by Dick Stivers
There was another long silence.
Babette suddenly brightened. “If I secure the hook in the window, can you three move the bodies down? And if I unhook the window from the inside, can you move quietly enough to hide the bodies?”
“I can handle that,” Ti said.
Babette turned to Gadgets. “I need a portable tape recorder and some slow sexy music.”
Gadgets looked at his watch. “There’s still time to get that from the corner store.”
“I’ll go,” Ti volunteered.
“Okay,” Babette said, “get those. When you get back I will go down to the goons’ office and distract those two. You’ll stash your garbage and get back out. Make sure you get me a tape player with lots of volume.”
As Babette went back out the window, Lao Ti went to make the purchases. She moved through the halls quietly and met no one. She was relieved to see that the cleaners were still in the building. It meant that the HIT operatives would not start to search until the cleaners left.
Once more Babette was lowered two floors to the ledge on the fourth floor. She carefully crabbed along the ledge to the window of the computer installation. After checking the inside of the room, she crossed over the window and made her way farther along the ledge. It was a tricky operation that had the two men sweating. They had to slack the rope away off so it would not dangle in front of the window. If Babette slipped, she would fall a long way before the slack was out of the rope. They did not know if they could hold on.
Once she was sufficiently past the WAR offices so that the noise would not be heard inside, Babette drove the pitons into the brickwork, working slowly, carefully, concentrating on keeping her center of gravity within the narrow limits of the ledge. Then she had to lean forward enough to free the loose rope from over her shoulder. The next job was to tie the end to the pitons. The job had to be done well, but could be done only with one hand. It was slow work and the concentration required was similar to what she needed as an Olympic gymnast — which she was as a youth — or an Olympic-caliber coach, which she was now.
On the way back along the ledge, Babette had to check the computer-room window with the mirror in her right hand. She saw two heads turned toward the clock on the wall. A sense of urgency gripped her. She began to pick up the pace. The result was that she held her arms too far from her body as she passed the mirror from her right hand back to her left. Her center of gravity shifted beyond the edge of the thin ledge. She almost fell. Babette shot her arms out in front of her as quickly as her highly trained muscles could react. She then continued the motion until her hands hit the wall over her head.
The momentum of pushing her arms out pushed her back against the wall. Before her body could lose balance again, the arms were against the wall over her head. She breathed deeply and slowly slid her arms down along the wall to her side. It was then that she realized that the mirror had dropped out onto the street. She watched carefully for a moment, but no one had noticed.
Pol and Gadgets pulled Babette in the window. They all breathed deep sighs of relief.
When Lao returned, everyone got back to business. Babette pawed through the half-dozen tapes that Lao had bought. Gadgets put the batteries into the portable stereo. Pol dragged bodies from the closet.
“I don’t see why they call this portable,” Gadgets remarked. “It must weigh twenty pounds.”
Lao shrugged. “She wanted lots of volume. This one can break eardrums.”
“Hey. This is it. This is exactly what I wanted!” Babette exclaimed, holding up a cassette.
“What are you going to do with it?” Pol asked.
“I’m going to deliver a message, a message that will keep those two downstairs totally occupied for over four minutes.”
“Can we get two bodies down there in four minutes and then get out?” Pol asked.
“It should be easy,” Gadgets figured. “We’ll already have a rope sling on them. We’ll tie the rope off and use it to slide the bodies down to the other window. I’ll catch them there and haul them in. If Ti watches my back, it should be easy.”
Pol turned to Babette. “How will we know when to start?”
“When you see the window open, start down there. When you hear the music, get moving. I’ll play it loudly. It’ll cover any sound you make.”
Gadgets stared at her for a moment. Her electric-blue eyes met his without flinching.
“You’ll be taking a bigger risk than walking narrow ledges,” he told her. “How will you get back out of there? I imagine they’ll want you to stay and play.”
“If she isn’t out of there one minute after the music stops, I’ll go in after her,” Ti said. “I can get her out without anyone associating us with their main problem.”
Gadgets grinned at the small woman. “Do that,” he agreed.
“Give me a couple more tapes to drop into my handbag,” Babette said to Gadgets.
“Which ones?”
“Doesn’t matter. It just wouldn’t look right if I carried a monstrosity like this and didn’t have several tapes to paw through.”
Pol grinned. “This lady knows role camouflage.”
“Let’s put the show on the road,” Gadgets said.
Babette hefted the oversized portable and let herself out of the bare office. Ti waited a few seconds and then followed. Pol and Gadgets were already preparing to move the bodies down two floors.
Gadgets looked up from the grisly task and chuckled. “Good thing the streetlights don’t reach this high and that there’s no moon yet. I’d hate to have to explain to some cop what we’re doing right now.”
Pol tied off the rope, being careful to get the slack exactly right so that the line would take whoever was on it to the fourth-floor ledge just outside the correct window.
“You ready for your space walk, commander?” he said when he was finished.
“As long as I have firm footing,” Gadgets replied, looking out the window.
Babette knocked timidly on the door to the WAR computer room. In a moment it opened a crack.
Babette put on an easy grin. “Hi,” she said. “Can I use your telephone?”
“Don’t you have one upstairs?” The voice was curt, impatient.
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t use it anyway. Some calls a girl doesn’t want another girl to hear.”
The HIT man was curious. “If you used our phone, we’d hear you,” he probed.
Babette made a gesture with her left hand, dismissing the thought. “That doesn’t count. You don’t even know me.”
The eye made an up-and-down movement. At least that much of the man was trying to get to know her better. After a couple of seconds the door swung open.
“Sure, come in and call,” the guy decided.
As Babette entered, the other hardguy glanced up from a desk where he had been playing showdown with his partner. His eyes fixed on the cassette player.
“You didn’t have that when you came in here,” he said.
“Nah,” Babette answered. “I loaned it to my friend, but I need it back. I use it for my work.”
“You must be popular with the boss if you take that damn thing to work.”
“You don’t get it. The boss supplies them. The girls got to make a deposit, you know, but then we get to keep the thing as long as we work there.”
The tough crumb was interested. “Work where?” he asked.
“Very Special Message.”
“What special message?”
“Nah. That’s the name of the place I work, Very Special Message. You got a message you want delivered it can be delivered by a gorilla, a clown, Santa Claus. But mostly people order strip-a-grams. No one ever sent you a strip-a-gram?”
“You mean you go and do a striptease to deliver a message?” the guy who let her in exclaimed.
“Sure. No one ever sent you a strip-a-gram?”
“Who’d send meone of those?”
“Your boss. Your girlfriend. Just about anybody with fifty
bucks and a sense of humor.”
The two hardguys looked at each other. They were both grinning.
“Hey fellas, I came in to use the phone, remember?”
The guy sitting at the desk said, “I don’t remember, but I’m sure you could deliver a message.”
“Hey, have a heart! This is my night off.”
“Why don’t you have a heart, baby.”
“Yeah,” agreed the one who had let her in. “I’ve never seen a strip-a-gram.”
“You’re kidding,” Babette said. “I’ve done so many of the damn things that I’d of sworn everyone has seen me personally. And Bernie has ten of us going full-time, plus some part-timers in the busy season.”
“Let’s see you do your thing, kid,” said the man at the desk. It sounded more like a command than a request.
“I ain’t dressed for it,” Babette complained, but her whine indicated she wanted to be encouraged.
“I thought you got undressed for it,” the seated guy scoffed.
“I could just go down and use the lousy pay phone,” Babette complained. “But you guys were so nice, making sure I found the right place. I’ll see what I can do. It’s too hot in here. Open the window. This is hard work.”
“The place is air-conditioned.”
“Listen. One rule we have is no sex — we’re not prostitutes. The second rule is: if the place is hot, we don’t do it. We can’t shower after and we can’t afford to go home between every message. So, either I open the windows, or I go use the pay phone.”
“Go ahead. We can close them later.”
Babette walked over to the windows and opened them. Her slow controlled walk already had the men excited. Hers was the perfectly conditioned, perfectly balanced body of the highly trained athlete. It was exciting every time she moved.
She then went back to the door area and arranged chairs for the two men.
They took the seats with their backs to the window.
Babette rummaged around in her handbag.
After seeming to debate over a couple of tapes, she put on the sound track for Flashdanceand quickly found “I’ll Be Here Where the Heart Is.” She pretended to be making up her mind, listening to part of it, deliberately building the suspense and the tension.
She then turned up the volume and stood up, poised, balanced. Babette moved in perfect time to the slow music. Her audience was unaware that what they were really seeing was a slow version of her daily warm-up exercises, stretching and warming every muscle.
As the song moved into the second verse, Gadgets let himself into the room. Babette had locked eyes with one of the men. She kicked her shoes into his chest so he had to catch them.
Gadgets turned his back on the scene and leaned out the window. Before the verse was over, he was dragging the first body over the window ledge.
Babette locked eyes on the really hard case and played with the buttons on her shirt. They came undone with agonizing slowness. Her victim’s eyes were riveted on the shirtfront. He was scarcely breathing. One of the corpse’s heels hit the floor with a slight thump, barely audible above the sound of the stereo. Gadgets quickly looked around, but neither man had noticed. He decided that he could probably set firecrackers off behind them without attracting attention.
Babette’s shirt slipped from her shoulders. Every move was slow, sensuous. Both men were leaning forward.
Gadgets looked around and spotted an office he could reach without coming into the audience’s peripheral-vision range. He yanked the rope off the arms and hoisted the body to his shoulders, moving silently through the computer area.
The third verse was playing as he made his way back. Gadgets found it almost impossible not to stop and stare.
Babette was fondling herself in time to the music. The muscles on the men’s necks were knotted from excitement. Gadgets forced himself to turn his back and lean out the window. He took a deep breath of air before signaling to Politician to slide the next body down the rope.
The body accelerated through two stories of almost free-fall. Gadgets braced himself and wrapped one arm around it. The force tore his grip loose from the window ledge, but he managed to stop the body by catching his feet on the window ledge. The problem was to get himself back in without letting go of the 160 pounds of dead weight.
Politician saw what was happening. He put on a pair of gloves and then wrapped himself around the rope and quickly slid down. The song was through the second chorus and on to the fourth verse.
Gadgets glanced over his shoulder. The men were about to fall out of their chairs as Babette slowly slid off her slacks.
Between Politician and Gadgets, the body was quickly hauled into the computer room. Politician took one glance at Babette, then hastily turned his face. He and Gadgets carried the body between them.
The last chorus was playing as the two members of Able Team crept back to the window. Babette was strutting back and forth, clad only in a pair of bikini briefs.
Gadgets climbed out as the chorus began to repeat and fade out. There was no time to undo the rope, Politician was already climbing.
Gadgets took up the slack rope in his left hand — he had his knife in the right — and edged onto the ledge toward the pitons. He slashed the rope as far from the window as he could reach. Then, as he lost his balance, he dropped the knife into his pocket and grabbed the rope with two hands.
The rope was nearly taut because of Politician’s weight. Gadgets was swinging at a high speed past the face of the building. He put his foot out and bounced himself out from the wall. As gravity pulled him back toward the wall, he managed to get his feet up to absorb the impact. He got himself braced, facing upward, with his feet on the brick surface.
The two worked their way up slowly, hand over hand, to the office two floors above.
Inside the computer room the music faded and Babette froze in an inviting pose with her arms spread open.
“Terrific,” enthused the one who had let her in.
“Ahhh, you didn’t finish the act,” said the other, pointing to the bikini panties she was still wearing.
Babette reached for her shirt. “I went a hell of a lot further than I ever went before. We’re supposed to stop at bra and panties. And usually we have another set of skin-coloreds on under those.”
The tough one stood up and seized her wrist. He pointed to the sheath, still strapped to her forearm.
“And what the hell is this?” he growled.
Suddenly Babette’s voice was no longer friendly. There was steel in it. “It’s an ice pick. It reminds the customer that this is only a show.”
Her hard voice was punctuated by an authoritative pounding on the door, and Ti’s voice. “Babette, are you in there?”
Babette wrenched her wrist out of the tough’s grip and proceeded to put her shirt on while she glared at him. Then there was a thump, the door flew open; the jamb was splintered at the catch. Ti stood in the hall, her foot still in the air from the powerful side kick that had sent the door crashing open.
The two men stood staring, unwilling to believe that such a large kick had come from such a small woman. Babette stepped into her slacks.
Before the two hardmen could speak, Ti snarled. “What’s going on here? What were you doing to her?”
“We weren’t doing nothing to her,” one whined.
The other broke into a grin. “I think we’re being treated to a new version of the badger game,” he told his companion.
Babette picked up her handbag and the cassette player. She started for the door.
“Take it easy,” she told Ti. “They were only being friendly, until I started saying no. Some guys just don’t know where the line is.”
“Not so fast,” said the toughest one.
Babette whirled on him. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. “It was fun until you had to get so damn grabby. Why can’t you be a nice joe, like your friend?”
She slipped through the door and ran down the hall, her shoulders shaki
ng.
The two men turned toward each other with puzzled expressions.
“What’s she crying for?” one asked.
“Don’t ask me. They’re the last from the building. Let’s get to work.”
Gadgets and Pol were waiting in the shadows by the front door of the building. Babette came out first, her shoulders shaking with laughter. A few seconds later, Ti followed, her wide mouth split into an impish grin.
“Won’t they find your computer when they search the office?” Babette asked as they wandered down the street.
“They’re looking for bodies. All offices have computers,” Ti answered. “There’s no way of telling that it’s monitoring their computer and telephone lines. They won’t give it a second thought.”
“I wonder if they’ll associate us with the bodies in their own office,” Babette persisted.
Politician grinned. “I doubt it. It doesn’t look like they’ll discover the bodies themselves. What I wonder is how they’ll explain those bodies, or if they’ll even be given a chance to explain.”
“How long are you going to be around?” Babette asked.
Gadgets sighed. “About another hour. We’ll be leaving for the airport as soon as we have something to eat.”
Babette still had questions. “What happens to the office?”
“The computer runs it,” Ti explained. “I have it on a telephone modem. I can call it from anywhere. It will dump a high-speed report into another computer and carry out any monitoring or control of the WAR computer that I tell it to. We won’t have to go near that office again. The only problem will be if the HIT people discover what’s happening.”
“Why don’t I look in once a day to see if anything’s been disturbed?” Babette suggested.
“What about your coaching?” Pol asked.
“I’m still on post-Olympic holidays. After all, even athletes relax for short periods.”
Ti handed Babette the key to the office. “Best if you check during the day. That way you’re unlikely to meet your boyfriends again. They’re less apt to try anything if you do.”
Babette took the key and nodded. Then she sighed.
“Well, if a girl has to settle for just food, it had better be a good meal.”