Favors and Lies

by Mark Gilleo

  “Time to put your money where your mouth is. You know that football program you have. I need the football picks for this Sunday. All the professional games. What team wins. What team is going to cover. Whatever you can lock down.”

  “Sixteen games in a weekend. How many do you need?”

  “How many does Vegas get correct in a given week?”

  “On average, ten. Five away teams. Five underdogs.”

  “I need you to beat Vegas. Convincingly beat Vegas. And I don’t have time for a long winded explanation of your data points. I need a list of your picks. And then I need you to prepare some sort of sales pitch.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No, actually, that is not all. Turn my phone back on and give me a number where I can reach you.”

  Tobias grunted and motioned his hand for Dan to follow him into the house. A lone laptop sat on the counter in the pass-through between the living room and the kitchen. A small portable wireless printer sat on the narrow counter near the wall outlet. Tobias opened the lid on the computer, swiped his finger in the built-in fingerprint reader, and then pounded on the keys for a moment.

  Dan felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. “It’s on. Now, print out this week’s winners.”

  Dan opened the phone and called Dr. Cathright. April answered on the third ring.

  Tobias paused to eavesdrop on Dan’s conversation and Dan waved his hand in a rolling motion to get Tobias back to work.

  “Hey Doc, it’s me again. I had some phone issues to straighten out.”

  Tobias glanced at Dan with the evil eye and rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign for money.

  Dan turned away and pressed the phone to his ear. “Any word on Sue?”

  “I don’t know where she is, but I know how she got out of the hospital. She swiped the badge from one of the doctor’s coats while they were taking a shower. She dropped the stolen badge off with security on her way out the front door. She told the guard on duty she found the badge on the floor in the lobby. Security brought the badge back upstairs a while ago.”

  “Clever girl.”

  “But she still needed a passcode to exit through the main doors on this floor.”

  “93765,” Dan replied.

  “You little cheat.”

  “Prudence. You know I don’t like being trapped. And if I watched you punch in the code, then she probably did too.”

  “Nice friends.”

  “Oh, it gets better than that. I’ll fill you in on the details later.”

  “Be careful, Dan.”

  “I’m always careful.”

  Dan hung up the phone as Tobias handed him a printout. “Those are the spreads for the sixteen NFL games this weekend. And I wrote down a phone number where I can be reached.”

  “How do you feel about these picks?”

  “I don’t feel anything about them. I trust numbers. It’s not like I have a chicken in the backyard and make picks based on where it defecates. I have put more work into that program than anything I have ever done.”

  “Good enough for me.”

  “Now when exactly am I going to get my money?”

  Dan stared intently at Tobias. “Listen carefully. Keep your crazy side in check, stick by the phone number you just gave me, and you can walk away into a very happy sunset. Clear your schedule for Sunday. Make yourself available. And don’t screw with my phone until then.”

  Chapter 36

  —

  Spies Like Us was a surveillance store hidden on an alley behind an outdated Vietnamese restaurant. Three blocks from the Clarendon Metro Station—and enough drinking establishments to host a rugby championship—the development of the surrounding area did not bode well for a renewal of the shop’s current lease. The shadow of burgeoning condo developments—starting at half a million for a studio—now reached the jet black door with the blue neon sign above the doorway.

  Spies Like Us embraced the essence of the clandestine community. No store front, no window shopping. A door, a small sign, and fifteen hundred square feet of aisles packed floor to ceiling. Most of the customers were on the fringe. Private detectives looking for surveillance assistance. Wannabe spies looking for toys. The occasional voyeur looking, well, to get a better look. On more than one occasion Dan found himself at a locked front door during business hours, voices on the inside indicating the shop was open only to certain members of the public.

  Dan parked the SUV with diplomatic immunity in the alley and looked both ways as he exited the vehicle. He estimated twenty yards of empty space in front of the car and another twenty yards behind. Enough space to get the eight thousand pound behemoth up to ramming speed, if an expeditious getaway was in order. Five feet on either side of the car was sufficiently tight to keep other vehicles from pinning him in while simultaneously putting a stranglehold on potential through traffic. Satisfied with the security of the location, Dan slipped through the front door of the shop.

  The man behind the counter with wild, curly hair and a matching beard nodded in Dan’s direction. Dan returned his standard greeting. As a private detective with an affinity for gadgets, Dan was a regular. In most establishments there would have been a personal relationship between the customer and the shop owner. When you drop fifty grand in a small business over a couple of years, the owner tends to want to know your name, remember your birthday, put you on a mailing list, offer you a drink. Spies Like Us did not. Despite clocking a hundred visits and doling out a stack of cash several inches high, Dan and the man behind the counter were stuck on the relationship equivalent of first base. Questions were asked, answers were given, and solutions and options were presented. Neither man elaborated. Dan always paid cash. Never offered his name. Skipped the chitchat.

  Dan’s eyes locked with the owner as he approached the counter. The man with the wild hair pushed aside a velvet-lined tray of wrist watches.

  “Can I help you?” he asked with stoicism that hid evidence of any previous encounter.

  “I’m looking for a remote camera I can use to monitor traffic flow at a high volume location.”

  “Will the camera be mounted indoors or outdoors?”

  “Outdoors.”

  “Under an eave or in the open?”

  “Exposed to the elements.”

  “Distance requirements?”

  “Up to a half-mile.”

  “Remote control access of the camera?”

  “Yes.”

  “Service life?”

  “Let’s say a week, for sure.”

  The man released a subtle “Hmm . . . Any size limitations?”

  “No size requirements, but smaller is better. The camera will be hidden in plain sight and needs to be installed with very limited set-up time.”

  “Hiding a camera in plain sight requires an understanding of the environment for appropriate camouflage.”

  “The camera will be placed roadside. Major thoroughfare.”

  “Infiltration and exfiltration of the camera done by vehicle?”

  Dan looked at the man with intrigue. “Yes.”

  “One-man job?”

  “At this point.”

  The man behind the counter stroked his beard and for the first time Dan noticed a faint military ensign tattoo peeking from the sleeve of his t-shirt.

  “Let me summarize. Correct me if necessary at any point. You will be in a vehicle. You will need to stop and exit the vehicle. You will set up the camera, in a matter of seconds, and return to the vehicle, leaving the camera without anyone knowing you left said equipment behind. The camera will have to function, remotely, with sufficient memory to last a week.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m just spit-balling here, but it sounds like you may be trying to take pictures of the entrance and exit behaviors of a secure location. An intelligence ins
tallation, perhaps?”

  Dan tried not to act surprised and failed. The relationship with the shopkeeper had just taken a large step forward. They had left first base, the initial kiss behind them. As they closed in on second, the shopkeeper was looking to cop a feel.

  “I may have just what you’re looking for,” the shop owner continued.

  The man stepped into the back of the shop, disappearing behind a plywood wall divider separating the front half of the store from the shelves of miscellaneous inventory in the rear. Dan heard a rattle of metal, a box hitting the floor, and the sound of breaking glass. Moments later the shop owner returned with a product brochure replete with a photograph and a diagram.

  Dan looked at the diagram and then at the photograph of a gray stone about the size of a softball. “A camera disguised as a stone?”

  “Field-tested and proven.”

  “Is it heavy?”

  “Doesn’t do any good to make a fake rock with incorrect weight parameters.”

  The man ran his finger over a small list of attributes written down the side of the product brochure. “It weighs just under seven pounds.”

  Dan took his time reading through the small print of the product specs as the shop owner made his pitch.

  “It meets your requirements. Most people don’t give rocks a second look. They don’t view them as trash. Most people with custodial responsibilities don’t bother to remove them when they are cleaning up an area. Rocks are heavy. The most prevalent danger to a rock is someone moving it either intentionally or accidentally. That would obviously upset your camera view. The US intelligence agency was recently discovered to have used a rock with a camera in it to keep an eye on sensitive locations in Moscow. It was quite successful for many years.”

  “What is the range for controlling the camera?”

  “Virtually unlimited. The signal is cellular. You can program it to sync with your smart phone or computer. Just like a babysitter camera. It has focusing capability. It has a thirty-two gigabyte solid-state drive, but you can also save images and video to your computer.”

  “That should work.”

  “Problem is that I’m sold out. We had six of them earlier in the week. One lucky customer bought them all. I can have replacements in forty-eight hours.”

  “How much?”

  “Fourteen hundred even. I’ll knock a hundred off because I am out of stock.”

  “I’ll be back for it on Monday morning.”

  “It will be here.”

  Dan looked down at the watches lying across the display counter. Various brands with various makes. Rubber, gold, titanium, black chrome.

  “You need a watch?” the shop owner asked, picking up a platinum watch with an oversized face. He held the watch to his lips, opened his mouth, and exhaled onto the quartz face before wiping it with a cloth.

  Dan replied. “I have a couple of watches at home already. I find myself wearing them less and less.”

  The shop owner snapped the round bevel off the face of the watch and pulled, extending his hands in opposite directions. A wire unfurled with a quiet tick, tick, tick. “Do any of your current watches have one of these?”

  Dan looked at the piano wire pulled taut across his field of vision. “A garrote?”

  “Get it around the neck, hold tight, count to ten, and then on to the next guy.”

  Dan felt another surge in the relationship between himself and the shop owner. As a couple, clothes were coming off and mouths were probing.

  “What else do you have?” Dan asked, picking up a thick black chrome watch with a heavy rubber band.

  The shop keeper with the wild hair smiled for the first time that Dan could remember. “What do you need it to do?”

  —

  Dan stepped from the store minutes later and looked down the alley in both directions. He checked the time on his new watch and smiled briefly at his acquisition. He pressed the remote on the keychain for the car and walked around to the driver’s side with his head on a swivel. Dusk was on the horizon and as Dan reached the driver’s door he thought he heard footsteps. Door still closed, he turned 180 degrees and saw nothing. He inhaled deeply through his nose and listened intently as the air escaped his lungs in a long, slow exhalation. He thought he caught a faint whiff of aftershave and unsuccessfully attempted to peer through the dark tinted windows into the back seat of the SUV. His spidey sense tingled again and he froze. He moved his eyes from left to right and then upward at the roofline of the buildings on either side of the car. He squinted at the condos on the horizon, and then opened the driver’s door.

  He put one foot into the car and before he could lift his second foot from the ground, he felt a sharp, brief pain in his lower leg. His eyes snapped downward and thought he saw the flash of a hand disappear beneath the vehicle. Dan reached for his leg and then fought to control his limbs. His head swooned and he dropped the keys in his hand and fell sideways across the front seat. Fighting for consciousness and losing control of his muscles, Dan watched in horror as Clyde Parkson pulled himself from beneath the vehicle, a hypodermic needle in his hand. Through increasing fog, Dan’s eyes fluttered as Clyde Parkson put the cap on the empty syringe and slipped it into his breast pocket. The man in the suit casually glanced around and then shoved Dan’s crippled body into the passenger seat.

  Dan’s eyes opened as the door shut. He watched as Clyde Parkson checked his sightlines in the mirrors and hummed quietly to himself. Dan blinked a final time and remained conscious just long enough to see Clyde Parkson flash his white teeth in an ear-to-ear grin.

  Chapter 37

  —

  The ski mask with closed eyeholes that was pulled over Dan’s face was as unsettling as the end of the handgun barrel bumping into his ribs from the left rear. Dan’s head throbbed and his body ached, but being vertical and moving under his own power was infinitely more advantageous than being unconscious on his back with no muscle control.

  He could feel his hands were tied at the wrist in front of his body with zip ties. He tugged on the restraints to gauge their strength and felt the gun stab him in the ribs. He imagined the gun was racked, a finger on the trigger guard. The hand grasping Dan’s arm tightened and pulled him to the left. Dan felt the ground beneath his feet change from a hard surface to soft and back to hard. A few steps later he felt gravel under his feet and then was steered back to another hard surface. Dan’s mind sifted through the options. A stone pathway. An old driveway. A garden walkway.

  The next surface was noticeably more slippery and Dan narrowed his likely location to a few blocks of Georgetown or Old Town Alexandria. Nothing had the same feeling as old wet cobblestone.

  He strained to listen through the ski mask as he was led up two short stairs. A brief pause. A turning doorknob. He concentrated on the sound of the door hinges as they protested. He registered the modest increase in temperature as he stepped inside. The sounds of the outside world—the faint hum of cars, the rain falling steadily—all vanished. The floor squeaked under his feet as he was pushed forward. He again noted the difference in his footing as he changed from hardwood floors to carpet and back to hardwood.

  “Stairs down,” Clyde Parkson said, pulling on Dan’s arm briefly. Dan paused, wondering if he were about to be thrown into some unseen abyss. Never to be seen again.

  He stepped forward and down, not taking the weight off his back foot until his front foot found firm footing on what he assumed to be the first of many stairs. He continued the measured gait downward and the man behind him moved the gun from his back to the side of his head. A few steps later Dan was on flat ground. He inhaled deeply through the ski mask and vaguely registered musty, cooler air.

  He heard other voices as he was steered across another floor. The surface beneath his feet was neither stone nor wood, somewhere between rough and smooth. Then Dan realized where he was. His momentar
y elation was squelched with a firm shove into an old wooden chair. Dan felt the seat rock and then settle onto the chair’s four legs. Each of Dan’s ankles were quickly strapped to the front legs of the chair, another zip tie restraint around the top of each calf, just below the knee. The zip ties on his hands were cut and his hands were moved behind him and restrained again.

  With an upward tug of the ski mask, light blasted Dan’s eyes and the charade ended.

  Dan squinted at the two incandescent bulbs hanging from separate wooden support beams in the ceiling. His eyes moved around his environment, immediately conducting an inventory of a room he knew well. An early 1800s cellar with an earth floor in the main residence of the Stonewall Jackson House. Within fifty yards of his very own bed. Another hundred yards from his office.

  His eyes focused on the two men standing at an old wooden table on the right hand side of the room. Ebony and Ivory, he thought. Dan’s heart rate involuntarily quickened at the assortment of needles, guns, knives, and zip-tie restraints on the table.

  The man Dan knew as Clyde Parkson threw an empty syringe on the table with the other tools of torment. He pulled Dan’s cell phone from his pocket and opened the screen before snapping it shut again. He turned off the ringer and tossed it in the mix. Dan noted the thick rope on the far end of the table, still coiled in its packaging. A red gasoline can rested on the ground at the foot of the table.

  Think quick, Dan told himself. His eyes darted more rapidly. In the far corner of the room, nearest the house and the stairs he had just come down, was the old coal closet, the earthen floor at the threshold of the door still stained black from decades of use in a previous life. In the nearer corner on the right was the old well. The dank scent of mold and mildew still wafted through the wood cover. The small brick wall around the base of the well showed moss near the seams in the centuries-old mortar.

  Dan’s mind raced through potential weapons. On his last visit to the cellar there had been a shovel in the coal bin, a prop to show tour guests and history buffs the utilitarian functionality and strength requirements of the old heating system. Dan moved his eyes upward and looked at the thick beams that ran in parallel across the ceiling. He scanned for loose boards, exposed nails, dangling wires, committing each possibility to memory and prioritizing which ones he could reach most easily.