by Rob Byrnes
“But I want that thirty grand.” Chase set his jaw firmly. “We worked hard for it.”
“Yeah, we did.” Grant stared off, his eyes as unfocused as his thoughts. “But pulling the same risky job twice doesn’t make sense. June will be waiting. June will have more security. Plus, if we didn’t get it the first time, even after stealing every piece of equipment June Forteene has—er, had—how are we gonna find it on the second run? I hate to say this, but it’s impossible.”
“But thirty thousand dollars…”
Grant put his hand on his partner’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “So we’ll steal thirty or forty more cars or something. Now it’s not our problem. It’s Austin Peebles’s problem…it’s that bitch of a wife’s problem…it’s Boy Wunder’s problem…but it’s not—” He stopped himself. “Wait a minute.”
“What?” Chase had almost allowed himself to be talked out of revenge, but if Grant now wanted to pursue it…
Grant rubbed his chin with the hand that wasn’t on Chase’s shoulder. “It’s not Boy Wunder’s problem, is it?”
Chase didn’t follow. “What do you mean?”
Grant set down his coffee cup next to the computer and started pacing, thinking out loud as he walked. “Who benefits from this? June Forteene? Sure, because she gets attention and maybe makes some more ad money, but big deal. In a week, no one will remember she broke the story, and she’ll be rutting around for her next exposé. It’s worth money to her, but certainly not thirty Gs. So beside her, who benefits?”
Chase thought that over. “Not Peebles. And not his wife.”
“True and true.” Grant stopped pacing and stood behind the desk, his hands gripping the edge of the monitor. “The way I see it, only one guy gets a boost out of this. And that guy’s name is…” He paused for dramatic effect. “Kevin Wunder.”
“Wunder? But how…?” Before Grant could answer, Chase’s brain flipped into full-on criminal mode. “I get it. Once Peebles has to end his campaign, there’s no logical candidate to replace him on the ballot. Except Kevin Wunder.”
Grant stroked his chin again. “Exactly. Wunder already told us he wanted to be in Congress, didn’t he? This works to his advantage, and only to his advantage. In fact, I’ll bet he was the one who sent the pictures to June Forteene in the first place.”
Chase knitted his brow. “You think he’d do that?”
“Motive and opportunity,” said Grant. “Isn’t that what the cops are always looking for? Well, us, too. It’d be easy enough for him to get on Peebles’s phone and send out that picture and make sure June got the twixter.”
“Tweet.”
“Whatever.”
A thought clicked in Chase’s sleep-deprived brain. “When I was going through June’s computer, I couldn’t find a secure online storage space. Couldn’t figure it out then, but I get it now. If Kevin Wunder is her source, she doesn’t need to protect the images. He can keep the cock shots coming.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.” Grant began pacing again. “Here’s how I figure things. Wunder sends the pictures to June and the family panics. Maybe Peebles…maybe the wife…maybe even the congresswoman. Maybe all of ’em. So who do they turn to take care of the problem?”
“Wunder!”
“Exactly. So he hires us, because he has to. But he never had any intention of leaving it at that. He was always planning to double-cross us.”
“What about Peebles’s wife? Think she’s in on this, too?”
“That…That I can’t figure out. Maybe.”
Chase continued to warm to the idea. “Which means we really did get all the pictures when we raided her office and apartment. We just didn’t count on Kevin Wunder double-crossing us by sending her another one.” He thought some more. “Which means we really did earn our thirty grand!”
“Didn’t we sort of come to that conclusion last night?”
Chase waved him away. “Last night it wasn’t making a lot of sense. But this morning it is.”
Grant walked around the desk and leaned over Chase’s shoulder, where he could study the penis fragment on the screen. “That’s exactly what’s going on here. Wunder screwed us. And nobody screws Grant Lambert and Chase LaMarca except Grant Lambert and Chase LaMarca. Now this is about revenge.”
Chase looked up at his partner. “I hear something in your voice that’s very scary…and maybe a little bit sexy.”
Grant’s smile was broad; it seemed incongruous on his face. “If there’s one thing I understand, it’s revenge.”
Chase grabbed his arm and led him toward the bedroom. Revenge could wait another hour.
Knowing something and doing something about it were two different things, of course, and Grant and Chase understood that. They also understood that they had only a few days to somehow bring down June Forteene’s operation, ruin Kevin Wunder’s plan, and—if possible—make back their thirty thousand dollars. If everything else would be more than difficult, the last component would probably be impossible. But they could hope.
They also knew they’d need help.
They had been fortunate during the foray into June’s office and apartment, but they’d also had the element of surprise. Not to mention a lot of luck, although Grant and Chase—still bruised and limping two days after taking falls of somewhere between eight inches and forty feet, depending on who was telling the story—could be forgiven for scoffing whenever someone mentioned luck.
This time June Forteene would be prepared.
And this time they’d not only have to burgle June’s office and home, they’d also have to burgle Wunder’s office and home.
And maybe the campaign headquarters.
And maybe U.S. Representative Catherine Cooper Concannon’s district office.
And they had four days if they were lucky; maybe less if June Forteene was an impatient woman. Which they figured could very well be the case.
If there was a positive aspect to the job at hand, it was that they’d at least be working for themselves. Working as a contractor for other people, as Grant had long believed and had just proven again, was never a good idea.
They’d also need to find help without much money to buy it, and no one liked doing things for free—especially criminal things—so it would be a challenge to bring together the right people willing to take on a laundry list of risky jobs as a favor. Fortunately, Grant had an idea about who they could use on the inside.
“Grab your Metrocard,” he said as he picked up a windbreaker from the back of a chair.
“We going somewhere?” asked Chase.
“Manhattan. I think we need to pay a quick visit to someone who’s gonna be very important to us if we’re able to carry this off.”
“Who?”
“Austin Peebles.”
Chase smiled, but didn’t move from the computer. “Peebles? The man behind the penis?” He laughed; Grant did not. “Seriously?”
Grant began putting on his windbreaker. “Of course I’m serious. He’s the one with everything on the line. And on the Internet. I figure we need an insider, and who better than the guy with the most to lose?”
Chase nodded and looked back at the monitor. “If you say so…”
“Are you coming?” Grant asked impatiently.
“Do you even have any idea where to find him?”
“I figured his campaign headquarters—”
“At this hour of the morning?”
Grant glanced at his watch. It was very early. “So we’ll wait for him.”
Chase clicked the mouse, and a window that had been hidden behind the blog popped up on the monitor. “Try across the street from Bloomingdale’s.”
Grant squinted. “How’d you figure that out?”
Chase tapped the screen. “They post his public schedule on the campaign website, and it says here he’ll be meeting the voters across the street from Bloomingdale’s later this morning. So if you wanna talk to him, we can either find him on Fifty-ninth Street in a few hours, or
pay two thousand dollars each to see him at his fund-raiser at the Friars Club tonight. Your call.”
Grant took off the windbreaker. “Free and Fifty-ninth Street works for me.” He tossed the jacket on a chair. “What time?”
“He starts his meet-and-greet at seven thirty. By eight he should be bored with meeting and greeting.”
Grant looked at the photo on the monitor. In his Official Campaign Photo, Austin Peebles still looked ridiculously young, but not as young as he looked in his Official Penis Photo. “I can’t believe we’re helping a child get himself elected to Congress. He’ll probably be the first one whose youthful indiscretions are youthful indiscretions.”
He studied the official campaign photograph, which—to Grant—looked like it might as well have been taken at high school graduation. The image captured on the screen—with his youthfulness and elfin hair and long lashes and mischievous half smile—didn’t look like a congressman. Austin Peebles looked more like he should be posing shirtless on the cover of Tiger Beat.
The candidate’s youth and general prettiness—the word popped into his head because Peebles was definitely pretty, not handsome—did help underscore a few things, though. Like, why Kevin Wunder resented him so much, and why in hell’s name this candidate was stupid enough to take a picture of his penis with his face in the background and send it out. When God was giving out common sense, Austin Peebles had obviously missed the announcement, probably because he’d been tweeting pictures of his junk.
“I have a very hard time taking this guy seriously.”
Chase laughed. “The good news, I guess, is we don’t have to take him seriously. That’ll be a mistake for the voters. All we have to do is use him for a while.”
Grant scowled. “If this guy can be a congressman—I mean Representative—then Nick Donovan should be mayor.”
“Don’t give Nick any ideas.” Chase looked back at the screen. “You want a mayor called ‘Cadium’?”
“Cadmium,” Grant said, surprising them both.
Austin Peebles stood outside the subway entrance at the southeast corner of East Fifty-ninth Street and Lexington Avenue, directly across the street from the Bloomingdale’s flagship, surrounded by a half dozen campaign volunteers who were still in or barely out of their teens. Meaning not much younger than he was.
The kids—an equal mix of cute, enthusiastic white boys with perfect haircuts and cute, enthusiastic white girls with perfect haircuts—wore blue T-shirts that read PEEBLES FOR THE PEOPLE; Peebles for the People wore a charcoal gray suit, light blue shirt, and blue-and-red rep tie, along with an expression that made it clear he’d rather be in Aruba wearing board shorts and nothing else instead of this grown-up costume that made him feel a little too much like his father and grandfather. And, come to think of it, his great-grandfather, too.
Of course, he knew he’d have to get used to the idea that he’d be dressing this way for the rest of his life. There was roughly a 100 percent chance—give or take a thousandth of a percent, in case something weirdly Libertarian happened on Election Day—he was going to be elected to Congress, and this was the way he’d have to dress. He was not disinclined to ask the Speaker of the House if perhaps a sharp blazer, stylish jeans, and an open collar could be allowed on the House floor, but figured he should wait on that until after he was sworn in.
The kids handed out palm cards featuring the same blue-and-red PEEBLES FOR THE PEOPLE theme as their shirts, while the candidate made a halfhearted effort to meet those PEOPLE he hoped to represent in Washington. He’d started out trying to campaign full-heartedly, but the fact that almost every voter, non-voter, tourist, and illegal alien—or was that undocumented worker? He couldn’t remember how the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had encouraged him to refer to them—who’d crossed his path over the previous hour had brushed past him in a rush to get to work or Bloomingdale’s had sapped at least 80 percent of his enthusiasm.
The typical exchange went like this:
“Hi, I’m Aust—”
“Outtamyway!”
“Nice to meet you!”
“Shuddup!”
He’d had occasional success, mostly from voters who already knew he was the new Concannon-by-marriage and would continue the family’s long tradition of public service. A fair number of people—most of them women—were drawn to him, too, but that was something he’d grown used to since his childhood. Having sailed through life as an adorable baby who grew into an adorable toddler who grew into an adorable teenager—yes, he was even adorable as a teenager, without a trace of acne or awkwardness—who grew into an adorable young adult, he took it as a given that women would flock to him.
There weren’t too many Concannon- or adorable-young-man-loving admirers that morning, but there were enough to keep him going. That would continue for at least the next hour promised on his public schedule, he hoped.
When he spotted the two men coming up the stairs from the subway platform, he’d already had enough experience to know they’d pretend he wasn’t there and push past him. There was a rough, no-nonsense look to them, especially the older one. The younger one, with highlights a bit too obvious to pass in polite society, was probably gay—that was good; gay men seemed to love him as much as women—but he figured they’d both brush past. They probably worked in the basement of one of the nearby office towers and were late getting to their jobs.
Instinctively, he turned away from them and searched the crowd for less certain rejection.
But then one of the Peebles Kids was tugging on his elbow, saying, “Austin, these gentlemen would like to meet you.” He turned and saw it was the two rough, no-nonsense men.
Okay, so it takes all kinds, he thought, and plastered on his smile. And then Austin Peebles went into Candidate Mode.
He smiled and batted his lashes. “Hi, I’m Austin Peebles, and I’m running to be your voice in Congress.”
Grant and Chase sized him up. Based on his campaign photo—and the face behind the penis in that other photo—they were expecting young and cute, but they were getting a lot more of both than they were prepared for. Austin Peebles was one of those people who photographed attractive, but not as attractive as they were in flesh and blood.
“Ah…uh…” Chase stammered until Grant nudged him. “You’re Austin Peebles?” Grant didn’t like the soft smile that accompanied the question.
“I am. So what issues are important to—”
Chase put a hand on the candidate’s shoulder and maybe squeezed it a tiny bit.
“Can we talk to you a second?”
“Well…sure.” Austin mustered another, brighter smile. Someone actually wanted to talk to him! It figured it was the gay one with the bad highlights, but still… “I’m always happy to talk to the people about the important issues of—”
“Privately.” Before Austin had an opportunity to answer, Chase was leading him down the sidewalk away from the subway entrance. When they were standing in front of an H&M display window and had as much privacy as one could expect to find on one of the busiest sidewalks in Manhattan, he continued.
“We know about the picture.”
“The…?” Confusion clouded Peebles’s face, but only momentarily. Then he got it. Still, he had to be sure. “The picture?”
“The sweet,” said Grant.
“Sext,” Chase corrected.
“Whatever.” He fixed Austin with a stare. “We know about it.”
If they’d expected that would rattle him, they were disappointed. Instead, he smiled, as if he were proud of his little escapade. “How do you—?”
“’Cause we’re the guys Wunder hired to steal it from that June dame. And we did it.”
Chase nodded. “Right. Which is why we’ve got to talk to you. Someone isn’t playing straight with us. And the way we figure it, that means they aren’t playing straight with you.”
Austin Peebles remained silent, but his face began to redden. He pondered their words. “Kevin hired you to st
eal the picture?”
Grant and Chase nodded.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“But…you couldn’t have stolen that picture, because June Forteene still has it. It was on her blog this morning.” He thought some more, and then annoyance crept into his voice. “Listen, if this is some cheap blackmail attempt, you won’t get away with it. I know the district attorney.”
“You do?” asked Chase.
“Well…okay, my mother-in-law does. But still…”
Grant bounced a glance off Chase and sighed. “We aren’t trying to blackmail you, Peebles. We just want what was promised to us, and also to let you know your friends aren’t necessarily your friends.”
Austin wasn’t following, and it showed in the confusion on his face. “Promised? What was promised? And by who? Uh…whom? Uh…Wait, maybe I was right the first time. Who?” He thought again. “No, whom.”
Chase talked, mostly to stop the who / whom thing that was going on. “Your campaign manager. Kevin Wunder. He promised us thirty grand if we stole the picture from June Forteene, which we did. Then he ripped us off.”
“Him and your wife,” added Grant.
Austin Peebles’s thick eyebrows arched.
“Yeah,” Chase said. “And the two of them refused to pay when we went to collect. But the thing is, we did what Wunder said he’d pay us to do.” Confusion continued to cloud Austin Peebles’s young, well-formed face, and Chase suddenly felt bad that they’d delivered such devastating news. He also sort of wanted to muss Austin’s hair and tell him everything would be all right, but fought back the impulse. “Don’t be upset. We’re only here to help.”
Grant stared at his partner. “Why would you care if he’s upset?”
But Peebles half turned from them, eyeing the Kids still shoving palm cards into the hands of uninterested passersby not twenty feet away.
And he wondered, How did everything get so complicated? Life was so simple just a few weeks ago, when I could do whatever I wanted.