by Tom Lytes
“Where are they?” Peggy asked.
“Near the road, behind the fat hedge,” the boy said.
“Wait a minute. You cut through my property by going under my house?” Leonard asked.
“I do it every day,” the boy said. “I thought you knew. I’ve got to go. My Mom will be looking for me.”
“Thanks for telling us about those guys watching us,” Peggy said.
“No problem,” he said.
The sound of fast steps pattering on pavement clapped away as the young boy departed.
Leonard asked, “How do you want to handle this?”
“Can you mess around with the car awhile?” Peggy asked
“Of course, I code computers and own a Porsche.”
“Right,” Peggy said as she jumped out of their embrace.
He asked, “Should I start by shaking out the floor mats?”
She smiled and laughed, and hit him lightly in the chest, all for the benefit of the men behind the hedge. She trotted towards the house and looked back at Leonard, laughing some more. Not the best at play-acting, Leonard seemed enamored with her performance and unable to move.
Peggy asked loudly from across the driveway, “Leonard, can you find it in the trunk? I’ll be right back.”
As if struck by lightning, Leonard went from a totally inert object to one that decided to realize its potential energy all at once. In a minute, Leonard opened the trunk and hood, and began fiddling around with all types of car insides. By the time Peggy reached the top of the steps, even she couldn’t believe Leonard’s ability to spread pieces of his car out on the pavement.
Peggy went into the house and carefully surveyed the scene outside.
“Finley, come here.”
“One second Peg, I’ve found an interesting connection between Clean and a certain—”
“There’s people watching us, and I think Bobby Touro sent them.”
Finley looked up, “Glad we finally got some help.”
“They’re not acting like helpers, Fin, they’re spying on us. What if Bobby isn’t sending guys to help us. What if they’re here to take us out.”
“Doesn’t make sense to do it yet. He wants to shut down Clean, too.”
“True— Finley, if you don’t get your face out of that computer and pay attention to me over here—”
Finley shut the laptop.
He said, “I don’t think Bobby would send guys to hurt you, especially, Peggy.”
“But what about after the program is neutralized? What then?”
Finley said quietly, “Hmm, I guess if Clean were gone, that would change everything.”
“And Bobby would have thought fifteen steps beyond that, Finley.”
“Yes.”
“Look,” Peggy reasoned, “We have a better chance of survival with Bobby’s guys if they think we’re capable. And given the same logic, we can’t appear weak.”
“You want me to badge them?” Finley asked.
Peggy looked for a weapon in Leonard’s kitchen, passing on the small knives used for shucking oysters. She wasn’t great with a knife and understood how dangerous it could be to put one into a skirmish if you were smaller and weaker than your opponent.
“Finley, the last thing I want is for you to go down there and show them your badge.”
The lamps with carved wooden bases in the living room could be broken and used as a club, but they wouldn’t be a match for a gun, or any longer-range weapon. Peggy longed for her service revolver, but of course Officer Pincus took it.
Peggy noticed just how stark and empty Lawrence’s house was. It was completely devoid of personality or personal taste. There weren’t knickknacks from weekend trips, or magnets on the freezer, papers laying around – not even mail. Peggy wondered why she didn’t notice before, just how unlived in Leonard’s house seemed.
She murmured to Finley, “I’ve been in the homes of a few bachelors, but this takes it to a whole new extreme. Not only is there no food, there isn’t anything that might suggest a real person actually lives here.”
Finley looked around blankly, his reaction reminding Peggy that the FBI valued Finley’s skill with computers, not his observational ones. She leaned over and opened Leonard’s desk drawer. It was empty. She opened a few cabinets in the living room from the built-ins that lined the library. They too were empty.
“Huh,” she said to herself.
Peggy slowly made her way from room to room of the downstairs of Leonard’s house. There was only one place Bobby’s men could stay hidden behind the hedge and remain invisible from the front windows. They’d found a good place to set up, able to see anyone coming or going from Leonard’s. Peggy stepped into the bathroom off to the side of the main entry and looked out the window from there.
“That’s it,” she said to herself, now sure of their location through her process of elimination.
Finley said, “I’m coming.”
“They’ll see us,” Peggy said, “stay here and come help me if something bad happens. I’d like to surprise Bobby’s guys and get them talking. I can slip out the bathroom window, I think.”
She slid it open and barely squeezed through the small opening until her legs dangled. Recalculating, she balanced her hips on the sill, carefully lowering herself down the side of the house until her toes rested on the base molding. At least twelve feet of lattice continued underneath her, and despite her worry, it supported her weight. With the wood sagging precariously, and after losing a foothold, she made it to the ground unscathed.
Peggy edged her way, trying to follow the same route under the house described by the neighborhood boy. Taking her time and using the foliage to conceal her, she continued to the front of the property as Leonard displayed an incredible ability to putz around with his car. Music blared, his floor mats spread out around the car like constellations, and the car looked twice its regular size with its doors wide open. All around the driveway, various sprays, potions, and numerous rags were in various stages of use next to a bucket of water. Peggy wondered if Leonard maintained a similar car routine, or if this show originated with the arrival of Bobby Touro’s guys.
Still undetected at the front hedgerow, she assumed Bobby Touro’s men were just on the other side. When the smell of beer and cheap cologne wafted through the hedge, she knew she’d arrived at the right place.
“Hi boys.” She stepped through a thin patch of the bushes, just behind them. “Looking for something in the bushes there?”
Peggy overcame her own shock at seeing a large man lying on his back, passed out a few feet in front of her. His shirt, more orange than a tangerine, moved up and down like the air sack of a bagpipe. A smaller, ruggedly handsome man diverted his eyes from Leonard’s house, yelping with surprise. Spinning, and covering his head with a forearm, he moved away on a diagonal to anticipate a blow that Peggy wasn’t going to throw but would have if she was going to attack.
From the man’s reaction, Peggy knew he could fight and she needed to be smart about how she handled herself.
“Who’s the big guy,” Peggy asked, bringing one hand to her chin and the other to a belt loop.
Her hands were close to fighting position while looking as casual as one can, sneaking up on a guy who’s spying on you from behind a bush.
“Roger,” the guy said conversationally without easing his focus. “I’m Hansel. Are you the hot police woman?”
Peggy said, while thinking he wouldn’t have said it the same way if she was wearing her uniform, “It’s a little tough to take offense to that comment, when it has such a nice complement woven into it. So rather than answer, I’ll ask you a question. Are you Bobby Touro’s men?”
The little guy didn’t soften his stance, but looked away from Peggy to glance at Roger, who lay there unmoving. Peggy took advantage of the moment and ran at the smaller ma
n, but she wasn’t fast enough. He easily sidestepped the attack and pulled Peggy onto his rising knee. The air went out of her, and she let herself fall to the ground. When she did, she spun and took the man’s legs out from under him. He went with the blows to his legs and rolled several feet away from Peggy.
“Hansel,” Peggy said while walking slowly to the side until she was almost on top of Roger. “I don’t want to fight you.”
She put one leg on either side of Roger’s neck to show she could, at a moment’s notice, turn the power of her legs into a large neck breaking tool.
“That’s bullshit,” Hansel said. “You attacked me. I came down here to help you get into Clemson’s computer lab. Bobby Touro sent me with specific orders. He didn’t mention you were going to fight me. I mean, what the hell?”
“He didn’t mention to me that you’d show up and spy on us from behind a hedge,” she said, “Or that one of you would be passed out, drunk. How is this guy going to help us go anywhere?”
Hansel ignored the comment about Roger.
He searched Peggy’s eyes for a clue that she might know more than him, “Communication with Bobby— it’s been funny.”
“What do you mean, funny?” Peggy asked.
“He isn’t available. I dunno. His driver sent me this address but couldn’t tell me nothing else. He didn’t even know for sure if you were here. No one explains why I don’t hear from Bobby, and no one knows what’s really going on. Except we’re supposed to break you into this supercomputer complex. It’s very strange, even being sent down here.”
Peggy didn’t say anything.
Hansel filled the void. “I didn’t want to stumble into a situation. I figured to check things out from here rather than just walk up to the front door.”
“Huh,” Peggy said, looking unimpressed.
“Now I know it’s you.” Hansel pointed at Peggy and then waved over in the general direction of Leonard and the Porsche. “The short, hot cop and one of the computer geeks. Where’s the other one?”
Peggy asked, “Were those your only instructions? All Bobby told you was to get us into the computer facility?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You’re lying.”
She must have been distracted by fleeing, or what she’d done to Doyle. What stupidity, to think Bobby Touro would simply try to get rid of Clean. He filled her with good advice about Officer Pincus, and she let down her guard. Everything Bobby Touro touched ended up destroyed, whether he wanted it that way or not. If they neutralized Clean, Bobby would be looking to obtain new advantages. Bobby Touro was Bobby Touro, after all. Whether anyone else came out of the situation well, if they even survived, didn’t matter to him. And if Bobby wanted Peggy to be his girlfriend, that would still end badly, especially because she wasn’t going to be his girlfriend. The only winner in Bobby’s world was Bobby.
Peggy decided to take a chance.
“I just talked to Bobby.”
“What? When?” Hansel asked.
“When I saw you out here,” she said to him dismissively. “I told him the big guy passed out, and the little guy was taking a piss in the shrubs.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
Peggy shook her head. “Nah, he wasn’t happy. I asked if he sent the right guys down to do the job. Bad things happen when Bobby has second thoughts about people—”
“No way,” Hansel said. “We’re the right guys.”
Peggy took one of her legs from around Roger’s neck and kicked him in the side. Roger groaned and shifted into the fetal position. Hansel winced.
“I know what happens when you don’t deliver,” Peggy looked sympathetic to Hansel’s plight. “And I mean, it’s not like Bobby’s going to be understanding about this.” She pointed to Roger. “Maybe if everything else works out, but—”
Hansel’s hands moved around like they were going to explain everything if they could make more gestures. “I’m here to do the job. Let’s do it.”
Peggy looked at him as if making up her mind.
She pulled out her phone. “Why don’t I call Bobby and tell him what’s happening.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Hansel said, moving toward her. “That won’t be necessary.”
Peggy put her phone away and looked resolute. She said to Hansel, “Yeah, you’re right. Bobby isn’t even here. I report to him, too. I’d rather it all be good news. Let’s work this out.”
Hansel slowed down his advance, and out of the corner of Peggy’s eye, she saw him unclench his jaw.
“So, things have changed,” she said. “It turns out we don’t have to get into the Clemson computer after all.”
“What? That’s the main part of the job.”
Peggy said, “Yeah, I know. The computer guys think they can do what Bobby wants without the risk of getting caught breaking into the place.”
“I don’t think you can change Bobby’s plans,” Hansel said.
Peggy nodded. “You know computer guys. He had a plan with Bobby, but he was only thinking about the computer side. He didn’t take into consideration that the supercomputer would be under some pretty tight security.”
Peggy rolled her eyes and Hansel rolled his. Peggy, after a second or two, shrugged her shoulders. Hansel did too. She knew she had him.
Peggy said, “So I pressured Leonard to see if he could come up with something else.”
“Cool,” Hansel said. “And you said he figured something else out, right?”
“Yeah, so it’s the other parts of your job we ought to go over.”
Hansel said. “Do you think Bobby wants us to blow up the lab still?”
“Probably,” Peggy said to keep him talking.
“Yeah,” Hansel agreed, like it was obvious.
He checked Roger’s ability to become conscious by slapping his face with both sides of his hand. Roger barely moved.
“And I can off the computer guys,” Hansel said. “But I gotta have the Leonard one sign a power of attorney over to a certain company first. Think you could help with that?”
“Yes,” Peggy said.
Leonard was right, Peggy thought. Bobby planned to use him up, kill him, and steal from him. Finley would be sucked into the wreckage, dead just because.
“Good. And you’ll come back with me, right? Bobby thought maybe you’d resist or something. That you’d maybe want to stay down here.”
“Oh,” Peggy said.
One more lie would keep everything on track, but for the first time, Peggy felt the weight of making constant fabrications to survive. She longed for a different, better way. She hoped to live long enough to figure it out.
In the meantime, she had to go with what she knew worked.
She said, “Ha, Bobby always gets so worried about everything.”
“Tell me about it, I know,” said Hansel.
And she thought to herself, and here comes another lie told for the sake of survival that chips away at another core part of my soul.
She said, “Yeah, can’t wait to get back up to New York and be with him.”
“Me either.” Hansel pulled hard on Roger’s belt, trying to shake him awake.
Peggy went around Roger and grabbed his leg. She flipped him over onto his stomach and gave his kidney a quick jab with her fist. Roger’s head popped up in response to the pain and she caught his rising head by the hair.
“Wake up, you hear me?” she asked.
Roger’s eyes swam laps in their sockets, but he nodded the best he could. Peggy dropped his head, hard onto the ground, and Roger struggled to his feet. He lurched into the bushes where he vomited. He came up after several retches, wiping his mouth.
“I’m ready,” he said.
Peggy looked at the man and marveled at humankind. Hansel looked unsurprised by Roger’s actions, so maybe this is what Roger d
id, or at least did before.
“Okay,” Hansel said as he slapped Roger on the back.
“Let’s stop screwing around and get Leonard to sign whatever paperwork you have for him,” Peggy said.
“Right,” Hansel said, pulling a folded document from the breast pocket of his black coat.
Peggy led them around the hedge to where Leonard polished the tires of one of his Porsches. Leonard looked up, startled by Hansel and Roger. Peggy walked casually in front of the other two men, and mouthed instructions to Leonard. He seemed to understand. If he didn’t go along, Hansel would kill him. Could Finley stop Clean without him?
“Leonard, meet Bobby Touro’s guys,” she said, pointing to each. “That’s Hansel, and that’s Roger.”
Leonard nodded and asked Roger, “You okay, man? There’s a lot of leaves and grass, uh, all over your clothes. It’s in your, uh, hair too.”
Roger’s look to Leonard said, “shut up, jerk” without words. He turned to Hansel and asked, “What’s this guy’s problem? We just meet one time, and he’s the fashion police?”
Peggy said, “Leonard, sign the documents like Bobby Touro wanted.”
Hansel handed Leonard the one-page document, and Leonard inspected it.
He looked up at Peggy like she had to be kidding, and Peggy said, “Go ahead and make the change Bobby wanted you to make, and just sign it. Hurry up, these guys have to go to the Clemson computer lab.”
Leonard pulled a pen from the glove compartment of the Porsche and crossed out a couple things on the document. He added a line of new writing and initialed the changes. Leonard took his time, and when he was satisfied, he signed at the bottom.
“I’m going to send a copy of this up to Bobby,” Hansel said as he flattened it out on the hood of the car and took a picture.
“Can you send me a copy too, for my records?” Leonard asked.
He gave Hansel a phone number, and Hansel sent the picture of the document to Bobby, and then to Leonard.