battle with Carlos Jr, the son of the infamous terrorist, this Kincaid is a man and manager apart. You can find previous chapters here.
“Holy fucking shit,” said Suede.
The Taj Mahal, appeared before them. It was a magical, glorious sight, as if Shah Jahan’s miraculous marble memorial to his wife had somehow been air lifted out of Agra and placed at the edge of the Pacific.
“It’s a hologram,” said Reuben Kincaid III, stopping the car.
“Really?”
“You should know. You guys hologrammed the prophet Mohammed just to incite riots in Iran.”
“That’s not true. Those bastards in Savama started that rumor. They did the whole thing and blamed us. Although give them credit, it was a great idea.
“So that was their counter intelligence?”
“Yes. And, yes, I know the joke: The definition of ‘counter intelligence’ is stupidity. Laugher to the tenth power, right?”
“Spy comedy gold,” Kincaid agreed dryly. “Anyway, that’s a hologram. As soon as we start moving, it will disappear. I read about it in a profile on Erique Davide Einstein. He has a ton of hologram patents.”
Kincaid put the car in gear and the drove parallel to the domed building.
“It’s still there,” said Suede.
The road curved down and away fom the coast.
“It’s gone. But that was impressive.”
“Agreed. You better report that one back home.”
“I”m sure we have worked with him already. He’s on our team.”
Kincaid slowed the car down. “Would you look at that?”
The real house was in sight now. A gleaming glass and steel pagoda, five stories high, with each tier angled differently, so that the building seemed to twist in an architectural pirouette.
“He designed it?”
“I believe so.”
“Again: Impressive.”
They drove down and parked. An Asian man in a tux and white gloves approached with two flutes of champagne on a tray. “Welcome,” he said. “Mr. E.D.E. regrets he cannot be here to greet you at this moment. But he will be here shortly. Please, have some Bollinger’s and make yourselves at home.”
They each took a drink and walked up the black marble stairs that led to the entrance. The first floor had deceptively big; high ceilings. Toward the middle of the building were a series of walls hosting massive paintings, a glass elevator, and deco furniture. Kincaid looked out the glass windows and, in the distance, beyond the small paved parking lot that housed his car and a few others, he noticed a man in military green standing on a rectangular clearing, automatic rifle slung on his shoulder. He seemed to be searching the skies.
“This house is definitely not a hologram,” said Suede.
Kincaid smiled. He turned and looked toward the western side of the pagoda, the side with a water view. There was furniture at that end. And there seemed to be someone enjoying the view.
He sipped the chilled champagne and thought he might as well enjoy the day. How much crazier could it get-safari animals, the Taj Mahal, a 100 ft pagoda? Not much.
The back of the head looked familiar.
“Excuse us,” called Reuben. “Mind if we share your view?”
The head turned. Kincaid wondered if E.D/E. had devised another hologram.
It was Monique De Sinaire.
*******
It had always been Monique De Sinaire.
She had been there flitting in the background for decades now. At the clubs, at private parties, in Malibu, in Kauai and Maui, at Compass Point, at Wimbledon, and the Monaco Gran Prix. Where else? Morton’s after the Oscars, court-side at the Forum.
At first she was just this beautiful woman, sometimes attached to a celebrity, sometimes surrounded by a pack of slightly younger beauties. She and Reuben would say hello and offer each other quick smiles. But that was it. There were always others. It was L.A., the land of the endless supply of young women. But everyone Rueben dallied with seemed to know Monique De Sinaire.
And then, after the first invasion of Iraq, they had been at Gray Bradington’s War Party. Large video screens broadcasting the invasion, Peter Arnett gabbing his Kiwi head off on CNN and she was next to him. Close. Drinking champagne, wearing a beige cardigan over a silk camasole. Her eyes, were what he remembered the most: they were shining.
At him.
And bit by bit, night by night, with months in between of no contact, they had had a fifteen year non-relationship. There had been other women, of course. But she, he suspected now, had sent many of them. It was her way of watching him. She had planned it. She was his mistress, but she was his procurer, providing warm-up acts and hand -holders until she chose to deliver her own spellbinding, bewitching personal ministrations.
Kincaid was sweating.
In this age of Kardashian excess, when lingerie had devolved into an unsubtle hybrid of lace, crushed velvet and leatherette Gestapo torture gear, and when women from the land of Pornistan performed permutations of polymorphous perversion that were diamond hard, red hot, and yet soullessly empty at their core, beaming in from a steroid and surgery-fueled the land of fantasy, Monique De Sinaire communicated a more subtle and ancient carnal essence, the kind that knows that there is nothing more alluring to a man than a bra strap on an otherwise naked shoulder in dim light, or a silk chemise silently revealing the marvelous sculpture of a collar bone so that it beckons, almost glowing and calling out in its perfect porcelain frailty to be touched, traced, stroked like a jewel, or a grazed and nuzzled like the rarest, sacred healing fruit, a fruit that to just caress would be a heavenly prelude to an even greater body-quaking beauty and passion than any man had a right to know; yes, that was it: she exuded magnetized languor and provoked unrequited lust; she spoke fluent “go-ahead: impress me” blasé without saying a word, her eyes drew you in and invariably moved on, dismissing you, leaving you to join the trail of so many other men who tried to decode her message only to ultimately misinterpret her poker-faced passivity as interest, thanks to the hypnotized, self-deluded, horn-bone projections fueled by her beauty and her silence and their own mad delusions of adequacy; yes, it was in her blood; she was French.
She looked at him now. He thought there was something in her eyes. Fear? Regret? Guilt? Silent hunger? It was hard to tell; her silence and beauty distorted everything.
He wondered if he should kill her. First he needed find out if she had set him up. He thought back to the night he rescued Yanni. Monique had introduced him to those blonde babes who turned out to be Russian spies. What the hell was she doing with them? He was sure there was a connection to Carlos Jr. Once he confirmed that, he would decide what to do with her. Of course, he noted to himself, there was always the possibility she would kill him first.
He sipped some champagne, studied her dark eyes, looking for a clue and smiled. He hoped she hadn’t really betrayed him. He didn’t want to kill her.
Love was funny that way.
He heard a whirl in the distance. That would be E.D.E. choppering in. Maybe he would learn what the hell was going on. Clarity couldn’t come fast enough.
