by Rob Byrnes
Chase got it. “Cab?”
“Yeah. This idiot doesn’t know where he’s…Hey! I said Park!”
Chase ignored the directions. Those were Jamie’s problem. “Where does Wunder want to meet?”
“The place on Second Avenue.”
“Where we met before?”
“Yes…Not Fifth, dammit!”
“Got it. Second, not Fifth. Wait—did I say Fifth?”
“Not you! This idiot driver…Hey!”
Chase clicked off without saying good-bye and turned to face Grant, who was sitting at the kitchen table in a T-shirt and pair of baggy boxer shorts that were once a much whiter shade of white.
“Looks like it’s pay day, partner.”
Grant rubbed Bengay on his right knee. “How do you mean?”
Chase smiled. “Wunder just told Jamie he wants to see all of us, and he wants to see us now. So throw on some clothes and let’s get to Manhattan.”
Grant nodded unpleasantly. “This doesn’t feel right. Didn’t they tell us this was gonna take four to six weeks, or something like that?”
“Your problem,” said Chase, “is you’re too pessimistic. We told the guy we wanted our money right away, we did the job, and now he’s doing what we told him to do. So why the suspicion?”
“It comes from many years of having things go sour on us. You’ve been right there with me, so you should feel it, too.”
“What I feel is that we’re gonna be thirty thousand dollars richer in an hour. So put on some pants and let’s go.”
Grant appreciated Chase’s optimism and wanted to believe. His churning stomach and aching back were less charitable.
Jamie met them outside the white-brick building on Second Avenue and they were buzzed inside. They took the elevator up, and—as before—were met by Kevin Wunder, holding open the door leading into the congresswoman’s suite of offices.
“Inside,” he said brusquely, and they followed him.
And, as before, Wunder went through the process of unlocking and relocking doors, except this time after the second door, he veered off and opened a different door. It was the one leading to what Grant had earlier assumed was the congresswoman’s—Representative’s, he mentally corrected himself—personal office, what with the semicircular throw and lack of wear and tear outside the door.
The light was already on when Grant, Chase, and Jamie entered the room. A tall blond woman—improbably young, even with a severe expression etched on her face—commanded the center of the office, watching them through cold blue eyes that never broke contact. Her perfectly tailored navy blue suit and high-collared white top were designed to let people know she was supposed to be at the office or a board of directors meeting or something like that. Her clothes said she meant business.
Two large young men in black suits and white shirts flanked her and gave the impression they also meant business…and could deliver, despite the ducks decorating one guy’s tie. Neither of them was less than two hundred pounds and both looked like recent members of a particularly vicious college football team. If some college had a team nicknamed “The Decapitators,” these guys were probably the star players.
But the blonde was scarier. The Decapitators would only separate your head from your body; the blonde looked like she’d separate a lower, more delicate body part. It was clear no one was going to mess with her. Ever.
Jamie, close to oblivious, whispered in Chase’s ear. “Look! They brought in the campaign team to say thanks.”
Chase took a look at the welcoming committee and rather doubted that.
The blonde took charge, which was no surprise.
“Close the door, Kevin.” He did exactly that, and they also heard him throw a dead bolt. No one was getting in and—if Grant read the situation correctly—no one was getting out until their business was concluded.
“These are the men.” Grant thought he heard a slight quaver in Wunder’s voice.
She had a tiny nose—most likely courtesy of an Upper East Side plastic surgeon, maybe the same one who did Jamie’s—but still managed to look down it at them.
“Take a seat.”
“If you don’t mind,” said Grant, because his body was still sore. “We’ll stand.”
“I said to take a seat.” She sort of smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile and it wasn’t an invitation. There was a three-second standoff before the men gave in and sat. Her tiny nose wrinkled. “And which one of you is wearing the bad cologne?”
Grant half raised a hand. “It ain’t cologne. It’s Bengay.”
Only then did she lean back against the desk at the center of the room. Grant could see enough of the nameplate behind her to confirm they were borrowing Representative Catherine Cooper Concannon’s private office, and wondered if that made this a federal case. The thought didn’t help calm the stomach that had been churning and back that had been aching since before he left Jackson Heights.
The blonde stood there for a moment, sizing them up with those icy blue eyes. Finally she spoke again.
“You don’t know me, so let me introduce myself.” She let the pause hang for a full ten seconds. “My name is Penelope Concannon Peebles.”
Grant hiked an eyebrow. This wasn’t something he had been expecting, but it helped explain why Peebles was twittering or tweetering or sexting or swexting or whatever to random anonymous women who were probably a lot nicer to him.
He nodded at The Decapitators. “And who are they?”
“None of your business.” She continued, “You already know Mr. Wunder.” They muttered an affirmation, and she picked up something that looked an awful lot like a check from the blotter centered on Representative Catherine Cooper Concannon’s desk. She glanced at it. “Which one of you is Jambro Enterprises?” She pronounced the word with a long A.
Jamie raised his hand. “Jambro.” He used a short A. “It’s my company. Jambro is short for Jamie Brock. Get it?”
She didn’t care; no one did. “So you’re here to collect your check?”
Jamie leaned forward and began to reach. “Yes, thanks, and let me just say it’s been a pleasure…”
Her eyes flashed. “Not so fast.”
She held the check just out of reach. From the corner of his eye, Grant saw Chase studying the piece of paper with a perplexed expression and thought he was about to say something, but then Jamie said something instead.
“We get the check, right?”
Penelope Concannon Peebles answered by ripping the check in half.
Then she ripped it into quarters.
Then eighths.
Jamie’s smile disappeared. “But…”
It was time for Grant to take over. He slowly and painfully rose from his chair and dropped his voice to the lowest level in his register. “Listen, lady, we did the job, and we’ve got the bruises to prove it. So now you’ve got to pay the fee. Those are the rules.”
“Except,” she said, letting tiny pieces of what had been the check flutter to the carpeted floor, “you didn’t do the job. You failed.”
Deep down, Grant had expected the campaign would try to cheat them. But he hadn’t expected to be told he’d failed. Not when he knew he hadn’t.
“What do you mean, sayin’ we failed? We got the pictures back. Every one of ’em.”
She turned and wordlessly nodded at one of the large silent men—the one with the duck-tie—who stood scowling behind her. In turn, he produced a laptop. It was already connected to the Internet.
“Does this look like success, Mister…Mister…?”
“No last names necessary,” muttered Grant.
“Fine. I’ll just call you Mr. Criminal.”
“Fair enough. And I’ll just call you Missus…”
“Grant.” Chase’s hand was abruptly on his elbow, a sign he should quiet down.
Grant, Chase, and Jamie strained to see the tiny screen on the laptop but had to get out of their chairs to catch a closer look. That hurt, but they toughed it out.
/> “What are we looking at?” asked Grant, squinting to make out the screen.
She sneered. “You’re looking at that horrible June Forteene’s blog. And if we scroll down…” She nodded again, and the man with the duck tie scrolled at her unspoken command. June’s open letter detailing how her blog had been attacked by imaginary hackers appeared.
Mrs. Peebles said, “Scroll,” and soon large lettering promised:
A PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS
“Yeah?” grunted Grant. “So?”
“Scroll.” The monitor now showed something that looked flesh-like and…
Grant and Chase sank back to their chairs. Jamie continued to examine the picture.
“Hey!” he finally said. “It sorta looks like part of that picture of Austin’s penis!” He looked away from the screen only to discover that no one else was shocked by his pronouncement.
Austin Peebles’s wife shook her head. “That’s brilliant. Just brilliant. You should be a private detective.” She slammed down the laptop lid, not bothering to order Duck Tie to do it and—in the process—came within a quarter inch of costing Duck Tie three fingertips.
“That is indeed a cropped version of the photo. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you wouldn’t know exactly what it was. Or whose it was. But we know, don’t we? We know it’s my husband’s cock shot.” Her icy blue-eyed glare focused on Jamie, who was clearly the person she liked the least in a room full of people she didn’t like at all.
Grant couldn’t figure it out. “That’s impossible. We stole her computers. We stole her phone. We stole her assistants’ computers. We cleaned out her apartment. How in hell’s name…?”
They looked at each other in silent befuddlement until Penelope Concannon Peebles again took charge.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how she has a copy of the photo. I don’t really care how she has a copy of the photo. All I know is that June Forteene states on her blog that, if a certain unnamed candidate doesn’t withdraw from his congressional race within the next five days—and pay her a substantial amount of money to compensate her for her losses—she’ll make the entire photo public.” She stood up straight and managed to seem even taller. “And, as you know, the entire photo shows more than a penis. It also shows a face.”
“Wait!” Jamie was suffering from another unfortunate brainstorm. “If she’s threatening an unnamed candidate, maybe she isn’t after your husband after all!”
Penelope Concannon Peebles eyed Grant and Chase and nudged a shoulder in the direction of Jamie. “I hope that one isn’t the brains of your operation.”
Grant slumped back in his chair. “Never seen him before in my life.”
They managed to ditch Jamie at the Fifty-ninth Street subway station and eventually made it home to Jackson Heights, wondering the entire trip how they’d managed to screw everything up. They’d cleared every piece of equipment out of her office, searched her online storage, and emptied her apartment, but still June Forteene had managed to hold on to one of the images. That didn’t make sense.
And now they were out thirty grand. Days of lost work and considerable risk with nothing to show for it except a dressing down by the candidate’s wife.
When they reached their stop, Grant turned to Chase. “This is why I hate working for other people. From now on, we only work for ourselves.”
“Deal,” Chase agreed.
They’d trudged a half block down the street in the direction of their apartment building when Chase said, “After the game with the fake check, I’m surprised you didn’t walk away.”
Grant stopped dead in his tracks. “Huh? What fake check?”
“The one she ripped up in front of us.”
“What about it?”
Chase studied him, trying to figure out if his leg was being pulled. “You saw it, right?”
“Saw what? The check? Sure.”
“The fake check.”
Grant stared blankly in another direction. “I don’t know why you keep saying that.”
“Because…” Chase paused. “Wait, you didn’t see it?”
“See what?”
Rather than go around that circle one more time, Chase paused to collect his thoughts before continuing. “That check Penelope whatsername ripped up. It was blank.”
Grant’s neck made a snapping sound when he jerked his head to get a clear look at Chase, who he hoped to discover was kidding. But wasn’t. “You mean…blank, like the amount was blank?”
“Blank like everything was blank. They didn’t even bother making it payable to BroJam or JamBro or whatever Jamie’s scam company is called.”
Grant returned his gaze to nothing, allowing the full realization of how much Wunder and company had screwed them—premeditatedly screwed them, at that—to sink in. Because if that hadn’t been their plan all along, why even bother having a prop like a fake check on hand? Why not just never call them back? That’s what Grant would have done.
“So they never intended to pay us a dime.”
“Not a penny,” Chase agreed.
They walked in silence the rest of the way back to their apartment, which gave Chase a solid ten minutes to contemplate a few things, none of which had to do with that fake check. Over their years together, he’d grown used to Grant’s bad back, his slight touch of arthritis when the weather turned, and his increasingly frequent trips to the bathroom at three in the morning. And, yes, there was also that unsettling snap his neck sometimes made, which sounded like it should hurt a lot, but so far didn’t seem to.
But if Grant’s eyes were now slipping—and the intentionally blank check, while not obvious, was something the younger Grant Lambert would have spotted a half mile away—they were going to have to rethink their line of work. Not to mention Chase’s Groc-O-Rama paycheck wasn’t big enough for both of them to live on.
While Chase was thinking things through, Grant was listening to much the same inner monologue. How could I have missed that? Am I getting too old for this career?
But for both of them, pride in their work won the day. Getting older was one thing; probably getting screwed over by a client was something altogether different.
So by the time they reached the front stoop of their run-down brownstone, they said the same thing at the same time.
“Those bastards can’t get away with this.”
Chapter Eleven
Neither of them got much sleep that night, but Grant finally nodded off around four in the morning, roughly an hour after the last time he had to get up to pee. Not that Chase was keeping track. Too much.
When Grant awoke an hour later—because his body woke up; not because his bladder did—the other side of the bed was empty. He found Chase on the computer, staring at June Forteene’s blog.
“You know,” Chase said, hearing Grant shuffle out of the bedroom, “I have an idea.”
“Does it involve hiring someone to kill Jamie Brock?” Grant tried but failed to stifle a yawn. “Because then it would be a very good idea.”
“Yeah, it would. But that’s not what I was thinking.” His eyes stayed focused on the monitor. “What I was thinking is we take another shot at getting the picture back.”
“Ugh.” Grant shuffled into the kitchen. “You’d better hold that thought until I make coffee, ’cause I’m gonna need caffeine in my system before I tell you to go to hell.”
Chase kept talking, mostly to himself. “Did you see this post on June Forteene’s blog? Kind of crazy and paranoid. Makes me think she might be cracking up.”
A few minutes later Grant returned with two mugs of hot coffee. Chase was still staring at the penis fragment on June Forteene’s blog, but looked up when he smelled coffee. Grant handed him a mug.
“So want to hear my idea?”
“No.” There was silence for a while until Grant half sighed and half yawned. “You still sore?” Chase nodded. “Me, too.”
“Is this a competition?”
“Nah. Just trying to fi
gure out if I should have sympathy and listen to your idea. I still feel bad for you, so go ahead. You’ve earned it.”
“Okay, so—”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“I feel bad for you ’cause you fell maybe six feet out a transom, but I fell…I dunno, maybe twenty, twenty-five feet down an airshaft. Don’t I get some sympathy, too?”
“Oh, jeez.” Chase rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’m sorry your six-foot fall hurt more than my twelve-foot fall. Better?”
Grant nodded. He didn’t care about the actual footage; he only cared that his plummet was acknowledged. Especially since Chase was making such a big freakin’ deal over his own fall of maybe three or four feet.
“So whatcha got?”
“You’re not gonna like this.”
“No doubt.”
Chase kept his eyes on the prize. Or, in this case, the penis. “I figure we go back to June Forteene’s place and steal everything again.”
There was more silence, and this time for a lot longer than a while. In fact, it went on so long that Chase, eyes still locked on the monitor, started to wonder if Grant had somehow silently slipped out of the room behind his back.
“Did you hear—”
“I heard you.” Grant no longer cared if Chase was sore or how far he’d fallen. “I also think it’s such a stupid idea you make me worry.” He eased himself onto the arm of the couch. “Not to mention, I think I’ve heard this before, and I seem to remember I didn’t like it then, either.”
Chase blushed. “You did. Remember Jamie’s idea about how we could maximize our income by stealing the picture over and over again? I sort of modified that to meet our more immediate needs.”
Grant wasn’t happy. “Sweet. So now you’re stealing ideas from Jamie Brock. Next thing, you’ll start going to the Hamptons with him to pick over the carcasses of the rich and elderly. Because Jamie Brock is like the Einstein of crime. He could be a Bond villain.”
Chase looked up from the penis fragment featured on the blog as a A PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS. “You have a better idea?”
Grant sipped at his coffee. The humiliation of the previous night had somewhat dissipated; also, he was too bone-tired to dwell on revenge. “The best idea is that we forget this entire episode ever happened. Make it disappear from our lives.”
