The Book Glasses

by Arthur Bozikas

  She looked at them—Lyn Blackwood, Craig Evans, and Chris Tanners. Barry had picked the best, he’d said. They all looked a bit young to her, although she knew that all three were older than she was. Without her experience, of course.

  Lyn was a startling woman to look at, with her red curls constantly trying to escape the tight ponytail she kept them in, but her face was shrewd. She would get somewhere, Sam was sure.

  Craig Evans looked a little too round-faced and innocent for her—almost like a cherub—but she had read enough on him to know that his looks were deceiving.

  Chris Tanners was the most standard of the bunch—standard-looking and relatively standard-performing—but his attention to detail could be an asset and was why she assumed Barry had suggested him.

  Not yet satisfied with their direction, Sam schooled them for almost another hour until she was convinced they were in sync with all her demands. Then she called for lunch to be delivered.

  She watched as they perused the spread that had been laid out for them. On offer was Turkish and pita bread filled with an assortment of chicken and bacon salad, Mediterranean tuna, spicy chicken and prawns and a combination of other seafood with various sauces and condiments. A platter of fresh seasonal fruits rounded out the luncheon perfectly.

  After demolishing a good portion of the food, the young lawyers began to unwind but once the champagne started flowing, they loosened up. That’s when Sam really got to know them and reassured her that she had hired the right individuals for the task.

  “Okay, team, listen up. Regarding the merger, you need to put this to bed tomorrow at the hearing. Make sure you avoid the approval being delayed for any reason. Remember, the economy is the winner here and there are no alternatives. The government bureaucrats will come up with some surprises so don’t let them distract you from our game plan. I need you to do what we talked about. Do it in a polite and forthright manner and don’t focus on their negative or worst-case scenarios and you will be fine.

  “Try not to look over at me and make sure you all work together. Any questions before we finish up here?” Sam asked.

  “No, we’re all good,” they answered.

  “Good. Also, there’s a cash bonus, on top of your fees, for each of you if you’re successful tomorrow. I’ll let you go and rest up for tomorrow. I will speak with you after the hearing.”

  The next morning, she arrived early at the government building in which the hearing was to take place and was thrilled to see her team were already there.

  The public viewing area of the large contemporary venue was already half-full of reporters, interested stockholders and curious members of the public. A late news story on one of the main television networks had created interest in the hearing and seats were filling fast.

  Fifteen minutes before the hearing was due to start, as Sam entered the room she felt a sharp pain in her right side near her waist. She turned to look behind her but there was no one nearby, so she placed her hand on her side as she took a seat in the back row. Her jacket felt wet and she looked down at her hand. It was covered in blood.

  Immediately, she got up and made her way to the bathrooms to investigate. Once in the privacy of a toilet cubical, she removed her jacket and blouse to find a puncture wound on the right-hand side of her waist. It looked as if someone had tried to stab her but had botched the job.

  The wound was not deep, and no serious damage had been done. Fortunately, she was wearing a dark navy suit which hid the bloodstains, but her ivory silk blouse was probably unsalvageable. However, a ruined blouse was the least of her problems. Garza’s men are here!

  After mentally retracing her steps, she decided it must have happened when she’d pushed her way out of the crowded elevator just before she’d entered the hearing room. She had no option but to leave immediately, especially with so many reporters present as she couldn’t afford the media taking an interest in her.

  Covering the wound with tissues and her handkerchief, she took off her stockings and wound them around her torso to hold her ad hoc dressing in place. Once she had washed the blood off her hands and straightened herself up, she looked in the mirror and took a deep breath to settle the rage growing inside.

  Targeting her in such a public place showed Garza was getting desperate. Her attacker had not intended to kill her, or she would have been dead. Instead, they had planned to disable her and take her to Garza. Once she was in his clutches, it would only be a matter of time before they had the book glasses.

  Upon exiting the bathroom, she strode along the hallway and took the stairs down, intentionally not looking back, despite knowing she was being followed. Her footsteps echoed around the empty stairwell and, once on ground level, she hid behind a large metal electrical cabinet, adjacent to the exit.

  Her pursuers’ footsteps grew louder and as she waited, it was apparent that there were at least three people giving chase. She put the book glasses back on, slipped off her stilettos and waited patiently.

  When her first two pursuers arrived on the ground level, she stepped out in front of them and pointed to her glasses. “Are you looking for these? Come and get them, boys!”

  “You’re not tricking us again, bitch,” Silverback said from the stairs, and then to his thugs, “Get me those fucking glasses now!”

  Before they could react, Sam struck out, one of her stiletto shoes in each hand. She ducked and weaved through the men’s strikes until she made it through the defences of first one, then the other, stabbing them both in the throat. Leaving them incapacitated and bleeding on the floor, she turned her attention to Silverback, quickly dropping him with a sidekick to his neck.

  “I’m not going to ask again, is Garza in Sydney or Italia?” Sam asked as she stood over him and watched him gasping for air.

  “Sy-de-ney,” he said, barely getting the word out.

  “Where?” Sam asked, pressing the heel of her shoe into his throat.

  “Thirty-second… Shangri-La!” he replied, breathing almost normally.

  “Room number?”

  “32… 0… 8.”

  Before he had time to blink, Sam swung her arm back and drove her stiletto heel into his neck, killing him instantly. Then she wiped the blood off both of her heels onto his shirt and attached her shoes to her wrists via the slingback ankle straps.

  But she couldn’t leave the bodies in plain sight. They could be discovered at any time. She needed to be well clear of the building before that happened.

  There was space under the stairs where the light didn’t quite reach. She dragged each of her attackers around there. By the time she was finished, she was huffing and puffing and shook her head in dismay at the smeared blood trail that led to the shadowy recess. She may as well have erected a billboard saying, “Dead bodies this way”.

  She followed the hallway behind the stairs and found a door, but it was locked. The second one she came to was also locked, but when she tried the handle on the third, it opened. A mop was too much to hope for, but there were a couple of buckets and a sink.

  She filled the buckets with water and used it to wash away the blood smears until there were only pink puddles of water left on the polished concrete floor. A final bucket of water rinsed away the pink, leaving the floor shiny and wet.

  After stowing the buckets with the bodies, Sam put her shoes back on and exited the building via the doors at the bottom of the stairs.

  Finding herself in a narrow laneway, she followed it along the building and back onto the busy street. Once she had put a couple of blocks between herself and the government building, she withdrew some cash from an ATM and, further down the block, stepped into a shop advertising fashion footwear. She quickly selected a pair of elegant navy suede pumps with stiletto heels and asked the retail assistant to retrieve a pair in her size. She paid in cash and left the shop and continued walking down the street.

  At the entrance to the next alley, she stopped and took out her mobile phone and pretended to take a call. Upon confirm
ing the alley was deserted, she headed down past a large dumpster. She opened the shoebox and placed the navy pumps on the ground, then removed her Jimmy Choo stilettos and slipped on the new shoes.

  After wiping her Jimmy Choos down and shoving them into the shoebox, she flung it into the dumpster and walked away. Yes, they were gorgeous designer shoes that cost twelve hundred dollars, but they were also murder weapons and she could not afford to be caught wearing them.

  She caught a bus to the upmarket Shangri-La Hotel. She was determined to put an end to Garza permanently, for Mr Harman, for Dr Dunn, and especially for Billy. The thought of Billy and the dream of a life that because of Garza’s greed would never be was a momentary distraction that she quickly thrust to the back of her mind.

  Calmly and confidently, she made her way through the foyer to the lifts, eager to get this over and done without any further delay.

  Upon exiting the elevator on the thirty-second floor, she noticed an unattended housekeeping trolley further down the hallway. A quick inspection revealed a spare apron and she put it on over her clothes and proceeded to push the trolley slowly up and down the hallway.

  She didn’t need to wait long. The door to his room opened and Garza appeared to attend to the hotel staff member delivering room service, loudly insisting he would not be letting anyone into his room. Keeping her head down to conceal her face, she pushed the trolley closer.

  She felt a sharp pain in her shoulder, and she was grabbed from behind. She struggled against the strong arms that drew her back and pinned her against a large-muscled chest. Then everything went black.

  Keep Them On

  Through the slowly dissipating fog in her mind, she could hear male voices yelling at each other in Italian and kept her eyes closed as she tried to figure out where she was.

  She was no longer wearing the book glasses!

  Then she remembered entering the Shangri-La Hotel looking for Garza. Apparently, she’d found him or, more accurately, he’d found her. She was sitting upright in what felt like a single leather lounge chair and was pleasantly surprised to discover no restraints on her arms or legs.

  “Boss, it’s been over five hours. She must be conscious by now!” one of the men said in Italian. “Maybe I should throw her under the shower to wake her up.”

  “How much ketamine did you inject into her, you son of a bitch?” another man asked, also in Italian.

  “Shut the fuck up, you sons of bitches, can’t you see I’m reading? I’m on the computer and the phone. These fucking glasses are working my ass off here, and I don’t want to lose my focus because of you two fuckers. So help me God, I will kill you both if you don’t shut the fuck up,” Garza yelled back in Italian.

  “Look, now you made the boss mad, you son of a bitch,” one of the men said, lowering his voice as he walked away.

  “Fuck you, you’re the son of a bitch,” the other whispered and followed him into the next room.

  Sam wondered if Garza was feeling the side effects of wearing the glasses. If he’d been wearing them for the past five hours straight, then he probably was.

  She opened her eyes slightly to get an idea of the layout of the room. She was in a lounge chair with a three-seater couch on her right and a side table to her left. On it were a few glasses and an empty champagne bottle. Garza was seated at a desk on the other side, engrossed in a computer screen.

  And the thugs had walked out of the room and left the two of them by themselves while she was unrestrained. Garza needed to find better help.

  Not one to waste an opportunity, Sam leapt out of her chair and pounced on him, hitting him on the back of the head with the champagne bottle. He slumped to the floor, out cold, still wearing the glasses. She then turned to the two thugs who came racing in and powered towards her like a pair of freight trains. She stepped to the side as the two fools dived for her, their momentum throwing them past her. She snatched up the side table and threw it at one and he crashed to the floor in a heap.

  But the other had turned on her before she had the chance to do anything to him. She dodged behind some furniture, picking up Garza’s chair and using it to keep him at bay while she looked for another weapon.

  They both saw the gun at the same time, where it lay beside Garza. But Sam was closer, so she snatched it up and shot him in the chest. He sank to the floor, blood leaking from his torso.

  Sam jumped over his body and checked the guard she had hit with the table. She wasn’t sure he was dead, so she found some cord and tied him up.

  She picked up Garza’s chair and balanced it on his chest. With it bearing down on his neck and both arms, effectively locking him down hard, he quickly regained consciousness. Dazed, he looked up as a smiling Sam sat on the chair, side-saddle, looking down at him, while carelessly waving the Glock at him.

  “Buon giorno, Signor Garza!” Sam said.

  “Parli Italiano!” he said in shock.

  “Sure do, shithead. So, you like my glasses?”

  “They mio bitcha!” he replied in broken English.

  “Well, if you want them, you keep them on!” Sam said and stuffed a large white dinner napkin into his mouth.

  He thrashed about, trying to slip out from under the chair, so Sam threatened to put a bullet into each of his biceps if he didn’t stop moving. Then, she sat there watching for the onset of the book glasses side effects.

  Although she’d worn them once for as long as eight hours, which she believed had nearly killed her, she had found that five hours was the general limit for her. Five hours had come and gone for Garza, and this would be her opportunity to discover the full consequences of wearing them past the limits. And who better to use as a guinea pig?

  An hour passed and the chair under her began to rock, slowly at first, but by the third hour, Garza was thrashing around uncontrollably. His eyes were closed, and he no longer took any notice of her threats to shoot him.

  Even after realising blood was dripping from his eyes and down his cheeks, Sam still sat there, holding him down, waiting to see what would happen. Forty-five minutes later the chair, with Sam on it, was catapulted into the air and tossed halfway across the room. After landing on the lounge, feet first, Sam turned and saw Garza’s body suspended two inches off the floor. Then blood started gushing out of his eyes, propelling the book glasses into the air. They landed next to her, covered in blood.

  Sam didn’t bother checking his body; it was clear he was dead. Shocked but not entirely surprised, she picked up the book glasses and took them into the bathroom.

  After thoroughly cleaning the glasses and herself, she returned to the lounge but avoided looking at the carnage.

  Taking another napkin from the table, she carefully cleaned her fingerprints off the Glock and placed it back in its dead owner’s hand. Likewise, she wiped down what was left of the champagne bottle and the arms and backs of the chairs to remove any evidence linking her to the massacre.

  She put on a black wig she found in the bathroom. With her head down to avoid hotel cameras, she strolled casually down the hall and slipped into the elevator. Exiting at ground level into a busy foyer, she made her way out of the building as quickly as possible without drawing attention to herself.

  She slipped into a café next to the hotel and, after ordering her usual lemon tea and a glass of cold water, called Gower and Roth, and asked them to meet her there urgently. By the time she’d finished her beverages, the two detectives were there, waiting to hear the worst.

  “Garza and four of his thugs are all dead. I don’t know what happened. They grabbed me and injected me with something to knock me out and kidnapped me. When I came to hours later, I was lying on a lounge in a hotel room and then I discovered them… they were all dead.”

  She took a shaky breath and appeared to stare off into the distance. “There was so much blood… I was so scared. I quickly ran into the bathroom to hide. I waited for a while and, after not hearing a sound, I put on this wig I found in the bathroom and I got out of
there. I came here and called you straight away.” She put on a show of being rattled for the detectives’ sake.

  Gower said to Roth, “You stay with her while I take the uniforms up with me and check out the room.” He turned to Sam. “What room number?”

  “Room 3208.”

  Danger Is Over

  Hours later, in an interrogation room on the ninth floor of the police headquarters, tired of all the questions from Gower and Roth, Sam just wanted to go home. “How many times do I need to repeat myself? There’s nothing more I can tell you!” She was fed up with the questioning and she was not going to tolerate it any longer.

  “Sorry, Dr Page, but what happened in that hotel room is hard to explain and anything you can tell us would go a long way to help us make some sense of the carnage,” Roth said. “We are going to have a hard time explaining this.”

  “I don’t know what happened because I was unconscious. I don’t know any more than you do. I heard one of the men say they injected me with ketamine so I assume that will be confirmed when you get the results of the blood tests you asked for.

  “Gentlemen, I’ve told you everything I know and now I’m leaving. However it happened, Garza is dead and if whoever killed Garza wanted me dead, they would have killed me. They had the perfect opportunity. So, the danger to me is over and I’m finally going back to live my life without having to look over my shoulder anymore. Thank you for all your help and goodbye!”

  Sam got up to leave but was stopped by Gower blocking the door. “Get out of my way, Detective.”

  “Before you go, Sam,” Gower said, “with Garza dead, we hope that the threat to you is also gone but we cannot guarantee that is the case.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “We suggest you continue to be vigilant regarding your safety and we would still like you to keep in touch with Detective Gower and myself.” When Sam tried to interrupt, Roth held up his hand. “And Dr Page, if you refuse to consider your safety then perhaps you need to consider the safety of your unborn child.”