Strange Bedfellows

by Rob Byrnes

  The women also scanned the room. Bare linoleum floor, maps and posters tacked to the wall, folding tables, telephones, and at least a dozen computers. It was designed for temporary functionality, not style. This wasn’t the sort of place anyone would come to relax.

  “The campaign staff doesn’t start coming in until around eight thirty, unless I have an event. Do you think we’ll be done by then?”

  “The truck is supposed to be here at seven forty-five,” said Lisa. “That should give us plenty of time, right?”

  “Right. There’s not that much we’ll have to take out of here.” Austin glanced with affection at a folding table, upon which he’d come a little too close to bedding a campaign volunteer until she’d panicked that her fiancé might find out. And also that anyone passing by on Lexington Avenue would be able to see them in the act, even though Austin thought of that as a bonus. “I assume you just want all the electronic equipment, right?”

  Lisa nodded. “All the computers and whatever else is in Wunder’s desk. Just in case he’s hiding something in there.”

  “Anything else?” He hoped she wouldn’t want the table; it had sentimental value.

  Mary Beth eyed a poster hanging one wall next to a map of the Upper East Side marked up by volunteers to show where they’d dropped brochures. It prominently featured the Official Campaign Photo—a slightly more mature-looking, still ridiculously young Austin Peebles—against the backdrop of an American flag. “Can I have one of those, too?”

  “Sure, kitten.” He smiled and dimpled again.

  “Absolutely not,” said Lisa, who neither smiled nor dimpled.

  Austin finally turned on the lights, and the room began to glow with a sickly fluorescence. He walked toward the far end of the office, motioning to them.

  “Follow me,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll show you where Kevin has his desk.”

  Chase pocketed his phone. “He’s not answering.”

  That didn’t help Grant’s increasingly gloomy mood. “What do you mean he’s not answering?”

  “What I said. I called four times, and he didn’t answer.” He looked absently out over the traffic gridlocked on Second Avenue from the sidewalk across the street from June Forteene’s building. “Maybe he’s stuck in a tunnel.”

  “I got a tunnel for him,” Grant muttered.

  Chase frowned. “I’m not quite sure what you meant by that, but I wish you’d reconsider the metaphor.”

  Grant wasn’t listening. “Don’t make excuses for him.”

  “I’m not making…Okay, I can tell you’re in a bad mood, so I’m gonna back off.”

  “I’m not in a bad mood.”

  Chase tossed out a mocking laugh. “You are in such a bad mood!”

  Grant was about to angrily tell Chase that he was not only not in a bad mood, he’d punch him in the neck if he claimed he was in a bad mood one more time. But then he saw something out of his peripheral vision that stopped him.

  “It’s her.” He said it just loud enough for Chase to hear over the traffic. They ducked behind a parked car.

  Chase looked at his watch. “It’s not even seven! She can’t be leaving her apartment already! We’re not ready!”

  “So much for our timing. As usual.” Grant crouched and watched her walk past on the other side of the street, blissfully unaware she was being observed and discussed just fifty feet away. “You’d better tell Farraday to abort the job at her office. Too risky now, and we’re getting behind schedule.”

  “I think they have time to pull it off.”

  Grant shook his head. “Not with two people. Unless Jamie gets there in the next few minutes. She could get there while Farraday and Donovan are in the middle of robbing her, and I can’t see how that helps anything.”

  “Well, then how will we—”

  “I don’t know.” Grant eyed June as she approached the corner.

  Chase took the phone from his pocket and started to dial while Grant rose a bit from his crouch to get a better view of June from behind the parked car. And then he said, “Wait a minute.”

  With one digit left to dial, Chase let his finger hover. “What?”

  “She went into Starbucks.”

  “Which one?” There were three in view. Grant pointed. “So…do I tell Farraday and Nick to abort?”

  “I’m not sure.” Grant strained to see through the glass window of Starbucks before giving up. “I need to get a better look.”

  “Bedbugs?”

  “Bedbugs,” Constance said again.

  Robles wasn’t buying it. “Lady, I live here! I’d know if this building had bedbugs.”

  Constance adopted a very officious tone, even more officious than the tone she’d already been using. “Mr. Robles, I understand your concern about alarming your tenants, but I can assure you the Department of Health has received a number of complaints, and I assume those have come from the people who live here, so your tenants are already alarmed.”

  The superintendent folded his arms across his chest. “I’m gonna need to see some identification, Miss…?”

  “Brown.” She pulled a wallet out of her purse, opened it, and handed him a laminated card identifying her as a special inspector for the New York City Department of Health. Whether or not that was a real job title at the agency was beside the point, as was the fact that, had Robles examined her other forms of identification, he could have found similar cards claiming she was an official with the New York City Department of Finance, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, the New York State Department of Agriculture, Weight Watchers, and the Church of Scientology.

  “I still don’t believe this,” he said, handing the card back.

  She nodded at the white van she’d double-parked outside before pushing the buzzer. A van she’d borrowed from a street corner in Morningside Heights less than an hour earlier after scouting it out the night before.

  Constance stared down Robles. “There’s one sure way to find out if those complaints are legitimate. The department’s special bedbug inspector is inside that van.”

  Robles looked at the white van and a middle-aged Latina with close-cropped gray hair waved back at him.

  Grant crossed the street alone and approached the coffeehouse, taking pains to stay behind other pedestrians. It would be a very bad thing if June Forteene spotted him. When he reached the front window, he stood at a far edge and scanned the crowd until he spotted her waiting to order, and kept an eye on her until she claimed an empty table and opened her laptop. It looked like she was going to make herself at home for a while.

  He hustled back across the street and explained the situation to Chase.

  “Call Farraday. I think they have some time, but the two of them are gonna have to try to pull it off without Jamie. Tell him to listen for his phone, though, in case June surprises me and doesn’t stay long.”

  Chase began punching in the digits.

  Ninety minutes earlier, in an immaculate penthouse apartment on Water Street in Manhattan’s Financial District, the darkness had been interrupted by a loud Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!

  An arm emerged from under the comforter and felt blindly for the clock on the nightstand. Finally, the hand attached to that arm found a button and the alarm stopped.

  And Jamie Brock returned to a particularly vivid dream in which he’d convinced a wealthy and famous and dying retired actor to not only add him to his will, but also make him executor.

  Then there was the Steve Jobs dream…the Olivia de Havilland dream…the Barry Diller dream…even the Wally Cox dream, although that was a recurring dream so it really didn’t count.

  The dreams still felt real—and highly profitable—when Jamie awoke. He stretched in bed and glanced at bright sunshine pouring through the window, and almost fell asleep again before his brain sparked and he realized bright sunlight shouldn’t be streaming through the window at 5:30 in the morning.

  He was afraid to look at the clock.

  And then t
here was the man suddenly stirring next to him in the bed, murmuring, “Good morning.”

  Jamie racked his brain, but—like the night before—still couldn’t remember his name. He remembered he was a stockbroker, and he remembered that the rent on this apartment was $4,212 a month, but the name? That was gone.

  So Jamie did what Jamie always did at moments like this.

  “Good morning, baby.” He rolled over, planted the briefest of kisses on the man’s forehead. “How’d you sleep, baby?”

  “Oh, wow,” said the man, blinking his swollen eyes. “Look at the time! I’m already late for work.”

  Jamie squeezed his eyes shut. “I hope you’re about to tell me that it’s five o’clock.”

  He laughed. “Try seven ten…uh…baby.”

  Jamie bolted upright in bed. Neither “seven ten” nor “baby” were what he’d hoped to hear. One was an insult—how dare whatsisname forget Jamie’s name?!—but the other meant he had really screwed up.

  Angelina Ortiz, clad in white coveralls that could almost pass for a hazmat suit if you weren’t paying close enough attention or weren’t aware that hazmat suits and painting coveralls were extremely different things, walked out on the front stoop gingerly holding a tiny plastic bag in one hand. She presented it to Robles, who inspected the tiny insect inside.

  “Is that a bedbug?”

  Angelina nodded her head, with the grimmest expression—one usually reserved for coroners and oncologists—fixed on her face. “It’s not just a bedbug, Mr. Robles. This is an Argentine Leaping Bedbug.”

  “Huh?”

  “In the Department of Health, we call these the Bedbugs of Bedbugs. This is the worst kind of bedbug to have. They reproduce daily. In extreme cases, some cities in Argentina have had to burn down entire blocks to eradicate the pests.”

  “Whoo boy!” Constance fanned herself. “I sure hope the city doesn’t have to burn down East Eighty-first Street because of this. That won’t make the mayor look good.”

  Robles studied the bug. “Argentine—”

  “Leaping Bedbug.” Angelina looked at the plastic baggie with disgust bordering on hatred. “They call them that because they don’t only crawl like normal bedbugs. They can also leap!”

  Her almost-shouted “leap” made both Constance and Robles leap themselves.

  Robles steadied himself against the building. “They leap?”

  Angelina nodded. “Some have been known to leap more than ten feet. That’s why the department considers containing this problem to be a priority.”

  Robles finally looked away from the bug in the plastic bag, still not realizing he was looking at a very small raisin. “Then how come I never heard of ’em?”

  Angelina rolled her eyes just enough to indicate she wasn’t rolling them at Robles, but at the government. “The bureaucrats downtown want to keep this hush-hush. The city doesn’t want everyone to panic.”

  That didn’t sound right to Robles. But he’d never dealt with Argentine Leaping Bedbugs before, so maybe…

  “And I’ve got worse news for you,” Angelina confided, leaning closer. “This poor bug…before she died, she gave birth. Which means on top of whatever problem you already have, you’ve now got a litter of at least twelve newborn Argentine Leaping Bedbugs burrowing through your house.”

  Constance stepped forward, assuming full authority. “I’ve heard enough. Mr. Robles, I need you to evacuate this building right now.”

  “But…”

  “That’s an order.” When he wavered, she added, “If you don’t do it, I’ll do it. On order of the New York City Department of Health!”

  Robles scrambled inside, leaving the women on the stoop. When he closed the door behind him, Constance leaned close to Angelina’s ear.

  “You are so good! I never knew you had this much talent!”

  Angelina beamed with pride.

  When the elevator doors opened, Nick nodded at the office door and told Farraday, “This is the place.”

  Farraday growled. “You know, I’m supposed to be the driver. I don’t do breaking and entering.”

  “C’mon, Farraday!” Nick was almost giddy with nervous energy. “Your part is easy. All you have to do is stand here while I do the hard stuff. I’m the one who has to go through that transom window and steal everything. You just have to collect it when I hand it to you.”

  “Sounds like a job better suited for Jamie Brock.”

  “Yeah, well…He’s not here. We are.”

  Farraday eyed the narrow transom window warily. “You sure you can even fit through there?”

  Nick scoffed. “If Chase made it through, I can make it through.” Then he looked at what he was wearing and thought things through a bit more. “Although this costume might not be practical.”

  He began the process of stripping to his underwear.

  Farraday averted his eyes. “I’m not gettin’ paid enough to see this.”

  June Forteene was in Starbucks, Chrissy Alton had not yet arrived, and Grant and Chase were getting nervous.

  “June’s been sitting there for twenty minutes,” Grant muttered. “If Chrissy doesn’t get here soon, we’re gonna have to grab the laptop and cell ourselves. Since she’s already seen both of us, I really don’t like that idea, but I don’t think we have a choice.” He put a hand on Chase’s shoulder. “If something has to be done, you’re the man to do it.”

  “Me?” Chase didn’t like the idea very much. “Why me?”

  “You’re a decent pickpocket, and I figure running in there and stealing her laptop and phone are just a variation on that theme.”

  “I think I disagree.”

  “Plus, you can run a lot faster than me.”

  Chase still didn’t like it, but he couldn’t argue with that. “Okay, let me size things up.”

  He made several subtle passes in front of the coffeehouse, once even sticking his head inside the door to take a look around, but couldn’t figure out how he was going to be able to waltz up to June Forteene and steal her stuff. It would have made things easier if June wasn’t typing on her laptop and taking phone calls every time he stole a peek, but not much easier.

  “Just bolt in there, grab the stuff, and run,” was Grant’s advice when Chase relayed his concerns.

  Chase looked at the ground, hoping to maybe divine a plan through gum-stain patterns or something. “That’ll work for maybe forty seconds.” He looked up and into his partner’s watery hazel eyes. “You’ll come visit me at Rikers, I assume?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Chase steeled his nerves. He wasn’t happy, but he was finally committed.

  “Okay, if that’s the way it’s gotta be…”

  He would have done it, too, but then there was salvation.

  It came in the form of a five-foot-two blond woman who parted the crowd as she pushed her way down the sidewalk in red-soled Louboutin heels, an oversized handbag bouncing limply against one hip.

  “Ready?” asked Chrissy Alton when she approached them.

  “You’re late,” said Grant.

  Chrissy put a hand on one defiantly cocked hip. “I come all the way from Staten Island, and it’s not my fault the trains are screwed up this morning. And anyway…” She glanced at her watch, which not too many days earlier had been part of a display at Harry Winston. “Why am I apologizing? You told me to be here at seven twenty, and it’s seven eighteen. I’m not even late!” She would have hit him with the bag, but—empty—it wouldn’t have the desired impact.

  Grant mumbled something like, “You coulda been,” but kept it mostly to himself.

  Chase pretended nothing was wrong. Nothing really was wrong, but that attitude made things easier when dealing with temperamental people. “Ready for the score?”

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  He thought to add, “And I assume you see cops all over the place?”

  She eyed the massive police presence. “Good. I love a challenge.”

  Grant
checked the time. “You think you can wrap this up quickly—very quickly—and get uptown to help Constance and Angelina take care of Wunder?”

  She looked disappointed in him. “This shouldn’t take any time at all.” Looking across the street at the plate glass window, she asked, “The woman with the dark hair? The one on her laptop?”

  “Uh…” Chase looked in the direction of the window, but his eyes weren’t as sharp as hers. “That probably describes half the customers.”

  Chrissy laughed at that, even though Chase was only telling the truth. “The one in the blue top?”

  That much he’d seen from behind the parked car. “That’s her.”

  “Let me go inside and size it up.” She took a step toward Starbucks but paused. “If it looks like anything’s going wrong, get the hell out of here.” She took another step but paused again. “Not that anything will go wrong, of course. But if something does, I don’t want you guys slowing me down.”

  Chase was impressed by her cool. “How are you gonna pull it off?”

  Chrissy shrugged and played with the strap hanging limply over her shoulder. “Every job is all about improvisation, Chase. Don’t worry about it. Leave the tough stuff—and the thinking—to me.”

  With that—Chrissy Alton’s very own Daily Affirmation—she was through the front door.

  June Forteene hated sitting in Starbucks so early in the morning, but there was no point in sitting around the apartment. She hadn’t been sleeping well since the burglaries, and those apartment walls seemed to close in on her over the long, sleepless nights.

  Inside the coffeehouse twenty-three minutes earlier, she had typed, Daily Affirmation: I killed Hillary Morris and she’s never coming back. Then she wrote a rant about something or other for the next nineteen minutes between sips from her far-too-strong cup of coffee. As June Forteene rants went, it was a four on a scale of one to ten, but she reread it and was pleased. She was just coming off a major humiliation; now was the time to ease back into the pool of controversy, rather than plunge.