Strange Bedfellows

by Rob Byrnes

  Chase stated the obvious. “He must not be in his office.”

  “Must not be.” Grant eyed the darkness through the broken pane of glass warily. “I’m going over.”

  “You?” It wasn’t only Chase who asked him that.

  “Yeah, me.” Grant gave the members of his gang an accusatory look. “Why not? You think I’ve never done something like this before?”

  Constance slowly shook her head. “I’m sure you have. But a long time ago.”

  “A long long time ago,” added Mary Beth.

  He snarled. “I’ve still got it. Just hold this end of the ladder so it doesn’t move.”

  Grant inched his way across the ladder suspended fifty feet above very hard pavement. It shook with every movement, and he wondered if he maybe should have sent Nick. When he reached the middle, it sagged under his weight and his stomach did a somersault. Despite his claim when he’d been on steady footing in the stairwell, he’d never done this exact thing before. He probably should have taken into consideration that a wooden ladder was going to have at least a little play in it, and this one seemed to have a lot. But every time he took a look at the far end, where it rested unsecured against shards of broken glass, he was reassured to see it didn’t look like it was going anywhere.

  He finally reached the other side and looked through the broken glass, which is when he realized they’d punched a hole through the wrong window.

  Grant inched his body backward until he could get a look at the windows facing the alley and counted them again. Which is when he realized they’d counted wrong, adding a small window near the ground to their tally when they shouldn’t have.

  They were still one floor below Kevin Wunder’s office.

  Kevin Wunder sat behind his desk and heard the sound of glass breaking out in the alley. Damn punk kids.

  Ordinarily, he would have taken a look, but ordinarily he wasn’t on his cell phone trying to talk June Forteene off a ledge.

  Not literally; figuratively. Although the way she’d been carrying on, the literal might not be that far in the future.

  It hadn’t been a good morning for either of them. First he’d been robbed of his cell and laptop in the middle of that ridiculous bedbug panic—and the building management company would definitely be hearing from him about that—and then he’d had to wait in line for almost an hour to get a replacement phone programmed. Then word came of the break-in at campaign headquarters. And now June Forteene was on the phone telling him she’d been robbed in Starbucks and her office had been burglarized again. Even if computers and phones hadn’t been the only things stolen from all four locations—and they were—it would have been all too easy to trace the crimes back to the source. This was payback.

  It was harder to explain why June kept finding underwear hanging from her transom, but no one paid him to do that.

  He listened as she ranted about fake cops and real cops and unhelpful Starbucks managers and fake UPS drivers and underwear-free burglars until it became so much white noise. But then—just as he was about to hang up—she said something that caught his attention.

  “Today’s the day, Kevin.”

  “The day for what?”

  “Today’s the day I destroy Austin Peebles. I can’t take this anymore. By the close of business, I’m posting the photo and ending his career before it begins.” She paused. “But, of course, I’ll need the photo…”

  He smiled at the stack of computers still sitting in one corner of his office. “I’ll get that photo back to you within the hour.”

  “And I need my computers back. It’s hard to run this operation on a single laptop.”

  He doubted that—all she did was blog, after all—but he eyed the stash in the corner of his office, the one he’d assured Triple-C was no longer there. “They’re waiting for you. Come and get ’em.”

  Lisa smoked and waited for Grant to plummet to his death. When he didn’t, she watched him back his way to the building on the north side of the alley and vanish back through the window. She flicked her cigarette to the gutter, where it landed next to her two previously discarded filters, and then found the stairwell door propped open at the sidewalk level and let herself inside.

  “You catch all that?” asked Margaret Campbell, sitting next to David Carlyle in the back of a cab parked across the street.

  “How could I miss it? Breathtaking! For a moment there, I was sure he was going to fall.”

  She opened the door. “We need to get in on this action.”

  David was so enthusiastic he almost forgot to pay the driver. The cabbie wasn’t quite as forgetful.

  “Oh, right!” He peeled the fare from a wad of bills in his pocket, paid the driver, and followed Margaret across the street and through that door.

  “That’s the right office.”

  Mary Beth frowned. “Are you sure this time?” She was answered with a hiss.

  Grant stood in the window across the alley and stared at the back of Kevin Wunder’s head through the open window, recognizing that round bald spot. “Soon as he’s out of there, we’re going in.”

  Chase started to ask, “Who do you want to—” but Grant heard something and shushed him.

  “Someone’s coming up the stairs.”

  Sure enough, footsteps slowly approached. But when Lisa appeared they collectively took a breath.

  “Easy for you to do.” Her normally gravelly voice had acquired a fresh coating of gravel, and she leaned against the wall, gasping for air. “If there are any more stairs on this job, I’m going to lose a lung.”

  “You should quit smoking,” said Nick.

  “Shut the hell up, kid.” She took another couple of deep breaths. “This isn’t the fault of the cigarettes. It’s the fault of all these stairs.”

  “So anyway,” said Chase again, eager to get back to business. “Who do you want to—”

  Grant shushed him, and again they heard approaching footsteps.

  “There you are!” Margaret Campbell said as she reached the landing and spotted the knot of people trying to loiter next to an open window and ladder and not look suspicious. “Christ, those stairs almost killed me.” She turned to Lisa. “You have a spare cigarette?”

  The exertion had deepened David Carlyle’s usual pink hue into a frightening maroon. “We apologize for inviting ourselves along—”

  “Who the hell are these people?” Constance wasn’t happy.

  Grant had to answer because Lisa was still catching her breath. “Lisa’s editor and some writer.”

  “Some writer?” Margaret coughed as her lungs rebelled. “If I don’t let Publishers Weekly refer to me like that, I certainly won’t let some two-bit criminal do so!”

  David’s coloring was frightening, but at least he could breathe. “Now, now. Simmer down.” To Constance—and the others to whom he’d not yet been introduced—he bowed slightly. “I’m David Carlyle, and this is Margaret Campbell, and we’re here to—”

  Angelina interrupted. “Wait a minute. The author Margaret Campbell?”

  David nodded. “One and the same.”

  She clapped her hands with excitement. “Murder in Mount Kisco is my favorite book ever!”

  “Ah, jeez,” Grant muttered as he sank to the floor. He stared at the people crowded onto the landing in the stairwell—including him, they now numbered nine—and longed for the days when the job was understaffed. Especially since they had work to do, and he was losing the gang’s attention to an impromptu book club discussion. “Okay, hey, everyone shut up for a minute!”

  It took a full thirty seconds and a few more shouts, but they quieted down.

  He continued. “We need to stay focused here and solve some problems. Starting with Problem Number One: How are we gonna get Wunder out of his office?”

  “Who’s Wunder?” asked David.

  Grant didn’t appreciate that the newcomer expected him to recap the plot for his benefit and let that be known through a scowl.

  Chase, more a
micable, filled in the gaps. “As long as you’re here, you’d better make yourself useful.” David nodded his agreement. “The office across the alley belongs to this congresswoman. Concannon’s her name.”

  “Catherine Cooper Concannon?” David was impressed. “She’s a legend! And that son-in-law of hers—Austin Peebles—is just adorable!” Normal coloring began to return to his face. “We’re breaking into her office?”

  “What’s this ‘we’?” snarled Grant. “Who said anything about the two of you—”

  “Grant, let me.” Chase spoke while his partner stewed. “Not her office, really. But this guy that works for her has some things we want. His is the office we’re breaking into.”

  Margaret, having mostly regained her lung capacity, stepped forward. “Is it safe for me to assume you intend to access that window—that window way over there—with this flimsy ladder?”

  “That’s the idea,” said Grant.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “That’s not the way I’d do it.”

  “Lady, you just write books. I do the real thing. This is how I make my living, so with all due respect—”

  “Okay, you two.” Chase stood between them. “Save the second-guessing for later. Right now, we have to get Wunder out of his office. Otherwise, we don’t need to worry about the ladder.”

  David cleared his throat. “Tell me about this fellow Wunder.” After Chase gave him the basics, he had an idea. “I believe I can get him out of the office.”

  Chase eyed him skeptically. “You’re sure?”

  “I think so. As long as it doesn’t involve any more stairs.”

  Grant nudged his shoulder in Margaret’s direction. “Take her, too.”

  “No way.” She stood her ground, planting her feet firmly on the landing. “I came to see you pull a job, and I’m going to watch this unfold all the way through to the disastrous end.”

  He sighed and looked at Lisa. “I blame you.” He didn’t have to say that; she already blamed herself.

  David departed, and they knew they’d have time to kill. Maybe ten minutes, maybe ten hours. That gave Grant a lengthy opportunity to regret almost everything about the job. Sending this guy he didn’t even know to the building across the alley to try to convince a guy he didn’t even know to leave his office was just the latest seat-of-the-pants wrinkle in a stunningly ill-fated plan.

  He was surprised to find himself wishing their Insider had been present, and even more surprised to hear himself say it out loud.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I wish Austin Peebles was here right now.”

  Before he had the chance to clarify the thought, Mary Beth, Angelina, Nick, and Chase had their cell phones out and fingers poised to dial.

  Grant didn’t think anything could surprise him anymore, but this did. “Seriously?” He stared down Chase. “You, too?”

  Chase shrugged abashedly but didn’t bother trying to explain.

  “I’ve got an assignment for you.”

  Edward Hepplewhite looked up from his sudoku to see his boss standing in front of him. She didn’t look good. Her hair was wild, not carefully coifed, and there were dark circles under her heavily lidded eyes. He tried to hold her gaze while discreetly hiding the puzzle under a manila folder.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I need you to go to the Upper East Side and pick up some computer equipment.” She chose her words carefully; it wouldn’t do for Edward to know too much. “Some surplus equipment to get us up and running again.”

  “Okay.”

  “Here’s the thing.” She leaned in closely. “And I’m taking you into my confidence on this. No one must ever know.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “My source works for the enemy.”

  He had to think about that. “The enemy?” He thought some more and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “You mean, the Democrats?”

  June Forteene nodded and matched his whisper. “The Democrats. My source is about to turn on them and dish enough dirt to ruin the party, and I’ll have the exclusive story. It’ll be live on my blog before Drudge has a chance to get off the toilet. Which is why we’ve got to keep this a secret.”

  “You can count on me, Miss Forteene.”

  She smiled. “I know that, Edward. I know that.”

  Farraday sat behind the wheel of a 2011 Lexus that had belonged to a dentist from Saddle Brook up until nine minutes earlier and fiddled with the radio. He wasn’t ordinarily the kind of man who listened to the radio while driving, but he figured the noise might drown out the whining from his passenger.

  That passenger—Jamie Brock—sat back in his seat sulking, and said for maybe the twentieth time since they’d ditched the garbage truck, “I can’t believe you didn’t see me back there.”

  Farraday found the traffic report. “I know. Can you believe that? Those trucks don’t have good rear views. I’m sorta surprised they aren’t involved in more accidents.”

  “I was waving and everything!”

  “No kidding.” He increased the volume on the traffic report.

  They traveled in silence through northern New Jersey on Route 46 until Farraday nodded to the right. “There’s Teterboro Airport. Wanna fly the rest of the way home?”

  Jamie, who thought Farraday was joking, slumped back in his seat. “I could have fallen off and been killed.”

  “That woulda been a shame…”

  No one was more surprised than Grant to look through the window across the alley and see the pudgy form of David Carlyle appear.

  “Son of a gun. He got through the door.”

  But getting through the door and making his pitch convincing enough to get Kevin Wunder out from behind his desk were very different things.

  “Immortalize?” Wunder pointed his thumb at his chest. “Me?”

  “You,” David confirmed. “You see, Mr. Wunder, I have a lot of friends in the political field. When I told them Palmer / Midkiff / Carlyle wanted to publish a book about a consummate political insider, yours was the first and only name to come up.”

  Wunder drummed his fingers on the top of his desk. “It’s true that I’ve been around a while and have seen a lot, but…Hmm.” He was naturally cynical—he’d been burned too many times, and the Austin Peebles insult was an especially fresh wound—but he also knew that what this editor was telling him was probably the truth. If someone was asked who knew where the bodies were buried, the first name on their lips would probably be his.

  David could see the criminals massed in the open window across the alley over Wunder’s shoulder. “Maybe we could step out and grab a cup of coffee, and I can explain my proposal in greater depth.”

  But Wunder didn’t move. He sat behind his desk and thought of the consequences—good and bad—of being, well, immortalized.

  “Mr. Wunder?”

  The consummate insider smiled. “Please, call me Kevin.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Austin felt he was finally making progress with Penelope—she’d even looked at him without hate in her eyes, although also without words, when he walked into the library upon returning from robbing his own campaign headquarters that morning—but it didn’t take long for the frost to return.

  He took Kevin Wunder’s call reporting the burglary and acted appropriately shocked. When he shared the news with her, she simply shrugged indifferently and that was that.

  Things only got worse a short time later when his phone rang and—while she was in earshot—he answered with, “Hello, kitten.”

  Austin listened while a breathless Mary Beth insisted he get to his mother-in-law’s office right away and help someone he’d never heard of try to get Kevin out of the office for a while. He tried, but couldn’t get her to expand or explain, and when he hung up he still knew nothing he didn’t know the night before.

  “Kitten?” Penelope’s voice dripped with contempt. It had been days since he’d heard her voice, and he wondered if she’d always
sounded like that.

  “Just a campaign volunteer.” There was no need for her to know more than that. “And don’t worry about it. She’s a lesbian, and it’s a pet name.”

  She didn’t buy it. “Nice try, Austin, but you’re just digging yourself in deeper.”

  Twelve minutes later, he walked into Mother Concannon’s office, still not quite sure why he was there. That made answering the first question posed to him even more difficult.

  “Austin!” said Catherine, spotting him in the reception room. “Why are you here?”

  “Uh…To, uh…To see if Kevin would like to get a cup of coffee.”

  She shook her head. “We’ve already had this conversation, Austin. As a candidate, it doesn’t look good for you to be here. The ethics purists would have a field day if they thought we were advising you out of a government office rented by the taxpayers. In the future, I have to insist—again—that you phone ahead and have Kevin meet you outside.”

  “Yes, sorry.”

  She smiled at him indulgently. He wasn’t always the sharpest person she’d ever worked with, but his apology was so sincere. “Go downstairs and I’ll have Kevin meet you.”

  “Uh…okay.”

  She walked in one direction—toward Wunder’s office—and he walked in another—toward the elevator—but Austin paused when he heard the receptionist on the phone as he passed her desk.

  “I’ll tell Mr. Wunder that you’ll be here to pick up the computers at noon. Thank you.”

  Noon? He checked his watch. If that call was what he thought, they had less than fifteen minutes. After that, that awesome picture of the candidate and his penis would be back in the hands of June Forteene and soon spread across the globe.

  Once out on the sidewalk, the candidate in question nervously paced for a few minutes. Mary Beth and the criminals weren’t going to be happy with the way he had bobbled the assignment. Worse, all of this—the series of crimes leading up to this moment—would be an exercise in futility.