Strange Bedfellows

by Rob Byrnes

  “Celebrity Boudoirs I’ve Known…And the Walk-In Closets, Too!”

  “Huh?”

  Lisa heaved a deep breath. Her little secret wasn’t so secret anymore, and she truly regretted that. Was there anything more embarrassing than being outed as a writer? “It’s not really a book…well, not a book-book, that is. It’s more of a coffee table book, with a lot of photographs of houses I’ve sold.” She suddenly, desperately, needed a cigarette, finally spotting her pack on a kitchen counter. “It’s really no big deal.”

  Grant shook his head slowly. “That’s why you didn’t mention it?”

  “That’s why I didn’t mention it.”

  His shoulders slumped. “And here I thought we were friends.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ll get over it.” She lit up then nodded down the hall toward her home office. “Let’s get this over with.”

  When they were out of range and could talk privately, Grant asked, “How’d that short woman make us?”

  She looked him over. “As criminals? Gee, I don’t know…let me think. Maybe it’s the entire aura of criminality you project.”

  A sour expression came to his face. “Really? We look like criminals?”

  Lisa glanced at Chase. “He doesn’t.” Back to Grant. “You do.”

  To which Chase said, “I’ve been telling him he needs a better hairstyle.”

  She nodded her agreement, even though she thought Chase’s own highlights were getting a little over the top for a man whose age was starting to catch up with him. Still, this was about Grant right now.

  “A new wardrobe wouldn’t hurt, either. After that, we can start working on the personality. And then the phone-aphobia.”

  Grant’s sourness deepened. “Can we get to business please?” Lisa shrugged consent, the better to get him out of her apartment quickly. “I got this job, and I’m gonna need help.”

  “I figured as much. Unlike the old days, we never just meet up for good times. These days, you only come to me when you’ve got a job.” She ground out her cigarette in an ashtray. “Okay, how much?”

  Lisa Cochrane was very successful in her line of work, which—unlike Grant and Chase’s line of work—required her to file tax returns and go to an office every day. She was good, which meant she made good money, which meant the only times she really saw Grant Lambert in recent years was when he was looking for a banker for one of his jobs. Such as this time, she assumed.

  But at this particular moment, she was wrong.

  “I’m not looking for money.” Both Lisa and Chase—who had not yet been fully brought up to speed on Grant’s budding plan—reacted with surprise.

  They waited for him to continue, but he let the words hang in the air.

  “You’re not looking for money?” She didn’t quite believe him.

  “Well, yes, I’m looking for money. But not from you. Somebody owes Chase and me thirty grand. That’s the money I’m looking for.”

  She still didn’t believe him, but didn’t have a choice. “Go on.”

  “Yeah.” Chase was also wondering where Grant was going with this. “Go on.”

  Grant locked Lisa in with his eyes. “I need a woman.”

  She couldn’t stop the laughter, which erupted in a throaty burst that was even more just-drank-a-glass-of-lye than her normal speaking voice, which was pretty damn rough. “That’s twice in less than a minute you’ve said something I thought I’d never hear.”

  “Uh…Grant?” Chase was thoroughly confused.

  Lisa calmed herself, although a few throaty giggles threatened to creep out. “Please satisfy my curiosity—and it looks like you’ve lost your boyfriend, too—and tell me why you need a woman.”

  “Y’see, there’s this horny candidate running for Congress…”

  “You’d better give me a moment to recover from the shock.”

  He ignored her gibe. “He’s campaigning over by Bloomingdale’s right now. Just the other side of the river here…”

  “I know where Bloomingdale’s is.”

  “…and we just went to see him. I need him to see the wisdom in working with us to get some money his campaign owes us. Follow?”

  “Of course not. I usually don’t. But keep talking.”

  “So we try to tell him that his campaign manager is trying to destroy his campaign…”

  She stopped him. “Why would his campaign manager try to destroy his campaign? Isn’t that sort of the opposite of what a campaign manager does?”

  “Usually, I figure. I don’t really know these things. But we know the campaign manager wants to be the candidate, so he’s trying to destroy the real candidate. Got it now?” She nodded distractedly. “So we went over to Bloomingdale’s to try to tell that to the candidate, but he shooed us off.”

  Lisa Cochrane looked at Grant and then took a quick glance at Chase, who nodded to confirm it. Then she pulled another cigarette from the pack, pausing to light it and take a very deep drag before continuing.

  “So what’s your angle? You don’t do politics, Grant, so when do you get to the part where you’re trying to make some money? And why do you need a woman?”

  “I was gettin’ to that. See, the candidate sent this picture of his, uh, his…” He didn’t discuss male genitalia often with lesbians, and wasn’t sure how delicately he should proceed.

  She squinted through the smoke drifting near her eyes and, thanks to his discomfort, figured out where he was heading before he got too tongue-tied. “His penis?”

  Grant blushed slightly. “Yeah, that. Anyway, the picture got in the wrong hands, and the campaign manager hired us to get it back.”

  “You? Why you?”

  He looked more than a little ashamed. “Jamie Brock brought us the job.”

  “Oh, Lambert. You should know better.” She shook her head admonishingly at him, then at Chase. “And you let him take the job?”

  Chase was every bit as chagrined as Grant. “It sounded like an easy thirty grand. And it would have been, except this campaign manager double-crossed us.”

  She took a drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke at the ceiling. “Now I’m starting to get the picture. Stupid Jamie Brock brought you a stupid job—of a stupid cock picture, of course, because I’d expect nothing more from stupid Jamie Brock—and you were stupid enough to take it. So you pulled the job, and they refused to pay up. And somehow, with all the stupidity involved, you’re still surprised.”

  Grant nodded. “That’s about it. And now we’re out thirty grand.”

  “Why don’t you let it go? I know it’s a lot of money for you, but…” She shrugged, and the fact it would have been a big-but-not-devastating loss to her, while it was both big and devastating to Grant and Chase, went unsaid.

  Much as Lisa might have hoped she was being subtle, Grant got it. He also didn’t care. He knew who he was, he knew what he wanted, and he knew why he wanted it.

  “It’s a matter of pride. Word gets around the street that you can screw over Grant Lambert, my career could be over. I might even have to go legit, which I’ve got no skills for.”

  “Another thing,” added Chase. “This isn’t over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Chase explained. “It’s not just that we didn’t get paid. It’s that this campaign manager turned right around and sent the uh, the, uh…” He was no better at it than Grant, so Lisa had to once again take control.

  “The picture of the penis.”

  “Yeah, that. Anyway, he must have sent it right back to the person we stole it from, which is how we figure he’s trying to destroy his own candidate.”

  Grant took over, back in control of his hoped-for destiny. “So we went to Bloomingdale’s to try to warn this candidate…”

  Lisa was ahead of him. “And get the thirty from him?”

  “Well, yeah. Sure. We earned it, so we would have taken it if he offered. But it didn’t get that far. Anyway, we went to talk to him, but he didn’t believe us. The thing is, if we’re
gonna make this all right with everyone—especially us—we’ll need someone on the inside of the campaign. Meaning, we’ll need the candidate’s cooperation.”

  She stubbed out the cigarette after a few puffs, but only after making a point of blowing the last of the smoke into Grant’s face. To her great regret, he didn’t even cough. “I think you should give up and write it off as a loss. But if you insist on this plan to avenge yourselves, why not do what we’ve done before? Just plant someone in his campaign, let a few weeks pass until the plant works his or her way into position, then—voilà!—revenge!”

  Grant leaned forward, shoulders on knees. “I would if I could, except I don’t have a few weeks. I have something like four days before the person who got the photo releases it to the world on her blog. After that, the campaign goes up in smoke, the campaign manager becomes the new candidate and ends up in Washington, and we still don’t get our thirty grand.”

  Lisa glanced at her watch. She was getting impatient and motioned for him to wrap it up. “Okay, now tell me why you need a woman.”

  “Because we already know the candidate, the one with the, uh, uh—”

  “Penis picture.”

  “Yeah, that. He must have what they call a zipper problem. Otherwise, why’s he sending those pictures? So I figure if we get an attractive woman close to him, maybe she can work the job on the inside.”

  She tapped her foot. “Seduce the candidate, convince him to help you…Is that where you’re going with this? Because that’s the only logical direction. Oh, and also? It’s probably the most idiotic idea you’ve ever had. And—as someone who’s watched you try to rob a mega-church, steal a yacht, blackmail an actor, and tunnel into a bank vault—I think I know an idiotic Grant Lambert idea when I hear one.”

  He folded his arms defiantly. Not that he looked, but he knew Chase was backing him up. “Got a better idea?”

  “Take the loss!” She knew he wouldn’t, so was compelled to add, “In any event, I’m far too old to be seducing married congressional candidates…”

  He stopped her. “No offense, but I wasn’t thinking about you.”

  That offended Lisa Cochrane, even though she tried not to show it. “You weren’t? Why not?”

  Grant tried to be gentle. “I was thinking younger. And more…uh, less…uh…I was just thinking different, is all.”

  “Then who?”

  Grant couldn’t believe he was about to tell her, let alone that he had conceived the idea in the first place.

  “Your girlfriend.”

  Lisa thought her ears were playing tricks. “Mary Beth?” She paused and replayed the conversation in her head. “You’re here for Mary Beth?”

  “Yeah.”

  She tried and failed to wrap her head around that. “But…you hate each other.”

  “True,” Grant said. “But I have to admit she’s good. When she wants to be.”

  This was all news to Chase, too, and he was having every bit as hard a time as Lisa believing he was hearing Grant right.

  “Are you sure? I mean, Mary Beth is, uh…” Chase looked apologetically at Lisa, but he was about to speak the truth and knew they all knew that truth. “She’s a bit difficult, Grant.”

  “She’s a bitch,” Grant said.

  “And,” Lisa added, without objecting to Grant’s very accurate characterization of her partner, “she’s never quite forgiven any of us for the last time she had to seduce a man during a job. I had to go a month without sex after that incident, which now that I think of it, was also a job brought to you by Jamie Brock! Believe it or not, Lambert, most lesbians aren’t longing to seduce men.”

  Grant held out his hands and stopped her. “I don’t need Mary Beth to seduce him. I just want her to get close to him. Lead him on a little…that sort of thing.”

  “Seduction!”

  “No. More like a friendship. A teasing, flirtatious friendship. Then all she’ll have to do is convince him that Chase and I are on his side, stop the campaign manager, get our thirty thousand dollars, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  Lisa wasn’t happy. “You make it sound so easy. And she’d have only a few days to take care of that. It’s…it’s…why it’s a walk in the park! And I think everyone knows how easy it is to meet a congressional candidate and quickly become his confidante.”

  Grant scrunched his face. “Is it really that easy? See, I figured that might take some work.”

  She was done being nice and gave him a cold stare. “You are such an idiot.”

  David Carlyle and Margaret Campbell waited until Lisa and the newcomers were closed behind the door of the home office before he whispered, “Do you really think those men are criminals?”

  “C’mon, Carlyle.” She took a gulp from her tumbler of bourbon. The Grande Dame of the American Mystery Novel—according to People magazine—was the only one drinking the hard stuff during brunch and that didn’t bother her one bit. If straight bourbon wasn’t known as a brunch drink, that just meant the rest of the world had yet to catch up with her. “Did you get a look at them? Especially the older one.”

  David fussed with his napkin, folding and refolding it. “Well, he does look rather unsavory. But I’d swear the younger one was gay.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Gay hoodlums? Puh-leeze! Just because the young one has bad highlights doesn’t make him gay.”

  “At his age, it does.”

  “Hmm.” She thought that over and realized that, after twenty-six novels, she’d never written a gay criminal as a character. It was an idea…

  She downed another gulp of bourbon. “I’ve been writing mysteries for decades, David. I’ve done jailhouse interviews and visited precinct houses from Tacoma to Tampa. Trust me: I know a crook when I see one, and these guys are the real deal.”

  They continued in that vein for a while and listened as muffled voices occasionally rose and fell in the other room, only stopping when the office door was reopened. Lisa, looking more than a little annoyed, paraded the group back down the hall, followed by the older guy who looked like a criminal with the younger one who was too old for his bad highlights bringing up the rear.

  Lisa forced a smile in the general direction of her lunch guests. “I apologize for the interruption. These gentlemen are leaving now.”

  Margaret Campbell was having none of that. “You,” she said, fixing Grant with an intense stare that almost made him shiver. “Sit down for a second.”

  “But…” Lisa’s protest was waved away before she could utter it.

  Grant held his ground. “I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.”

  “Are you sure?” Her stare seemed to intensify. “Because I want to talk shop.”

  “Then I’ll sit.” Grant took Lisa’s seat at the table, leaving her to lean against the counter that divided the kitchen from the living room / dining room. There was one more chair at the table, but Chase opted to rest his back against a wall.

  “How long have you been in the business?” asked the writer.

  “How long have you been in your business?”

  “Twenty-three years. Now, back to you.”

  Grant looked at her unpleasantly. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  She peered at him over the rim of her half glasses. “Let’s see. You’re around fifty-five years old, so I figure forty years in the business. Am I right?”

  He squinted. “You think I look like I’m fifty-five?” He turned to Chase for support, but got little more than a weak smile in return, so he turned back to the author. “Not that you need to know this, but I’m in my mid-forties.”

  Margaret again peered over her glasses and studied him closely. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I’m the guy who lived it!”

  She tilted her head and reached for her bourbon. “I’ll take your word for it.” She gulped. “So anyway, what’s your specialty?”

  Grant planted his hands palm-down on the table. “Listen, lady, I keep telling you t
his, and I want you to get it. We’re not criminals.”

  “I told you so,” sniffed David Carlyle. He nodded at Chase. “They’re obviously gay.”

  She ignored him and kept talking to Grant. “I’m not making any value judgments. This is just professional interest. I write about criminals, so I like to get into their heads. So you’re…what? A car thief? A second-story man? Blackmailer? Lock-breaker? What’s your specialty?”

  Grant leaned back. Pretty much every one of her guesses was correct, but it was still none of her business. “What makes you think I’m not a hit man?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Respect me enough to take me seriously.”

  “I could be a hit man.”

  “Tell me a story, not a myth.”

  A sigh escaped as a frown appeared on his lips. “If I was a criminal—and I’m not sayin’ I am—I think I’d be the type of criminal guy who plans the heist and brings a gang of experts together to pull it off.”

  “Ah!” she said, as if that was a satisfactory answer. “Very Westlake!”

  “Huh?”

  “Don Westlake. He was an old friend of mine. Wrote these very funny crime capers.”

  None of this information interested Grant, and he let that be known. “I’m just sayin’ that’s the type of criminal I’d be. But since I’m not a criminal…”

  Chase stepped away from the wall where he’d been leaning. “I’ve got a question for the author.”

  “Who, me?” Margaret Campbell pointed to herself, even though she was the only real author—Lisa hardly counted with her picture book—in the room. “What’s your question?”

  Chase took a deep breath and refused to look in Grant’s direction. “Remember, this is hypothetical.” She nodded. “I was wondering how you’d solve a case like this. Say there’s a guy being blackmailed over something, and these crooks are hired to get this thing back from the blackmailer. And they do the job, except the thing ends up right back in the blackmailer’s hands.”

  Margaret mulled over Chase’s scenario for maybe five seconds. “Obviously, someone close to the victim stabbed him in the back.”

  Chase slapped one hand against the other. “Exactly!”

  “Chase,” Grant warned in a low voice that was ignored.