Chapter 2: The Girls Plan

Exactly how I convinced Billy to accept Brown’s demand, I will probably never know. I had to make a few promises myself, and beg a little. But deep down, I think he was in all along.

The kid’s disappearance had affected us differently. I felt my intelligence diminished, something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I was responsible. It was my duty to foresee those things, to prevent them.

I never relied on Billy or Sullivan, not like they could be smarter than me anyway. I did my job thinking I was the only one protecting the mom and child. And before the incident, I had a perfect record.

Billy, on the other hand, didn’t see his honor touched. He simply thought he was the one that was supposed to jump in front of the bullets instead of Sullivan. He was the big guy, he didn’t think, he acted.

Of course, Billy and I had been subdued before either of us could realize the magnitude of what was happening. There was simply no chance of us getting outside of the car. But he was wounded. He should have gone after Lily, he should have posed as her armor. That was his job.

Yes, Billy didn’t need to see the boy’s picture, he’d had enough when he heard his name. He was still pretty shaken about the idea of kidnapping Toes, and mostly focused on how to live to tell the story rather than pulling it off.

Both of us had things to do, so we set off to play our routine characters and agreed to meet again at three at Catalo’s Bar, a place that held lots of memories of our past lives. But before we headed our ways, we had our first assignments set. Billy would reach out to a couple of guys he met back in the old days that were still working with Toes. In my opinion, talking to somebody that close to him was a bad idea, but he insisted they all owed him. Plus, having someone on the inside was comforting for him, so he wouldn’t let me argue with it.

Since I was the smart one, I came up with my own assignment. I was going to track Brown’s activities and try to figure out what he’d been doing, who he was talking to and most importantly, anything I could find out about where he was last Thursday.

Billy, in a sudden inspiration of brightness, had kindly reminded me that Brown was a poor excuse of a man, and that we shouldn’t trust a word he’d said. Still, I thought that piece of info had slipped out of his mouth before he could even think about what he was saying.

I started driving back home, going through everything that had happened. Anyone would think they’d remember killing somebody as one of the most significant events of their lives. They’d think a fresh image of the look in the eyes of the one who was about to die at their hands would flash inside their heads every night, giving them nightmares.

Me, on the other hand, I’d completely forgotten all about Billy’s friend. Last night I had the best meal I’d tasted in months at Ginny’s. We weren’t supposed to stay, we had tickets for the latest chick flick at nine thirty, but things heated on too quickly and we decided to drop that plan.

Virginia Miles was a hot girl I’d known my entire life. We’d been friends ever since I could remember, yet we always argued for the smallest things. We were always picking on one another, trying to make the other one snap. Our friends hated that. It sometimes got physical, and not in the good way. But we were always there for each other.

By the time she first slept with a guy I’d already been with almost half of the volleyball team, and some other girls too. Of course, that first guy happened to be my oldest brother Johnny, something I found out years later, and I still considered that kind of made us even.

That got us apart for some time until we happened to attend to the same Christmas party two years ago. In a second, I’d realized that every fight, every argument, every mischievous plan I’d plotted against her, was simply a reflection of my most secret intentions: to be close to her, to have her attention, and have her thinking of me… even if it meant trying to work out how to get back at me for something.

It suddenly became so clear to me it was painful to my own intelligence. Anyone would have realized the nature of the hostility between us was pure attraction, yet that never crossed my head. She certainly felt the same way I did, both attracted to me and frustrated for not being able to figure it out earlier. And that was how our relationship was reborn into… well, whatever it was now.

Ginny was good for me in a lot of ways. She reminded me of who I was when I needed it the most. No matter what happened, she was always there for me. And most importantly, she was the one constant in my life.

She never knew much about what I did. Partly because I didn’t want her to get hurt, and also because even though I enjoyed my edgy way of living, deep down I’d always been a bit embarrassed of it.

I grew up in a fine family who taught me well, went to good schools and made friends with the right kind of people. But nothing was ever enough. I just had the urge of more.

I’d always been very curious and daring. My two older brothers practically pushed me to that state.

Johnny was a role model. He was good at anything he did, and he was absurdly modest. He had more college degrees than the rest of our family altogether, and he was always giving in some way. Scott, on the other hand, was a showoff. Sports were his drive and he had his own trophy cabinet.

Growing up in their shadow wasn’t easy. It was true that I could have focused my desire to stand out on something less dangerous. I’d always believed I could have won a Nobel if I wanted to, but I chose the easy way.

And this was a perfectly good example. There I was, driving my car in a lonely road, thinking about how on Earth I could kidnap a head gangster only to figure out where a lost boy was being held and risk my life trying to save him and give him back to his mother, who I hadn’t seen in years. Too complicated, even for me.

But enough with that, I really needed to focus on Brown now. He was the key, he held all the questions. Why would he want Toes for? Why would he ask us to do it? Was he involved in the disappearing of the young Oliver Turner? A million ideas danced in my mind.

Brown was always very mysterious and acted as if he was above the law. This alone left endless possibilities to the extent of our problem. In addition, he worked by himself and never cared about any soul other than his. This could explain why he didn’t mind exposing the kidnappers of Lily’s son. But still, there was something fishy about the whole situation.

As I was considering this, I realized I was almost home. I left the highway and took the first road to the left, avoiding the traffic on 1^st Avenue.

I was driving down the street when I realized it was practically deserted, unlike the weekends. This was comforting since it didn’t give me much to think about. I’d always tended to overanalyze things, which often ended up distracting me from what was going on.

A light breeze brushed my hair back through the half rolled-down window as I passed the last intersection and I started slowing down. I parked in the same spot my car was last night, right before I left to Ginny’s.

I got out of the car and crossed the lawn almost running. Even though until then I’d felt no rush, a sudden sense of urgency flooded my mind. I stopped once I reached the door and started going through my pockets looking for the keys. You could tell how full of useless stuff my jeans were just by touching them. A low wrinkled paper sound announced its contents, and just thinking about how many pieces I kept gave me a headache.

I always kept every receipt, wrapping or anything of the sort with me. My mother was very strict when it came to littering and forced me to keep everything with me until I could find a trash bin to dispose it. Of course, I inherited my father’s short term memory for things that weren’t important, which left my clothes and baggage overcrowded with garbage.

It took me a minute to find the front door key, which I remembered was safely stored in the left pocket of my shirt. I got inside and took a moment to breathe before I went back to thinking.

Somehow I realized there were other things going on in my life that I’d forgotten completely about in the last few hours. I had to attend to my niece’s play tonight, and I’d promised Ginny I’d take her with me; it was almost June, which meant I had to start thinking of an alibi to avoid my mother’s annual party, which was too populated for my taste; and last but definitely not least, I had to look for those damned DVDs my boss gave me before she kicked me out. Yet, nothing presented a good excuse for what I was going through right now. After only days of getting back with Billy, I was over my head already.

It wasn’t that Billy was a bad influence. In fact, sometimes I thought I was the bad influence, but that wasn’t true either. The real damage happened when we got together. Somehow that triggered the worst of us. It was like dusting the little demon over my left shoulder and watching it push the sleeping angel on my right one.

Yes, Billy and I did plenty of things together, and the score was scarily against us. I wondered if finding the Turner kid would call it even.

My cell phone started vibrating frantically in my jacket. As I took it out, I noticed my lost weapon hanging heavily in the inside pocket. After all, it was a good thing I found it just now. It would have been a real mess if I’d attacked Brown back on the frozen lake. If I’d done that, I would have never found out Oliver was still alive, nor would I be figuring out how to abduct a feared man whose drive was looking for excuses to massacre people. I would have probably been back at my original plan of getting back what was mine, as I was last night.

The buzzing sound in my hand slapped the thought out of my head. I looked at the caller ID; it was Billy.

“Already bugging me, sweetheart?”

“I got a lead from one of the guys.” He said at once. That was fast. For him, obviously.

“It turns out Toes is on a special treatment for hair recovery, and he has an appointment with his doctor this afternoon.”

I wasn’t even going to start on the hair issue; that would have driven Billy crazy. Instead, I thought I had to focus on his recent discovery and avoid the nagging.

“Too soon.” I sentenced. “We can’t do this today, there’s a lot of research we need to do, I’m not taking any risks.”

“Me neither, but this might be the perfect chance.” He continued. “The doctor’s office is at Silver Palace, and it’s just a couple of floors below Mooney’s office.”

Come to think about it, it was a good chance. We’d been in and out of that building thousands of times. Our good friend, Urban Mooney, had been working there for the past seven years. He had a regular sized office on the eighteenth floor. It even had a window.

Mooney worked at the travel assistance office of GoneTouring Agency, part of the Wholly Group. His only job was to make sure all travel insurance applications were properly filled and delivered. It was an easy job, too easy in fact. Anyone would think he would get tired of doing that after a year, but Moon thought differently. It was a simple job that could be done without thinking, and that’s what he needed.

Once upon a time there was an awkward little family, the Mooneys. Mommy Mooney, daddy Mooney and young Peter Jay lived in a small apartment in the second worst neighborhood of Blarywood City.

Silvia, the mom, was completely deaf from her left ear. She was also slightly paranoid and kept insisting a man in a blue suit followed her to the dry-cleaning every Saturday.

Our friend, Urban, was special. Having three older sisters, he had always been his mom’s favorite and his dad’s pride. This gave him the green light to do pretty much anything he wanted, including what he was better at: nothing.

When we met him he was already married to Silvia, and had the poor girl working all day long while he… did nothing, of course. A little over a year later they had Peter Jay, and Moon stopped being the spotlight and became a thirty-year-old man with no working experience whatsoever and a family to provide to. So when he got his job at GoneTouring he thought he had hit the jackpot. It had no chances of career advancement, and his salary was frozen like a deer in the headlights of a car, and yet, it was Moon’s dream.

Billy and I had been in that office so frequently people often confused us for the agency’s employees… and naturally we took advantage of their confusion on a regular basis.

But that was another story. The fact was that we knew that building like the palm of our hands, which made Billy’s tip worth considering. What wasn’t comforting at all was the short time we had to prepare our plan.

“Let’s pretend we have a flawless plan.” Suddenly I figured I had to think out loud to let Billy into my mind. “It’s Tuesday. How are we going to hold Toes till Friday?”

Silence. I could picture Billy’s frown yanking as he thought of an answer. It was a really good question, actually. Brown made it very clear that he would meet us on Friday, which sounded like he was trying to give us at least some time to pull this off. But what if we had him before then? Should we call him and try to get rid of the package sooner? Would Brown accept this change in the deal?

“You’ll figure it out,” he finally said.

I had to give it to Billy, he wasn’t that stupid after all. He must have known such a compliment would reach that tiny piece of courage I kept hiding, and make me ride with him in this nonsense.

I’ve always been the smart one. How could I argue the guy?

We agreed it was worth taking it into consideration and went back to our original plan: we were meeting at Catalo’s at three.

I looked around and realized I was lying on my bed, toying with the remote. Surely my body had slowly dropped me there while I was on the phone.

The sheets on my bed were all tangled, and the more I searched through them the more I found: an mp3 player, my wireless phone, another remote, which belonged to my CD player… and sweet honey from heaven, Ginny’s lost purple push-up bra. She brought it with her last Saturday, but left braless after what she defined as a thorough search of the entire house. I’d seen the bra and pushed it under the bed right after she checked there. I knew it was somewhere in my room, but this was still a nice surprise.

As I played with Ginny’s underwear I remembered I had things to do. I had to find my laptop and start working on Brown. By this time, I’d had more than enough time to think about Brown’s words. I decided I should avoid the whole trust issue and needed to try and track down his latest activities. The first thing in my priority list was to check for his whereabouts last week and try to narrow down the possible locations where the kid could be held captive. The second, find out what he’d been up to the past few weeks, and try to connect that with the Turner kid.

I went to the desk and confirmed what I was suspecting: the computer wasn’t there. Given the general appearance of my home, this was no shock. I got out of the room and started searching the house. In the meantime, I thought I could save some time and started calling a few friends I had at the police station.

I called Fran first. She worked at the Payroll office, and surely she could tell me about every minute Brown had been on duty.

“He was in all week.” She dragged every word out of her mouth in the most repellent way I’ve ever heard. “I remember because the newbies arrived and he had a lot of work training them.”

She made a pause and I could hear her breathing in excitement. “I might be able to check who he was with on Thursday, but that might cost you a bit.”

Somehow that revolting feeling I had in my throat turned unbearable. I kept picturing Fran’s long curly hair scattered all over her sweaty body, and her droopy eyes looking at me over that eagle nose of hers. But the worst part, the thing that had always kept me away from her, was the thick fuzz over her upper lip. The woman never looked at a mirror.

Anyway, it was time for me to play my part, or else I would have to start digging information from another source.

“Sugar, nothing would please me more than to owe you that much.” Sick freak, I should have been hanged for saying such a lie. But of course, that line combined with my deep tone of voice was a guaranteed success with such a heated female.

An instant later, a keyboard sound announced she was crazily looking for something, anything useful that would give her the excuse she was after.

“On Wednesday he had Officer Gates go with him to a crime scene at Moira Valley. On Thursday…”

Her sudden silence was not encouraging. “That’s strange,” she meditated, “I have no record of his whereabouts on Thursday.”

That was it. That was what I was looking for: a blank.

“I do know, however, that on Friday he was back with Gates, at least until noon. You know he takes Friday afternoons very seriously.” She made a snorting sound louder that should be allowed and giggled like a teenager.

“So I guess this is all I can tell you.” Her voice was back on lugged mode. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine some hot chick before I replied.

“I owe you, baby.” Disgusting. “I’ll stop by next week and make it up to you.” Ha! What she didn’t know is that I wasn’t probably going to make it till the weekend. But that wasn’t funny for a number of reasons.

I started forgetting her words as they traveled to my ear. And with good reason. So far, I’d asked Fran simple things, the kind that can be made without feeling guilty. In exchange, I’d let her flirt with me and feel better about herself. I was a hero, no man would willingly act the way I did with her.

I went to the kitchen and drank what was left of the orange juice I had in the fridge. This whole situation got my mouth dry.

The good part was that Brown went to work on Wednesday and Friday. This meant that whatever he did on Thursday, wherever he went, it wasn’t far away. I had to check with Ali, my good friend at the airport, and beg he could find out if the Detective’s name appeared on any manifest. Knowing that meant rolling out a lot of places.

But before I drifted away again, I thought I should call Gin and let her know we had to cancel tonight’s plan. Otherwise I would have probably forget all about it and stand her up… again.

I still had my phone on my right hand so I might as well got it done with. She was the only person I had on speed dial.

After a few rings her voicemail popped up. I wondered if she was still sleeping. She didn’t like sleeping late; she loved sleeping but knew she could just lay on her bed all day long if she didn’t find the will to get up. Of course, nobody could have blamed her if she used a few extra hours to recover; after all, we’d had a crazy night.

I thought about leaving her a kinky message referring to our recent adventures, but I gave up on that idea as soon as I heard the beep. Instead, I smoothly said that I couldn’t make it tonight and that she should go out and have fun on her own. It wasn’t a detailed message, but then again I knew she was going to understand. That was another good thing about Gin: I didn’t need to come up with any excuses.

All of a sudden, I realized I was starving. I wasn’t just hungry, my guts were screaming for loads of food, fast. I turned around again, facing the fridge. Obviously, that wasn’t a good idea. As a good old bachelor, my refrigerator was full of useless junk. The best thing I could have hoped for was finding some leftovers from God knows when and cross my fingers, but something told me I had to look somewhere else.

I took a quick shower and put on my best pair of jeans and a white shirt. As I searched for my snickers I noticed a black suitcase under the bed. I probably would never know how it got there, but at least I’d solved the laptop mystery.

With my Toshiba under my left arm and my jacket half on, I closed the door behind me and started walking East. It wasn’t even one o’clock yet, but I decided to eat at the bar when Billy and I had agreed to meet and save some time.

As I order the first thing I could think of, I placed my computer on the table and started digging through last week’s newspapers. A few articles caught my attention when I searched for crimes perpetrated late last week. The first one was a frustrated robbery at a local supermarket that ended up with a dead criminal and another in the ICU after a cop furiously opened fire to them.

The second one was described as a crime of passion: murder-suicide. The deceased couple lived in a little town a few miles from here.

Even though the third one didn’t qualify as a crime, somehow I felt I had to go over it. There was a small picture of a car crushed against some trees and a Do Not Cross sign. It read there were three adults and a child inside the crushed car, and nobody made it out alive.

They were presumed to be going on a short getaway, police informed, although they didn’t bring with them more than a backpack with the girl’s school books. They couldn’t find any reservation made under any of their names in the nearby and not so nearby hotels either. Tire marks suggested the vehicle had turned right abruptly a few feet away from the crash scene. After further investigation, the forensic concluded there were rests of a recreational drug on the driver’s system, though there was no formal statement.

I read the article about four times before sitting back to think. I noticed the waitress leaving my table just then. Good timing.

I must have finished the sandwich in three bites, I was really hungry. I thought about ordering another one, but that thought abandoned my mind as soon as I remembered the article.

A few things didn’t add up. For once, the kid heading out of town in the middle of the week was fishy. The fact that she carried her backpack with her probably meant she’d suddenly left school.

The driver being high, on the other hand, was odd too. The paper didn’t say anything about the others being clean or not, but with two other adults in the car, chances are at least one of them should had been able to drive.

Finally, for the vehicle to have left such intense marks on the asphalt it had to be speeding the devil out of it, not the traditional way of skipping town for a short vacation.

Perhaps I was being delusional. After all, I was really hungry when I read the news for the first time and I still had the Margaritas thumping my liver. I figured I had to wait until the food kicked in.

I used the spare time to make the calls I’d delayed earlier. I found no useful information, but at least I got to discard some possibilities. As I suspected, Brown hadn’t boarded any flight in at least the past 10 days, which meant wherever he went had to be at enough driving distance for him to be back at least on Friday morning.

My other informant at the station was a junior detective who had worked next to Brown on some occasions. We’d grown up in the same neighborhood, a little fact Brown knew nothing about, probably because the only thing we shared back then was a couple of twins: Sheila and Shona. The girls looked exactly the same, and they both liked to party as… well, as I did, probably.

The stories we had together were… distracting enough for me to deviate my thoughts, hence I took those brunettes out of my mind and tried to concentrate again. Maybe another sandwich.

The chair in front of me made a sharp sound against the wooden floor. As I looked up I saw Billy all dressed up sitting down. Was it three already?

“Is it three already?” I repeated, out of my head this time.

“No,” He replied tilting his head as if he was trying to swallow a big pill. “I needed to grab a bite.”

I could see those Margaritas blurring his mind too.

He hurried the ordering and after doing so, he checked nobody was close enough to even have an idea of what we were talking about. Then he relaxed –all but his frown, of course.

“What do you have?” He asked -poker night flashback.

For the first time in my life, I felt smaller than Billy. He’d found a lead, a good one, in little time, while I’d come up with barely useful data that didn’t point us in any direction, it just told us where not to look, and it wasn’t very specific. And I even had to flirt it out of Furry Francine.

I told Billy about my conversations and my thoughts while he just looked at me and nodded every other time. When I was done, he waited in silence looking through the closest window.

“Have you thought about what I said?” He said anxiously after providing me with a decent amount of time to believe he was digesting my inside information.

I exhaled loudly in disapproval. But I’d given up defending my speech; next to Billy’s founds it was almost worthless.

“I have.” I said looking at him. “I still think we have little time.”

“I thought about that too,” he replied quickly taking some kind of paper out of his pocket, “so I figured we had to start on it right away.”

He stretched what looked like a map a ten year old had drawn on the table and started pointing at different parts of the drawing with a pen.

“This is the building. “ He started. “Here’s Moon’s floor, and here’s the practice of Dr. Richards.” He pointed at two large squares separated from a bigger one on the middle. “There’s only one entrance to the Doctor’s office, which is here. It leads to a large reception. There are two assistants at the front desk, one that takes care of the phone and the doctor’s schedule, and the other one welcomes the patients and gets them through.”

It looked like Billy had done a good job finding out everything about our destination. The picture, though silly, included what seemed to be every door, window, hall and room of the seventh floor. Even the chairs were numbered.

“The first room on the right is where he takes the consults. It’s connected to the sterilized room where he performs the treatment Toes is getting, among other things.”

As Billy explained the functions of every corner of Dr. Richards practice, I started picturing a plan in my mind. There was enough to work with, and soon enough the sketch started whispering its flaws to me.

First of all, there were three rooms which were all connected and each one of them had a reason to be locked and keep people away. This would provide us with the opportunity to somehow maneuver Toes and not raise suspicion.

Then, there was the doctor’s staff. As Billy had delightfully explained, besides the two receptionists there were three other employees: the doctor’s personal assistant, an anesthesiologist and an intern. Each one of them a different opportunity we had to gain territory and infiltrate ourselves into the office.

At last, there was the lack of security in the floor. The building itself was extremely well protected. It had eight guards at the lobby, two metal detectors at the front and back entrances, dozens of cameras in every elevator, hall and stairs, and alarms on every office that summoned another four officers that patrolled through the building in a matter of seconds.

But the Doc’s office had no defense whatsoever, and that was essential. That meant that we only had to worry about Toes’ bodyguards, and that we seriously had a good chance.

I took the pen and started scrabbling on the piece of paper while I put together a few ideas I’d came up in the last few moments. I realized I’d interrupted Billy when I did this, which was strange since I hadn’t heard a word out of him in the past several minutes.

I was on my game and it felt just fine. Everything started falling into place as if the answer had always been right in front of us, plain and simple. And Billy was himself once more, staring at the mastermind in silence.

By time we were supposed to meet at the bar, we were heading out and into my car towards Silver Palace with a thorough plan and a couple of beers.