Mayday, Mayday

Charles Wu woke up exhausted after his busiest Saturday in a very long time.  First he had needed to plant robotic millipedes in all fifty consulates open Saturday for the World Embassy Tour--thank goodness Angela de la Paz, Apricot Lily, and Camisole Silk had all been available to help.  Then he had arrived as early as possible to the White House Correspondents' Dinner to show off his date:  D.C.'s most beautiful 2-year-old, his very own Buffy Cordelia.  Delia had served her purpose well, disarming even the most guarded and cynical politicians and charming the secrets out of many an influential journalist.  More importantly, she had scored her single father a handful of business cards with private cellphone numbers--numbers he would be able to start phoning as soon as he was able to convince his mother she could go back to Hong Kong.  He rubbed his eyes, remembering that he had made at least one contact he could call immediately--Cokie Roberts had a recommendation for a nanny.

Angela de la Paz, in fact, had done her share of the embassies, but not before sensing a plot to assassinate the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia.  Upon informing him of her special intelligence on the subject, the Ambassador had promptly had her handcuffed, and called the D.C. Police Department to come pick her up for attempted murder.  Even a few months earlier, Angela would have resisted violently, or at least escaped from prison after being locked up, but she no longer felt like a rolling tumbleweed.  She had a son now, and needed to remember there might be consequences:  she had already been at the scene of a suspicious suicide and did not want to become a perpetual person-of-interest to the D.C.P.D.  But after 24 hours with no visit from a lawyer, she was starting to think that using her one phone call on Lynnette Wong might have been a mistake.  Finally, her jail cell was opened, and she was out on bail.

"I'm sorry it took so long to put the cash together," said Wong.  "Are you alright?"

"It's OK----I'm fine."

"What are you gonna do now?"

"I still need to save the Ambassador--that's what my vision told me to do."

"You can't go near that embassy again!"

"I know--I think Apricot Lily will do it for me."

"And then what?  You'll still need a defense at arraignment.  You need Charles to hire you an attorney."

"An attorney?  No, I have enough powers of persuasion--they'll drop the charges."

"Are you sure?  You've never tested your powers like that before."

"I'm sure."

Meanwhile, the police had not been able to arrest anybody for the gun rampage at Bridezilla's [non] wedding to Buddy Lee Trickham, since most of the witnesses had suffered memory impairment from the special tear/nerve gas Glenn Michael Beckmann had tossed during his client's getaway.  The best witness was the cameraman who had been knocked out somewhat earlier by Wince--he was stumbling groggily out of his van when he saw Beckmann and "John Smith" hop into Beckmann's car and zoom out of the parking lot.  But the grogginess prevented him from giving more than a vague description of the car (black SUV) and the two men ("very lumpy white guys").  The wedding guests could barely remember a thing, though Bridezilla herself  distinctly remembered Wince jumping in front of her to take a bullet--while her own fiance', Trickham, had done nothing to save her!  (She didn't know about the slow reflexes of tenured English professors.)

Now here she was, picking up Wince from George Washington University Hospital.  "You're gonna be just fine, honey doodle!  I got all your favorite foods at home, and non-alcoholic beer, and the Wall Street Journal, and "House of Cards" on Netflix, and--"

"You didn't have to do all that."

"Nonsense!  You're a hero, and you deserve all that and MORE!  And I bought a new swimsuit to wear while I'm giving you your sponge baths!"

"How's your fiance' gonna feel about that?"

"We broke up!  I told you at least five times already!  You're the one that took the bullet for me.  Are they sure you only took a bullet in the shoulder, and not in the brain?" she teased.  "You're so forgetful."

"Yeah," Wince said, trying to remember where she lived and what it would look like there.  "Just the shoulder.  I'm just tired."

"You'll feel better after the sponge bath!" she whispered close to his ear, but he seriously doubted that.

Still in the intensive care unit, Chloe Cleavage, former Senator Evermore Breadman, and Prince and Prowling's managing partner were all in stable condition.  "You really dodged a bullet," said the latter (with a willful sense of irony) to Felix Cigemeier, the junior partner who had brought by his baby boy to make visits and spread cheer.

"I'm very thankful," said Cigemeier, and he was--especially that his wife had not been harmed.  "Nurse Arroyo says you and Chloe will probably be out in a few days, and they're still hopeful the Senator will be out by the end of the week."  ("Harrumph!")  "Perry Winkle of the Washington Post wants to interview Prince and Prowling about the gun rampage and all the lobbying we've done on gun rights."

"We have no statement!  I told you that already!"

"I don't think this story is going to die.  There are a lot of rumors flying around."

"Like what?"

"One gunman or two?  Was one of the injured P&P attorneys actually shot by friendly fire?  Jilted lover or lovers of Bridezilla?  Enemies from Goode Peepz law firm, or Lye, Cheit and Steele? Anarchists who hate our work for corporate America?  The Teamsters?  The gay lobby?"

"The gay lobby!  What did we ever do to the gay lobby?"

"Bridezilla posted something on Facebook about how it would be an abomination before God to allow diddles at her wedding.  It may have been a typo for fiddles."

"What the Hell are diddles?!"

"Um, you don't want to know."

"Look," said the managing partner, "it's probably just a disgruntled contract attorney--we laid a lot of them off last year."

"But murder?  Mass murder?  Surely there must be a bigger motive!"

"Never underestimate the capacity of a contract attorney to get pissed off at Prince and Prowling.  Before you joined the firm, we once had a contract attorney leave dismembered chicken parts all over the 9th floor, and then we found a decapitated lamb in the kitchen sink."  ("Oh, my God!")  "And one time, we found that a porno video virus had wiped out the entire computer network.  ("Maybe that was an accident?")  "It was released at 3 a.m. on a Sunday!  Only a godless temp would be looking at porn on a Prince computer at that hour!"  ("Um--")  "And one time a contract attorney forgot a semi-colon on a privilege log, and Judge Sowell Ame laughed openly at us in court!"  ("Well, that's not so bad--")  "You need to interrogate all the contract attorneys!"  ("We haven't hired them back yet; SOTA-BUNK is still under construction.")  "Then it's one of the ones we fired, no doubt!"

A few miles away, at Southwest Plaza, "John Smith" had stopped by to give Glenn Michael Beckmann a bonus payment, and a gift of whiskey, for his bodyguard services the weekend before.  "Nobody's come after me!" he shouted with glee to Beckmann.  "I made a clean getaway, thanks to you!"

"Just doing my job, sir," replied Beckmann, with a flourish and a graceless bow.

"Four people in the hospital!" Smith declared happily.  "Well, one of them was not from Prince and Prowling, but he loves Bridezilla, so screw him, too!"

"Screw 'em all!" agreed Beckmann.  "Hey, you never told me what this was all about."

"Sorry, Mr. Beckmann, but if I tell you, I'll have to kill you!"

"Ha, ha!  Alright, have it your way!  But can you give me any kind of hint at all?  Giuliana won't speak to me, and maybe I could get her back if she understood why we had to do it."

"That woman blogged yesterday that you're smellier than a skunk, stupider than a worm, and uglier than Squiggy, the 20-pound Chinese Crested/Japanese Chin mutt with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.  And she said your blog about turning shell casings into glitter was domestic terrorism, and you should be labeled an enemy combatant and shipped to Guantanamo.  I don't think there's much chance of getting her back."

"You're right!  To hell with her!"

"Don't worry--I'll fix you up with my cousin from Germany?"

"Germany?!  I don't date foreigners!"

"Man, I wish I had an apartment this big," said Smith.  "This is sweet!"

"Yeah, I don't know why more people don't live at Southwest Plaza!" exclaimed Beckmann.

(The crack dealers in the pool house, prostitutes in the stairwells, and real estate demon living in the parking garage could not agree more.)

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COMING UP:   Angela de la Paz meets Judge Sowell Ame.