by Tim Tigner
“That’s good, because I like talking to you, but I don’t have any ties to my mother.” He gave her his high-voltage smile. She would have swooned were the effect not diminished by his silly outfit. “I’m going to run on ahead,” he added when she did not topple. “Why don’t you slow down so that we arrive a couple of minutes apart?”
“Probably safer that way,” Emmy replied, pointing to her flamboyant heels.
As he took off, she corrected herself. She had it backwards. The safe move was probably running—in the opposite direction.
Chapter 31
A Bird in the Hand
FARKAS USED his rifle scope to confirm the sighting. His eyesight was tip-top, but he wanted to be absolutely sure before making the call. Satisfied, he used the speed dial without taking his eye off the mark.
“Talk to me,” Luther said.
“I’ve just spotted Troy. He’s added fifty pounds to his frame with pillows, is walking with an altered stride, and has his face and forehead hidden with sunglasses and a baseball cap, but it’s him.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m looking through a rifle scope at his Kirk-Douglas dimple right now. No way to mistake that chin. A feature like that would be tough to camouflage on short notice. Troy obviously decided to ignore it and hope for the best. I’m about to give him the worst—assuming that’s still what you want?”
“Where are you?” Luther asked.
“On a private balcony across from Solomon’s. He’s entering the bank as we speak.”
“I can’t believe it! How did he do it? How did he find the bank again? Are you sure you wiped his memory?”
“I’m sure. I did them just like the others. After forty-six straight successes, I’m confident in both my skills and the technology.”
“And you’re sure they’re working alone?”
“Well, they were working with Detective Johnson. But as you well know, I’ve already plugged that hole. I never observed them in extended conversation with anyone else, but even if there was someone, they can’t possibly remember him now. They must have left themselves a trail of breadcrumbs—although I can’t imagine how. I didn’t leave them with so much as a scrap of paper.” Farkas kept the Hensoldt scope sighted in on the bank entrance as he spoke.
“Bloody Hansel and Gretel,” Luther said. “Wait a minute. You only mentioned Troy. What about Emmy? Is she there?”
“Shit,” Farkas said, realizing the obvious. He couldn’t risk taking out one without the other. “I’ll have to follow him to her.”
“Do that. Then do what you have to do to find out what trail they’re following before you kill them. I don’t want to give anyone else the chance of picking up where they left off.”
Farkas was already disassembling his rifle as Luther spoke. When his boss finished, he said, “Agreed,” followed a moment later by “Hold on.”
“What now?” Luther asked, his irritation showing.
“I just spotted Emmy. She’s approaching the bank from the opposite direction, and … incredible.”
“What?”
“I would have expected her to wear a dumpy disguise like Troy, maybe even try to sneak past me as a teenage boy. Instead she’s dressed for a Milan runway, and let me tell you, the effect is enough to make the Pope himself go dry in the mouth.”
Farkas began reversing the disassembly procedure.
“It’s going to be a shame to spoil that with an ugly red spot. Do you want me to drop them as they exit, or do you still want to go for an interrogation?”
Luther remained silent for a moment of contemplation, then said, “Better a bird in the hand than two in the bush. Go ahead and take them out.”
Chapter 32
Aura
GOOSE BUMPS TINGLED Emmy’s arms as the air conditioning blasted her exposed flesh. It seemed that Solomon’s management feared their money would melt if the mercury crested sixty degrees. Now, if she could just stop sweating on the inside.
She glanced off to her left where Troy was distracting Ms. Andrews with questions about mortgages. Then she shifted her focus to Gunter Gustafson’s office. He was alone. Had he not been, Troy would have headed her off at the door and they would have tried again a few minutes later. She made a beeline for Gustafson’s door but Thomas intercepted her halfway, standing behind his desk and offering assistance in a tone that sounded more imploring than obsequious.
“Thanks for the kind offer,” she said, flashing her smile, “but I have an appointment with Gunter.”
Thomas nodded and returned to his seat, but she could feel his eyes caressing her flesh all the way to Gustafson’s door. She gave the glass a light knock and then walked in and closed it without waiting for an invitation. “Good afternoon, Mr. Gustafson. My name is Maya. Maya Lamb. I have some money to put away and was told that you are just the person to help me.”
“Really, well ah, quite so, yes. Please, have a seat.” His pupils were dilated, his face beginning to flush. Despite some superficial evidence to the contrary, Emmy knew then and there that Gunter was not gay. She could still have worked him if he was, but that would have required a bit more verve. She didn’t mind expending verve, but preferred to save it for special occasions.
Emmy took the cushioned chair before Gunter’s desk, crossed her legs with her purse in her lap, and gave him her warmest smile.
“Do you already have an account with us, Miss Lamb?”
“No, no. That’s why I’m here. I need help in selecting the right kind of account.”
“I can surely help you with that. Why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re looking for.”
Emmy rambled on a bit about inheriting some money and wanting to see it put to good use while asking enough questions to ensure that Gunter did most of the talking. After four or five minutes of back and forth during which she frequently crossed and uncrossed her legs, Emmy leaned forward and put her purse on Gunter’s desk. “Excuse me for saying so, Gunter, but I can’t help but be distracted by the life force you’re radiating right now.”
“The life force?” he asked, glancing down to assure himself that his force had not sprung free of his pants.
“Yes. Yours is most powerful. It’s as though you’re a tiger trapped in a man’s body.” She glanced around the office. “But then I suppose you do spend most of your day in a glass cage.”
Gunter had no idea how to react to this, of course, so he just stared at her. Emmy leaned still closer. “Would you mind if I read your aura?”
“Ah, well, I …”
She pushed her purse further back on his desk, adjusting the angle as if to get it out of the way. Then she reached out and took his hands. “Oooh,” she gasped, as though they conveyed an electric shock. “Very powerful indeed. Capricorn obviously. You are going to be easy to read.”
Gunter just stared at her in lusty disbelief. Apparently this did not happen to him every day.
She looked into his eyes for a good sixty seconds before beginning, allowing her gaze to grow vacuous, possessed. “You are extroverted, affable, and sociable at times, I’m glad to see that. But on other occasions, far too often, you are introverted, wary, and reserved. You also have a great need for other people to like and admire you, but you keep it hidden away.”
She massaged the palms of his hands with her thumbs as she spoke, without looking away from his eyes. “I sense a great deal of unused capacity, both personal and professional, which you have not yet turned to your advantage. Perhaps this is because of your tendency to be critical of yourself. Much too critical, Gunter. While you do have some weaknesses, as we all do, you are generally able to compensate for them if you try. But you don’t try often enough because, although disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.” She cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes a hair before continuing. “At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing but you worry in vain. You need to trust your in
stincts more.
“It’s clear to me that you would prefer more change and variety than you currently have in your life. Monotony is at the core of your dissatisfaction. Sometimes you feel hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself as an independent thinker, but don’t get to exercise that talent nearly enough.
“I get a strong affinity for numbers from you. I’ve got that too. They rule my life. I’m seeing twos, threes and sevens.”
She released his hands and shook her head, bringing her eyes back into focus. “I’m sorry if I bored you, but I thank you for the indulgence. When I see an aura like yours I just can’t help myself.”
“My pleasure. That was … remarkable. I, I don’t know what to say. My sister didn’t send you, did she?”
“Your sister? No. Nobody sent me. It’s just a gift I’ve always had. A gift or a curse—depends on how you look at it.”
“I see, well, ah, where were we?”
“Oh, I think your Priority A account sounds perfect.”
“Excellent. It is our most popular account. I have one myself.”
“Tell me something, Gunter. Would it be possible for me to pick my own account number?”
Emmy could sense a surge of reservation, so she added, “Please. It’s important to me.”
“Well, uh, I suppose it might be possible if it’s the right format and the number is not already in use.”
“What format do you need?”
“It will start with two zeros and a four. After that the next nine digits can vary.”
“If I give them to you will you try to make it work.”
“Okay.”
Emmy brought her index and middle fingers up to her temples and closed her eyes. “Nine, another nine, five, six, two, five, three—no wait, four, two and five.”
She opened her eyes and looked up expectantly as Gunter finished typing.
“I’m sorry,” he said, studying the screen. “That number is not available.”
“Are you sure? Can you read it back to me?”
Gunter recited the correct number.
“And there’s no way to get me that number?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Is it new? Perhaps I could—”
“No, it’s an old account. I’m sorry, really. We’ll have to pick another.”
Emmy stood and extended her hand across the table to shake his. He looked at her in disbelief as he stood to accept it. An encounter like this would be difficult for any normal person to comprehend and impossible to forget, much less a fastidious banker. “Is the exact number really that important?” he asked, no doubt reluctant to end what was likely the only enchanting customer experience of his career.
“It is,” she said, giving his hand a final squeeze. She released his hand and picked up her purse, doing her best to give the camera a clear and close-up parting shot at Gunter’s screen. “You take care of yourself, Gunter. And try letting that aura of yours get a bit more fresh air before you become dangerous.”
Chapter 33
Mist
“THAT’S REALLY THE BEST we can offer,” Agnes Andrews rebuffed. “Perhaps you should try the internet.” She spoke the name as though it would poison her tongue.
Troy shrugged and nodded along. He had toyed with the haughty banker for fifteen minutes now—the amount of time Emmy predicted it would take her to manipulate Gustafson. Clearly, the moment to retreat had arrived. He stood, said, “T’anks for ya time,” and left her fishbowl office without further comment.
Glancing over his shoulder, he thought Emmy appeared to be wrapping up. She had the camera-purse in perfect position and Gunter shaking his head at the computer screen. Troy whipped out his cell phone as he shuffled his padded sweat suit past Thomas. He continued to the far side of the exotic flower arrangement where he spun back toward Gunter’s office, said “Yeah?” and pretended to listen.
Emmy was standing now. Gunter’s prim face was contorted into an unnatural combination of distraught and perplexed. Troy was so entranced by watching Emmy’s smooth moves that he failed to notice the man approaching from his left. “Hey buddy, you mind giving me a hand for a second. This frickin contraption takes two.”
Troy turned to find himself confronted by that all-too-familiar uniform. The police officer was struggling to stuff a flyer into the thin crevice of an advertising display. “Bloody thing is too tight,” the cop added.
Troy’s eyes darted from the COP KILLERS headline to the grainy headshots beneath without revealing the emotions that erupted within. It was he and Emmy, right there in black and white. His split-second appraisal was that it would take a pro to identify them from just the shadowy security shots, but combined with description of his forehead scars and dimpled chin, it was a no brainer. The question was: had the cop bothered to read it?
Troy turned an appraising eye to his adversary. Officer Jacobs was a handsome man, a ladies’ man, the kind of guy who spent a lot of time at the gym and never gave you a chance to forget it. Troy hoped he pressed iron to compensate for a lackluster mind rather than a puny penis—otherwise it all ended right here.
Maintaining the Bronx accent, he said “Hold on,” into the phone, and then “Pardon” to Jacobs.
Jacobs pointed to the display. “Just hold this doohickey open so I can slide this wanted poster in on top. Capice?”
“Uh, yeah, sure officer,” Troy replied, pushing past the surreal nature of the situation. “Anything I can do to help.” He pressed the phone between his ear and shoulder, keeping his dimple covered and scars in the shadow of his baseball hat while he pried the display’s plastic lips apart.
Jacobs slid the poster in and stepped back to admire his work. Troy caught him doing a double take just as Emmy came around the corner. Turning toward her, Jacobs’ eyes bulged and then bulged again.
He drew his gun.
“You’re the two in the poster,” Jacobs said, backing toward the door and cutting off their only means of escape. “Get down on your knees. Holy shit! On your knees.”
Troy knew that this was the time to do something miraculous like they always did in the movies, but he had seen too many real gunfights to be stupid enough to try. Instead he primed himself to pounce. Despite the fact that Jacobs was holding a gun and sported more muscle than most cows, he was now a bundle of rattled nerves and thus prone to mistakes. Captain Honey must have talked them up as super-villains in order to keep from looking like a putz. Or perhaps, Troy would later reflect, Jacobs somehow sensed what was coming—just not from where. As he shouted “Down!” for the fourth or fifth time his head vanished into a red mist, exploding off his shoulders like a watermelon at a target shoot.
Chapter 34
But for a Nail
FARKAS WATCHED the cop’s head disintegrate through the magnified perspective of his sniper scope. He found it more odd than gory, a magician’s now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t—except for the telltale red mist. Farkas had been expecting the magic, so he had the rifle collapsed and back in its shoulder canister before Troy and Emmy had fully registered their gift from above.
Popping the cap on the end of the canister, Farkas felt his blood pumping with a hunter’s fury. He could not kill them where they stood, but there was no way he was going to let his quarry escape again.
As he slung the case over his shoulder and leapt over the balcony rail toward the soft grass twelve-feet below, Farkas never once took his eye off the ball.
He was halfway to the ground when he realized his mistake. It felt like a hollow-point round tumbling through his gut. He had been so focused on dealing with the cop and his quarry, that he had forgotten to flash the Wootens.
It would have taken him less than ten seconds to reach the bathroom door, throw it open with a violent smack, and meet the wide-eyed stares with a programmed UV-C flash.
The crucial mistakes were always just a matter of seconds.
Even before his feet hit the ground he knew that there was no going back. He did not
have a key to the Wootens’ front door and Troy and Emmy would get away in the time it took him to pick his way in or climb back up. “Govno!”
“What?” Luther asked. “Did you miss? Kill the wrong guy?”
Farkas had also forgotten that his boss was on the phone. He pulled the black helmet over his head before answering into the wireless mike. “I don’t miss. The cop’s toast and they’re going to get the blame. I just twisted my ankle jumping from the balcony,” he lied.
He hopped on his scooter and brought it to life.
“Don’t let them escape,” Luther said, adding the obvious. The man was more nervous than he was.
“No worries. Between Troy’s padded clothes and Emmy’s high heels they’re not setting any land speed records.” Farkas watched them disappear around the corner before the first police car arrived.
“What’s your plan?” Luther asked.
“I’ll follow them to wherever they were hiding out, interrogate them, and then end this whole fiasco such that they get the blame for killing the cop.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“Make sure their bodies are never found. I’m leaning toward concrete galoshes.”
“I mean the cop part. Won’t ballistics prove that it wasn’t them?”
“What ballistics? I’m on a tropical island. They’ve got known cop killers and another dead cop. These bozos aren’t going to look further than that.”
“What about the bank’s security video?”
“Icing on the cake. Solomon’s has cameras over the front door and behind each teller, but nothing in the entryway. Troy and Emmy will be identified walking in and running out right after the shot.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Where did that come from?” Farkas said to himself.
“What are you talking about?”
