“You tell me, sweetcheeks.”
“Wait a minute—what about this?” she asked, her voice rising in excitement. “Something must be hidden in the office!”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” AJ said. “When you get excited about a case it just warms the cockles of my cold, cold heart. How soon can you get to New York?”
“What?”
“Do you want to find some way of doing the work you love, honey, or not? Do you want to patch your reputation back together, or not? Do you want your man back, or not? Don’t you think there’s actually a possibility that this could be The One, and don’t you think you deserve the chance to find out? Get on a plane, train, or automobile, get to New York, get the fucking hidden treasure, and save the day. It’s what you want, right?”
“Right, but, I can’t just break into Chas’s town house. And what if he’s home?”
“Oh, sweetie pie, you really don’t know me at all, do you?” AJ cackled.
“Your meaning, Oh mysterious one?”
“Chas just got on a plane to New York. You have an entire evening until he gets home. I have the codes to all his security systems, and interior surveillance of his home, car, and cell. You just put me in your ear, and I’ll get you in.”
There was a pause. Then Susannah smiled. “Oh, Fingers, I do love you. And I never want to know how you know all that. Gimme half an hour, and I’ll be on headset.”
“I’ll be waiting with bated breath, Sugar Britches,” she said. Then she disconnected the call.
Susannah sat on her bed for a minute, trying to catch her breath. Looking skyward she said, “Dad? Do you think I should go back to New York and try to figure this out? I’m confused. If you have any thoughts, I need a sign. Scratch that. I need a really big sign.”
She waited for a moment. Then she muttered, “Well, of course. I’m being ridiculous. I have to learn to make my own decisions.”
And with that, she grabbed AJ’s drawing off the wall, took it out of the frame, and tucked it in her pocket. “ ‘Someone Prove Me Wrong’ indeed,” she said with a smile.
‡‡‡
SUSANNAH’S HEART WAS BEATING a mile a minute as she ran down the stairs and directly into her mother, who had been listening, it seemed, from below. “Sorry, Mom! Gotta run. I’ve got important business to take care of, and—”
“Yes, Susie, I heard. Anything I can do to help?”
“No, Mom. I’ve just got to hightail it back to New York—I’ve got to get on the next flight out,” she said breathlessly.
“Can I drive you to the airport?” Janice asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s no big deal, really, just—”
“Sweetheart,” Janice said with a wan smile, “did you really think your father was a salesman? And that he traveled for business last minute to sell life insurance? Really? I thought you were smarter than that.”
Susannah’s eyes widened. “Wait, Mom, you mean—”
“I mean that I’ve been dealing with this my whole life, it seems. Secrecy is in your blood, and justice pumps it through your veins. I know the quickest route to any airport, train station, rental hub, or private helicopter service you can name.” She smiled wider. “And my car is faster than yours. Come on, sweetheart. Grab a few brownies for the road. You’re gonna need ’em.”
10
SUSANNAH ARRIVED AT Chas’s town house a little before ten p.m. She was wearing all black and had a backpack and an earpiece, nothing more. She was in a hip-hugging pair of spandex pants, a skintight tank she’d gotten at a Tribute to Metallica concert, and new boots that were all shiny patent leather and silver buckles. She felt exciting and sexy like Catwoman or a Bond girl—but she also still felt like a bit of a clown.
She didn’t have any of FTP’s fancy in-ear surveillance on hand since she’d been fired, so she was forced to use her Bluetooth headset. The minute she got out of the cab she dialed AJ, who picked up on the first ring.
“Well, I dig the Catwoman getup,” she said upon answering.
“First of all, I love that you can see me, and secondly, it was all I could think of last minute.”
“Are those boots new? HOT.”
“I got them on Zappos,” Susannah said proudly.
“Well, Sugar Britches, you know how I love to talk shoes, but we’ve got a job to do.” Susannah heard keys clicking, and the faint sound of jazz. “Okay, so you’re actually going to go to the alley, it’s to your right when you’re facing the town house, two stoops down . . . there you go. Now that you’re at the entrance, turn left. Excellent.”
Susannah found herself in a New York City alley, which looked, for the most part, like every scene she’d ever seen on SVU where someone winds up dead. “Seriously, Fingers? This is pretty—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Don’t worry. No one’s around. Now walk down about halfway, and there should be a door to your left. Down the stairs, past the graffiti that says ‘Nark Loves Potato,’ past the trash. Black door, no markings, old padlock.”
“Right, got it. The one that looks like it has dead bodies hanging behind it?”
“That’s the one. You got your gun?”
“Always. It’s the smartest thing I can think of to keep between my legs.”
AJ let out a laugh that sounded like a foghorn. “Right on, sister. Well, grab it, and shoot the lock off.”
“What? Isn’t that going to—”
“Honestly, honey, just shut up and trust me.”
“Well, all right, but it doesn’t seem like the best idea.” Susannah took aim at the lock, shot it off, and the door popped open. There was a cacophonous alarm that sounded. “Fuck, AJ!”
“I know, sweetie, I know. But we have thirty whole seconds. Look to your right. There’s a clock in the shape of a rooster. Behind it, there’s an alarm keypad. Type in these numbers: 55378008.”
Susannah did so, and the alarm immediately stopped. “See? I told you to trust me,” AJ said. “By the way, do you know what those numbers are?”
“No,” Susannah said, “should I?”
“It was something we all did as kids. If you type that series of numbers on a calculator and turn it upside down, it spells ‘BOOBLESS.’ We all thought it was riotously funny . . . .” She trailed off. “Didn’t you do that?”
“No,” Susannah said. “That’s ridiculous. I mean, really?”
“My guess is that it was his favorite password when he was a kid. There are different codes on different doors, and this entrance hasn’t been functional for years, though he probably still changes the code with some regularity. Anyway, make your way upstairs. It’s time to find this Bride of the Wind and hear what she has to tell us.”
“Roger that,” Susannah said, and made her way to the nearest staircase. She was in what appeared to be servants’ quarters, or at least they must have been at one time, and she had to take a serpentine route to find her way back to the main entrance and up the two marble staircases to the office. She entered Chas’s inner sanctum, and it was just as she remembered it: there was the globe, the scotch, the dark wood. And yes, on the opposite side of the room, the credenza with the painting above it. “Bingo!” Susannah said. “I’m gonna search the room and report back.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, sweetie pie,” said AJ, sounding excited. “First things first. Check behind the painting. Any safe? Or on the back of the painting itself?”
Susannah lifted the print off the wall and put it facedown. There was nothing behind it. Grabbing a Swiss Army knife from her bag engraved with the word “Legs” she sliced the back of the frame open, hoping for a discovery of some kind, but it, too, revealed nothing.
“Right,” said AJ. “Step two. Credenza. Describe it to me. Sadly, there’s no surveillance in this room. And you know how pissed off that makes me.”
“Okay, well, there’s a series of drawers.”
“Great. Open all of them and look inside.”
Susannah opened each drawer in turn. When that yielded nothing, AJ said, “I need you to look for anything around the credenza that’s out of the ordinary.”
“I already have. But there’re a few other things here. Hang on a sec.” Susannah searched through the items, most of which were liquor related, and found a handful of things that belonged in a junk drawer. “Nope. Nothin’ doin’.”
She could hear AJ furiously typing away, and the music in the background suddenly got louder. She thought she also heard the sound of a match being lit. Finally, after some time, AJ exhaled loudly. “Check the back of every drawer. Feel around. See if there’s a hidden compartment.”
“Honestly, Fingers, I know how to search a room. Do I really have to wait for your go on all this?”
“Yes. I want to be in control of everything. Sorry. Of course you know how to do this, it’s your job. I just got a little overexcited is all. Ransack and report back.”
“Roger that,” Susannah said with a smile.
She began to explore every nook and cranny, using the skills she had honed during years of performing searches. She had to remove all the liquor bottles and feel around the edges. Then she removed a small flashlight from her backpack and shed light on the only unexplored part of the credenza, which was farthest from her reach. The beautiful antique backing was loose, and, with a bit of work from her handy Swiss Army knife, it easily came off, revealing what appeared to be a small rusted brass safe tucked within the wooden frame. “Holy guacamole, Fingers. You’ve done it this time. It’s like I just found the safe at the end of the rainbow. Now how do I get in it?”
“What does the lock look like? Combination? Keyhole?”
“Hmmm . . .” Susannah mused. “Neither. Looks like—well, like something out of Indiana Jones. Or Lord of the Rings.”
“Explain.”
“Well, there’s beautiful handiwork, and Gaelic lettering, and a sort of missing piece, like a key that goes on the surface. It looks like that door in Game of Thrones—did you see the episode where Daenerys is being wooed by one of the statesmen of the weird gated community they all come across, and he boasts of having an entire safe of treasure, but when they get there—”
“Enough, honey, I got it. For fuck’s sake! Now we need a fucking artifact? I mean, this guy—”
“I know,” Susannah agreed. “Tell me about it.”
“I mean, he’s almost TOO good. Really. All right, gimme a minute.” Once again, Susannah heard furiously ticking keys and the music got still louder. She heard AJ mumbling as she typed but could only make out certain words like “fuck” and “holy grail” and “men.” As the time lengthened, Susannah began to get nervous. She was anxious about when Chas would be coming home, and if anyone else would be coming to check on the place, and if she should clean up, and if Chas had really ruined her life or not, and did he feel anything for her at all? Would she ever date again, would she ever like/love/lust again, would she ever wear a pretty dress and flirt and kiss anyone again? Would she grow old and die alone in a big cottage in the woods where trees grew through the house and she had seventeen cats? Feral cats, angry cats, a cacophony of loud, spraying, untrained cats, cats having kittens and playing with balls of yarn and eating off the dining room table? And newspapers from years past piled so high you couldn’t see over them? As she began to have an anxiety attack, she reached for a strand of hair to play with, but she had put her hair back in a ponytail, so she reached for her necklace, which was . . .
The Celtic family tree.
“Oh, fuck. Fingers? Fingers, turn the music down. I’ve got it. I think I’ve got it. I’m wearing it!”
“No,” AJ said. “No way. It’s not that fucking family tree? I thought that was all a big bunch of bullshit.”
“Well, let’s see.” She pulled it up over her head, and the silver tree fit perfectly on the lock face. She turned it, and it opened.
Inside the minuscule safe were a flash drive and a piece of paper. And on the piece of paper were four words. “The Italian: Heavenly Balls.”
‡‡‡
THE BOSS, JACKSON, and Lisa Bee were sitting in a New York hotel room playing poker and wondering what their next move would be, both in the game and in the case. The Boss was nearly out of chips, Lisa Bee was holding on to a small pile, and Jackson had everything else. Jackson’s pile of chips was so large that his face could barely be seen over it. Normally, he would be grinning like the Cheshire cat; he did so love to whip Bossman’s ass at cards. But tonight, the mood was somber. They were trying to take their minds off the loss of Susannah, and their FBI contact Fritz’s threats, and the fact that a group of truly unsavory criminals were about to win this de facto war. They each felt like a failure in slightly different ways. The Boss felt like a failure as a boss. Lisa Bee felt like a failure as a friend. And Jackson felt like a failure as a man.
They were at the end of a hand, and the Boss’s eyes lit up for half a second. “Full house,” he said, smiling drily at Jackson. “FINALLY. At least I can keep my man card tonight.”
Jackson sighed and looked resigned. Fanning his cards on the table he said, “Four of a kind, Bossman. Hand the man card over. Sorry, old friend.”
There was a long, ugly silence. The Boss took his remaining chips and pushed them to the floor. Then he took a large swig of Jack Daniel’s and said, “Perfect. Looks like I can’t do anything right.”
Now it was Lisa Bee’s turn to sigh. “Okay, boys, I’ve had it. The truth of the matter is that none of us can do anything right. None of us saw this coming, none of us knew how to save her, none of us knew how to stop this from happening, and none of us know what to do next.”
“You’re right,” said the Boss. “There’s really only one thing we can do for Legs. We can find these guys, and we can take them down.”
“Better yet,” Lisa Bee said, “we can stop them before they have a chance to harm her further. She’s been called a whore and an international joke. We can’t stop that. But we can keep her safe. Can’t we?”
Jackson didn’t say anything. He had already solved the problem. No one messed with his people, especially his inner circle. He still had contacts from his time in Morocco, and some of them owed him big. He had ensured that Pierre, whoever he was, would never talk. Jackson’s oldest friend, Mahmoud, would find the scumbag. And when he found him, he would slit his throat.
“It’s taken care of,” Jackson finally said. “She’ll be fine. I say we worry about Chas Palmer. After all, it seems they can’t do anything without his say-so, right?”
“What do you mean, ‘it’s taken care of’?” Lisa Bee asked.
“I’ve got friends in low places,” Jackson replied. He liked it when he did something that made Lisa Bee curious. “That’s why Bossman hired me.”
“Yes,” said the Boss, “that and your uncanny ability to seduce every woman in the room while emasculating every man.”
“Well, he’s not seducing me,” Lisa Bee said.
“Oh, just you wait,” Jackson hummed, more excitement in his tone than he wished. “I haven’t even tried yet.”
“Enough. Really, ENOUGH!” Bossman growled. “It’s back to business, team. Jackson, keep it in your pants. Bee, get us hooked up. We’ve got all the intel we need. We’ve got the equipment and the intelligence to deal with the situation. So we know what it’s time for, right?”
“Enlighten us,” Jackson said grimly.
“Now we go get the bad guys.”
11
SUSANNAH HAD SPENT the night in a decent, if cramped, Midtown hotel room, and the morning buying a light blue Tahari suit at Bloomingdale’s and doing some research. She rarely dressed in power suits, but when she was wearing Tahari she got to play the woman she hadn’t quite grown into yet. She also decked herself out in a stunning shoulder-length
black wig with bangs, just to avoid any unwanted attention. She had left the flash drive for Fingers, who was on her way to New York for business and said she’d swing by the hotel straight from the airport. It hadn’t taken Fingers long to figure out the cryptic note; after all, there was only one thing it could mean. Heavenly Balls was the nickname of a restaurant on the Lower East Side. The full name was Heavenly Balls: A Meatball Emporium, and it was set up to look like a food truck surrounded by picnic tables inside an Italian-style garden. The place was tiny and always packed; every night there was a line out front, and on the weekends the line stretched around the block. You could get any kind of meatball imaginable, and they were all served with the sauce of your choice on a bun or on a plate of pasta. The restaurant didn’t open until eleven a.m., but Susannah decided she’d go down at ten to see what she could find out.
She was on Ludlow Street when she spotted the restaurant’s sign hanging overhead. As she walked underneath it she saw the quote: “Balls So Good, Even Your Mama Will Want Some.” She laughed, and then abruptly stopped herself. This was not a funny situation, and she wouldn’t be dissuaded from her task. But what was her task, exactly? She figured she’d just ask who owned the place and pretend to be interested in franchising. Then she could get some information, put all her ducks in a row, and figure out where to go from there. It was a half-baked plan, unlike the brilliantly conceived work she had done for FTP in the past, but she had no choice. She was short on time, and long on desperation. In her mind’s eye she could hand Chas the information he needed on a silver platter, have him clear her name, then get her job back. Unless her cover was really blown to bits. But she’d have to wait to find out. Till then, the worser part was that he’d wrecked her credibility.
She sighed and smoothed back her hair. She was living in a fantasy world, wasn’t she? Her desires were as far from reality as possible. But could there be a slim chance? Perhaps. It depended upon one thing: if her name and face had been seen by the inner circles of the intelligence communities or, god forbid, beyond, she was done for. She knew that it was potentially the end of the life she had created, but she wasn’t ready to let it go. Still, there was hope. She’d see if there was anything she could salvage.
Game On (The Bod Squad Series Book 1) Page 12
