Carla
“...and don't forget to wear a mask.”
Those were the last words Gio had said to Carla before ending the call. Her phone had rung a couple of hours ago, and when she picked up, Gio commanded her to meet him at a specific address at eight o'clock on the West Side, just a couple blocks off Belmont Avenue.
For a moment, these words had given Carla an icy wave of panic as she imagined being summoned to some remote abandoned building so Gio could shoot her through the head. Maybe he'd decided he was done with her, and he was going to silence her before anyone else found out about their arrangement. Maybe he'd told her to wear a mask just in case there were any witnesses, so no one would be able to identify who they'd seen killed before the body was carried off and disposed of.
So Carla did a brief online search, using her FBI credentials to access secured law enforcement databases. She wanted to see if any murders or other illegal activities had been reported at the address in question over the years, and whether the location was owned—either directly or indirectly—by any mob figures.
When her search was over, she breathed a shaky sigh of relief. The address was a nameless countercultural gallery that was often rented for gothic art shows, “cult classic” movie viewings, and fetish parties. There was no official webpage for tonight's event, but based on the comment threads of several local websites for people in the kink scene, Carla could see that it was their monthly S&M masquerade ball.
So the good news is that I'm not on my way to be executed, Carla thought ruefully. The bad news is that I'm about to walk into another of Gio's unpredictable “play” sessions, and this time it's in public.
Now she was wearing the cocktail dress she'd had on when Gio took her to Skizm and browsing a costume shop in Lincoln Park, a short drive from the gallery. Many of the masks on display were scary or absurd, and she stifled a giggle as she briefly considered showing up in a rubber mask depicting a blood-drooling zombie or a snarling werewolf.
“What?” she'd ask innocuously when confronted by Gio's expression of disgust and disappointment. “You didn't say what kind of mask to get!”
And then he'd pistol-whip me because he's a mobster psycho and the joke would be a lot less funny, she thought.
Finally, she found a mask that would cover the top half of her face. It was porcelain, and decorated with glittering sequins and wispy peacock feathers. Perfect.
As she walked up to the counter and fished in her small purse for her wallet, the cashier—a girl in her early twenties with a shaved head and at least a dozen facial piercings—gave her a knowing smile and a nod. “Last-minute shopping for the Belmont party tonight, huh?”
Carla's eyebrows raised. “Huh?”
“The masquerade,” the cashier continued, carefully putting the mask in a bag. “It's tonight, right? We get a lot of first-timers who show up here to get their masks before the big event. No shame in it. Hell, I've been there a handful of times myself. It's a lot of fun.”
“Oh. That's, um...good to know.” Carla paid for the mask, then waited as the cashier made change at a glacial pace, all while looking Carla up and down appreciatively.
“Here you go,” the cashier said, handing over the bag and the money. “Hey, my shift's over in about an hour. Maybe I'll grab something off the shelves and see you there.”
“Maybe,” Carla said quickly, tucking the mask under her arm. “Thanks. Bye.”
“Be sure to save a dance for me!” the cashier called after Carla as the door jangled shut behind her.
Great, Carla thought. Now there'll be at least one person at this thing who knows what I look like under the mask.
She tried to comfort herself with the thought that the cashier still wouldn't have any way of knowing that she was a Fed, or that her escort was a gangster—that it would be utterly impossible for her to make that connection—but it didn't ease her dread at all.
After what she'd been through so far this week, it was hard for her to honestly dismiss anything as “impossible” anymore.