“I wouldn’t worry too much. If they were hitters, they’d have done something by now. This feels like surveillance … someone just sniffing around.”
“How did things go with Xen last night?”
“Oh … hit and miss, I guess.”
“What happened?” she asked, figuring the worst.
“The guy Yvgenny told us about … the psycho … well, he showed up. He’d staked out Grady’s and was waiting for me.”
“Oh my god! Are you both okay?”
“I’m fine, and Xen didn’t get hurt too badly. He handled himself really well in there, I gotta admit. Xen surprises me more and more every day.” I smiled.
“You are pretty predictable about that, by the way. Grady’s, I mean.”
“The thought occurred to me, too … anyway, we sorted out our differences with the Russians the way I like to, and that was the end of it. Xen was pretty shaken up by the experience though. I put him in a safe house I know about.”
“Where’s that?” she asked.
“I plan on showing you later on. With things heating up, I want both of you safe.”
“Awwww … how sweet!” she said putting her hand on mine.
“I need you,” I said simply. I decided to bait her a little. “I mean, where else could I find someone with your qualifications: a stunt driver who speaks three languages, does decent research, can kick the crap out of most men, and looks that good in a dress?” I gave her a sideways wink. “You’re not exactly dime-a-dozen, are you? It would take me at least a week … maybe two to replace you.”
“Cretin!” she yelled and smacked me in the arm.
I laughed and then got very serious. “No, really,” I put some emotion into my voice, “the truth is that I need you. Life wouldn’t be the same without you.” I smiled affectionately at her.
She paused for a moment, smiling slightly. “You’re forgiven.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Awwww …” I said, mimicking her.
She slapped my arm again, but lighter this time and with more affection.
“Brute,” I added with a mischievous grin. I turned on the radio, and we were silent as I drove us downtown.
It took us another thirty minutes to get into the city, and I pulled into a parking garage one building away from the VeniCorp offices. We got out, exited the garage at street level, and walked up the street towards the office building where VeniCorp had its HQ. There was a wide pay lot full of cars between the buildings. As we approached the end of the lot, I stopped dead in my tracks and looked to my left.
“What?” Rachel asked, bumping into my shoulder.
“Look,” I said, motioning to a car parked one row in.
“Ah.” she said, seeing it immediately. “It’s a black Audi. And I’m sure it’s the only one in the city,” she said a bit sarcastically. “This is, after all, Los Angeles. How many black Audis could there be?”
“Rule, number one: it’s all about the details. What do you see in the back window?”
“Temp tag with a 3, for next month. That narrows it down, sure. But what are the odds?”
“And do you see anything on the bumper?”
Rachel peered at the bumper, not seeing anything at first. “No, I …” Then she spotted a small red patch of paint on the lower left portion. “The red paint?”
“The red paint,” I said with certainty.
“What’s the Audi doing here?”
I narrowed my eyes, mulling over the possibilities. “I’m thinking someone had the same idea as me. Do you see anyone inside the car?”
“Hard to tell through the tinting, but I don’t think so.”
“Me either. Walk with me,” I said and stepped over the low-hanging cable that encircled the parking lot. I casually approached the car with Rachel right behind me. I scratched my head and accidentally knocked off my hat. I stopped by the back window, picked up my hat, put it back on my head, and used the black mirrored surface to look at myself, adjusting it to a rakish angle. I also memorized the license number, date of purchase and engine ID. Satisfied with the angle of my hat, I walked past the Audi and exited the parking lot through a gap in the wire. We walked towards the front doors of the building we wanted.
I switched to the English accent. “Alright, madam—we’re here as sales representatives of Livingston, Inc. Reginald and Margaret Livingston, proprietors. Siblings, not spouses. If anyone asks, we inherited the business from our father, Sir Jonathan Livingston. We’re here to discuss exporting rare gases such as xenon and argon for VeniCorp’s commercial use. Our flight home leaves in the morning. Have you got all that?”
“Indubitably, sir,” she replied with her Mary Poppins impersonation.
I tapped the hat on my head, opened the door, and motioned for her to go in. “After you, madam.”
“Thank you ever so much.”
There were no security cameras or gates in the main lobby, but a couple of rent-a-cops occupied a wide information desk in the middle of the brightly lit space. We approached with as much British pomp and circumstance as we could muster, my cane clicking loudly as we walked up.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, but I wondered if you would be so kind as to direct me to the offices of VeniCorp?”
The one in front of us answered, “Third floor. Elevators are down that hall.” The guy pointed behind him with his thumb.
“Thank you very much, my good man. Ta.” I doffed my hat, and we both strolled down the hallway. We stepped up to the elevator doors, and I pushed the UP button.
A few seconds later the doors opened, disgorging a mild assortment of office workers leaving for the day. We stepped in once the elevator emptied. I smiled when I heard “Mack the Knife” coming over the elevator speakers and pushed the button for the third floor. The doors closed, and I whistled along with the tune, snapping my fingers with the rhythm. Rachel turned her head slowly and gave me a mildly irritated look of disbelief.
“What?” I said innocently, but I stopped whistling and snapping.
The elevator chimed our arrival. “Game faces,” I said. As the doors slid open, we both stared directly into the face of Ricky Petri, Gino DiMarco’s financial advisor. We were practically nose-to-nose.
“Can I help you two?” he asked.
***
Xen’s Discovery
Xen sat bolt-upright in the lounge chair and yelled. He had dreamed of the fight at Grady’s, and the image of the gangster hitting him in the ribs woke him up. He shook his head, trying to lose the memory, but it stuck with him. Mag sat near him and stared. “It’s alright, Mag. Just a bad dream.” She licked her paw and cleaned her ear.
“Didn’t Justin say something about a casino?”
Mag stopped cleaning, nodded her head and looked north. She nodded once more and then looked back at Xen, cocking her head to the side.
“Up that way, hunh?”
She nodded. Xen suddenly felt strange having a conversation with her, but he wasn’t going to mention it. He stood up, headed into the house and back to a bedroom. He remembered Justin’s comment about cash under the bed. He got on his knees, pulled back the comforter and looked.
“Holy shit,” he said, face to face with a sleeping bag stuffer, and the only thing under the bed. It had bulges here and there that had to be bound stacks of cash. He pulled the bag out, set it on the bed, released the pull-string and opened it.
His jaw dropped. It was full of hundred dollar stacks. He did a fast calculation … more of a wild-ass-guess … of how much he was looking at. “There’s got to be over three million in here.” Xen looked around the room, suddenly feeling very guilty and having no idea why. What was it Justin had said? Xen thought to himself as he tried to remember … “Don’t take more than fifty out of the bag,” the words echoed in his head. “He couldn’t possibly mean …” Xen muttered. He looked at the money on the top. There were only hundreds.
He up-ended the bag and poured it out, digging through the pile and looking for te
ns, twenties or even fifties, anything smaller than a hundred. Nothing. All C-notes. Xen gulped and put the money back in the bag. He could do math, and fifty had to mean fifty thousand dollars. It was the only possible answer. “Okay,” Xen said out loud, smiling gleefully. He left five bound stacks on the bed and slid the refilled bag underneath it.
He went to the closet and spotted a fanny-pack. He grabbed that and threw it on the bed. Taking a blank t-shirt, some shorts and sandals that were too big for him, he got dressed, clipped the bag around his waist and headed out of the house, turning north towards the casino.
***
English Propriety
“How do you do, sir?” I took off my hat and extended my hand. “My name is Reginald Livingston, and this lovely woman is my sister, Margaret. Livingston, Incorporated. Proprietors. At your service, sir.”
“Richard Petri,” Ricky said as we shook. “Pleased to meet you both, Mister Livingston, Margaret,” he said, shaking her outstretched hand as well. “Look, most of our people have gone for the day. I was headed that way myself.”
I looked at Rachel, and she didn’t miss the queue.
“Oh, that is unfortunate, Mister Petri,” she said taking him by the arm and walking towards the receptionists desk just inside the elevator. A young, shapely woman in her early twenties watched us. We stood in a small, contained lobby. A closed pair of tall wooden doors stood on the left of the desk, and I saw one camera over the receptionist’s desk and one behind us over the elevator. There was a stairwell door directly across from the receptionist’s desk. “Our flight leaves in the morning, and we were hoping to make one more stop during our tour.”
“Did you folks have an appointment?” Ricky said, smiling at Rachel … and her cleavage.
I jumped in, “No, actually. We’ve been discussing our intentions all day with a number of corporations in your line of work. One of them had accidentally mentioned VeniCorp in a rather negative light—something about you beating the trousers off them or some such. I can’t say whom, of course, but if you are successful in the industry, then we’d like to consider doing business with you … and not them.”
“You’re a perceptive man,” Ricky said a bit slyly.
“Oh, I absolutely pride myself on it, sir,” I said, bowing my head slightly.
“I’m going back in, Paula,” Ricky said to the receptionist. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a card-key, passing what I recognized as a Prox II card over the reader. The door clicked, and he opened it, motioning for Rachel and me to enter. “Why don’t we talk in my office?” Ricky offered.
Rachel and I stepped through the door, smiling at each other. I winked at her when Ricky couldn’t possibly see it.
“So, uh. What is it you’re into?” Ricky asked.
“Rare and noble gases,” Rachel said enthusiastically.
“Correct,” I added. “Neon, xenon, argon, and their applicable derivatives. We even produce halon for several security firms in Great Britain.”
Richard walked into the office space. Offices lined the outer wall, stretching from the door all the way down about seventy feet. Small and large cubicles filled central area, and the far end of the office space lay behind floor-to-ceiling glass, a laboratory containing an assortment of equipment, several desks, and some computer terminals.
“It’s a lovely space, Mister Petri,” I said. “Is this all of it?”
“Thank you, and yes, it is.” Turning back to Rachel, he said, “We don’t have much use for gases like that, at least not today.”
“Perhaps not,” Rachel said, taking Ricky’s arm again. “But think about the future.” We walked towards the corner office.
“I always do, Miss. It’s my job.”
“Of course it is. And we understand completely that you might not require our products or services at this time. We’re mostly laying the groundwork for an international expansion.”
We stepped into his open office. Ricky took a seat in a big leather swivel chair behind his desk, while Rachel and I perched on the end of upright chairs set in front.
“What a coincidence,” Ricky said, smiling slyly. “So are we.”
“All we’re asking is that you consider our organization for your future needs.”
“Of course I can do that. I don’t close doors. Do you have a business card I can keep?” Rachel looked at Justin.
“Unfortunately, we’ve nearly wall-papered the city with cards today,” I said smoothly. “We ran out two offices ago, terribly sorry. Perhaps I could pull up our website on your terminal there. At least you would have that.” I stood up so I could see Ricky’s hands on the keyboard.
Ricky typed in a password, brought up a browser, and stepped aside.
“There ya go. All yours.”
I sat down and typed in an IP address. “They’re in the process of moving the servers for our site, so we have to use the IP for a few more days. You can go to LivingstonInc.com eventually. Decent IT help is so hard to find,” I lamented.
“Eh … you ain’t kidding,” Ricky added, understanding completely.
I finished the URL and hit enter. The cursor churned for a few seconds and then the screen came up with a “Page Not Found” error.
“Bloody hell!” I blurted then regained my composure. “I’m sorry, Mister Petri. They were supposed to have this work complete over the weekend.” I closed the browser and stood up, stepping back to stand next to Rachel who remained seated. “At least you’ll have the URL once they have the site back up.”
“Like you said … bad IT guys are dime-a-dozen, good ones worth their weight in gold.” Ricky sat down and locked up his terminal.
“Agreed, sir.” I nodded in affirmation. “I say, do you have a card? I’d like to contact you upon my return to Britain, if that’s alright with you.”
“Certainly, Mister Livingston.”
We shook hands, and I put my hat back on as I gently grasped Rachel’s elbow. “You’ve been more than kind, Mister Petri. And please, call me Reginald.”
“It’s Ricky, and it was my pleasure.”
“Thank you, Ricky,” she said as she stood and held out her hand. “We really do appreciate you speaking with us after business hours. We were told that Americans would be a bit uncouth, but we’ve encountered nothing but kindness all day.”
“Like my daddy used to say, don’t believe everything you hear.” He lifted her hand up and brushed her knuckles with a kiss.
She bowed her head. “Lesson learned, Richard. I’ll have to keep that in mind. Ta,” she added as she extracted her fingers.
We stepped out of the office, and turning I said, “We’ll show ourselves out, Ricky. Thank you again for your time. Cheerio.” I tipped my hat and quickly followed behind Rachel. I opened the main door for her, and we stepped into the elevator. “The Girl from Ipanema” played on the way down, and I almost started whistling again, but thought better of it. We quickly walked back to my car, noting the Audi had disappeared.
The moment the doors closed on my Chrysler, Rachel hugged me from across the seat and kissed me on the mouth. She was flushed with excitement, and I found myself feeling some odd stirrings in places not previously stirred by Rachel.
“That was fantastic!”
I smiled and licked my lips, tasting her lip gloss. I’d never think of strawberries the same way again. I cast her a sideways glance and started the motor. “And useful. He gave me an easy in.”
“The URL?”
“Yep. I’ll show you when we get to my loft.” I pulled out and exited the garage, merging directly into a traffic jam.
She paused. “You’re taking me inside?”
“Yep.”
“Justin, you never let me into your loft, only your house and the martial-arts school. You said it was private.”
“That’s right.”
“And now it’s not?” She sounded rather suspicious, but excited, too. “What’s the special occasion?”
“Last night,” I replied vaguely.
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Confused, she asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well, because of what happened last night, I had to show Xen a few things … things nobody knows … things I never considered telling anybody until recently. You deserve to know, too. You should have been first, but it didn’t work out that way. I figured I better fix that.”
“That sounds so ominous,” she muttered, raising an eyebrow at me. I forced my way into a crack between two taxies and waved at the middle finger raised by the driver behind me. Then I pulled out my phone while we were stopped at a light and handed it to Rachel.
“Dial Yvgenny. The locking code is 2273.”
She opened the phone and keyed in the code. She hit the Contacts button, scrolled to Gershovich and hit dial, handing the phone back when it rang. I grabbed it and put it to my ear. Yvgenny picked up,
“Da?”
“Yvgenny, it’s Justin.”
“Let me guess … you having killed some Mexicans this time … or perhaps Americans … and you are needing my help.” Yvgenny didn’t laugh this time.
I practically whined, “No … nobody’s dead, Yvgenny. But I do need your help. It’s an easy one.”
Rachel shot me a questioning look and mouthed, What happened?
“Sure it is,” and this time Yvgenny laughed. “It is always being easy with you and your requests.”
I mouthed the word Later, to Rachel. Talking into the phone again, I said, “Do you have any Prox cards handy? Prox IIs, to be specific. Every place I can think of that would have them will be closed.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not having any here. However, man I am knowing uses courier service. He could probably have them here in forty-five minutes if you’re needing them today. And he only charges retail. He is actual vendor.”
“Perfect. It’ll take me that long to get to your place with this traffic. Think he would have a card imprinter as well?”
“Probable. I will asking him. Shall I hang up phone and calling him?”
“Also perfect. Thanks.” We both hung up.
“So, what was that about no one being dead?” Rachel asked, bursting with curiosity.
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