by Dirk Patton
I looked at her blankly. Had no idea what the hell she was talking about.
“Google Earth? Satellite photos of the entire planet?” She spoke as if by phrasing it as a question I’d suddenly know what she was talking about.
“I told you where I’ve been for more than a decade,” I said. “I wasn’t making that up, and I really have no clue what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Sorry,” she said, walking over to the suitcase and picking up her laptop.
She messed with it for a bit, getting up and looking at the paper the front desk clerk had given to Cummins when he checked in. Reading something off it and typing it in, she sat back with a smile a few minutes later and patted the sofa cushion next to her. I sat down and looked at an amazingly crisp overhead image of a street lined with buildings.
“Is that real time?” I asked, amazed.
“No. I don’t know if there’s any way to tell when the pictures were taken, but Google runs cars all over the place with big camera setups on the roof. Their goal is to photograph every street. Don’t know how close they are to completing that, but I’ve yet to see a large city that didn’t have every single road already imaged.”
I leaned close and peered at the screen. Thinking, I was able to remember the three rooftops where the Secret Service was stationed. I pointed them out and Julie clicked her mouse and marked each one with what looked like an upside-down red teardrop.
“OK, I’ve already eliminated these two buildings.”
I tapped the screen to indicate the ones directly across from the restaurant. A moment later, two more teardrops decorated the image.
“Has to be a location with direct line of sight to the restaurant. Right?” She asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“And the missile impacted the center of the front wall?”
I nodded.
“OK. Let’s try something to speed this up.”
Julie clicked a bunch of times, opening menus and selecting options faster than I could keep up. Soon she had a blue dot placed at the base of the center of the front wall of the target. Still clicking, she drew a straight line directly across the street from the point she’d created.
“So, we eliminate these two buildings,” she began. “We can also eliminate anything on the same side of the street. That leaves…”
She used the mouse cursor to begin dragging the end of the line farthest from the dot. Moving it up and down the street she identified five buildings. Everything else was at an impossible angle to the target.
Of the five possibilities, two were structures that had already been tagged as having Secret Service on the roof. Of the remaining three, one was a restaurant, one was a boutique coffee house and the final was an office building.
“It almost has to be the office building,” I said. “The restaurant and coffee shop are too public. Can you turn on that view that lets me see the front of the building?”
“Street view,” she reminded me, clicking and pulling the image around until we had a clear shot of the entire front of the structure.
A door at the midpoint of the building. On either side, half a dozen windows. Most of them had the name of the business occupying the suite stenciled on the glass that faced the street. Twelve windows. Nine of them were obviously occupied, but just because the other three weren’t labeled didn’t mean they weren’t in use.
Julie zoomed and began making notes on a pad of hotel stationery. She wrote down the name of each business, then opened a new browser window. In the search box, which I noticed was Google, she typed in the name of the business at the top of her list. Within seconds, we had results and she scanned them quickly.
Realizing I was out of my depth, I sat back and let her work. She spent almost twenty minutes researching the businesses, then did a final search based on the street address of the building. She clicked on a couple of links, scribbled some more notes, then sat back with the pad in her hand.
“Alright,” she said, flipping back to the first page. “An independent insurance agent. Copyright attorney. Two different personal injury lawyers. Credit repair company. Residential alarm systems sales office. That’s what’s to the right of the entrance.
“To the left is a small publishing company. A public relations firm, but it looks like it’s a one-man show. And a CPA. That leaves three offices unaccounted for.”
“You’re thinking it’s one of the empty ones?” I asked, glad to have another head working on this.
“Maybe,” she said, lifting her hand and waggling it back and forth. “I looked up the building itself. It’s owned by a corporation named New Look Ventures. They’re incorporated in Delaware. I tried to follow the ownership back to an individual or individuals, but it’s a maze of shell companies. I’m sure there’s a way to unravel the maze, but that’s beyond my abilities.”
“You said maybe,” I prompted.
“Right. Sorry. So here’s what’s interesting. New Look Ventures purchased the building one month ago. And they paid a premium for it, even though none of these tenants are the type that write a big rent check each month.”
“How much?”
“Fourteen million,” she said.
“Sorry,” I shook my head. “I haven’t exactly been following the commercial real estate market. Is that a lot these days?”
“In this economy? With low rent tenants? That alone is a red flag. But check this out. The restaurant, two doors down, which is a much larger building, was bought two and half years ago for less than three million!”
That got my attention. I may have never been more than an Army grunt, a roofer and an inmate, but I was still smart enough to recognize the smell of the US Government. Basically unlimited funds when they really wanted to buy something. No one else was dumb enough to overpay for a piece of property by a factor of seven. It was damning, but not quite a smoking gun.
“How long did the previous owner have the building?” I asked.
Julie leaned over the keyboard and typed and clicked some more.
“Thirteen years,” she said. “A private individual was the sole owner. Josiah Holmgren.”
“Out of the blue, he gets a fourteen million dollar check for a property that’s probably worth two million at best,” I said. “Anyway to tell if he was trying to sell, or if the buyer came to him with an unsolicited offer?”
Julie shook her head and leaned back, lifting the notepad again.
“I’m sure there is, but I’m not the one to try and figure that out. I’m an office manager for a large real estate company in LA. That’s the only reason I know how to look for this stuff. Probably the agents in the office could find out, but I don’t have a clue where to start.
“But, here’s the final thing I found. You’d think, if you just paid a shitload of money for a building that’s one quarter unoccupied, you’d be trying like hell to lease out the empty offices. Right? Well, not here. If the owner has them listed, they would have come up when I searched the street address. But nothing other than the property records and a listing of the businesses that are operating at that location.”
I sat there and turned over what she was telling me. On the surface, it sure looked suspicious. And what was a fourteen-million-dollar expenditure if it resulted in the death of the President and the Speaker of the House? To the people that operated at that level of government, it was nothing. A pittance in exchange for gaining control of the White House.
“Is there a phone number listed for the owner?” I asked when an idea popped into my head.
Julie clicked a few times before shaking her head.
“No, not the owner. Just the law firm that handled the transaction. I pulled up their website and they look like a really big deal here in Washington. Their home page has a photo of the senior partner standing next to the President on a golf course.”
“Give me their number,” I said, stepping over to the hotel phone.
I dialed as Julie read it off the screen. It rang once before bei
ng answered by a woman with a melt you in your tracks sultry voice with a slight British undertone. When I could put my brain back in gear, I identified myself as the first fictitious name that popped into my head and explained I was interested in leasing space in one of their client’s buildings. I provided the address and was asked to please hold.
While I listened to sappy music, I tried to dispel the image of a naked goddess that the receptionist’s voice had conjured up in my head. I had little doubt that was exactly why she had been hired.
It was almost five minutes later before she came back on the line and told me that she had checked with the attorney for that particular client and there were not any offices available at this time. Before I could say a word, she thanked me for calling and disconnected.
“Well?” Julie asked with raised eyebrows when I hung up the phone.
“Nothing definitive,” I said. “But there’s supposedly no space available.”
“Could be true,” she said. “One of the other tenants could have rented out the empty offices as their business grew. Probably cheaper than relocating to a larger space.”
“OK,” I said, thinking. “Or she didn’t do anything other than put me on hold long enough to make it seem like she asked someone. Or, our theory is right. Time to take a walk.”
“Give me a minute,” Julie said. “I haven’t been to the bathroom since we left LA.”
“I should go alone…” I stopped when she glared at me.
“Are we really going to have this conversation? You’re the one that talked me into coming with you. Now that I’m here, I’m not going to sit in a hotel room. It’s just a walk.
“Besides, you said you think the Secret Service will already be in place. That means they’re checking out everyone that passes through the area. A couple, walking to the coffee house, will attract a whole lot less attention than you by yourself.”
“I’ll wait,” I sighed.
She smiled and disappeared into the unoccupied bedroom after grabbing some items out of the suitcase. I didn’t want to tell her, but I was damn glad she had come with me. She was very smart, but also much more thoughtful than I am. Where I would charge in before thinking, she considered all the angles.
Sitting there waiting, I let my mind drift to Monica. I’d managed to push thoughts of her aside while we worked on the problem of where to find the ground team, but with a few minutes alone, the image of her roared back into my head.
And Roberto? Had I gotten her pregnant? Was he my son? If he was, did he even know who his father was? Did he know he’d been sired by a convicted cop killer and drug runner? I hoped she’d never told him the truth. No kid needed to have that weighing them down. Growing up is hard enough without having a father on death row.
Monica looked happy. Happy with her clutch of kids, and with her husband. The man that could have been me. Should have been me. If only…
I stopped myself right there. There was no point in dwelling on the past. Even though I did have access to a time machine, I couldn’t go back that far and change things. But, what if I could? Dr. Anholts had been hinting it might be possible. Did I have the right to go back and undo the happy family I’d just seen? Not that if I changed things any of them would ever know, but where did it stop?
What if I could go back twelve years and fix my mistakes. Not go to prison. What’s to guarantee that Monica and I would ever be more than friends? Sure, we were heading for more, but how much of that was due to the emotions resulting from the events that transformed my life?
Without me, she’d found someone she obviously loved. Had children with him. Built a life. Apparently a life good enough that they could bring their kids to the nation’s capital for an educational vacation. If I messed with the past, those other kids would never be born. The husband, whoever he was, would never meet and marry her. How many ripples across the timeline that couldn’t be predicted would that create?
Even if it was possible, I couldn’t take that away from her. And I couldn’t risk the impact on the present and future. No matter how much I wanted to.
“Are you OK?”
I snapped out of my musings and looked up to see Julie standing in the bedroom doorway. She had changed out of the cargo pants and boots into a lightweight skirt and skin tight, white tank top. Low heeled sandals were on her feet. Her blonde hair was loose, framing her freshly scrubbed face and falling around her shoulders. I couldn’t help the big smile.
“You look terrific,” I said without even thinking. It just came out.
I was surprised when she blushed slightly and looked away. She fussed with her purse for a moment before turning back to face me, smiling. I stood, unable to take my eyes off of her.
“I’m great,” I said, answering the earlier question. “Shall we go?”
I extended my arm and a moment later she stepped forward and slipped her hand through the bend, resting it on the inside of my forearm. Together, we walked out and headed for street level.
46
We strolled down the sidewalk, avoiding a couple of homeless men who hit us up for change. I’d thought about passing out some more of the FBI agents’ cash, but was afraid that if I did, word would get around and we’d get mobbed by more desperate people looking for money. That would make us stand out, and I couldn’t have that happen.
It wasn’t that far to the target, and we covered the distance on foot in about a quarter of the time it had taken to drive it earlier. We stuck to the side of the street opposite the buildings I wanted to get a closer look at. Julie kept her hand on my arm, her body close to mine as we walked.
I didn’t know if she was playing her role as part of a couple, or not. Perhaps she was enjoying the physical contact as much as I was. Either way, it was exactly how we needed to appear to anyone who might notice us.
We slowed to a stop in front of the restaurant where the President was going to be killed. To any observers, we were reading a small menu posted in an enclosed display case mounted to the exterior wall. Julie was directly in line with it, but I had a clear view of the interior through the heavy, plate glass windows that fronted the street.
Four men wearing dark suits were moving about the dining floor. They were carefully checking over every inch of the room. Two additional, dressed more casually in slacks and polo shirts, were slowly sweeping across the interior with some sort of electronic equipment.
I refocused my eyes to use the glass as a mirror rather than look through it. Turning slightly, I leaned my head close to Julie as if I were talking to her. But instead of whispering something in her ear, I was adjusting the angle of my view to see the roofs of the buildings across the street.
There was a flicker of movement at the parapet on one of them. One that I knew would be the location of a counter-sniper team. Looking back inside, I watched one of the men reach to his earpiece a moment before he turned to look in our direction.
My head was still close to Julie’s, and I leaned the final couple of inches and kissed the side of her neck. She stiffened at the intimate contact, but didn’t pull away.
“They’re watching us,” I whispered, brushing her ear with my lips. “Smile and laugh like I said something you liked.”
There was a momentary pause, then she smiled brightly and turned to look up at me. Withdrawing her hand from my arm, she placed it on the back of my head and pulled me down until our lips met. It may have started as a theatrical kiss for the benefit of the Secret Service, but it immediately became more. And lasted longer than it should have.
I wanted to wrap her in my arms and crush her body against mine. Fortunately, there was still a tiny part of my mind that remembered what we were doing and why. Breaking the kiss, I looked into her eyes for a long moment before smiling at her and straightening up.
Careful to not look into the restaurant again, I turned to continue down the street. Julie put her hand back on my arm and pressed against my side. From the corner of my eye, I could see the man inside the restaurant still w
atching. Making a production of the gestures, I pointed across the street at the coffee house, then the crosswalk at the next intersection.
Julie nodded and leaned her head on my shoulder. We started walking, strolling like two lovers without a care in the world. After a couple of yards, I heard the restaurant door behind us open. I wanted to turn and look, but resisted the urge. I was supposed to be completely absorbed in the beautiful woman on my arm, not worrying about anything else.
We took our time reaching the intersection, pausing for Julie to look in the window of a small shop. A dress that was fabulous on a mannequin caught her eye. She stared at it for a few moments before heaving a sigh.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have done this,” she said quietly when we reached the end of the block and had to wait for the signal to change so we could cross.
“What?”
I was hoping she wasn’t talking about the kiss. Then I mentally kicked myself for getting distracted from the task at hand.
“Walking the area with the Secret Service watching. I keep forgetting you haven’t kept up with current technology. They’re probably already running our picture through facial recognition software. How many flags is that going to raise?”
I thought about what she said for a few moments. Facial recognition had been around before I went to prison, but it was slow and laborious. Now? I knew computer technology had advanced exponentially. They probably already knew who we were.
“I think we’re OK,” I said. “The part of the FBI that is hunting us doesn’t want anyone else to get their hands on us. They aren’t going to put any alerts out there. You’ll come up as who you are, and I’ll come up as a long haul truck driver from Dallas.”
“You’re sure?”
“No, but it’s too late to worry about it now,” I said. “If they find something to make them take an interest in us, we’re boxed in and on foot. All we can do is what we came here for and hope for the best.”
“Don’t you think the FBI is already here? Looking for us? They have to know you’re trying to stop them.”
The light changed and we stepped into the intersection after I glanced both ways to make sure some idiot wasn’t running the red signal. Crossing, we turned onto the far sidewalk and I moved Julie to my right so I could get a good look at the front of each building we passed.
