by Rob Byrnes
The damn door still wouldn’t open.
He slammed his body into the wood and it gave a tenth of an inch. “It’s barricaded! Who the hell got into my office and barricaded it?!”
The receptionist was standing at the back of the crowd and pointed at Edward. “He’s the only crazy we’ve had in here all day.”
Wunder stared at the crazy and sputtered. “Who are you?”
“I’m not a crazy, Mr. Wunder. I’m Edward Hepplewhite.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“I was sent by…” Edward remembered he was in the middle of enemy territory. “I was sent to pick up the computers.”
“Who sent you to…?” Wunder’s memory finally kicked in and trumped his anger. “Oh, right, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, then, Ed, I want you and…” He looked around. “Randy! You and Randy are going to help me open this door.”
It took a while—Nick had done a good job of blocking it—but finally they inched it open.
The office was empty of both computers and people.
“Cops,” said Grant, and he didn’t have to say anything else. The gang that had been staring up for so many tense minutes instantly transformed itself into small groups of casual pedestrians and neighbors.
The patrol car pulled up outside the front door and parked at a hydrant. Two officers—acting even more casual than the criminals—finished their conversation before getting out of the front seat and walking to the entrance.
Wendy Hyer-Romanov stood in the doorway of her office, wondering what was taking the police so long, when a leg appeared in her broken window.
There was a crunch of glass as the foot attached to the leg touched down on the ledge, and then she was watching Spider-Man lower himself through the opening. It had been the sort of day when that didn’t seem as bizarre as it should have.
“Spider-Man?”
“Sorry to disturb you, citizen.” He began crossing the small office toward her door. “I had to take care of some burglars upstairs.”
He passed her in the doorway and entered the stairway just seconds before the elevator doors opened and two uniformed police officers stepped out.
“You’re not going to believe this one,” she said as they approached.
Kevin Wunder looked down. And then he looked up. And then he looked at Edward.
“So you’re trying to tell me you saw a ladder.”
“Right. It looked like it went from this window to the window across the alley.”
Wunder looked back down at the ground. “And you say people were throwing computers down there?”
“Right.”
“So where are the ladder and computers now? Except for that sock down there, the alley looks about as clean as I’ve ever seen it.”
Edward started to sweat a little bit. “I don’t know.”
“Unbelievable,” Wunder muttered. “How can someone steal eight computers and vanish into thin air?”
Down in the alley, two workers—one grabbing each side—began to wheel the Dumpster out to the sidewalk.
One block away, Chase pulled to the curb in a 1996 Cadillac. He was looking for something roomy, and the Caddy fit the bill perfectly. He popped the trunk and waited.
It didn’t take them long. First to appear were Mary Beth, Constance, and Angelina, carrying the splintered ladder. Chase broke some of the larger pieces down and tucked them in the trunk.
Chrissy carried Nick’s clothes. “I couldn’t find a sock.”
Angelina shook her head. “If he manages to get out of the building without being seen, that’ll be the least of his concerns.”
Finally, they heard a low rumble and Grant and Lisa appeared, guiding the Dumpster down the sidewalk until it was positioned next to the Cadillac. Concluding the procession of criminals up Second Avenue was Margaret Campbell, taking notes and telling Grant exactly what he was doing wrong.
While Chase loaded the trunk with smashed electronics, Grant turned to the author. “The job is done. You can go home now.”
She smiled in a way that announced she wasn’t smiling. “My home is in the state of North Carolina, so I’m not going anywhere. Let’s not forget that my editor is still inside, and let’s not also forget I haven’t heard you negotiate to get the thirty thousand dollars they owe you.”
He might have forced her into the trunk if Spider-Man wasn’t suddenly running down the street toward them.
“That,” said Chase, as Nick dove into the backseat and ducked down, “was a true superhero performance.”
“You did good, kid,” said Grant. “You did weird, but good.”
“Here are your clothes.” Chrissy handed them over. “I found everything except one sock.”
“Aw, man! Those were my favorite socks!” He sat in the backseat and pouted.
Outside the Caddy, Chase pulled Constance aside. “Time for us to mop up here. I called Farraday and he says he knows a place where he can dump the car. You mind getting some of these people out of here and taking it to him?”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Just remember,” Chase cautioned, “the car’s hot, so don’t attract attention.”
She scowled and shook her head. “Don’t insult me, Chase LaMarca.”
Chrissy leaned out the window. “Sorry I have to go, but the boys have hockey practice at four.”
“Not a problem,” said Chase. “Your job’s done here.”
She winked. “This was fun. Give me a call if you have another job for me.”
Chase waved good-bye as Constance pulled from the curb with a trunk full of broken things and a passenger compartment full of criminals, leaving only Grant, Chase, Lisa, Mary Beth, and Margaret behind on the sidewalk.
Grant fixed Margaret with a stare. “Okay, lady, wanna see how this is done?”
She frowned. “I’d like to see how it’s done correctly. But your way should at least be amusing.”
He squared his shoulders. “Then let’s go get our thirty thousand bucks.”
The staff members in the office of Representative Catherine Cooper Concannon were surrounded by chaos.
Kevin Wunder—their chief of staff, who’d been so vocally concerned about the computers stashed in his office—now claimed to know nothing about them. Never heard of them. He had his reasons, of course, chief among them that they were stolen property, but his sudden reversal left the rest of Triple-C’s staff shaking their heads.
And then there was the presence of Austin Peebles. The staff knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. If he was still in the office when the Representative eventually emerged from her closed-door meeting with trade representatives from Nigeria it could get ugly…although maybe not. Triple-C seemed to love him as much as the staff did, so he’d probably get no more than a mild rebuke. Still, it was something they’d have to prepare for.
And then there was the presence of the pudgy, pink-faced man, who stood observing the action but seemed to have no business being there. And the strange young man wearing hipster frames standing off to the side, quietly praying. No one had the slightest idea who these men were or why they were there, but they were present when everything was going off the rails and therefore not above suspicion.
And then the cops arrived and mentioned someone downstairs had seen Spider-Man in the building.
In short, it wasn’t a normal workday.
Representative Concannon’s loyal staff had been through an interesting day that wasn’t even half over. Fortunately they had an after-work retreat for days like this—or for days less bizarre than this, because no day had ever been like this, but still… So just minutes after noon, the receptionist called and reserved them two booths in the back of the bar where they could bitch about Kevin Wunder, shake their heads over the reported sighting of Spider-Man, and otherwise speak their minds without being overheard.
But things were moments away from becoming a lot more interesting.
The office door opened, and a rough-looking older man walk
ed in. He was trailed by a tall woman with short-cropped blond-gray hair; a young, attractive woman with dark features and a no-nonsense attitude; a man who was getting too old to pull off his highlights; and a short woman who carried a notepad in her hand and wore a sneer on her face.
On a normal day, any one of these people might raise interest. But coming in as a group they signaled “Red Alert.”
“Can I help you?” The receptionist wouldn’t have minded having a panic button at the moment, even though all of Triple-C’s employees stood only yards away.
Grant Lambert didn’t have an opportunity to answer.
“You!” Kevin Wunder stormed across the office toward Grant and Chase, shoving staffers and at least one cop out of the way as he passed. “I should have known you were behind this!”
“I don’t think I know what you’re talking about, Wunder.” Grant shrugged and didn’t look innocent at all.
Wunder stabbed a finger at him. “I want to talk to you in private.”
“I’m not here to see you. I’m here to see your boss.”
“In private!”
“Do I have to say this again?”
Wunder tried to stare him down. “You…wouldn’t…dare!”
Grant smiled, and for the first time in years it was almost passable. “I wouldn’t? Try me.”
Everyone—the staff, the cops, the people who seemed to have no business being there—watched the stand-off to see how it was going to play out.
Wunder noticed that and forced his most innocent smile. It wouldn’t do to have a complete meltdown in front of the staff and police. “Representative Concannon is very busy right now. And you have no reason to see her when you can see me.”
“I have every reason.” He held out his hand and opened his palm, revealing a flash drive.
The cops sort of watched and sort of didn’t, because they were mostly waiting for the return of Spider-Man.
“Know what that was?” asked Grant.
“A flash drive.”
“Know what’s on it?”
Wunder’s eyes flickered around the room. He was being watched by too many people to tell the truth. “I don’t think so.”
Grant smiled again, and this time he carried it off. “That’s a shame. What’s on this drive is the last image in existence of—”
Wunder grabbed but Grant snapped his hand closed.
“So…” Grant was taking his time and enjoying this. “Who do you think is gonna be the high bidder? You? June Forteene? Austin? Triple-C?”
Wunder snarled. “Give me that.”
Grant wasn’t impressed. “Hey, Austin!” The young man stopped flirting with the receptionist and turned around. “How much for this flare drive?”
“Flash drive,” hissed Wunder.
“Whatever.”
Peebles shrugged. “Five?”
“Is that dollars or thousands of dollars?” asked Grant.
Austin laughed. “Dollars, of course. Why would I pay five thousand for a flash drive?”
Wunder muttered under his breath.
At an edge of the room, Edward Hepplewhite stopped his mumbled prayers just long enough to raise his camera phone above the crowd and snap a picture, which he then texted to June Forteene. He thought she’d be interested in knowing that the scruffy UPS deliveryman was in this very room at that very moment.
At some point over the previous half hour, June had managed to retrieve her phone from the desk before sinking back to the cool floor, so it was close at hand when Edward texted her the photo along with a message telling her the image was that of the fake UPS driver.
She looked at the picture and her stomach lurched.
Detective Finnerty Rafferty Jr. and the UPS stalker were the same man!
June crawled into a ball. She wanted her mommy. And after all these years, she finally wanted her mommy’s Xanax.
Kevin Wunder knew he was in a difficult situation. He also knew his temper wasn’t doing him any favors, so he willed himself to calm down and assess it rationally. A couple of deep breaths came close to doing the trick.
He looked around the reception area and quickly realized that the only way out of this jam was to separate the players. The longer the criminals, the candidate, the editor, June Forteene’s assistant, the other staff members, the cops, and the strange, short woman with the notepad mingled together, the greater the possibility of disaster. He needed to separate them, and he needed to do it quickly.
Some separations would be easier than others, and that’s where he started.
“Everyone back to your desks,” he ordered the staffers. Reluctantly, they trickled away.
“You.” He pointed to Edward. “Get back to your office and tell your boss I’ll be in touch.”
“But I’m not suppose to return without the computers,” he protested.
Wunder paused and took another couple of deep breaths. “There are no computers any more. Got it?” With a glance at the cops, he thought to add, “There never were any computers. Never!”
“But…”
“Never!”
And that took care of Edward.
Next it was time to get rid of David Carlyle. “I have to apologize. Things aren’t normally this crazy. You should leave and we’ll pick up the discussion later—”
“I find it fascinating!” David did the opposite of what Wunder wanted him to do and took a seat in one of the chairs lining the wall. “I’m gaining a lot of fresh insight into your career.”
Okay, that one didn’t work so well. He’d come back to him. In the meantime, it was time to peel the cops off the pack.
“Officers, I’m sorry we wasted your time. There seems to have been a huge misunderstanding.”
One of the cops said, “Are you saying there was no crime committed?”
“None at all.”
“Then why was Spider-Man here?”
Deep breaths…
Wunder managed a smile and a chuckle. “Must’ve had the wrong address.”
But they did finally leave, so whatever worked.
He looked at the short woman carrying a notepad. “I don’t even know who you are.”
Margaret Campbell fixed him with a stare and sat next to David. “That’s right. You don’t.”
While Kevin Wunder cleared out most of the room Grant held his silence, mostly because it was also in his best interest. But now that the people present had been pretty much narrowed to Wunder on one side and everyone else on the other, he figured it was time to start negotiating again.
“How about coughing up thirty grand so we can go home?”
“Shhh!” Wunder motioned at the people in the room who weren’t Grant or Chase or the women who were obviously with them. “This conversation should take place behind closed doors.”
“I don’t know about that, Wunder. This room works just fine for me.” Grant nodded at Austin. “Does it work for you?”
“Perfectly,” the candidate said, and the color began to drain from Wunder’s face with the realization that this child knew a hell of a lot more than he should have known.
It was a setup. Somehow the crooks got to Peebles, which meant… He looked around the room, and everyone—even David Carlyle—nodded a confirmation when he met their eyes.
They were all in on it together.
“Give me that flash drive!” He lunged at Grant.
Negotiations had been tense, but a deal was close at hand.
Or so Representative Concannon thought as she looked at the trade delegation from Nigeria sitting across the desk from her. There were only a few fine points to work out, but soon she’d have a done deal to take to her good friend, the Secretary of State. The Catherine Cooper Concannon Institute of American-Nigerian Trade would be a fitting legacy.
But then the screaming started, accompanied by the sound of breaking furniture.
The Nigerians looked at each other in confusion as she rose from her chair and excused herself.
In the reception area,
she found her chief of staff wrestling on the floor with an older man. As legs kicked and chairs toppled, her other staff members began to emerge from the back offices. Triple-C caught the eye of one of them.
“Randy, please break that up.”
Randy, much younger, bigger, and stronger than the grappling men, waded in and had the situation under control in seconds. And then Triple-C stepped forward.
“What the hell is going on here?”
“Maybe I can fill you in, Mother.” That’s when she realized Austin was also in the room.
“You know you’re not supposed to be here.”
Kevin Wunder spit out his words. “Like that’s the worst thing he’s done today!”
“Kevin!” It was true she didn’t like Austin’s presence in her office, but she still couldn’t abide her chief of staff talking that way about her son-in-law.
Chase stepped forward, careful not to step on Grant’s legs. “Madame Congresswoman? Could we have a few words with you?”
When her private office was clear of the trade delegation and the entire group—including the odd woman carrying a notepad—was locked inside, Representative Concannon took a seat behind her desk. “I hope you’re all happy. You’ve set international relations with Nigeria back weeks, if not months.”
“Sorry about that,” said Grant. “I’m sure that’s somehow important in a way no one in the world will ever understand.”
She waved a hand and dismissed him. “I think I’m owed an explanation.”
Kevin Wunder knew it was now or never. This was the moment he would either save his career or see it destroyed. He pointed at Grant, then Chase. “These are the men I hired to retrieve that picture.”
Triple-C turned pale. “Kevin, we do not speak of…” She caught herself. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Austin was leaning against the wall near the locked door. “That’s all right, Mother. Everyone in the room knows the situation. You can speak frankly.”
