Mistaken Identity
A Hollywood fixer, Ray Donovan gets a new client, one about to become world famous, only she has a deadline, a very dead deadline. Can he find the man she's looking for before her time runs out. (For those who know me do you have to ask)
Chapter 1 – Discovery Channel
She sat quietly in the waiting room, the modest skirt and high collar blouse so out of place in Southern California, although, to her just as comfortable as the short skirts and open necked blouses on the other women. It wasn't that hot in California, she had her customary scarf around her shoulders as there was a slight chill from the air conditioning, certainly nothing like the heat in the eastern delta of the Nile this time of year. Her long auburn hair ended at her waist, under the wrap of the scarf. Her world debut was in less than twelve hours, and she sat in a waiting room, cooling her heels.
"Dr. Wilson, Mr. Goldman will see you now." She glanced at the young woman behind the reception desk and stood. She wasn't tall, the other woman seemed to tower over her, looking down her nose at Kate's modest dress and few extra pounds. Were all these women starving to death. Ailea should be here, she'd fix all of them quickly. Her mentor's youngest wife was the best cook Kate had ever met.
"How do you do." The elderly man held out his hand, she felt his slight shudder as she firmly shook it.
"Thank you for seeing me on such short notice." She said, her voice soft, trained to be pleasing to a male ear. Sometimes it was the little things that gave you the edge in her career, certainly she had all the training, but working where she did, and among the people she did, she worked hard not to offend anyone. Especially now, with a world announcement of her discoveries only hours away.
"You said you are looking for a missing person?" He said as he closed the white double doors to his office. He gestured for her to take a seat on one of the light colored leather sofas.
"Yes." She handed him the small folder of information she'd been able to discover on her own. "It is a matter of life and death."
"It usually is."
She sat quietly, ankles crossed neatly, her ankle length skirt rising only a little in her seated position. She watched his lips move as he quietly read the information.
"I see." He looked at her, she could see how little he actually did.
"Mr. Goldman..." She started
"Ezra, please." He corrected her. She gave him a small smile.
"Ezra, I know it isn't much to go on, my brother and I have been searching since my mother passed, and that is all we could find."
"Twenty years is a long time." He gave her a fatherly nod.
"I know. But as I said, it is life or death."
"Whose?" he asked
"Mine." She handed him the second, much thicker folder. "I may not know much about him, but I know everything there is to know about myself."
"My my my..." He whispered, as he read the second folder. She could tell he was stalling, waiting for someone else to join them. She was a very patient woman, she had to be. Things moved at their own pace in Egypt, it was no wonder to her that the country had survived relatively intact for nearly ten thousand years, they just did things their own way. Los Angeles was a confusing place to her, after five years abroad.
"This could get expensive. A man like this, if he doesn't want to be found, won't." Ezra said, laying the folder on the table next to the first.
"I understand that, but I don't think he would have taken the precautions he did, if he didn't intend for me to find him." She said.
Ezra nodded slowly.
The double doors opened, and she felt like a mule kicked her in the gut. The man that walked in was just larger than life. His rugged face, unshaven and scared, demanded attention, attention that was immediately drawn to his mouth and his uncanny green eyes. His height was daunting to her, most of the men she worked with were bent from years at the screens, or hunched from working long hours in the tombs. He stood straight as a board, shoulders back, his dark jacket swinging from his shoulders to his hips, his dark shirt almost the same color as the acid washed jeans. He closed the doors behind him.
"Ah, Raymond." Ezra said as he stood. "This is Dr. Katherine Wilson. Dr. Wilson, this is Raymond Donovan."
His green eyes raked over her, and she kept her blush contained, barely at the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. Just that twitch was enough to tell her that her clothing amused him in some way.
"She needs our help, Ray." Ezra stated as Ray took a seat in a chair across from Kate.
She met his eyes, inwardly proud of herself for being able to. Years working with Zahi and his penetrating stares gave her the fortitude. He gestured with a hand for her to explain.
"My father passed away ten years ago." She started. "He was killed in some of the early action in Afghanistan. I was sixteen. My mother was diagnosed the same year with ovarian cancer, and passed away last year. I earned a scholarship to the University of Oklahoma, where I majored in Archeology, until I got an offer from the University of Cairo, where I changed my major to Egyptology and graduated three years ago with a triple doctorate in Archeology, Egyptology and Anthropology."
I've been working a dig just outside the eastern Nile delta for five years, since I was a graduate student, and have had..." she paused, a slight smile on her face at her mentor's descriptive term... "a Carter moment. A discovery that will be world shaking when it is announced tonight."
He just nodded at her.
"I'm by no means incompetent, or even lazy, I know this will be a great deal of work, and am more than willing to pay whatever it takes."
He nodded again. His silence was unnearving.
"When my mother passed away, my brother and I spent months trying to straighten out the family finances, and what we found did nothing but confuse us, until we found this letter hidden in my dad's duffle bag." She handed him the first folder of information. "This is everything my brother and I have been able to find about the man described in the letter."
He didn't even open the file, just gestured for her to continue.
"I'm mostly furious, but when you look at the second folder of information, you'll understand why this is so important to me." She handed him the second folder. "I have to find this man or I'll die."
"Of what." His voice was a growl, elongating the vowels and sending vibrations down her spine.
"A massive heart attack."
He just nodded, opened the folders and began to read. She folded her hands in her lap and sat, patiently, again. Yes, working with Zahi all these years had been good training for this moment.
"Is this bullshit?" He asked, glaring at her over her medical records.
"No."
"This is the kind of shit you see in comic books and bad movies."
"It is all true, verified by independent doctors."
"Shit." He flipped the file over and started reading again from the beginning.
"So let me get this straight. This guy, you don't even know his name, bought you from your parents when you were born, paid for everything in your life, and now you want me to find his ass so you can fuck him?"
"Yes." Kate hoped her poker face wouldn't fail her now.
"If not, you'll die?" He cocked his head to the left, hiding a long straight scar on his cheek in shadow. His dark hair, cut short, seemed to curl on its own, and she had the strange impulse to run her fingers through it. She curbed it, as she had curbed any such impulses her whole life. Sex and archeology, Indiana Jones be damned, just didn't mix, not in Egypt, not where being a woman was already a major mark against her with the establishment.
"And you think he's in LA?"
"I can't explain it, but yes."
"Raymond, do you think you can do this?" Ezra said.
"That'll depend..."
"On what?" She asked.
"If he's in LA." He tossed the folders on the table casually, and she barely contained the urge to leap forward to keep the papers from scattering. He was looking for an opening, some break in the studied and practiced exterior she'd kept up for years. He might look like a god among men, but he certainly was just as human as the next, and if Zahi Hawass couldn't break her, Raymond Donovan wouldn't.
He stood, quickly, nodded at Ezra and only paused long enough to open one of the double doors, and walked out. She looked at Ezra who was handing her a contract.
"My usual retainer. Mr. Donovan's fees are included." She looked at the papers and didn't even cringe at the amount. The man she was looking for had taken care of any financial needs she would ever have, including the exorbitant fee of the attorney. She slipped her wallet out of a pocket in her skirt and wrote a check.
"Five hundred thousand dollars should cover everything?" she asked as she wrote out the check. Ezra nodded.
She stood and automatically reached to wrap her scarf over her head. She stopped herself. She wasn't at home, and might never see the majesty of her home again. She let the silk drop to rest on her shoulder again, as she walked out the open door.
XXXXXXXXXXX
He just sat in the car. Where the hell had she come from? After last year, all the problems the last thing he and Abby needed was him getting a hardon for some dirt digger from the middle east. His phone rang, and he glanced down at it. It was Brig.
"Daddy?"
"Yeah, kiddo."
"I need to ask a favor."
"What? Anything."
"I have a report I have to do this week for school. It's about this new exhibit at the museum."
"So."
"So, the opening is tonight, and I was wondering if you could get tickets?"
"Brig..."
"Dad, you don't have to go. I could go with some friends."
"Over my dead body." he growled into the phone, her chuckle on the other end making him relax. That was what was great about kids. They cleared your head from other things.
"Dad."
"I'll see what I can do."
"Dad."
"I said I'll see."
"Okay." He'd find tickets if he had to cut the fingers off every scalper in LA. Nothing was too good for his little girl.
He hung up the phone and called Lee.
"Do you have tickets for this thing at the museum tonight?"
"No."
"Get me four."
"Ray..."
"Four."
He hung up. He'd make it a date night. Abby could wear those damned shoes...maybe he'd find a janitor's closet and fuck her in them again. He certainly was getting his money's worth from those damned things.
"Hey Abs." He said as she picked up the phone. "We're goin' out tonight."
"Ray...what now."
"Some thing at the museum. Brig has to go for school, thought we'd all go. Dress up."
"Ray."
"And wear those shoes." He hung up the phone and smiled. Yep, he was getting his money's worth out of those damned shoes.
He pulled into traffic, as his phone rang. One of these days he was just going to chuck the damned thing out the window.
"Yeah, Terry."
"You heard from Bunch?"
"No."
"He had a job interview today."
"A job, what the hell does he need a job for." Ray asked
"He said he wanted a job."
"That's why we have the gym."
"Ray, he hasn't come back."
"Where'd he go?"
"The bike shop."
"Shit."
"Ray."
"I'll check." he hung up. One of these days, one of these days he was just going to turn the damned thing off and let everyone fend for themselves.
He drove across town, his phone blessedly silent for the forty five minute drive in traffic. He pulled up outside the bike shop, but he could see everything was okay. Bunchy was talking to the counter guy as he worked on a bike. He smiled as he opened the door. Bunchy had been clean for almost three weeks, and looked it. He hadn't seen his little brother looking this sober in years.
"I told ya I could fix anything..." Bunchy was saying to the guy.
"I can have you come in part time, fix the stuff in the back." The guy at the counter said. Bunch was grinning as he turned and saw Ray.
"Ray, did ya hear that. I got a job."
"Yeah, Bunch. Good job." He grinned.
"You can start tomorrow."
XXXXXXXXXXX
Kate stood nervously backstage. Everything was ready for the big reveal but her. She could hear the crowd on the other side of the curtain in the auditorium the museum used for screening historical movies. The Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History was chosen for this screening because Zahi liked it. She really wished they'd done this in Cairo or even DC. She hated Los Angeles. Her phone vibrated softly in her purse and she pulled it out.
"Everything will be fine." The soothing tone of her mentor's voice said in her ear. "There is nothing that can go wrong."
"Nothing. It is a glass sarcophagus filled with Argon over two thousand years ago, and we don't know how the hell they did it. It could tip over, it could shatter, exploding over an audience full of the rich and famous and we could be sued." She quipped.
He laughed in her ear. "No it won't."
"Pain in my ass." She muttered, knowing he was glaring at her from the opposite wing. He hated it when she cursed at him, but she was the only woman he'd allow to do it. Something about saving his life several years ago had endeared her to him and he saw her as an errant, if brilliant, daughter.
"One of these days, you will get married, and know what that phrase means." he quipped back. She chuckled and hung up her phone.
The director of the museum was standing in front of the curtains, and as she always did when she had to speak to a large group of people she started to panic. She took a few deep breaths, then froze. He was here, Donovan, she could smell him. She hadn't even realized she'd memorized his scent, but there it was. She let out a little growl, childishly angry because he was here instead of looking for her mysterious 'owner.'
Even Zahi didn't know about that. Now she felt violated, as if Donovan would expose her. She paused, of course, an event that featured her, and her work might be the very place to find a man who had spent upwards of one hundred million dollars on a trust fund, and five mortgages on the family farm in Oklahoma for the right to 'own' her.
She heard her name, and shaking her head to clear it, stepped in front of the curtain, and to the podium.
"Good evening." She said, the microphone warping her voice in her ears as it echoed back. "My name is Dr. Katherine Wilson, and tonight, thanks to the magic of our modern technology, you will get the chance to experience the wonder of making a truly staggering discovery. One step at a time..."
The screen came down behind her, and the video started.
"Just set it up over there, I'm still clearing these glyphs at the bottom." She heard herself saying as the camera snapped on. She cringed as she heard the brush drop, just like she did when it actually happened, and every time she'd watched this video since. She closed her eyes, seeing in her mind, from her point of view what the screen showed the audience.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Kate glared at the young camera operator. Zahi wanted cameras at the digs at all times now, and she hated being filmed. Her brush clattered off her camp stool and she bent to pick it up, her hand resting on a slight protrusion of rock in the blank center of the squared archway. She felt something give way, and then the whole piece of stone swung on a center pivot, a plume of deadly gasses filling her face. She glanced back to make sure the diggers were not exposed to the toxic fumes that could be released from an ancient tomb.
Her mutation protected her from these things, but she still worried about everyone else.
She looked inside the opening, shocked at the ease of the opening of the stone door. The light from the hot afternoon sun glinted off jewels and polished metal artifacts, and her mouth went dry. There was a fine film of dust, undisturbed, over everything in the chamber. It was the undisturbed that sent the wave of adrenaline through her body. No one, nothing had been in this chamber in over two thousand years to disturb the thick layer of dust.
She could see another opening behind the offertory items in the first chamber. She grabbed the camera with it's bright light and, followed by the young camera man commanding her not to damage his equipment, she moved slowly through the chamber, letting the camera pick up the unmistakable proof that she was the first person into this room in centuries.
The second chamber, later identified as the burial anti-chamber held personal items, cosmetic jars, brushes of fine hair, with gold handles inlaid with lapis lazuli and rare amber. A gaming table with several board games of the Roman period, silver glinting, untarnished, in the camera's lights, set as if ready to play. A throne, bracketed by two huge stone statues, painted in bright colors, each one a representation of Isis, Queen of Heaven, and behind them, another opening.
She walked toward the opening, camera lights illuminating as she stepped gingerly through the room. Just beyond the halo of the light, she made out a squared shape, roughly the size of a normal sarcophagus...
XXXXXXXXXXX
The lights came up, the film stopping at that crucial point.
"And this is what I found." She said, as the curtain opened, revealing the marvel to the world.
Cleopatra VII Philopator , in all her glory, forever encased in a blown glass and lead coffin, somehow filled with inert Argon gas, preserving her nearly perfectly, lay behind the curtain, slightly inclined so the audience could see her striking face, the patrician nose, strong chin, and high fine cheekbones. A face that toppled an empire twice, controlled men of power, and ruled with an iron will in her own kingdom. The last Pharaoh of Egypt.
"Cleopatra." Kate said, as the gasps filled the room. Keeping the lid on the discovery had been difficult for the last two years, but what was more important to Kate were the other artifacts in the tomb, the minute and tiny details that had to be photographed, cataloged, drafted and rendered by artists and artisans.
Zahi stepped to her side and she moved to the chairs set up next to the podium. He was now going to wax poetic, and she could just relax, let him take the rest of the credit and the glory for Egypt, and himself, she didn't care. It had been a fight to get him to give her this much credit, but the video was bound to leak eventually, and they had decided to stay ahead of it.
She scanned the audience, looking for Donovan. Why was he here? Her mind was so preoccupied, she nearly missed her cue.
"Thank you, Dr. Hawass." She said as she stepped back to the podium. She'd told this part so many times she could do it in her sleep. "I was working on a wall, underwater, in the bay of Alexandria, a building we'd found that we had reason to believe was the tomb referenced in the legend of the death of Cleopatra. If it was intended as a tomb, it wasn't intended as her final resting place, but more of a tomb of state, where her body could be displayed right after death, then moved to a safer location. Many tombs in Egypt are built facing East and with a false exit to the West, to allow for the movement of the soul from birth to death. The tomb in Alexandria was facing west, with the false exit and wall to the East. There was a section on the wall that seemed to give directions to the final tomb site, and I worked for several months photographing and translating the glyphs until I was certain I knew where the tomb site was."
"Unfortunately, a small earthquake hit the region, and the wall slipped into an underwater crevice and was unrecoverable. The only evidence I had was my photographs, but Dr. Hawass, agreed to allow a small dig to see if the directions led to anything, and as the video showed, they did. Almost within one hundred feet of the entrance."
The audience clapped, many, and then all standing, cheering, and Kate blushed.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Ray watched her on the stage, the monument of the announcement barely registering as he struggled to keep his reaction hidden from his wife. In Ezra's office it had been one thing, she'd been covered up, but up there, in an evening gown that definitely didn't leave her figure to the imagination, or the fact that she had a rack from hell, and right now was his own personal hell as every movement caused his damned silk boxers to rub against his fucking cock, it was pissing him the hell off.
No woman had the right to be sin incarnate, not like that. This woman was going to be the death of him. At least Abs would help take care of it, even if he had to close his eyes and imagine Dr. Wilson's dark brown eyes looking up at him as her full lips stretched over his cock.
Shit. He glanced over at Abby, looking in awe at the damned dead bitch on the stage. Who gave a shit about some broad who'd been dead that long. He put his hand over hers on the arm of the seat, and guided it to his lap. She looked at him, in shock, but put her hand under her coat in his lap and started stroking him through his pants. She took his hint and excused herself to go to the bathroom, and he followed a few minutes later. He saw her slip down a roped off hallway, and followed.
"In here, Ray." She whispered, holding open a closet door.
"Abs." He groaned, as he closed the door behind them. He lifted her up, pushing her back against the door, with one arm, while the other hand skillfully opened his slacks and pushed her dress up. She was wearing a thong with a garter belt under the dress, so he just moved the string aside and slammed into her. She cried out, and he put his hand over her mouth to quiet her. It didn't take long, with her legs wrapped tight around his hips.
"Damn, Ray, this has ta stop." She whispered as she pulled herself together.
"Why?" He grinned.
"Because, I'm gonna get old and you're still gonna be fuckin' me in janitor's closes like in high school." She laughed.
They slipped into the crowd in the main lobby, the after presentation question and answer in full swing.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Author's note:
I know I have quite a few to work on, but my brain has been on overdrive, and my medical situation has had me so worn out that I just haven't felt like writing. Thank goodness for Showtime and Ray Donovan, I have new inspiration, and hopefully, new energy. I have been working on some of the others...just slowly.