“But if you two went up...”
“Same problem. We'd be salmon going upstream and the fire alarm could make people panic.”
Clarence shrugged. "Well, we can skip the alarm and work around the guards."
"But Clarence, you already gave getting into the security room a good shot and you got caught. Now they've seen your face."
"It won't necessarily be the same guards."
"That security system you intend to shut down includes facial recognition. By now they've logged your face as a suspicious one. The moment you approach the desk, the guard will get an alert."
"Oh.” He looked sad. “Then what can we do?"
Lila smiled. "The basic idea of taking control has merit. But instead of you trying to talk your way in, I think it needs a woman’s touch. I'd be willing to bet that Cecilia here could charm her way into that room."
They both looked at me and I laughed. "Even if I did manage to do that I can barely turn a computer on."
Clarence picked up on her idea far too enthusiastically. "No, but I can tell you what to do. You can shut the basic alarms down. Then I can come in."
"How?"
“We will create an opening,” Lila said. “Never fear.”
"Well, I'm afraid I'm not as confident as you about my womanly charms getting me into the room."
"Not your womanly charms," Lila said. "You as a womanly technician.”
I laughed. “Isn’t that exactly what Clarence already tried?”
“This time we will set the groundwork. Clarence will call, impersonating the firm and tell them a tech is coming for routine maintenance. They won't know you."
"I suppose you expect me to wear coveralls?"
Lila wrinkled her nose. "I’m sure we can get you a sexier outfit than Clarence wore."
"Sexier?" I asked. "Won't that destroy the illusion that I'm a technician?"
Lila shook her head. "Not really. If you think about it, how things go, a good con is nearly always based one-third on the setup and most of the rest of it, the last two-thirds is a matter of distraction. You set things up to create an illusion and the distraction makes the mark take his eye off the ball long enough for you to… do whatever you need to do. In this case, the telephone call and you showing up in the coveralls are the setup. That lets you show up without arousing any suspicion. Then, because the security personnel that man the desk are all, well, men, you… a sexy woman will provide the necessary distraction." I must've made a face because she laughed. "You don't have to seduce them, Cecilia, just give them something to look at that takes their minds off being security professionals for a few moments. You have the body for it, don't you agree, Clarence?"
I realized then that he'd been remarkably quiet for a time. "Yes, she does," he said, surprising me by looking at me as if he’d never seen me before. It was flattering.
“A lapse of attention on their part gets you in the door where you have access to the high-tech distractions that we need for the next part.”
After that explanation and the flattery, I found it difficult to argue anymore. "Fine," I said.
"Excellent!"
Clarence tapped his fingers on the floor plans he'd drawn. "What about the rest of the plan?"
"What do you mean?"
"How will you get the two artifacts? You won’t have much time. You need to get up to the collection and back down again."
"If they’re where we saw them last it won’t take that long. With each of us going after one object, everything we want should be ours soon enough."
"Everything we want?" I asked. I didn’t like the sound of that. Again, I wondered if Lila had the same agenda that we did.
She smiled. "The lock and the dice. The fire alarm should bring all the elevators to the ground floor and lock them there but once Clarence is in the room he can give us access to the private one. If you meet me at the elevator we will ride up. You go after the lock and I’ll get the dice. We have an existing relationship."
"Fine." I hated that I was using that one-word answer so often lately.
Lila touched Clarence's arm. "We will be quick as a couple of bunnies. The cases undoubtedly are wired so that breaking the glass sets off an alarm. The guards might even turn on the motion detector when they leave the room, but if you've turned all the alarms off that’s no problem. Actually getting the artifacts shouldn't be hard or take much time.” She touched my arm. “Remember that neatness doesn't count in this kind of crash and grab."
"What about getting out?" Clarence asked.
Lila shrugged. “We come down in the same elevator unless something goes wrong. There is an emergency elevator as well, if there is a reason we can’t go down the way we go up, and if that fails, there are stairs.” She sighed. “Lots and lots of stairs. Once we reach the lobby we blend with the crowd that will probably be standing outside the building. We can drift away from there casually.”
"That’s it? You don’t want a more detailed escape plan?"
Lila shrugged. "It’s hardly worth it. We can’t predict what the guards or anyone else is going to do after the initial confusion. So, in a situation like this, when you get that far along in the operation there are bound to be more unknowns than knowns.”
Clarence didn’t like that at all. “But if I know what and how you will get out, I can help. I’ll control the building.”
“We don’t know exactly what you’ll be able to control or for how long. We’ve made some assumptions and they might be wrong.”
“But...”
“Clarence, in my experience, trying to plan for every contingency is pointless and dangerous. We are going to have to improvise and it’s best if you acknowledge that from the beginning.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Lila wasn’t finished either. “Your job is to do the best you can to help us get out—you aren’t responsible for getting us out though. That’s our job, Cecilia's and mine.”
Clarence looked resigned. “So our plan, such as it is, only involves getting me into the room. Lila, you mentioned creating an opening...”
“Yes, let’s discuss that part. Since I have to do it, I’d like to know how we get the guard away from the desk,” I said.
“That’s the tricky part, really,” Lila said. “I could fake a heart attack or something.”
“Then you’d have to get away from him to meet me at the elevator.”
“I still say we can use the fire alarm,” Clarence said. “The guard would check the monitors, but I’m certain he’d also be wanting to make sure fire doors are clear and people will be demanding his attention.
“I thought we shot that idea down,” I said.
“I don’t like the idea of all that noise,” Edgar said.
Clarence shook his head. “And I’ve been thinking about it more. There has to be a way the technicians can test the alarm. Since it won’t always be the same tech working here, there should be some instructions… a phone number to call to warn them, or something like that.”
I saw the flaw in that. "When the alarm sounds, people will be calling 911 and all that."
He nodded. “At first they’ll be told it’s a test. And after enough calls, sure, they’ll probably still come, but you two will have a lot more time to get upstairs and back down again before they work out that something is wrong.”
"I agree that it will be safer for us with everyone out of the building and this will slow the authorities down—give us more time," Lila said. "I like it. It does what is necessary. We don’t need to be gone when they arrive, just out of Steele’s apartment."
And so the plan evolved and after we’d gone over it a few times, making adjustments, tweaking this and that, it sounded pretty good. Plans usually do. “Remember that we will need to improvise,” I said. “Like Lila said. And that means if you need to get out of there, just run for it. We’ll get out however we can.”
"Where do we meet?" he asked.
"I vote for regrouping back at the Budapest bar," Lila sai
d. "It’s not far away, it’s comfy, and after all that work I'll need Clarence to buy me another drink."
And so we agreed. From my perspective, our plan still had lots of large holes in it and I agreed with Edgar that I’d prefer an approach that didn’t call so much attention to us, or even to the building. But the reality (another recurring and dangerous word) was that without more time and resources it was probably the best we could come up with. And so, it would just have to be good enough. I didn't feel great about it, but I knew that was mostly my reluctance to accept plans that involve other people, especially people I still felt uncertain about—Lila Twill was still a cipher in my mind.
I pushed my concerns about her aside. I had no tangible reason to doubt her and my misgivings could easily be related to the fact that I just don't play as well with others as I should. Enid certainly thought that of me. So I’d try. I’d make it work.
Okay, Enid, this one is for you, so you can't say I'm not trying.
Chapter 18
Having decided to act and found a direction that, while vague, was one we could all agree on, we needed to get moving and that meant getting ready.
“Now what?” Edgar asked, beating me to the question by a ghostly millisecond.
Clarence looked at me. "Study time. I need to brief you on some things you can say if the security people ask what you are going to be doing," Clarence said.
"Good. I'll need a little time to absorb it all."
"And I better go find you a sexy little technician outfit," Lila said.
"I should go with you, shouldn't I?" I asked.
She laughed. "No. You'd just slow me down. We'd get to arguing about this or that thing that won't matter for the job we need to do. You don't need to love what I buy, just wear it and play your part."
"She's right," Clarence said, annoying me. It seemed like he was happy to listen to her… more than me.
Once she had gone we went through the plan again. Needless to say, Edgar wasn't pleased. "Oh my," he said… several annoying times.
“What?” I asked, sounding more impatient than I would’ve liked.
“This plan sounds risky.”
"And you have a better idea?" I asked.
"Oh I have any number of them and they are all superior to yours," he said.
“Enlighten me then.”
“Well, first of all, none of them involves going anywhere near that building.”
“So basically you are voting for turning tail and run?”
“I have to say that I find Destiny’s Point delightful this time of year and we are in this dreadful place missing all of it.”
“So you don’t like Las Vegas? The excitement? The glamor?”
“The inside of a pen box… no, I don’t. And all this fancy escapade sounds rather dreadful.”
“You aren’t at risk.”
“But what happens to me if you get killed?”
That brought me up short. “I have no idea.”
“And please bear in mind that I have to go in there with you.”
“How can I forget? You won’t shut up.”
“My nerves won’t take the strain. I’m not much on stealth.”
"Fortunately you are out voted, Edgar," Clarence said. “Now, Cecilia, here is what you need to say when you arrive.” He started talking and I listened attentively, hoping I could remember enough of what he said to sound reasonable. I had to remember some basic things about the security system and he was trying, quite hard, to teach me some terminology that I could toss out.
"That's a lot to remember," I said.
"Don’t worry about it too much. First of all, you won't be carrying on a long conversation about the tech, just making a comment or two. And if you did get it wrong… this isn’t stuff everyone knows. There's a good chance the guards won't have a clue what you are talking about anyway. Just speak with confidence."
"Okay, I trust your judgment." I did and I think it was a good thing too, because I had to.
He frowned. "Before we go off on this… adventure, I wanted to apologize, Cecilia."
"Don't do that! You’ll screw up the dynamics of our relationship."
He had the grace to grin. "Look, we've been at each other's throats instead of helping each other and I feel bad about that."
"That's true. Although it seems natural, in a way. We have such different ways of working and different priorities. Add in this infernal heat…"
"But we need to work together, let those differences complement each other, not let them come between us. We let our differences become a personal conflict."
"I can't always help losing patience with your deliberate and methodical approach, Clarence. It’s not that I think it’s wrong, but I'm naturally impatient and when I can see clearly that action is needed… well, I just have to take it."
"Even if it's wrong?" he said.
I flashed him a smile. "I suppose so. Sometimes doing something is stupid, but just as often not acting has a worse outcome. And the best-laid plans don't necessarily get things right."
"Acting based on your gut… I do get it, but I’m pleased that you will acknowledge that sometimes it is dangerous. Like in the Grand Storeroom… your impulsive actions almost got you killed."
He didn't say it, but the undercurrent, the fact that he was subtly reminding me that he'd saved my life after I did something rash was irritating. I still thought what I’d done was the best thing under the circumstances ― my actions had been necessary. "My gut instinct also saved the world, in case you've forgotten."
"With a little more thought, spending a little time putting our heads together, we might've found a course of action that would have made taking that risk unnecessary."
"And we never think things through enough to suit you. I know you are uncomfortable improvising, that's why you nearly got in trouble today."
"My plan…"
"That wasn't really a plan as much as an idea. You only thought it through as far as getting inside the room so you could turn things off. Did you really think that after you shut down all the systems the guards would just let you get in the private elevator and go up to Steele's apartment?"
He stared at me and I realized that he hadn't even thought about the next step at all until now, when I’d practically forced him to. "I…"
"There are two reasons I'm not that keen on planning, Clarence, especially in great detail. The first one is that, as we just saw, you can't think of everything and sometimes in making plans we even miss the obvious. The other was the thing Lila pointed out. As soon as you start executing a plan things change. Assumptions prove out or prove to be wrong and it’s important to adapt to take them into account. The reality is that sooner or later you are going to wind up improvising whether you want to or not. Every situation we've been in has shown us that."
He sighed. "I need a framework."
"Well, this time there is one."
"The two of us have actually accomplished quite a lot in a short amount of time. I think we really are a pretty good team when we act like one."
"That's true. We've done some things together that neither of us could've done alone."
"Yes," he seemed relieved to hear me say it.
"What do you think about Lila?" I asked him.
He shifted uncomfortably. "What about her?"
"Do you like her?"
"Sure. Why?"
"Because of the way you act around her. It’s weird."
"Weird?"
"You act like a boy wanting to impress a girl he likes."
The insight embarrassed him. "I do like her but I don’t know what to make of her. She's different. When she saved me from getting caught she pretended I was her boyfriend and kissed me in front of them. I was a little surprised. I'd never kissed someone I didn't even know before."
His words stung a little, and that surprised me. The idea that he'd kissed Lila shouldn't bother me. It wasn’t like we were an item. "Okay, you liked kissing her. More importantly and relevant to us
getting out of this next adventure alive… do you trust her?"
"I guess I do.” He stopped to think and I let him, pleased that he wasn’t giving me an emotion, knee-jerk reaction. “She didn't need to save me, but she did. And she told us right away what she'd done with the dice. Those things make me think that she is being straight."
“She admits to being a con artist.”
I saw him blink. “I know.” I could see that bothered my moralistic Clarence a bit. “That makes her less than honest. Still...”
I still wasn't as convinced that she was telling us everything, or that there wasn't another reason for her telling us what she did. But we were committed and Clarence wasn't in a mood to hear any of my suspicions. So I hedged. "Well, she seems to be willing to play a big role in helping us get the artifacts and she contributed to the plan."
Clarence liked me saying that. "Exactly."
Even as I reassured Clarence, my wicked brain insisted on asking the obvious question. Why was Lila willing to risk her own neck helping us? She didn't strike me as the community spirited sort, or someone happy for a chance to take on the evil forces of doom. She wasn’t a crusader and I worried what her personal angle was. I tend to be cynical (if you haven't noticed) and forced myself to rein it in. We could use her help. We needed her on our side. I told myself that she wasn’t going into the collection alone. I'd be there to keep an eye on her in case she had some optional extra steps in her scheme that she hadn’t bothered to mention.
Clarence looked down at the floor plans in his lap. His finger traced a path down a hallway to the spot where he’d indicated the lock would be stored. "If, if, if…” he muttered before looking up at me. “I guess this little exercise will tell us just how good a team we make."
In that, he was absolutely right and the tone of voice told me that he was worried sick about things going wrong. Because it was Clarence, I knew his concern was for what might happen to me and to Lila. "We will make this happen," I said. I had my hand on his shoulder and a confident tone into my voice that didn't want to be there of its own accord. The smile it put on his face made the effort worth it.
The Curious Case of the Cursed Dice (Curiosity Shop Cozy Mysteries Book 2) Page 12