by Diane Kelly
“Uh-huh.” Klein paused a moment, as if weighing my response. “Alicia Shenkman tells me you were attacked last week. That you had to shoot someone.”
“Alicia has a big mouth.”
Klein chuckled. “She misses working with you.”
I missed working with Alicia, too. Goofing around with her was the one thing that had made my former job bearable. Tossing a rubber band ball back and forth over the top of our cubicles, watching funny videos on YouTube during our coffee breaks, lunchtime shopping excursions.
“You planning on staying on?” Klein asked.
“Yes, sir,” I responded without hesitation. “I am.” I carefully stepped over the legs of a scruffy-bearded homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk. The man wore a faded green sweat suit two sizes too small and reeked of alcohol, perspiration, and desperation.
“Okay, then. Just know that if you ever want to come back to Martin and McGee, we’ve got an office waiting for you.”
I stopped in my tracks, one leg on each side of the hobo. “Did you say ‘office’?”
“I’m offering you a management position, Tara. You have unique talents. Nobody has a nose for corporate fraud like you.”
I did have an uncanny ability to sniff out accounting irregularities. For some reason, thinking like a criminal came naturally to me. Apparently, skipping school and underage drinking had taught me some valuable skills.
“We’re prepared to offer you six figures.”
Whoa. “Does that include the numbers after the decimal point?”
Klein chuckled. “Nope. All six figures come before the decimal.”
For a brief moment, I wavered. A cushy management job at a prestigious CPA firm. A big salary, 401(k) matching, four weeks’ paid vacation. No crazy men with box cutters.
But, no. I couldn’t do it.
Even if I’d be ditching the cubicle, I’d still be riding a desk all day and that just wasn’t for me. I loved the action as a special agent, the snooping around, that Bingo! feeling when I finally found the smoking gun that would nail a tax cheat. I’d been bored stiff at the accounting firm and no amount of money could change that. “Thanks, Mr. Klein. I appreciate the offer. But I love being a special agent.”
The homeless man lying between my legs stirred and opened his bloodshot eyes.
“All righty, then. But if you change your mind,” Klein said, “give me a call.”
“Will do.” I snapped my phone shut. “Excuse me,” I said to the man and continued on my way to the bagel shop.
CHAPTER FIVE
Undercover Angels
I’d just ordered the bagels and a caramel latte with whipped cream when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to find myself face-to-face with a life-sized Latina Barbie.
Christina was tall, thin, and busty, with big brown eyes and full lips. Her lustrous black hair hung halfway down her back. She performed a curtsy in her fitted black-and-white polka-dot minidress, then waggled her fingers at me in a cutesy wave. “Hi!” she gushed. “You have to be Tara, right? ’Cause you look like a librarian, just like you said.”
I took in her painted acrylic nails, her perfectly arched brows, and her four-inch heels. She should be wearing a tiara and tossing Tootsie Rolls from a parade float, not hunting down drug dealers. My thoughts spilled out of my mouth before I could stop them. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Her brown eyes flashed with fury and before I knew what was happening, Christina had wrapped her arm around my neck and pulled me into a headlock. “No,” she hissed in my ear, her voice now low and tinged with a sharp Spanish accent. “I’m not kidding you at all.”
So Barbie had spunk.
Agent Marquez and I had received the same training, so within seconds I’d performed the evasive maneuvers needed to slip out of her grip, skipping the stomp on the instep so as not to mar her adorable patent leather pumps with polka dot bows on the toe. I faced her and held out my hand. “I’m sorry. That was inexcusably rude of me. It’s just that you don’t look at all like a DEA agent.”
She took in my delicate facial features, my tastefully drab olive-green linen pantsuit, my hair pulled back with a tortoiseshell barrette. “Well, you look exactly like an IRS agent.”
“Touché.”
We traded smiles. She took my hand and gave it a firm shake, all forgiven.
After we received our orders, we slipped into a booth at the back of the shop. Christina handed me a manila envelope. Inside was an enlarged driver’s-license photo of Joseph Cullen, aka Joe Cool. Joe had a goofy smile, an acne-pocked face, and the worst haircut I’d ever seen. “The guy wears a mullet?”
Christina nodded. “We may have to kill him.”
I smiled. The girl might be annoyingly bubbly, but at least she had a sense of humor. This bust could be fun.
The printout indicated Joe was only five foot six and a hundred and forty-five pounds. Two female agents should be able to take him down easily. Of course I’d never expected a porker like Jack Battaglia to move as fast as he did, either.
“HUD foreclosed on a crack house in the middle of Joe’s ice-cream route,” Christina said. “I had keys made for us.” She pulled a key out of the envelope and slid it across the table to me. “We can use the house as our base of operations.”
“Good idea.” I handed the file back to Christina and tucked the key into my purse.
“If we’re going to run a successful stakeout in that neighborhood, we’ll have to make some adjustments to our appearance. If we go in dressed like this”—she gestured at our clothes—“Joe and everyone else will be on to us in a heartbeat.”
Looked like it was time to get back in touch with my blue-collar roots.
We left the bagel shop, ready to get started. “I just need to run these by my office.” I held up the white paper bag containing Eddie’s bagels. “They’re for my partner.”
Christina and I walked to my office, her heels click-clacking on the sidewalk as she all but skipped along next to me. When we reached the homeless man, asleep again on the sidewalk, I tucked a second bag containing a nutritious whole wheat bagel and a bottle of orange juice under his arm.
We arrived at the Treasury building and made our way down the hall. Viola assessed Christina with a sharp eye as we approached her desk. Like me, Christina was deceptively benign looking. She’d already proven that when she’d taken me down at the bagel shop. When we drew near, Viola turned her pointed look from Christina to me. “Lu’s looking for you.”
Dang. She must’ve received her copy of my firearm discharge report. I’d known this was coming. I’d just hoped for a longer reprieve.
Christina waited in my office while I went to see the Lobo. I took a deep breath and rapped tentatively on the door frame.
Lu looked up from the stack of paperwork on her desk. And she didn’t look happy. “Well, well,” she said, picking up the cigarette from her ashtray and taking a deep drag. “If it ain’t the Annie Oakley of the IRS.”
I stepped into her office. “Didn’t Eddie tell you what happened? That Battaglia attacked me with a box cutter?” I knew my partner would back me up. Eddie and I hadn’t worked together long, but we’d gelled instantly. His loyalty was one of the few things I could count on these days.
Lu blew smoke out her nose, like a dragon with a beehive. “’Course he did. But rules are rules. You’re officially on administrative leave until we can hold a hearing and get this mess straightened out.”
Dang.
“But we can’t spare you,” she said, “so don’t stop working.”
Sheez. “Some leave.”
She waved her hand. “Get out of here and get back to work.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I retrieved Eddie’s bagels and Christina from my office, and we headed down the hall to Eddie’s digs. Eddie glanced up from his desk where he sat virtually buried in Battaglia’s records. His CPA license hung on the wall behind him next to a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader calendar featuring a
woman with a pair of large pom-poms in her hands and another pair nearly bursting out of her tiny halter top. I tossed the bag to him.
He caught it in midair. “Thanks.” He set the bag on his desk, then stood as Christina stepped forward with her hand out. I introduced the two.
“Nice to meet you, Christina.” Eddie shook her hand, then turned it over and raised her wrist to his nose. “Wow, you smell nice.”
Christina giggled. “Thanks. I went to one of those places that make personalized fragrances. I call this one ‘Christina in Bloom.’”
Eddie grinned. Although he was happily married, Eddie was also a hopeless flirt. “It suits you perfectly.”
I picked Eddie’s framed family photo off his desk and held it up to Christina. “These would be Eddie’s wife and kids.”
“She’s pretty,” Christina said, taking the frame out of my hand, “and your girls are adorable.”
“Thanks. I’m a lucky guy.” Eddie sat back in his rolling chair and pulled a bagel out of his bag. He fished around in the bag with his hand and, coming up empty, pulled it toward him and peeked inside. “What? No cream cheese?”
“Oops.” I shrugged sheepishly. “I forgot.”
Eddie shook his head. “It was only a matter of time before the love died.”
Christina returned the photo to Eddie’s desk and we headed out the door.
“Take pictures of the takedown,” Eddie called after us. “Two-on-one action, I don’t want to miss that.”
Urk. Men.
CHAPTER SIX
Playing the Part
We headed out to the parking lot and climbed into my BMW, putting the top down to enjoy the pleasant spring day. As we left downtown, I changed lanes on Elm Street just past the historic book depository. Something about driving over the big X painted on the street, marking the spot where President Kennedy had been shot, gave me the creeps. A handful of tourists stood on the infamous grassy knoll, looking over at the road then up at the old building, no doubt wondering if there was any credence to the second-shooter notion advanced by conspiracy theorists.
An hour later at a trendy store at the Galleria, Christina and I searched through racks in the juniors section for appropriately inappropriate attire to wear on our upcoming undercover gig. Though it was only March, daytime temperatures already reached the low eighties and the summer stock was out and primed for purchase.
Christina sorted through a rack of colorful tops, sliding the hangers aside as she looked over the offerings. “See anything that’ll make us look like slackers?”
I held up a skimpy black T-shirt that read DIVA in glittery silver lettering across the front. “How about this?”
She scrunched up her nose. “It’s totally tacky, so it’s totally perfect. What do you think of this?” She held a pair of hot-pink hot pants up to her waist.
The tiny shorts looked to be a size three. They also looked like they’d fit her perfectly. I fought the urge to bitch-slap her. “Trashy. Get them.”
She added them to the stack accumulating on her arm.
“How far do we have to take this whole undercover thing?” I asked. “I want to look the part, but I’d draw the line at a tramp stamp or belly button ring.”
“So I should cancel the appointment for the nipple piercing?”
The mere thought had me hunching my shoulders in phantom agony.
“Listen up.” Christina put one finger in the air and waved it in a zigzag pattern in front of my face. “This undercover thang ain’t jus’ about wearing the right gear,” she said in a sassy voice. “It’s about puttin’ on the right attitude.”
“And the ‘right attitude’ would be what, precisely?”
“That everyone can kiss our sweet little asses.” She kissed her fingertips, cocked her hip, and gave her right butt cheek a resounding slap.
Hmm. I kissed my fingers, stuck out a hip, and slapped my ass. “How’s that?”
She frowned. “Needs work.”
We snatched several pairs of seamless no-line underwear from the lingerie display. Didn’t want our sweet little asses to have panty lines in these tight clothes.
We headed into the dressing rooms with our selections, choosing the largest room to share so we could swap the selections we’d squabbled over. Inside the room, I slipped out of my loafers, then removed my jacket and hung it on a hook.
Christina glanced over at me, gesturing at the bandage on my arm. “What happened?”
I explained the injury, giving her the basic details of Battaglia’s bust.
“He didn’t know you carried a gun?” She slipped into a pair of skintight jeans and zipped them up. “What part of ‘IRS Criminal Investigations’ did he not understand?”
Maybe if the word got out that IRS agents were armed, we’d have fewer problems. “Yeah. It was pretty stupid. He would’ve spent only a month or two in jail for the tax fraud. But assault on a federal officer will put him away for years.” I slipped the black top over my head, tugging it down into place. I didn’t know Christina well enough to openly discuss my concerns about my job, but I was curious to know if she’d been through the same experience, suffered the same doubts. “You ever been attacked?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? You expect to, then?”
Christina turned to look at her butt in the mirror, performing a series of squats to test the flexibility of the fabric. Satisfied, she stood and looked at me. “If you don’t expect an attack, you won’t be ready for it.”
“True.” I hadn’t expected Jack Battaglia to do what he did. And I hadn’t been ready for him. I’d never make that mistake again.
After trying the clothes on and finding the right shoes to complete our outfits, we paid for our purchases with our government-issued credit cards and headed back to the dressing rooms to change into our new panties and outfits. We emerged from our separate rooms and gave each other the once-over. Christina appeared all of eighteen in the teeny pink shorts and tank top.
“It needs one final touch.” I reached over to her shoulder, pulled her black bra strap out from under the tank top, and let it hang off her shoulder. “There.”
Christina took in my tight black T-shirt, the hip-hugging Capri pants that showed my belly button and very nearly revealed my coin slot, and the over-the-top flip-flops embellished with sparkling silver sequins. “You’ve got the clothes right, and your manicure is cute, but we’ve got to do something about your hair and makeup. Too conservative.” She pushed me through the lavender curtain back into the dressing room.
While Christina had glitzy, striking cover-girl qualities, I was more like the attractive but less showy sort of woman on page sixty-two of a magazine, in an ad for floor polish or tampons. I decided to let Christina have her way with me, makeup wise, that is.
She whipped lipstick, blush, and eye shadow out of her enormous purse and set to work, pausing occasionally to evaluate her progress. After emboldening my features with a metallic rose lipstick and thick black liquid eyeliner, she put one last dab of powder on my nose and declared my face “Done.” Putting her hands on my shoulders, she turned me around to face the mirror.
I took one look and gasped. “I look like a—”
“Ho.” Christina dropped the makeup back in her bag. “You’ll fit right in where we’re going.”
I turned back to the mirror and took another peek. I squinted but could still hardly recognize myself. She’d made my thin lips appear pouty and sexy. Very Angelina Jolie. Or John Madden.
“Now for your hair.” Christina scavenged a hairbrush and a small spray can out of her purse. She removed my barrette and brushed through my hair. “Face me,” she ordered.
I turned around and she used her fingers and hairbrush to tease my hair into a wild mane. She stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Just right.” Grabbing the spray, she shook the can and aimed. Psshh.
The spray seared my eyes and nose, and my skin felt like it was on fire. I screamed, my hands flying to my face. “It
burns!” I choked out between coughs. “It burns!” My eyes watered like never before, gushing tears like a geyser. I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes, desperately and vainly trying to ease the pain.
“Oh, poop,” Christina muttered through the blistering haze. “This isn’t my hair spray. This is my pepper spray.”
“Pepper spray?” I shrieked. “What the hell!” Temporarily blinded, I reached out to throttle her, but she managed to evade my grabbing hands, probably by jumping onto the bench. “If I catch you, Christina, I’m going to kill you!”
My fingers found an empty plastic hanger on one of the hooks and grabbed it. I swung the thing like a machete, but never made contact, unable to find my target. “Shit!” I tripped over something on the floor, probably my purse, and fell into the wall, shaking the flimsy structure.
“Watch it!” hollered a girl in the adjacent dressing room.
Two loud raps sounded at the doorway to the fitting room. “Everything okay in there?” a clerk asked. “There’s a weird smell and I heard screaming.”
“We’re fine,” Christina called, materializing again and pushing a wad of tissue into my hand. “You’d scream, too, if you saw the way Tara looked in those pants.”
Now I was really going to kill her.
* * *
Ten minutes later, I could finally breathe normally again and make out blurry images. My tears had smeared most of the eye makeup Christina had so carefully applied, but no way would I let her touch me again.
People stared at me as we walked through the mall, averting their eyes when I caught them gawking. Christina treated me to a garlic-butter pretzel by way of apology.
I swallowed a huge, yummy bite. “You’re lucky I can be bought off so easily.”
“I am,” she agreed. “If you’d held out, I would’ve upped the offer to include a raspberry lemonade.”
“Damn.”
We took the elevator down to the parking garage and climbed out on the second level. Christina took a few steps forward, then stopped, her head rotating as she tried to locate the car. “Didn’t we park in section 2B?”
