“I’m getting cramps,” I said and clutched my stomach.
Leech grabbed my fingers and smushed them through the chalky powder.
“Put your foot there and your other foot there. You’ll feel better when you gain some altitude. Get a strong open-handed grip. Find your plumb-line.”
Plumb-line? I don’t have a plumb-line.
My cell phone did its Pink Panther ring. I fumbled in my jean pocket holding one finger up to Leech. Caller ID read T. Henman. Not now, Tippy. I silenced the ring and pocketed the phone. I’d call her back as soon as this was over. If I lived through it.
Chapter Ten
Leech grabbed my tushie in an upward shove. I frog-jumped away from his hand and found myself clambering up the wall. “Stop that you little shit!”
Failing to dodge his next pass I felt his palms cup my butt cheeks. I frog-jumped again and shot further up the wall. “Get your hands off my ass!”
“Be Zen,” he said.
This was bullshit. I was about to kick his head to drive the point home when he boosted my right thigh sending me into yet another hop. I was a good ten-feet high on the building.
“Less swing on the hold!” he called as he spidered-up the wall leaving me behind.
In a blink I was two-stories up and clammy as a dead tuna. The strain on my wrists was making carpal-tunnel seem like a holiday. Pressing my head and chest to the wall, I swung my lower body back from my waist, hips and legs dangling over the courtyard. The logical side of my brain chose that moment to wake up and do the math. Leech would have been about ten years old when Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones filmed Entrapment. I was dealing with a psycho.
“Just watch where I step and place your feet in the same grooves.”
Hands on the ledge I leaned back to see where his damn yellow feet were. My bare palm scraped the cement. It stung like acid. My feet were now toe-in, kitty-corner on the four-inch wide third floor ledge. I sensed Leech one level above me. “How the hell do you get your groceries?” I panted trying to distract my un-Zen mind from jumping to the pavement and ending it all.
“I eat out. Now take your nose off the bricks and reach higher with your bare hand. Just a little further. Push up with your lower body.”
My lower body was in no position to thrust, my feet teetered on the edge of air. Stretching, my fingers slid from the narrow concrete trim. A window to my right opened with a rattle. “Who the hell are you? Batwoman?” an old man shrieked.
Losing my grip I spun a one-eighty Kill Bill kick and ended facing out with the back of my head pressed against the wall, my clammy right hand suctioned to the building, my left fingers frantically clutching clouds, and my sneakers slipping off the ledge.
Looking down I could see the Grand Canyon. I thought I knew vertigo before, but this was an entirely new dizzy. The air whooshed from my body as if being hermitically sealed. The ground spiraled up to meet me. I flung my head back against the wall. If I fell I’d splash like corned beef hash.
“I am so out of here!” I yelled at Leech. “Talk me down you lunatic!”
“Get Zen!”
“Does he have a net?”
I crossed my left hand over my body and groped for my cell phone. “I’m calling nine-one-one.”
“Don’t do that!” Leech hollered.
I fumbled my phone out of my pocket. It slipped from my hand and dropped hitting a cluster of bushes and lodging on a limb. A fleck of dirt flicked in my right eye. I blinked like a neon bulb going out. The image of Roger weeping at my funeral pooled tears in my eyes and washed out the grit. Small blessings.
Shadows settled to my left and then my right. Tangible darkness seemed to be enclosing me. I felt a hand clutch my ankle. In what appeared to be a computer-generated horror scene the wall filled with a flock of skinny dudes in black. The Birds.
I fell forward. The Bird who had me by the ankle held tight. I swung down, face in toward the building. My nose scraped the wall, my body bounced once, and then slammed into the arms of two Birds. They fell to the ground with me. I was killing two Birds with one nose.
“This is not going to happen ever again,” I said as I released my death grip from the taller Bird. My legs buckled and the shorter Bird caught me. “Hey lady, no offense, but you’re too old to be Buildering.” He handed me my phone.
I collapsed on the pavement and glanced down at my left leg in horror. There was a hole in my jeans… at the knee. A real honest-to-Pete hole.
Chapter Eleven
Back at my condo I showered and scrubbed my knee until it was bright red. There was no way to undo what was done. I would always know my left knee had been holed. I towel dried and pulled on my undies avoiding a knee-glance. Packing concealer on my red clown nose, I winced from the pain and admired the results. Not too bad for gallery reconnaissance.
I had to meet Leech in front of the North by Northwest Building at three o’clock. I decided on a discreet gray business suit with a pencil skirt and form fitted jacket, tailored but not too flashy. Likeable, but not memorable. I pulled my shoulder-length blonde curls into a tortoise-shell barrette at the nape of my neck. Leech was to look the part of a wealthy cowboy but not so he would attract attention.
At three on the dot, I stood on the sidewalk in front of the North by Northwest tower. I couldn’t fathom the compulsion Builderers felt to climb. Tipping back to look up the fifty-one stories, I bumped into a passerby. He caught me as I fell into his chest. “Sorry, sorry!”
Stumbling back I spotted Archie Leech marching along the street lost in his own parade of self-importance. Dressed entirely in white he looked like the new sheriff in Blazing Saddles. The only spot of color, a huge turquoise belt buckle, matched the rings he wore on all ten fingers. And I was worried about standing out.
“Cool, huh?” he pivoted on the heels of his white cowboy boots, took off his ten-gallon hat and swung it in an exaggerated bow.
“Terrific. Let’s hurry. I only have days, hours, minutes to re-steal Alfred Hiccup’s bronco.”
Leech sucked in his cheeks like a hound dog on the scent. “The Alfred Hiccup?” He tugged on my arm pulling me to a stop.
Oh shit. “Forget I said that. If you tell anyone I’ll have to kill you.”
He smirked sending a chill of precognition through me. I passed it off as nerves.
“Here’s our story. You’re my client, a wealthy cowboy looking to put money in a pension fund. I’m your investment advisor. Keep your mouth shut.”
What were the odds he wouldn’t blow it?
We entered through a revolving door and clattered across a polished terrazzo floor avoiding eye-contact with the two uniformed receptionists standing behind a cherry-wood console. A bank of brushed steel elevator doors lined both sides of the corridor to our right. Standing in front of the doors marked floors twenty-six to fifty-one, I steadied my hand and pushed the top floor button with my knuckle. Never use the tip of my finger. Elevator buttons are chocker-blocked with germs.
A camera the size of a golf ball hung in the upper left corner of the elevator cab. Turning my back on the doohickey, I whispered to Leech, “Don’t look but there’s a camera in the elevator. Don’t say anything, it might be a lip-reader.”
He gave me a snarky know-it-all grin.
Showoff. I faced front and watched the floors click away. On fifty-one, the doors eased open revealing a marble hall with the Cowboy Pension Fund logo embedded in the floor. Auditorium-sized glossy wooden doors stood open with the sculpture-laden antechamber beyond.
Leech strode into the gallery all Donald Trumpy. I tagged behind the bantam rooster, my lips moving in a silent prayer.
With a thumb-cam on my ring finger I furtively recorded the room and its contents. Two dozen pedestals were strategically placed to draw attention to the cowboy sculptures. Each podium stood at least five feet high placing the art at eye level.
Casually I glanced at the spotlights above each figure. There were button-sized holes in the ceiling. Camera
s or lasers… either way a challenge.
My knees rattled when I spotted the bronco. In that instant the caper became real. I was going to commit a re-theft, okay… a burglary. I stood in front of Leech and rolled my eyes upward. He crossed his and made a goofy face. I grimaced and rolled my eyes again. The master-thief finally appeared to understand as he looked ceiling-ward.
A blond Brad Pitt-ish dude dressed in modified Western garb trotted toward us, his hand extended. I began my clueless spiel about cowboy investments, while Leech eyeballed the security. He ambled around the base of the bronze bronco appearing to admire it. I attempted to distract Brad with a couple of well-placed eye-bats but he was more focused on my banged-up nose.
“Brad” informed me that he was Stewart James’s assistant. Unfortunately, Mr. James was at a business luncheon. We would need to set an appointment to discuss Leech’s financial planning with Mr. James. Would we like to set a day and time?
I took Brad’s card and promised to call.
Leech and I left the gallery moving slower than two senile snails nonchalantly checking out a nest of tiny cameras and low-placed button-bulbs that could only be security laser beams crossing the doorway and aimed to the back of the exhibit.
We stood mute in the elevator as it dropped us fifty-one floors to the main lobby. Leech grabbed my elbow and guided me to the revolving door.
My breath hissed from my body. A tire going flat had nothing on me. “Now what?” came out of my mouth with the last of the hiss.
“Let’s scram to my apartment. There’s something I have to do.”
Cool. I was about to see how a real burglar plots. I hoped this was an Ocean’s Eleven thingie. I imagined myself as Julia Roberts as we trotted down Brickell Avenue to the public parking garage.
Chapter Twelve
Leech’s apartment was no George Clooney pad. A red plush sofa dominated the center of the living room. The walls were a funky shade of orchid, the drapes a flame-stitch combo of crimson and purple. All in all, the place made my eyes ache.
My burglary coach rummaged through his video collection and pulled out a DVD. Entrapment. “Now watch this. Study it carefully.”
“I know this flick by heart.”
He put his finger to his lips. “Hush…”
So I hushed figuring he was the expert and I was here to learn.
Leech fast-forwarded to the scenes where Catherine Zeta Jones wiggles her body seductively under practice red string and then under real laser beams. He leaned forward engrossed in every detail. I was running out of my world famous patience. If I didn’t need his skills so badly and he wasn’t the man who knew too much I’d dump his happy ass.
Ten minutes of the actress’s bumps and grinds and I elbowed Leech. “What am I supposed to learn from this?”
“Huh?” He looked surprised to see me. “Oh… forgot you were here. This wasn’t for you. It’s for me.”
I smacked him in the head. “Focus! We just wasted twenty minutes.”
“Nah… I’m thinking on all eight gears. Got us a plan. We’re going to do a snatch and grab. I’ll stand at the door. You grab the statue, pitch it to me, and then wiggle-back under the lasers just like Catherine did in the flick.”
I gulped. Laser beam security. “Why don’t you do the worm through the laser rays? You’re the pro.”
His look was a total putdown. “Lady, you hired me to run this caper so let me do my thing. If there are lasers, you’re smaller and a better fit. Plus someone has to stand guard for the guards. Either that or we can drop from the roof into the skylight and dangle over the statue.”
Belly wiggling across the floor was a much better plan. He was the pro; I was the client with a promise. I pulled the thumb-cam off my finger and popped the dot-recorder in my White Rabbit watch, then played the video of the gallery against Leech’s orchid wall. It was grainy but I could see the laser light buttons on the bronco’s podium. Responder buttons stuck in the ceiling and appeared to point to the gallery entrance creating a crosshatch of beams.
“You’re going to need a cat suit and a mask cause they’ll have that room on video tape.”
“Kit and I are going to Calligraphy and Cat-Scans to get me one.”
“You mean Lady Merlot’s. It’s part of the Calligraphy mini-mall. Make sure you buy a tight slippery suit. No leather. You got some fast floor maneuvers to perform. You see how she wiggled and pumped from her waist? You gotta get that wave-action going in and coming out.”
Rather than strangle the idiot, I left his apartment with red and purple swirls super-imposed on my brain. My Ralph Lauren sunglasses added to the surreal haze created by spending an hour in his pad surrounded by the cacophony of colors. We agreed to meet at just before midnight in the alley behind North by Northwest.
Kit was waiting for me at the Second Act Café. He poured himself into Goldie and we headed to Coconut Grove. We were pretty quiet on the drive over. I was thinking about not being pregnant. I doubted Kit was thinking along the same lines.
I eased my car through an alley of cute gay-yuppie shops and into a cul-de-sac of even sweeter stores and restaurants that tumbled out onto the main drag. On the second sweep of the alley I found a space. The meter ate three one-dollar bills and burped out a time-stamped ticket. I zipped back to Goldie and placed the receipt on her dashboard where it would be visible to the meter-maids.
“Lady Merlot’s is at the end of the cul-de-sac that ties this mini-mall together. Follow me,” Kit said as he strode away. I struggled to keep up. At six-foot-four, he’s all legs and built for speed-walking even in stilettos. Focused on the cute cluster of flowered shops I stumbled over the curb and caught myself on an old-fashioned hitching post.
Ahead was a glass-front store, every surface except for the huge panes wore a heavy coat of baby blue enamel. Basketball-sized lights dangled from long metal poles attached to the ceiling. The window display looked to be a stationery store with little do-dads and tiny boxes. The sign above the door declared Calligraphy. To the left bloomed an explosion of spring, a festival of blossoms reminiscent of something from a European flower market. The sign above the floral riot read Cat-Scans.
“They scan cats?”
“Uh huh.”
“How do they—“
“The money is in the calligraphy. After we get your cat suit I’ll treat you to a calligraphy.” He guided me to the right of the Calligraphy shop and toward a pale lavender cottage with outrageous lime-green awnings. Cursive lettering above the door read… Lady Merlot’s Ladies’ Clothes.
Kit tweaked my elbow. “This is so exciting. I’ve always wanted a cat suit.”
“I’m the one buying the cat suit.”
“I’m living vicariously. The cat suit has not been made that could fit me.”
The idea of a cat suit was beginning to concern me. If I were caught lurking in the halls of a high-rise dressed like Catwoman at midnight I’d have some ‘splainin to do, Lucy.
“Maybe we should rethink this,” I said tugging on Kit’s arm. “I could wear black yoga pants. They’re more flexible.”
Kit let loose with a quiet eeek. “What if you got arrested? I could never face my public if my best friend was caught wearing yoga pants to a high-class burglary. No… it’s Catherine Z, or you can’t go. I’m putting my Perry Ellis foot down.”
Half of me was pleased. Maybe Roger and I could use the suit for role-playing.
The proprietress of Lady Merlot’s was a Barbie-shaped dudette sweating in a fuzzy pink workout suit. Her platinum hair was pulled to the top of her noggin and held with a pink leopard scarf that screamed hair extensions. A pair of gold Gucci readers hung from a chain around her neck.
I ran my hand over racks of what could only be described as Las Vegas vintage. Glitter tinkled to the floor. Kit was in the leather section. He grinned like a kid in a candy store.
A hat display caught my eye. Chapeaus confiscated from Ascot or Downton Abbey. I was gently extricating a blue cloche when Kit nudge
d me. “These three suits are all in your size and oh so sharp.”
He marched me to the fitting room, a former closet with a full-length mirror peeling at the edges, and a wine-colored drape for privacy.
“Try the one with the white stripe first.”
I yanked him behind the curtain. “This is a covert operation. I need to blend into the shadows not provide an illuminated arrow saying this way to the cat burglar.”
“Fudge. You’re right.” He took the striped suit and left me with two versions of a black cat get up.
The first suit fought me as if possessed by the spirit of an anorexic queen. No way was that a size six. I handed it back to my able-bodied assistant. We were left with suit number three.
The stiff spandex was up to my butt when I ran out of pulling energy. It was like giving birth to myself. I reached out from the curtain and yanked Kit back into the fitting room. Two of us in a closet-size space forcing my only body into spandex casing caused the purple drape to flip around like a gypsy girl’s skirt.
Our grunts drew a cautionary comment from Lady Merlot. “This is neither the time nor place!” she snapped.
When I was finally installed in the full-body straightjacket, Kit fastened the hood under my chin. The mask pressed on my sore nose but I did look adorable in a super-hero way. I wondered if they had a Batman suit for Roger. It occurred to me I might have to pee, but I filed that thought away under things to do later.
Experienced at costume changes Kit helped me remove the suit. It was a keeper.
“Stay right there!” Kit said.
Since he’d run off with my street clothes I didn’t have a lot of choice.
He hung two bawdy corsets with dangling garters on the cushioned hooks. One black and one white, and both trashy.
“I hope those are for you, because they are so not for me!”
He unfastened the black iron maiden. “Try it on. Just for fun. Roger will love it.”
Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries Page 22
