My overdue phone call to John Helms the next morning resumed our discussion of an alleged spy who’d built a backdoor into some software. He was a good deal more upset than usual about a potential security breach. I promised to put an investigator on the case right away.

“I want those programmers grilled,” he said. “Investigated. Followed, if need be. One of them’s lying. Up to something. And I won’t allow anything to go wrong with this project.”

“What’s so important about it?”

“The client—a Wall Street consortium—will be using our software to query an extremely large database containing highly sensitive information of a personal nature. We can’t be too careful with data like that.”

After hanging up with John, I assigned the investigator, Dale Robo Robinski, a new hire and recently discharged US Army veteran with about a dozen years of investigations experience for the military police. Next, I phoned my psychiatrist’s office.

My regular, monthly appointment wasn’t for another fifteen days, but I managed to reschedule for the following week. Then my life returned to normal, so to speak, until the middle of a business trip to the west coast.

At the time, my firm was nearly ten years old and prospering. In regard to our personal protection unit—a kind of Secret Service for the rich and famous—we’d developed a sizable clientele, more than one hundred accounts. Half of these clients lived in Hollywood. One I’ll call Peggy Van Horne. I can’t tell you her real name, but she’s a legendary singer and an Oscar-winning film star with a couple of television Emmys to boot.

She rarely sang live anymore. She rarely appeared in public anymore, I’d been told, a recluse, at least by show-biz standards. Her long-time business manager had let me know that she suffered from stage fright and a fear of crowds stemming from the death of John Lennon. But once or twice a year, she’d perform at a charity event for one of her pet causes. On this business trip of mine it was an Aids benefit in Los Angeles. She was a new client and, walking backstage at the Universal Amphitheatre before the show, I was looking forward to meeting her in person, even though I’d been warned her nerves were on edge.

“It’s just performance jitters, Mister Ward,” said her personal assistant, Malcolm, breathless from the pace he set us. “We’ve been through this before. Before you were hired, I mean. So just humor her. ‘The show must go on!’ ”

“By the way, what exactly is a diva?”

Malcolm sighed heavily. “After today, Mister Ward, I’d say diva’s just a four-letter word for a five-letter word. Here we are.” He halted us in front of a star-emblazoned dressing room door and knocked.

“Come!” With one word, one syllable, I recognized the voice calling to us from the other side of the door, famous the world over, a soaring, sighing, sultry voice, a ménage à trois partner inside millions of bedrooms.

“Remember,” said Malcolm, whispering as he opened the door, “don’t make eye contact.”

“I’ll try to remember,” I said. “But it would help if she’s wearing something low-cut.”

Inside, we were greeted by an eerie shimmer. But it wasn’t simply all the sequined costumes. The entire dressing room, it seemed, had been Saran-wrapped. The fruit tray, the deli tray, the vegetable tray, the juice pitchers, the unopened bottles of Evian drinking water, the Diet Coke cans, the Cristal champagne chilling in a stainless steel ice bucket. The furniture too—the two sofas facing off, and the leather-padded rocking chair and its matching footstool. All of it draped or sealed in plastic.

The great singer, wearing a pink terry cloth bathrobe, sat before a brightly lit make-up table, her hair dresser on one side, her make-up artist on the other, both men working on her with flying fingers. Saran-wrap that must’ve until recently covered the make-up table sat on the floor nearby, a crumpled pile the size of a large pillow. A small TV on a high, narrow stand had been wheeled directly behind Peggy’s head, so that she could view it through the mirror. There was an old movie on, men-wearing-hats old, in black and white. From the forties, I thought. I heard an actor saying, “You’ll do as I say, see.”

Malcolm made the introductions. “Peggy, this is Argus Ward, of Argus Ward, Incorporated. It’s his firm protecting you now.”

Before I remembered to look away, I saw her using the mirror to assess me. I stared at a row of gaudy wigs, capping mannequin heads, and thought, Not many women her age look pretty facing a ring of 500 watt bulbs. It’s good the men with the flying fingers have another three hours before the concert starts.

“Pleasure to finally meet you,” I said to the wigs.

Ignoring me completely, she said to her make-up man, “That’s ghastly, Tony. I’ll look like a glow-stick out there.”

“You’re right, Hun,” he said. “We’ll try something else.”

A rap at the door. “Come!” Peggy said.

Sandy Mannheim barged in, the stage manager I’d met earlier. “Peggy, one moment.”

While they conferred—Sandy staring down at a clipboard, never Peggy—I paced in front of the dressing room’s plastic-covered sofas, aching to sit down, but a little worried I’d be scolded, or bashed over the head and mummified in Saran-wrap.

The Saran-wrap, along with the two plug-in air purifiers, humming in opposite corners, told me that Peggy had a thing about germs. I saw nutty behavior like this all the time, working for the rich and famous. Called it the Just So Syndrome.

Everyone had it to some extent. The more control people exerted over their environment, the more everything was Just So, the calmer and happier they felt.

But it could be a mighty expensive habit. A lot of people drew the line at a grande cup of Starbucks iced mocha coffee, easy ice, half and half instead of milk, no whip cream. People like Peggy Van Horne, on the other hand, might go through football fields of plastic wrap every day, or order a custom Rolls Royce convertible in their favorite shade of gummi bear.

“I think I’m coming down with something,” Peggy said soon after she’d dismissed the stage manager. “I think I’m catching a cold. Does my voice sound scratchy?”

“Well, uh . . .” Tony said.

“Um . . .” Henry said.

“You’re fine,” Malcolm said, sampling cheese from the deli tray. “There’s a little dust in the air. Give the purifiers a chance to work.”

“You think?” she said. “I’m really not feeling so hot. My chest feels congested. Definitely. Definitely, I’m congested.”

I cleared my throat. “Uh, Ms. Van Horne?”

“Oh, yes, you,” she said. “How long have you been working for me, Mister Ward? Ouch! Henry! Not the tweezers, not now.”

“Three months,” I said. On the TV, someone was calling someone else a stool pigeon.

“Three months? That’s all? Well then I guess I ought to give you one more chance.”

“One more chance?”

“To catch the trespasser, of course!”

“Um, about that trespasser—”

“He came back last night, you know. I heard him right below my bedroom window this time. Trying to jimmy the outside door, I’m sure of it. I slept in the panic room. I was terrified.”

“But Ms. Van Horne,” I said, stepping in her direction, then quickly stepping back, settling my eyes on Malcolm for no other reason than it wasn’t forbidden. “The alarm was never tripped, and the guard on duty told me he didn’t see, or hear, any intruder, and the surveillance—”

“You calling me a liar?” The Brooklyn girl she used to be was sneaking into her voice now.

“No,” I said, “no, that’s not—”

“Why can’t you protect me?”

“But, but I am—”

She waved me off. “Not now, dammit. I can’t . . . I can’t seem to catch my breath. Malcolm, get the doctor.” Malcolm dropped his cheese and raced out of the dressing room. “Give me space,” she said, “give me space, for God’s sake.” Tony and Henry stepped back. “I can’t go on. Not like this. It’s impossible. Cancel. Do you hear me? I can’t possibly perf—”

I gripped her swivel chair and whipped it around a hundred and eighty degrees, until she was facing me. Her color was off, her respiration too rapid. She couldn’t even hurl the angry words she’d picked out for me.

“She’s hyperventilating,” I said. “We need a paper bag she can breathe into.”

“Paper?” Tony said, searching. “Now plastic we can do.”

“No plastic,” I said. “I don’t want to kill her.”

“Oh,” Tony said, sounding a bit disappointed.

Somehow, Peggy Van Horne found her voice. “How dare you stare at me, Sir! And you, Tony, you—”

I gripped her head, cupping her mouth, and jammed a thumb deep into her left nostril. “Don’t fight me,” I said, but she beat at my forearms anyway. “I’m forcing you to breathe out of one nostril. In a minute or two, your carbon dioxide level will return to normal, and you’ll breathe easy again.”

She tried biting my hand, but I just pressed harder until she stopped. “Take slow, deep breaths,” I said. “I want you to feel your lungs filling up as you inhale, and at the same time, I want you to imagine trying to fill your belly with air too. It’s called belly breathing. It’ll expedite the whole process.”

She relaxed, finally. The others seemed to be bracing for a train wreck.

“Good,” I said to her. “I know you don’t perform live very much anymore, Ms. Van Horne, so it’s perfectly natural to be nervous tonight. But nothing’s going to hurt you here, I promise. I’ve brought metal detectors, I’ve brought bomb-sniffing dogs, I’ve put a crack team of security staff at every access point. Many of my men have served in the same elite Marine battalion that provides security at US embassies around the world . . .

“Now, I’m going to let go, and when I do, Ms. Van Horne, you keep your mouth pursed, and keep one nostril closed tight. Press it shut with your index finger . . . That’s it. Good.”

When she felt fine enough to also feel embarrassed, I walked over to the wigs and pretended to study them. “I’ve even got a closed circuit TV system sweeping the crowd tonight, and something we call ‘face recognition software,’ which allows a computer to identify any members of the audience we’ve deemed as potential threats to you, on the slim chance any show up, and just in case we somehow miss them at the door.

“We’re prepared for absolutely every contingency. So there’s nothing to worry about, nothing at all. You’ve paid me good money for peace of mind, Ms. Van Horne, so don’t cheat yourself. All you have to do tonight is sing. Just sing.”

From the wigged head of a mannequin, I stole a twinkling silver tiara and crowned myself. Tony and Henry gasped in unison. Malcolm and the doctor burst into the dressing room. I showed Peggy Van Horne my new look. “What do you think?”

She laughed. From the belly, she laughed. “You’re aces with me, kid.”

On the TV behind me, a single pistol shot rang out. She watched a lot of old movies, I’d heard. A lot of film noir. Worlds where men weren’t lackeys, to say the least. I thought, That’s the attraction, isn’t it, Peggy Van Horne?

My cell phone rang. I turned from Peggy’s adoring gaze, leaving her to Malcolm and the doctor’s needless ministrations.

Before sitting down to take my call, I threw off the sofa plastic like a real he-man. “Yes?”

It was Mike McKenna, calling from Washington. “Argus, we’ve got a problem.”

“Only one? We’re doing well tonight.”

“No, no, this is a big problem! Back here in DC! It’s about John Helms! We had a scare!”

“One moment, Mike.” Henry the hairdresser had wandered over. I asked him what he wanted. Henry pointed to my head.

“We need that tiara for the My Fair Lady number.” I handed it over, and Henry let me be.

“Okay, Mike, what happened?”

“Near lethal attack on John—lone actor—no injuries, but—”

“Where?”

“At his compound near Georgetown. During a dinner party. The assailant was on the catering staff. Female. Used a knife.”

I turned my back to the others and whispered into the phone. “Close call?”

“Very. John’s shaken up too.”

“Put me on the red-eye.”

Next Chapter: Chapter Four