Deceptive Practices

by Simon Wood

  “Are you sure I can’t offer you a room, Clare?” Melinda asked.

  Clare looked past her at Gault, who was getting antsy. Maybe she should take Melinda’s offer of a room, as long as it was for more than one night. “No, I need to get home tonight.”

  “I understand. Well, I hope you’ll be back again soon.”

  “I will.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll have Baptiste and Maurice escort you to your car.”

  Clare grinned. “I’d really appreciate that.”

  The bouncers walked her out to the parking lot, and she pointed out her Honda. The guys engaged her in small talk as they enveloped her in their protective shield.

  She knew Gault was following without even looking back. She was protected until she drove off their lot, but what she needed was a head start.

  “There’s a man following us,” she said. “He’s been watching me all night.”

  “Do you know him?” Maurice asked.

  “I’m here a lot, and I’ve seen him around.”

  Baptiste looked back. “We’ll take care of him.”

  “I don’t want him getting into trouble. I could be wrong. This money might be making me a little paranoid.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Maurice said. “We’ll use good judgment. We have a number of protocols at our disposal.”

  Protocols. The word had an infinite meaning in their powerful hands.

  They reached Clare’s Honda. Baptiste held her door open for her as she got in.

  “Enjoy your winnings, Clare, and try not to lose too much of it back to us,” he said before closing her door.

  Clare pulled away with a smile on her face as Maurice and Baptiste blocked Gault from getting into his car. The last sight of him she had was being escorted back into the casino.

  “Reinvention,” she said to herself.

  But for reinvention to happen, there had to be change, and change meant disposing of the past. She pulled her car over. The on-ramp that would take her back home to Martinez was ahead of her. If she took it, winning this money tonight meant nothing. She’d go home to the same old shit. Gault would shake her down for his money, Roy would keep expecting her to spy for him, Finz would keep twisting the blade until he got his confession, and Olivia would keep on judging her. If she truly wanted a fresh start, she had to leave all that behind. It wasn’t like she would miss anything if she left. All that was waiting for her back there was that shitty trailer, her crappy Target job, and a lifetime of mistakes.

  That wasn’t entirely true. It wouldn’t be a guilt-free escape. Running meant leaving her sister in the lurch, but that was probably for the best. She’d sold her out to the cops and Infidelity Limited. Running out on Olivia was the nearest thing to doing her a favor. Clare was certainly a liability if she stayed. She’d make it up to her someday.

  She eyed the money on the passenger seat next to her. That cash could take her anywhere, so where to go? Vegas? But everyone would expect her to go there. Oregon? Washington? No one would expect that. Reno? She liked the sound of that. It was reasonably close, cheap, and would give her time to regroup and plan her next move.

  She had one last thing to do before she reinvented herself. She took out the two cell phones—hers and the one Roy had given her. She pulled the battery and the SIM card out of Roy’s phone. She snapped the SIM card in two and tossed the pieces out the window. She took her phone and called Olivia. While it rang, she lit a cigarette. Mercifully, the call went to voice mail, saving her the awkwardness of actually talking to her sister.

  “Liv, it’s me. Look, I’m sorry. I know I’ve been ducking your calls. I’m a bitch. I shouldn’t have gone to Finz. It was stupid. Not that either of us expect me to do anything smart.” A lifetime of screwups and Olivia clearing them up flashed across the back of her mind. “Look, there’s too much heat right now with Roy, Finz, and some other shit I’ve gotten myself into, so I’m leaving. I don’t know where I’m going. Call me a coward, a low-down bitch, and anything else you want, but it’s the right thing to do. If I don’t, either Roy or Finz will get to you through me.” She took a big drag on her cigarette. “As your older and dumber sister, I want to give you some sisterly advice for once—run. The bastards are closing in. They’re going to get you, so get out while you still can. You have money and smarts. They’ll never catch you. Shitty advice, I know, but I have faith in you.”

  She went to hang up, but she had one more thing to say. “I’m really sorry for getting you into all this. I hope you can forgive me and will let me make it up to you . . . if I can. I’m ditching this phone now, but I’ll be in touch later. Love you, Sis.”

  Tears were streaming down her face when she hung up.

  “You are a fucking coward,” she said to herself, “but you won’t be tomorrow. You’ll be someone else.”

  She pulled apart her phone, like she’d done with Roy’s, then she put her car in drive and headed toward Reno.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Olivia stared at the cash—$450,000 in neatly bound stacks. She picked up one of the stacks of bills and ran a fingernail down its edge. Money was just numbers these days. Nearly half a million bucks didn’t mean a lot until you saw it in the flesh. It didn’t take up much real estate on her dining room table. Just forty-five banded bundles of one hundred $100 bills. But its value far exceeded its monetary worth. It wasn’t just $450,000. It was breathing space. It was her salvation. It was her last shot at saving herself.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen so much money at one time,” she remarked.

  “Me either,” Andrew said.

  She put the cash down and took his hand. “You don’t know what this means to me. Whatever happens, I will pay you back.”

  He blushed a little. “Let’s take this one step at a time. Let’s get Roy off your back and worry about the money later.”

  “Did the bank give you any trouble?”

  “No. The money was in an escrow account. They had to give it to me in some form.”

  It had taken Andrew two days to get the escrow company to process his request. It worked in Olivia’s favor that Andrew had provided the money. If she had withdrawn the money from her account, it would have raised questions, but a payout of escrow funds wouldn’t set off any alarms.

  They didn’t sit on their hands for those two days. They came up with a plan for taking Infidelity Limited down. Roy liked to think of himself as being off the radar. He wasn’t. He lived somewhere and had a place where he kept every one of Infidelity Limited’s clients’ secrets. For his system to work, there’d have to be something that amounted to a little black book, whether it was a file on a computer or paper files. It would contain all the dirt on his clients and who they had killed, including Richard’s killer and her. When Olivia gave Roy the cash, he’d take it either home or to his storage place. Either way, he was taking it somewhere that was real. The mission was simple—break in and get everything he had on her. Once she had that, the hold Roy had over her would be broken and she’d have something to give Finz.

  The weakness in this plan was that it relied on Roy leading them to the place he kept his records, which might not be the case. At the very least, Roy would take them to a physical location that would possess a public record. They could use that information to track down his true identity. Once they had Roy’s real name, public records would move Infidelity Limited from the shadows into the light.

  The plan was easy in theory but harder in practice. Roy wasn’t stupid. He’d been getting away with this for years. Olivia couldn’t be the first person to think she could follow him back to his lair. That was why he had his little helpers on call to run interference for him. She imagined Roy himself would run all sorts of countersurveillance maneuvers to ensure he wasn’t being followed. The chances of Olivia and Andrew beating Infidelity Limited at its own game were slim. But technology provided the solution. Infidelity Limited was supposed to be about finding cheaters. They weren’t the only ones in that business. There were d
ozens of phone apps designed for catching cheating spouses. One type was a phone-finder app. It would use the GPS capabilities of a phone to locate where the phone was in the world. All they had to do was slip a phone to Roy and let him lead them to his home. That was the tricky part. He’d search Olivia, especially now that he didn’t trust her. The solution was for Andrew to do it.

  Roy liked his isolated meeting spots, usually with one road in and the same one out. It made surveillance easy, but it also meant picking up Roy’s tail after he left was just as easy. Andrew planned to use his construction crew to rig an accident so he could slip Roy the phone in all the confusion. It wasn’t the slickest of plans, but it was the best they had.

  They had the cash. They had the plan. Now they just had to wait for Roy’s call.

  Olivia checked her watch again. “When do you think he’ll call back?” She’d left a message for Roy this morning that she had the money. It was now midafternoon.

  “Today, or maybe tomorrow. He needs time to get everything in place.”

  “I hope this works.”

  “Chances are it will.”

  “Chances? You don’t sound too confident.”

  “I don’t want to blow smoke. This may not work.”

  It had to. It was their only shot. Once she handed the money over to Roy, she wouldn’t see or hear from him again.

  “It’s not like I have any other options,” she said.

  “You do.” He patted the money. “You can do what Clare said and run. There’s more than enough cash here to take off to some nonextradition country and start over. It’s okay. If you want to run, I’ll support your decision.”

  This morning, she’d picked up Clare’s message and played it for Andrew. It was heartwarming to hear Clare be so honest but concerning that she believed she could solve the situation by running away. True to her word, she must have ditched the phone. Olivia’s calls had dead-ended with “the subscriber you are calling isn’t available.”

  Olivia eyed the cash. Skipping the country made sense, but she wouldn’t just be skipping out on Finz and Roy; she’d be skipping out on her life, everything she’d made of it—and Andrew. He’d become more than a friend, and she felt if she went, he would come with her, destroying his life too. But the number one reason why running wasn’t an option was she’d be damned if she’d let Roy get away with this. He was going down, or she was. It didn’t matter which, but it ended today.

  “No, I want to get my life back, and that means sticking it out.”

  He grinned. He pulled her to him and hugged her tight. “That’s my girl. An attitude like that and we can’t fail.”

  Roy called at three. “Chabot Space and Science Center. Now,” he said and hung up.

  She looked at Andrew. “We’re on.”

  “Where?”

  “The Chabot observatory.”

  They packed the cash into a paper Trader Joe’s grocery bag and covered it with a sweater. It was less conspicuous than a briefcase or sports duffel.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “That’s fine. Scared is good. Scared is natural.”

  Andrew was probably right, but she’d been living in a state of fear and paranoia for weeks. It would be nice to feel a different emotion for a change. “Tell me this is going to work.”

  “There are no promises.”

  “Just say it.”

  He hugged her. “This is going to work.”

  He put her in her car, then went to his truck, parked on the street. As they both drove off, she felt as though she were going into battle. She’d never felt as alone as she did when she made the turn at the end of the street. Andrew might have her back, but it was just her versus Roy now. What she did in the next hour would shape the rest of her life.

  “Don’t screw up, Olivia,” she said to herself.

  The Chabot Space and Science Center was in the middle of the Redwood Regional Park in the Oakland Hills. Olivia took Highway 24, then Highway 13. Normally, this scenic route surrounded by tree-covered hills gave the area a restful, alpine feel. Today, it was more insidious. Roy and his people were hiding among the trees.

  She took Skyline Boulevard from the highway and followed the long, winding road that climbed into the hills. True to form, Roy had picked a secluded place with limited access. Skyline provided the only access to Chabot. Dolores or her ski-masked sidekick would no doubt be watching to make sure she was coming alone.

  It wasn’t the perfect location for Roy. Skyline didn’t dead-end at Chabot. It went past the space center. That meant the center could be accessed from a southerly or northerly direction, so Roy’s people would have to watch two approaches. It also meant that Andrew had to cover both exits when Roy left.

  “This is going to work,” she reminded herself.

  She turned into the center and parked the Audi in the parking structure instead of the open lot. Somehow it seemed fitting for a payoff to take place in the shadows.

  Roy wasn’t waiting for her inside the entrance of the center like an eager docent. She paid the entrance fee and walked in, then called him on the burner cell.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “I’m hanging out with Nellie, Rachel, and Leah. Come meet us. Ask for the girls if you don’t know where to find us.”

  Roy humor, she thought. Nellie, Rachel, and Leah were Chabot’s three telescopes, housed inside their own observatories outside of the main museum.

  He was standing in the middle of the deck that connected the three observatories. Dozens of fifth graders from some school party zoomed in and out. He was helping a couple of kids use a filter to stare at the sun.

  He looked so normal there with those kids. Despite his size and shaved head, he could be mistaken for a dad, a husband, or a teacher. Instead, he was a man who extorted money, blackmailed, and killed. It was funny how easily people could be deceived. He spotted her, handed the filter to the kids, and waved.

  He was in a better mood than the one he’d been in during their meeting at the poultry farm. Maybe he’d forgiven her transgression. Then again, extorting nearly half a million bucks would likely lift a person’s spirits. She cut through the kids to join him.

  “Isn’t this place great?” he said. “I haven’t been here in a while, but I love it. Look at the kids sucking up all this science and knowledge. These are the kinds of places that change the world.”

  She didn’t understand why he kept up with this pretense as the happy-go-lucky friend. He’d removed the mask to reveal his true face. Why pretend anymore?

  “I thought we had business,” she said.

  He frowned. “Can’t you take a minute to enjoy the moment?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, let’s take it inside.”

  He waved good-bye to the kids, and they returned to the relative quiet of the museum. Only a handful of kids were chasing each other back and forth past the exhibits, and there were even fewer adults.

  “Let’s go in here,” he said and took her into the planetarium.

  A docent stopped them to tell them the show was midway through and suggested they could catch the next show in half an hour.

  “That’s okay,” Roy said.

  The prerecorded show was playing to a couple of dozen people dotted around the auditorium. It wasn’t hard to find an empty section of seats. He guided her to a section at the back. They settled into their seats, and she stared up at a representation of the night’s sky.

  Roy leaned in. “Sorry about this, but I have to do it.”

  She nodded. She knew what was coming. It was hunt-the-wire time.

  Like they were teenagers at a movie, he reached over and ran his hand across her chest and stomach. He told her to roll onto her side so he could check the back of her neck and her back. Finally, he ran a hand between her legs.

  “Enjoy yourself?” she said when he was done.

  “Bitchiness is beneath you,” he said, taking her purse. After he rummaged through it, he said, “Let’s go.”<
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  The docent cocked her head when they walked back out.

  Roy held up his hands. “You were right. We really need to see the show from the beginning.”

  “Starts at the top of the hour,” she said.

  Roy took Olivia’s hand and led her back by the exhibits. Olivia wondered if it was the same hand that had held the knife that took Heather’s and Amy’s lives.

  He made the pretense of looking at an old space capsule. “Where’s my money, Olivia? I thought you said you had it.”

  “It’s in my car.”

  He exhaled. “You better not be fucking with me. You tried once and failed. I won’t tolerate a second time.”

  Her heart fluttered a note of unrest, and she shuddered. He didn’t see it with his head buried in the capsule. “I thought bringing in all that cash would be weird if this place searched my bag.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy him. “Where’d you park?”

  Olivia walked him to her car. The parking structure was long and narrow, making it cramped. It didn’t offer much in the way of privacy, but with so few visitors on a weekday, she’d found a quiet spot on the top level. She popped the Audi’s trunk and removed the Trader Joe’s bag.

  Roy smirked at the bag, but he took it. He removed the sweater and peered inside.

  “It’s all there. You can count it,” she told him.

  “I will.”

  She and Andrew had loaded three disposable phones with an app to track Roy. She had one in her purse, Andrew had one, and so did one of his guys. It didn’t matter which of them planted the phone, as long as someone did. She got the first crack at this. There was no way she could have put it in with the money or slipped it into his pocket without him noticing. Her best option was to plant it in his car, but she needed access to it.

  “You want to take it back to your car and count it there?” she asked.

  “Why my car? You seem nervous. What’s going on, Olivia?”

  “Nothing’s going on. We’ve got nearly half a million out in the open, and we don’t need the attention. We can do it in my car if you like, but let’s not do it where anyone can see.”