So Night Follows Day Pt 22

By T. MaskedWriter with special guest author Susan Bailey.

"Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with The Queen.

Doing the Werewolves of London.

I saw Lon Chaney JUNIOR walking with The Queen!

Doing the Werewolves of London.

I saw a werewolf drinking a Pina Colada at Trader Vic's.

His hair was perfect."

-Warren Zevon, "

Werewolves of London

"

Hi, my name's Susan. I know that's what I usually say, so I've been trying to mix it up throughout things. We'd been riding to the club in the back of Helen's limo. Since we were going a longer distance than before, Mander rode up front, leaving Julie, Helen, and I alone.

"No,

Werewolves

is like his

Walk on the Wild Side

." Helen said, trying to avoid answering another question. "Like, they say if you love

Walk on the Wild Side

, you'll hate everything else Lou Reed has ever done; and if you love all of his other work, you hate

Walk on the Wild Side

. It's like that with

Werewolves of London

, except you can't bring yourself to hate it, because it's still Warren being Warren, dammit! His style wasn't Weird Al-level esoteric, more like They Might Be Giants: You knew he was gonna totally change the mood up on the next track, and you had an idea of what he might do, but you could never be sure. A true 'Moody Genius Artist' like yourself, Julie! That's why

A Quiet Normal Life

is such a brilliant album, and that was just a 'greatest hits up to 1986' one! He had another seventeen years of his career ahead of him! This is PRE

Life'll Kill Ya

stuff!"

As through most of the day after lunch, we'd had a full Ultimado escort, rather than the two to four that Helen usually travels with. She reasoned that one thing we know for certain about Leonard Whyte CBE; the man who'd been out to kill her for the past two months and whom she and Troy had been financially ruining throughout the day, was that he knew how to ambush a limousine.

Troy Equals had done something called "shorting Whyte's stock." Even if I didn't know he'd know how to do something with money like this for real, it had been a key plot point of the James Bond film

Casino Royale

, and so his obsession with 007 might have caused him to think of it anyway. At any rate, there was no way he wasn't going to explain it to me. Since he's the Math Boy, I'll give you a story problem, and those of you who care can solve it or not:

Whyte's stock is trading for $218.00 a share. Troy knows that Helen's about to do something that's going to cause Whyte's stock to take an absolute shit. (This is why Le Chiffre wanted to blow up the airplane in the movie.) Troy obtains a loan of a million shares, with a promise to return them by a certain date. He immediately turns around and sells those shares. Troy now has 218 million dollars. (There are brokers' fees throughout this process, however, let's presume that Troy knows and has everything he needs to act as his own broker, so there are no fees and the math stays clearer.)

A bunch of hackers brag about how easy it is to sabotage all communications for a day in Seattle with Whyte brand Signal Jammers. The public learns that "certain select customers" have a way around the jammers, and Whyte stores all over the world get flooded with freaked-out angry mobs who think their 911 calls can be sabotaged at any moment (They can't. Least not with these.) and demand "that rich white people only upgrade." (This is what Bond stopped Le Chiffre from doing by saving the plane, leaving Le Chiffre on the hook to pay back those shares that have now skyrocketed, forcing him into the poker game which, yes, Troy, we know it was Baccarat in Fleming's original novel.) Whyte's stock closes for the day at five dollars a share. When the stock drops to $8.88 1/8th of a share, Troy buys a million shares, turns to Whyte, and says "Here's that stock back like I promised. I don't want it anymore." How much profit has Troy made, and how completely fucked is Whyte now? Give your answer in the comments, where available. Show your work.

Troy may or may not have enough himself to do that with however many million it would take to ruin all of his companies. He does, however, have the unlimited credit of Contessa Helena de San Finzione, monarch of the Sovereign County and Nation-State of San Finzione; and CEO Emeritus of La Familia Royale de San Finzione's international business conglomerate, Società Finzione, behind him. And with all that, he could certainly raise whatever collateral a loan of the size to drive them into the ground requires.

Whatever money Whyte has saved up, it's never going to be enough to outbid Helen for Springheel. You'd think that would make him less dangerous, but like Helen told us, it just means she's given him no choice now but to come at her directly. Even before I knew Helen personally or that she could control minds, I could have told you what a fucking stupid idea that is. His "Board" and "The Shareholders" will be looking to unload their shares for pennies on the dollar now, and that's when Helen steps in and buys out the company to shut it down or start Finzione Telecom or whatever.

"Yes, Helena." Julie answered. "Everyone loves

Werewolves of London

, but that doesn't answer the question about the stuff you said we should see on that tape."

"I know, Mistress." Helen said, with a puff of smoke. "That would be the point of avoiding a subject. It seems that's not going to happen, though. So, yes, I tortured those pricks. Those women were not actresses, and they had far more than what I gave them coming."

She produced a balisong knife from a compartment in one of the armrests that looked to serve as Helen's junk drawer and idly flicked it open and closed before returning it. (The armrest that pulls down on the other side of her usual seat is a bit of a "Lost & Found of the Rich & Famous." It's how I ended up with Vicente Fox's silver monogrammed mustache comb. Helen gave it to me. She said the replacement she bought him two months before was gold and that he liked it better, so he's OK with me keeping it. I really try to keep my head about all this power and influence that Helen has, but I know this story because SHE CALLED HIM AND ASKED AND HE FUCKING SAID MY NAME AND THAT IT WAS COOL WITH HIM!! Then there was some private stuff with him and Helen, tell ya later. Rita's name came up.)

"How can you be sure they weren't actresses?" Julie asked.

Helen gave Julie a surprised look, like "Why would you even ask that?" Followed by an "Oh yeah, you're Julie" look. She turned to me and gave me a look that said, "Will you be ok with the answer I'm about to give?" I had a fair idea what kind of thing she was going to say and nodded. She turned back to Julie.

"The same way Susan would have known if she'd been there, Julie. Between The Thing and your daddy teaching you how to kill a man with your bare hands, you've never been physically assaulted." She paused, and her eyes moved to look at mine again. I nodded again and hers moved back to Julie's. "Or worse. There are things you think you get; you can certainly empathize with them, but you can't really get them. I'd rather die than let you get them, Julie."

"Dad taught me to defend myself." Julie replied, a little offended, but also seeing Helen's point and backing down.

Helen gave a laugh that turned into a cough because she'd been inhaling at that moment. As she was coughing, she turned to me.

"The Colonel didn't teach... his little girl 'self-defense.' The man was... Army Intelligence. What he taught her..." She reached for a bottled water, took a drink, and recovered. "Was something called the Fairbairn Fighting System! The mixed martial art developed for undercover OSS agents in World War II! It's also known as 'Gutter Fighting' and 'The Art of Silent Killing!'" She looked back to Julie. "Which he always refused to teach me, for some reason..."

Julie turned to me.

"Dad felt it'd be safer if I just looked out for Helena, rather than teaching her how to do a chin-slam takedown."

Helen gave a little smile at that and spoke to me.

"It's really cool to see, too. If you've got the fingers for it like Julie, you can nail the prick in the eyes with the same move. Even if you don't have her reach, go for the balls AFTER that move. You have to have met the Colonel when you came to Anchorage for the wedding. You'll have a guy his size on his knees and you'll still have hold of the fucker by the nose." She tried to show the move while sitting down, then turned back to Julie. "So yes, I can assure you that those pricks in the warehouse deserved far worse than anything you'll see on the video, but I had other shit to take care of in the morning."

Julie nodded in agreement. The discussion had been settled. Whatever Helen did to those fuckers, they had it coming.

"Well," I said. "It's a martial art, right? That means it's art, so of course Julie's going to be great at it."

Helen patted Julie's knee. Julie smiled.

"One of the great tragedies of this world, Susan, is that this woman has focused her efforts on the physical and graphic arts, and has never picked up a musical instrument or tried to sit down and write a poem. Because there's no way she wouldn't be brilliant at either of those as well. Your logic is infallible, Mr. Spock."

I think I gave Helen the biggest smile I'd ever given her at that.

"Thanks for that." I said. "I'm wondering, though: Why hasn't Whyte struck back yet?"

"You guys are here." Helen replied, taking another drink, and putting out her cigarette. "He still hasn't mentioned you, Susan, but he's already figured out that Troy and Julie know The Thing, too. He tried to play it off this morning as 'it just now hit me,' but he had to have come to that conclusion long before now. Between that and knowing I'd have some kind of protection on you all, I think that maybe he's seen or heard your name, but hasn't dug into their lives enough to connect you to them. If he'd sent any private eyes to watch your house or follow you, Roberto and Enrique would have immediately dealt with them and reported it to me."

Julie nodded in agreement and spoke before I could ask what "dealt with them" might entail.

"If he came across the name Susan Bailey while snooping into Troy's business." Julie added. "She'd just be another one on a list of all the people Troy invests for. I'd think he'd at least notice that you've got the same address as us, though. Troy would either file away anything with the potential for identity theft, or shred it and hand-deliver it to the recycling plant; so he wouldn't get much out of going through our garbage. A lot of paint and lube on his hands, maybe."

"It's something I'll have to ask him about." Helen replied, lighting a new cigarette as the limo rounded the corner where

Neighbours

was located.

I'd been to the place before. An all-inclusive dance club which, more importantly for our purposes than being a tolerant and friendly environment for all genders and preferences, was open and doing solid business on a Tuesday night. It wasn't usually the sort of place where they employed red carpets and velvet rope barriers, but we were driving around for a little while before arriving, so that by the time we got there, it would be packed like someone world-famous had announced to Twitter that she was going to be there a couple of hours before. She might have also confessed to be a filthy little slut who loved it up the ass before Julie's tweet got deleted and another was posted, with a winky-face "PSA from La Contessa" warning of the evils of handing your phone to your friends when you're all hammered.

"You command the waitresses at restaurants and bars to bring you the mocktail version of any drink you order or someone in the place buys for you. Or you do apple juice in a whiskey glass, like Dean Martin." I told Helen. "You haven't had a drop since this morning at the summit. None of us have; we've all been staying sharp for whatever Whyte throws at us next. Why would you tell Twitter that you're wasted?"

"For the same reason I needed you and Julie today, Susan. If I'd been doing all the stuff we did today on my own, it would have been totally transparent. The press would've seen what I was trying to do, said 'thanks for the free lunch,' and then the story would be 'Contessa Helena de San Finzione is sucking up to us for some reason. What's she out to distract us from?' Butting in on a day out with my best gal-pals, on the other hand, means that they're getting 'the REAL me.' Especially if those gal-pals are 'Nobodies,' and I apologize again for the phrasing there, but you hopefully get the idea I was going for. The illusion of intrusion is mainly for delusion, ya might say."

I nodded. I wouldn't have said that, but I think I got it.

"If it'd been you with a couple of mega-celebrities or other world leaders blowing off the conference to go on a shopping spree, that would just be Tuesday. You and 'some Nobodies,' even ones they don't find worthy of filming, is a curiosity. And no, I wasn't hurt by it at all. We wanted them to ignore us, and Contessa Helena de San Finzione did what she does to everyone: she spoke to them in their own language."

I think she matched my Spock reference smile. I looked out the window.

"We're here." I told them, stepping in. "Unless what you have planned is another kung-fu brawl like yesterday, it's time for whatever The Next Thing is, Helen."

"Ok, the armrest on your left, Susan, should have reading material; couple books, newspapers, and a couple of magazines. What I need you two to do is sit in the back seat and hold them up like you're pretending to read them to hide your faces. Because that's what you'll be doing." Helen sighed. "These are different photographers from this morning, and it's a big crowd with more coming; so I won't be able to keep throwing The Thing around out there. That means Mander has to stay in the car, too; and puts us back on the Shoe Plan for you guys, but we're giving them some leg, too, because it's night time, and it's suggestive. I'm going to go in, do a thing, and come back out. And it'll work better if I look like I'm not a friendless loser and I've got my gal-pals waiting back in the car for me."

Helen saw Julie and I both opening our mouths to protest her statement about being a friendless loser when she looked to have caught herself and held up her hand in an "I know" gesture.

"Bad choice of words there. I know I have friends. The best ones ever." She opened her cigarette case and it was empty. Helen opened another compartment filled with cartons of her brand, and opened a new pack of cigarettes, a real smile on her face as she fiddled with the cellophane tab and her recently-done nails, reloading her case.

"What I meant was, I want to show this world that Contessa Helena de San Finzione KNOWS that she is not alone in it."

We stopped protesting and smiled.

"Neither is Helena Medina." Julie said.

"Or Helen Parker." I added.

She won the smile contest.

We pulled up to the entrance. Helen put a more stylish pair of sunglasses than her daytime pair on and loaded the new cigarette into her holder. We held up our magazines. She waved at one of the photographers outside behind the velvet ropes. The man couldn't have seen her through the tinted windows, but gave a subtle wave to the limo door. Helen gave a little wave back, again invisible to the man.

"You got another cool thing ready to say before you get out this time?" I asked her.

"Stop me if you've heard this one." She replied, already in character. "A Contessa walks into a bar."

Without another word, Contessa Helena de San Finzione proceeded to step out of the limo to walk into a bar.

* * *

Contessa Helena de San Finzione emerged from her limousine and felt the slightest of raindrops from the gap between the roof of the stretch and the canopy that had been put over the entrance to the club. It was another item that wasn't usually at the entrance, but had been put up because word had gotten out that a VIP was coming. One who had a reputation for stopping into clubs like this one, finding them "charming," and deciding to buy the joint before the night was through.

The shades protected her from the flash bulbs that probably would have blinded her during her first year with Vincenzo without them. From behind the press line, the people waiting to get into the club who could see her cheered. The cheer swept back into the crowd to the ones that couldn't even see her when Helena gave a wave to the public, and a nod to the man who was standing a few feet away from the others, whom she'd waved to before stepping out of the car.

He had a video camera slung around his neck, and pointed to a spot on the ground. A half-nod in his direction, and she began her walk toward the door, taking a deep drag of her cigarette. A bouncer held the door open.

"There's... uh, no smoking, your highness." The bouncer said.

Contessa Helena de San Finzione stopped in front of him and opened the tiny decorative purse she carried.

"Fifty-dollar fine in Washington State, right?" She asked. He nodded. Helena took out a hundred-dollar bill and put it in his hand. "Here's a C-note. I might stick around for a second one." She and her cigarette continued their journey into the dimness of the club.

She looked toward the bar for something, found it, and made her way toward it. People inside turned and stared as she stepped through their midst, some making faces at the cigarette; but, knowing who she was, and that they were in the presence of genuine royalty, were too awestruck to say anything. It would have been weird to not see her with one, and jerks would have come up and asked where it was.

La Contessa approached her target, a curvy brunette tending bar. She made her way purposefully toward the woman and leaned across the bar.

"Shot of Jack, straight." She told the bartender. The woman brought Helena a shot glass of brown liquid, which she immediately tilted her head back and consumed. Helena slammed the shot glass down on the counter.

"How much?" She asked the bartender.

"Uh... on the house for you, Contessa." She replied.

"Nonsense," Helena said, opening the little purse again, and seeing that there was nothing else in it, and it had barely contained enough space for the folded-up hundred she'd had in there a moment ago. "You definitely deserve something." She seemed to think for a moment, then made an exaggerated gesture of getting an idea. "Ah!"

Contessa Helena de San Finzione bent down and slid the silk panties she wore down her legs, being careful of the large bruise on her left leg, rendered invisible by her black stockings.

"These," She said, twirling her underwear around her finger for all to see. "Are easily two-hundred Euros in any high-end lingerie shop in Paris." With a smoldering look, she gave them a kiss and set them in the bartender's hand.

"Now they're priceless." Helena said, as the woman took them. She leaned in closer, allowing the bartender to smell the drink on her breath. "Hotel de Società Finzione, La Contessa Suite. Any time from Thursday to Saturday. Let me know how you like them."

With a small kiss, she turned and walked out of the club. By the time she'd gotten to the door, the swagger she walked with acquired a small stumble to it, as though she'd walked into the club 90% drunk already and that last shot had done the job. With a little wobble, she made it to the limousine door, and an Ultimado came and opened it for her.

Contessa Helena de San Finzione stepped into the limo. As she did, she stopped, and seemed to be thinking of something. She looked over to where the man with the video camera was kneeling in the right spot. Then, as she lifted her right leg off the ground, she had a second thought, stopped, and spun around, planting her foot on the ground and causing her skirt to rise up several inches.