Double Agent

by Gretchen Archer

  Bradley opened his mouth to put FEMA on the road; I hid a “no” in a cough. My husband looked at me strangely, then tried again with FEMA. I tugged his sleeve. He held up a finger to the agent, walked me back a step, where I whispered in his ear, “We need to keep him here.”

  “We don’t need anyone else here, Davis,” he whispered in mine.

  “He’ll go back and report it, then we’ll have fifty FEMA agents.”

  He barely raised one eyebrow, imagining our casino crawling with FEMA agents, and there’d be no evacuating. We stepped back, where Bradley eyed the man skeptically for a full minute and I agreed: there was something about Laverne Goosed that didn’t speak well of FEMA. But then again, I’d never worked directly with FEMA. It could be we were looking at a fair representation of the whole organization.

  I hoped not.

  Finally, Bradley asked, “Do you go by Laverne?”

  “Call me Goose.”

  “Okay, Goose.” Bradley said it in his let’s-take-this-for-a-spin voice. “We have a dead body.”

  “I can see that.” FEMA toured the fake officer’s corpse from a comfortable distance, then found a seat at a Triple Wild Cherry. Fell into a seat at a Triple Wild Cherry was more like it. He pulled a roll of something from the pocket of his windbreaker. Mints, maybe. He shot one in his mouth. The scent of eucalyptuses wafted my way. Throat drops.

  “Do you know who he is?” FEMA asked.

  I answered before Bradley could even think about it. “No.”

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “No,” I said. “We don’t.”

  Mostly, we didn’t.

  “Did anyone speak to him or have any interaction with him before his…demise?”

  “No.” I wasn’t about to bring Eddie the Idiot and Dazed Danielle to the party. That party, or any other party.

  FEMA was several shades of green. But that might have been the throat drop. “Who found him?”

  Bradley briefly explained casino lockdown, the slot machine drop, and Hurricane Kevin preparations, leaving out everything FEMA didn’t need to know. “We were making one last tour through the casino, and there he was.”

  All true.

  FEMA asked one last question. “Where’s the gun?”

  We told him we didn’t know. We didn’t tell him we hadn’t found the gun, nor had we found any shell casings in or around the area where he’d been shot, and when I’d rolled the dead man looking for my gun, I hadn’t seen an exit wound. Our only firearm evidence was somewhere in the dead man’s leg.

  FEMA stood, phone in hand. He held up a finger. “Excuse me.”

  We watched him waddle away. All we heard was, “I need the chief,” then he was out of earshot. I pulled my phone from my pocket and got busy.

  “What are you doing?” Bradley whispered.

  I was poking on my phone was what I was doing. I poked all the way to U.S. Federal Government Employee Lookup website, then searched for Laverne Goosed, Atlanta. I found his name, his title, which was Miscellaneous Clerk and Field Assistant in Training, along with his annual salary, $53, 062. I showed it to Bradley just as FEMA returned, then settled back into his Triple Wild Cherry chair. He cleared his throat. “Normally, we’d need homicide.” He rolled the throat drop around his mouth. “In lieu of that, we’d call the morgue. But under the circumstances, with everyone on your city’s payroll up to their eyeballs busy, your police chief wants us to handle it ourselves.”

  “Captain Marini said that?”

  “Chief Bullard.” He held out his phone. “Would you like to speak to him?”

  “No,” Bradley said.

  “My instructions are to secure this body until your police department can send someone.” FEMA wagged a finger at the fake officer.

  “And FEMA procedure to secure a dead body?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “But I’ve seen all three hundred and thirty-seven episodes of CSI at least five times each, and I know how they’d do it.”

  Great.

  I was a police officer in Pine Apple for seven years before I was a casino spy. I knew what to do in real life. “Let’s document this.” I started taking pictures with my phone. “Then, for now, we’ll move him to a cooler in one of the restaurants until someone on the police force can get here.”

  “Is that casino procedure?” FEMA asked.

  “NCIS,” I said.

  I gathered the dead man’s personal effects—a digital watch, a wallet with no ID and seventeen dollars, and his cell phone, which I’d tear into as soon as I had the chance—then FEMA and Bradley rolled him in a drapery panel they’d pulled straight from the wall behind the potato chip display at Snacks. The three of us lugged the dead man to an ice machine the size of a minivan in the main beverage service area behind Shots, the casino bar, and wedged him in the bin. At which point, we were all sweating.

  “What’s next?” FEMA popped another throat drop.

  “We find the shooter,” Bradley said.

  FEMA’s head spun wildly on his neck. “You don’t think the shooter is still somewhere in this casino, do you?”

  Truthfully, at that point, with all the traffic in and out, we could have ten shooters crouched under craps tables, behind bars, or between slot machines, but I didn’t share that with FEMA. Mostly because if there were ten shooters in the casino, the three of us would probably be dead already.

  He talked around his throat drop. “You say you have money missing too?”

  “When did we say that?” I asked.

  “You—” he pointed at me “—were emptying the slot machines of cash, correct?”

  That was correct, but how did he know?

  “Your keys.” FEMA pointed to the jumble of keys in the front right pocket of my jeans, that were, indeed, short, squat, silver slot machine lock keys. Could the man see through denim?

  “Where’s the cash?” FEMA asked.

  We chose not to answer.

  “Whoever shot this man has your money,” FEMA said.

  Maybe. I didn’t say it out loud in front of FEMA, but there was a strong possibility, one I’d try to discern as soon as Danielle remembered what year it was, that the fake officer’s fatal wound was self-inflicted. Killers didn’t aim for legs. And there was an equally strong chance we were only dealing with one bullet, a bullet that passed through Eddie the Idiot’s hand and wound up lodged in the fake officer’s leg. Which cast strong suspicion on Danielle as the shooter. Not that she’d remember.

  Why would Danielle shoot Eddie?

  (Why wouldn’t she? It was Eddie. It was truly a miracle someone didn’t shoot Eddie every day of the week.)

  My distrust of Danielle went so far back it was blinding me.

  I shook off my past and tried to be in my present.

  “Let’s get everyone together.” FEMA’s eyes were presently rolling around the ceiling. Probably watching mental reruns of CSI. His head came down. “Call everyone in here and administer gunshot residue tests.”

  Didn’t see that coming.

  “We don’t stock GSR test kits,” I said. “This is a casino.”

  “Do you have paraffin wax?” he asked.

  Was this about the fungus on his feet? “Why?”

  “We can use paraffin wax to test for gunshot residue.”

  “How do you know that?” Then I answered my own question. “You saw it on CSI.”

  He was right about the very real possibility of the person or persons we wanted being in the building, and confirming they’d discharged a firearm would put an end to our predicament quickly, plus, we probably did have paraffin wax at the spa on the second floor, but he was wrong about finding a shooter by administering do-it-yourself GSR tests. Gunshot residue washed off, even rubbed off, quickly. It had been more than an hour. That window had surely closed.
<
br />   “That won’t work.” I went on to explain why it wouldn’t work. Then, “I agree we need everyone in one place, but not this place. This is a crime scene.” A crime scene I felt certain was in very close proximity to ten cash carts. When the shot rang out earlier, the cash carts were where they were supposed to be. There wasn’t even a slim chance the fake officer moved ten cash carts; he’d been busy dying. Someone else moved the cash carts right under our distracted noses, and that someone else couldn’t have moved them far. “Another reason we can’t call everyone here,” other than the fact that I couldn’t take one more minute of the bloody casino, “is it’s too spread out. The conference center won’t work for the same reason.”

  “Or the theater,” Bradley said. “Too many exits.”

  “Disaster,” I said.

  FEMA hit the throat drops. “Excuse me?”

  “The thirteenth floor,” I said. “It’s built for Disasters. There’s one way in and one way out. If we get everyone to Disaster, we can keep them there until we figure this out.”

  “How many people are here?” FEMA asked.

  Bradley went through the list: The Storms, the Weather One crew, the gaming agents, the two women from Michigan, my mother, our daughters, plus Eddie and Danielle.

  “And our dog.” Candy, our Goldendoodle. “And a pig,” I remembered.

  FEMA unwrapped another throat drop. “I have pork allergies.”

  “And Bianca,” I said.

  Bradley’s eyes popped wide at the remembrance of Bianca.

  “How in the world are we going to round up that many people?” FEMA asked.

  We didn’t have to.

  Just then, our radios squawked.

  It was Filet, the Storm chef. “Ees there? Anybodies there? Restaurants closes downs for big storms. Filet, who is my person, goes to alls restaurants and brings foods to unlucky floors. Filet bringses lobsters, big fat beautiful lobsterses, and Filet bringed all steakses, Kobe steakses with delicious marbles through all steakes, very tender can cut with forkses, and Filet bringed all fresh vegables and delicious baby raspberryses. Filet cooked feastses and is hot one hours to now. Comes to unlucky floorses for your dinners in the one hour. That is all. Filet go now because butter sauces is bubbled. Please to wash filthy handeses befores.”

  FEMA licked his lips.

  Arms crossed, Bradley looked down at him. “We appreciate your help.” I nodded along. We sure did. “That being said, this will be your one and only chance to leave,” he told FEMA. “You can forget we ever called, get in your car, and go back to the police station. When the storm passes and the authorities can pick up our dead body, we’ll leave your name out of it. No one will ever know you were here. If you go with us to Disaster, you may very well be there for days.”

  From a cloud of eucalyptus, FEMA said, “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Cole.”

  “Bradley. Or Brad.”

  “Brad.” FEMA ran a hand across his bumpy bald head. “I don’t want to go back to the police station. Your building is much more structurally sound than theirs. They’re in the flood zone, which makes no sense to me, and not that you aren’t,” he said, “but thirteen stories in the air will be away from any floodwater. Or let’s hope it will be.”

  Yes, let’s hope.

  “Not only that,” he went on, “FEMA is sending the cavalry. The minute they arrive, which will be any minute, someone will pass me a broom and tell me to sweep water. If I can be of any assistance to you, I’d just as soon stay here.”

  Bradley tapped his lips. One of his thinking moves. With his eyes, he tossed it to me.

  “Do you have a firearm?” I asked.

  “No, ma’am. I haven’t passed the proficiency test yet.”

  “Have you failed the proficiency test?” I asked.

  “I haven’t taken it.”

  Ah.

  “I understand if you want me to leave,” FEMA said, “because your immediate problems are internal rather than storm related. But if you don’t mind, is there any way I could get in on the steak and lobster before I go? The restaurants around town have already closed.”

  So, as it turned out, instead of evacuating, I was headed to Disaster on the Thursday night before Hurricane Kevin with my real husband, my daughters, my mother, our dog, my best friend, the Storms, two gaming agents, the Weather One crew, two women from Michigan, my ex-ex-husband, his amnesiac girlfriend, their pig, Bianca Sanders, and a bizarre FEMA agent.

  SIX

  In the melee of moronic ex-husbands, missing money, pigs, and the total breach of our casino, I’d missed countless voicemail messages from my mother and even more text messages from Bianca. I texted Bianca: I’ll try to send someone with coffee. Because that would solve her first twenty problems. I didn’t take the time to read the others before I switched to my mother, shooting her a quick text too: Are Bex and Quinn okay? Yes or no, Mother. She texted back: Yis. Then we called in the gaming agents. It wasn’t like we had much of a choice. Only one showed up.

  He flashed his badge quickly and introduced himself. Carlos Ray Norris, then he repeated it, slower, and louder, in case we’d missed it the first time. He said the other gaming agent was somewhere in the lobby, or just outside the lobby, on the phone arguing with his wife or maybe his girlfriend. He’d be right along. “Are we ready to close?” He rubbed his hands together.

  “We’re not ready to close,” Bradley said. “We’ve had a—”

  “—hiccup,” I supplied.

  The agent listened carefully, his cheeks filling with air, then deflating slowly, nodding along gravely. “This is unprecedented.”

  Boy, didn’t we know it.

  “You don’t know where the money is?” he asked.

  “We do not,” Bradley said.

  “You have no idea what happened to the cash carts?”

  “None.”

  The gaming agent shifted his weight. “You don’t even have a clue where the money went?”

  For the third time in a row, we assured him we didn’t.

  We answered Gaming’s next round of questions, the same ones FEMA had asked: did we know who the dead man was, did we have any idea who shot him, and had anyone spoken to him before he died.

  We bluffed our way through. And by we, I meant me.

  The gaming agent looked at his watch, a Movado stainless. I knew it because we sold the same watch in Rocks, the jewelry store in the lobby. “If these weather imbeciles are right, we still have a good eighteen-hour evacuation window.” He rubbed his jaw, the face of his watch catching an overhead light. “I’ll give you half of that. If you can find the money by three a.m., I’ll close you.”

  It was going to be a long night.

  “If you don’t find the money by three, I’m still closing you.”

  What he meant by that was he’d close us, but not clear us. We could evacuate, but we’d be evacuating in violation of our gaming-license agreement by not reporting activity and earnings. If we were to locate the money after he closed us in violation, we would no longer be in violation, but we’d be fined. Heavily. If we didn’t find the money at all, we’d most likely lose our gaming license for several months.

  I wondered if Bradley and I would be looking for jobs.

  “First, though,” Carlos Ray Norris said, “have you looked everywhere?”

  “If you mean have we searched every square inch of the property, no,” Bradley said.

  “What about every square inch of the casino?” he asked. “The money couldn’t have gone far.”

  “The main casino floor, yes,” Bradley said. “But the adjacent venues, no. They’re locked. No one’s been in or out.”

  “That you know of,” the gaming agent said. “Search them before you leave.”

  I raised my hand. “I need to leave now. The casino owner’s wife—”

  “Find t
he money,” the gaming agent interrupted.

  We watched him leave.

  “Not a friend of yours?” FEMA went for a throat drop.

  “We have to follow state gaming laws,” Bradley said, “and he’s here to enforce them. The Gaming Commission has revoked gaming licenses for way lesser offenses than this, so we’re not exactly in a position to argue.”

  Hurricane Kevin would make landfall where we stood in twenty-four hours.

  It might not matter if we argued or not.

  * * *

  “I can’t find Weather One.” Bradley shook his two-way radio in one hand and his phone in the other. “They’re not answering the radios, and they don’t go back on the air for ten more minutes.”

  We toured the main casino floor again not finding any additional bodies, which was the good news, but not finding the cash cages, my laptop, or my gun either. (The bad news.) We were within ten feet of the main entrance when we decided to confirm everyone in the building was on their way to Disaster from where we were, over our phones and radios, rather than leave the casino, get to the thirteenth floor, only to have to leave again to round up strays. And it was more about Bradley and me wanting everyone on Disaster before we moved our daughters, my mother, and Bianca than anything else.

  Bradley checked in with the Storms, who radioed back they were either already on Disaster or on their way.

  I started with Fantasy.