by Don Bruns
Getting back into the truck, he shook the water from his face and hair. Like a dog. “Padlocked. Rusty old padlock. I don’t think the place has been open for years.”
“Well, he was here.”
“Let’s hit the next place.”
“Probably about three miles.”
“We can do this.” He started the truck, and we drove down Palm Breeze Way. The shabby dwellings just got shabbier.
A left on Bianca Drive, another curving left onto Bonita Boulevard, and I saw a small laundry on the right. Chinese letters in the window, and under them the name CHEN’S LAUNDRY.
“So he had to drop off clothes.”
“Disappointing so far, eh, pard?”
He pulled back out on the road, and I glanced in my side mirror. “James, check out your mirror.”
He glanced out. “Is that gray car an Accord?”
“I believe it is.”
“There’s a lot of gray Hondas in Carol City, Skip.”
“Or, maybe Feng is hitting his stops again.”
The car hung back a couple of blocks, then turned off the road, and I lost it. “Must have been someone else.”
“You’ve got his license number.”
I thought for a moment. I’d been intimate with his car. We’d been physical, and I didn’t even have the number. “You must have taken it down, James.”
“Jeez. Great spies we are.” James banged his fist on the steering wheel. “What’s our last stop?”
“This is stupid. Let’s go to the bar you talked about and have a—” I stared hard into the side mirror, making sure of what I saw.
“What is it?”
“Gray Honda. Maybe two blocks back.” There were a couple of cars and another box truck between us. I viewed the Honda as it maneuvered behind the other vehicles.
“How would he know where we were?”
“It’s probably all a coincidence.”
“Where do I turn, pard?”
“Next street. Forty-seventh.”
He turned and picked up speed. Not much, but a little. The engine chugged along. The Little Engine That Could. There were some commercial buildings, then a rundown strip mall with three of the five businesses boarded up.
“Any sign of the graymobile?”
There were none.
“On your right, James. Right there.”
He stepped on the brakes and there was a metal on metal sound. Another problem with the truck. We needed new brakes.
“It’s a day care center.”
“So Feng’s got a kid. He had to pick him up.” James shrugged his shoulders.
I noticed the name. Recognized the name. Tiny Tots Academy. Somewhere Carol Conroy had picked up one of their pencils. I was sure she didn’t have any kids. “Keep driving.”
He did. Swerving to avoid the caverns in the road and trying to maintain a speed at about forty miles per hour. Quick for Forty-seventh avenue. I glanced in the mirror and there it was. No mistake. A gray Honda. It never slowed down at the day care center, but hung back, blending in with the light traffic.
“He’s back, James.”
“Son of a bitch. He knows exactly where we are.”
“I should have brought the laptop. Why didn’t I?”
James took a sharp right, then a left. Then back out to Forty-seventh. “You never thought about him following us.”
“If I had it, we could tell if the Honda was Feng. It would be so easy. We’d just check out his car, and we’d know immediately if it was him.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, pard.” James braked hard, the grinding and squealing painful to my ears. He took a hard right into a parking lot of a small restaurant. Anita’s Place. The sign in the window said closed for family emergency. It was a Mexican restaurant. Just as well. I’m not a big fan of Mexican food.
James opened the door and got out of the truck.
“Hey, man, it’s closed.” I yelled out the window after him.
He didn’t respond, but ducked down, and I lost sight of him. I jumped out of the truck and looked around. No sign of James, no sign of the gray Honda. Nothing. “James?”
Everything was quiet. A couple of cars passed, kicking up a spray, and the gentle raindrops spattered around me. Nothing. “James?”
“Skip, here. Check it out.”
He was nowhere.
“Skip?”
From under the truck.
For the second time in two days I scooted under a vehicle. “What?”
James pointed to the gas tank. “Check it out, pally.”
Feeling the wet pavement through my soaked shirt, I gazed up. Fastened to the metal tank was a gray box, very much resembling a GPS unit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My cell phone rang on the way back. The ring was Springsteen, the musical opening to “Born in the U.S.A.”
“Mr. Moore?”
I didn’t recognize the voice.
“This is Carol Conroy.”
I reached over and nudged James. He glanced at me and took his eyes off the road as we hit a crater that went halfway to China. The truck shook like we’d encountered an earthquake. We had to do something about the shocks. “Yes, Mrs. Conroy. What can I do for you?”
“For what I’m going to pay you, I hope you can do a lot.” There was venom in her voice.
“What do you have in mind?”
“I need to know what’s going on in one of the offices at Synco.”
“What’s going on?” Maybe someone was having sex on a desktop. Maybe someone was doing a second set of books or taking drugs.
“Is there any way that you can record conversations? Without being obvious?”
“Mrs. Conroy, can you hold on for just a moment?”
“Of course.”
We were pulling into the Synco Systems parking lot, and I scanned the blacktop looking for Feng’s gray Honda. It didn’t seem to be on the property. “James,” I put my hand over the phone and spoke in a loud whisper, “she wants us to bug somebody’s office.” It hit me that no matter how much this lady was willing to pay, I could be in a lot of trouble. But I also remembered that this lady thought her life was in danger. If I could save a life—
“We can do that.”
“Yeah? What if we get caught?”
“She’s calling the shots, amigo. She’s the owner’s daughter. Not only that, she’s the president’s wife. She’s a double threat, amigo. If she tells us to do something, it’s part of the job.”
For the right amount of money, you can justify just about anything. Sarah Crumbly had already reached that conclusion. James seemed to have always been there. And, for a split second, I thought about James’s rationalization and figured he was right. This was going to be a really nice paycheck.
“Mrs. Conroy?” James drove through the puddles and parked the truck in the identical spot he’d parked it this morning. He turned off the ignition and we sat there listening to the engine sputter and crackle. “We can probably handle that.” Feng’s office. It had to be. And, it would serve two purposes. We could find out what the little man’s agenda was. Find out why he was following us, and, at the same time, we could report to Carol Conroy on his conversations.
“Good. How soon can you report to me?” Maybe she was trying to get evidence on the little guy so she could go to her father. Maybe she needed to worm her way back into papa’s good graces. This was my imagination at work, but it all made sense. She’d told me that she and her dad were not on the best of terms. Finding a mole in the company might help cement that relationship and at the same time help her insure her inheritance. Of course, this was all a guess.
“How soon can I report to you? Um, tomorrow. Will that be soon enough?” I couldn’t wait to give her the news that Feng was the guy who was messing with her Lexus.
“No. That’s not soon enough. However, it’s probably the best you can do.”
The lady was a stone-cold bitch. Getting a shot in as often as she could. “We’ll find a way
to do it.”
She was quiet for a moment. I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. “Mrs. Conroy?”
“Yes. Just do it, okay?” I wasn’t sure that she was sure. The tone of her voice led me to believe that maybe she was hesitant. But here was someone who thought her life may be in danger, and she was taking steps to find out.
“Okay. You can call me late tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll give you a report. We’ll have some sort of recording, or notes.” James and I would figure out how to do it later. Right now, I just wanted to cement the project. And my bonus. I wanted to nail Feng myself. And we could get this done.
“Okay.”
I hung up the phone.
“We’re going to bug somebody’s office?”
“We are.”
“Feng?”
“Yes.” And then it hit me. Just as the phone rang again.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Moore, I seriously wonder if I hired the right person for this job. Are you a complete idiot?”
“I can assure you, Mrs. Conroy, this will be taken care of.”
“You don’t even know whose office I want you to monitor. I am seriously reconsidering my decision here.”
I realized she’d never told me whose office needed bugged. But I’d figured it out on my own. I just didn’t want her to realize that James and I had already started looking into Feng.
“Mr. Moore, I want you to gather conversations from office number one.”
“One?” One? That couldn’t be right. And yet I realized Feng was number one in my thoughts.
“Office number one. Sandy’s office. My husband.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“It’s impossible, Skip. You can’t fall into this much crap. Nobody can get themselves into this much of a mess.” Em sat wedged between James and me as our truck chugged down the highway toward Delray Beach.
I’d attached the GPS unit from our truck to the UPS truck that stopped twice a day at Synco Systems. Learning from my mistakes, it took me about two minutes this time. Let Feng follow “Big Brown” for a while. So I didn’t think the complaint was entirely warranted. I mean, I was adjusting.
“Em,” James shot her a glance, “it’s not like we’ve been exposed to this kind of thing before. You can be as critical as you want to be, but we’re in virgin territory here.”
I heard her growl. “James, I blame you for ninety percent of this.”
“Your boyfriend is innocent. I take all the credit.”
I wanted to strangle both of them. “Why don’t the two of you grow up and quit throwing blame around?” I used the popular phrase that seemed to be the dumbest one of the decade. “It is what it is.”
“And that’s exactly what it is.” James jerked the wheel, avoiding a Porsche that cut us off, and kept his eyes straight ahead.
“Look, we’re going to be at Jody’s store in about ten minutes. We have a mission, and I’m—we’re being paid well for it.” This had started out being my project. Obviously I wasn’t comfortable in my own ability. I’d asked these two people to participate. A bad decision.
No one else spoke for the next seven or eight minutes. We listened to the tinny radio. There was an electrical short somewhere in the system and it cut in and out. The sound quality was second only to the crappy rap music selection James had chosen. Finally, we pulled up next to Jody’s spy store.
“You know,” James said, “we don’t really need three people to buy a simple bugging devise.”
“No.” I agreed. “I volunteered to do this myself. But you two decided it couldn’t be done without your expertise.”
The three of us walked into the store, and Jody greeted us from behind the counter.
“Hey, Skip, James.”
“You remember Emily. My—” I remembered how he’d almost made a play for her the last time.
“Girlfriend.” Emily finished the sentence. “He has a hard time with that.”
“No.” I corrected her. “It’s just that I still can’t believe I’m dating someone as hot as she is, and I stumble every once in a while.” I wasn’t going to let this sleazy guy move in again on Em.
James rolled his eyes. Em grabbed my arm and squeezed it.
“As we said on the phone, we need a listening device.” James was scanning the walls, checking out the inventory.
“Well, there are several things I would suggest. First of all, there’s the power strip.” He pulled a three-outlet power strip from behind his counter and handed it to me. “I showed you this the last time.” Jody beamed a smile at Em. “You turn on the red switch, just like you always do. Then, you plug it in. No one has a clue, and you hear every voice in the room.”
“That’s what we need, pard.” James was nodding his head up and down.
“Hold on, friend. Then there’s the light switch, the body microphone, and the motion detector.”
James nodded as if he understood. Trust me. He didn’t.
“If you need to move it around to different locations, the power strip is good. I’ve also got a ball.”
“Ball?” I looked around. Didn’t see a ball.
“Right here.” He opened the palm of his hand. “Barely the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Now this is a camera and a microphone.”
Jody set the ball on the counter as we hovered over it. He pointed to a flat-screen moniter on the wall, and we could all see ourselves.
“You guys are setting up a security system, right?”
“We are.”
“Then these two items here would be perfect. Remember these?” He pointed to the wall behind him. “You thought it was a motion detector. Pretty good imitation, huh?” The small, curved plastic apparatus was mounted on the wall, facing us.
The thing was dead on. To the eye there was no way to tell it was a camera. I dealt with motion detectors on every installation. “It looks exactly like a motion detector. If it was a real detector, anytime something moved in front of it, it would trigger an alarm. The alarm is usually programmed to call the security company and they send out the cops.” But it wasn’t real.
Jody walked back to the monitor, flipped a switch, and we were all treated to another live shot of ourselves. “It’s a really good camera and a microphone. So you’d be getting quality video as well.”
“Wow.” James stared at me. “If it can fool an expert, it should fool a layman. Pretty good.”
Em watched the monitor and brushed her hair back from her face. “So Skip could have that installed and it would appear perfectly normal for the security system?”
“Exactly.”
“Wow.”
“But I’m thinking the item up there might be the best of all.” He pointed above our heads. A smoke detector was mounted to the ceiling, and again we all appeared on the flat-screen monitor. “That baby covers the room, and the sound is great.”
James looked at me, a big grin on his face. “I told you that Jody would come through. These are pretty cool, eh, amigo?”
I had to admit. There were companies making a living inventing these spy things, so there must be a lot of sneaky people in the world. “You must sell a lot of these to industries for espionage. Or maybe checking up on employees?”
“Some. Most of them, they’re used by spouses.”
“Woman checking up on cheating husbands?” James smirked.
Jody shook his head. “No. Men checking up on cheating wives. Mostly.”
It was Em’s turn to ask a question. “What?”
“I know, you think of straying husbands, not wandering wives. If I was in business, let’s say north of Atlanta, I’d be dealing with philandering husbands. But south of Atlanta, it’s where the rich sugar daddies retire. The old men bring their money and end up marrying girls half their age or younger.”
“Ah,” James seemed to get it. “And the old geezers need to keep an eye on the little fillies because they know that most of them married for the money.”
“Something like that.” Jody poin
ted at the monitor with all the locations clearly marked. “Twelve out of fifteen clients are men tracking wives.”
“A clear case against marriage.” James laughed.
“So, my choice would be the smoke detector.”
I let out a deep breath. “How much?”
“This one I can sell you for about a hundred seventy-five dollars. All you need is a computer, and when you remove the secure digital card, what the industry calls an SC card, you can plug it into your computer and see and listen to everything that happened in the room.”
“That’s a steal, Skip.”
I gave James a sharp look. He hadn’t put up one cent yet. Oh yeah, the truck. That was always his investment. As long as it continued to run.
“The card inside?” I was thinking about taking it out, putting it back in, taking it out—
“Well, if you want to do this fast and easy, you just mount the detector. The card inside is motion and sound sensitive and should last about six hours. As I said, you just take off the cover, take out the card, and play it on your computer.”
“Just?”
“Well, you could hardwire the thing, but there’s cable and drilling and running it into ceilings and walls and—”
“No, no.” That’s what we were doing for the legitimate part of our business. This had to be quick and easy. “Never mind.” I looked up, studying the white piece of plastic. What had I gotten us into? So someone, probably me, has to go into the office, climb up on a chair or ladder, remove the card, replace the cover, and get out of the office alive.
James was looking up too, and I noticed Jody was looking at Em. “And, amigo, someone has to go back in and replace the card.”
“There’s that too.”
“You can buy an extra card.” Jody looked anxious.
“I’m not sure I can afford the one I’m buying now. Any chance we can lease this smoke detector? Rent it?”
“Can’t do it. You have to do a permanent mount. But I can let you have it for half down and half once you get it up and running.”