3 Bad Guys Get Caught (15 page)

Janet wearily jiggled the front door key
of her apartment. All she wanted right now was to collapse into her bed and
forget about this annoying day. She opened the door and heard Baxter’s happy
barking, accompanied by the sound of his scrambling paws hitting the floor. In
an instant, he was bouncing at her feet, his tongue hanging out in excitement.

“Baxter!” Janet scooped him up into her
arms.

“Tough day?” Dennis stood in the foyer,
leaning against the wall.

“Hi!” Instantly, her fatigue was lifted
away. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“I told you I’d be here.”

“I thought your date might run long.”

“Are we back to that again?”

“No, I’m sorry.” Janet lowered Baxter
onto the floor and kicked off her shoes. “Oh, that feels nice!” she exclaimed,
rubbing her feet against the cool wooden surface.

“Hot bath coming right up,” Dennis said,
heading down the hall.

A few moments later there was the sound
of running water coming from the bathroom. Janet headed into the bedroom, took
off her clothes and changed into a bathrobe. She sat down on the bed, thinking
about what to do next. She was dying to question Dennis about what happened
during his meeting with Mila, but she didn’t want to be overbearing. No, she
resolved, she wasn’t going to bring up the subject first.

“Your bath awaits you, my lady.” Dennis
sat down next to her and started to massage her shoulders.

“Mmm, that feels nice.”

“Come on, up you go and into that bath.”

Janet followed Dennis’s orders.

“Now you settle in, and I’ll be back in
a few to tell you about my day.” Dennis closed the bathroom door behind him.

“Thanks, you’re an angel.” Janet sank
into the hot water, relishing the tingling sensation against her skin. Whoever
invented hot baths was a genius. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
The lavender bath foam enveloped her into a blanket of serenity. This was
heaven; well, almost heaven, had it not been for the pesky thoughts of Mila
littering her brain. Be patient, she thought, wait for Dennis to tell you
himself.

A few moments later, Dennis rapped on
the door. “May I come in?”

“Yes.” Janet gathered the foam around
her, making sure it covered her. She wasn’t a prude, but she didn’t want to be
naked in front of Dennis when they were talking shop.

“How’s the bath?” Dennis asked, perching
on the tub edge.

“It’s heavenly. I feel reborn.”

“Glad I could help. So how was your
day?”

“Uneventful, annoying, exhausting.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I did get to carry Libby’s dirty
plates, though.”

“What? Libby dined at Panther?”

“Yeah, he came with his wife; it was
their anniversary. They ordered lobster bisque, duck and steak. Then they
polished it all off with chocolate soufflé. Then he paid the check. Other than
that, I haven’t learned anything new about him. Oh, he’s kind of a lousy
tipper: took the booze off the tip.”

“Still, that’s something.”

“Come on, Dennis. That’s nothing. I’m
starting to think that this whole thing was a really stupid idea.”

“It wasn’t a stupid idea. Undercover
work takes time.”

“We don’t have much time. We need to get
intel on Libby pronto, and we’ve got zilch. Unless you got something?”

“I got something, but not on Libby.”

“Oh?”

“Mila hired me to do a job.”

Janet’s eyebrows knitted together. “What
kind of a job?”

“Don’t worry, there’s no sex involved.
By the way, thanks for calling me a sex addict. That was very clever of you.”

Janet felt her whole body burning with
embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I said it in the heat of the moment. Mila was asking
me if you were into women. Apparently, she was upset that you weren’t into her,
so it just kind of rolled off my tongue. I don’t know where it came from.”

“I think I can guess. You needn’t worry;
I’m not going to cheat on you with Mila, or with anyone for that matter. She
wants me to break into a safe and hack into a bank account to get back her
inheritance.”

“Her inheritance?”

“Yes, the money her grandmother left
her. She said it’s over a million dollars and told me a teary story about how
her boyfriend, Anton Kovar, stole it from her. I think you and I both can guess
that it’s way over one million, and it wasn’t left to her by her grandmother.”

“It’s Muller’s money. It explains why
she’s stuck with Kovar. She must’ve asked him to help her wire the money out of
Muller’s accounts and he took it for himself.”

“Bingo.”

“So do you know how to hack a safe?”

“I’m a little rusty, but I think I can
manage. I’ve got a training session with one of my buddies tomorrow.”

“When’s the job?”

“The day after tomorrow. I’m going to
wear a bug and record the whole thing.”

“You think of everything, don’t you?”

“I try to do my best notwithstanding the
distractions.”

“What distractions?”

“Do you think it’s easy to concentrate
with that leg of yours poking out of the foam like that? Are you tempting me on
purpose?”

“It’s just my leg.”

Dennis ran his fingers from the tip of
Janet’s toes down the length of her leg, reaching lower. “And this is just my
hand.”

Janet moaned from a jolt of pleasure.

“I think you’ve had enough of that
bath.”

“Did I now?”

“Most definitely. You know, these things
have to be consumed in moderation.” Dennis reached for a towel and lifted her
onto her feet, wrapping her into the warm cotton.

“Mmm, feels delicious.”

“Well then, you’ll love what I have
planned next.”

Janet giggled as Dennis lifted her into
his arms. She leaned her head against his chest, secure in the firm grip of his
embrace—the embrace of the man who loved her, even if he didn’t say it out
loud.

Dennis rapped his fingers on Ham Kirk’s
office door.

“Come in!”

Dennis straightened his jacket and went
inside.

Ham looked up from his computer screen.
He was dressed in one of his invariable charcoal suits, accompanied by an
argyle tie; the same attire he used to favor at the Treasury. “Dennis! How are
you? It’s been a while.”

Dennis pretended not to notice Ham’s
sarcasm; they saw each other in the office every day.

“Have you got any news for me?” Ham
prodded.

“As a matter of fact I have.” Dennis
took a seat in one of the armchairs across from Ham’s desk.

Ham rubbed his hands. “Might it have
something to do with Libby?” he asked.

“No.”

“No?”

“No, but I think you’ll be interested to
hear it all the same.”

Ham steepled his fingers. “It seems that
I don’t have much choice in the matter, so by all means, go ahead.”

“I am ninety nine percent sure that we
found the link to Muller’s money.”

“You mean David Muller, the insider
trading crook who was in cahoots with Finnegan?”

“That’s the one.”

Ham leaned forward in his chair. “This
is very interesting news indeed. Do tell me more.”

“Janet was the one who found the lead on
this one through her undercover work at Panther. She became friendly with a
hostess there, Mila Brabec, and learned that Mila is Muller’s ex-girlfriend.”
Dennis proceeded to tell Ham about his meeting with Mila and her retaining him
to break into Anton Kovar’s safe and bank account.

“So you think that this Mila Brabec
swiped Muller’s money?”

“I don’t think that she did it; she
asked Anton Kovar to help her move the funds and he put the money into his own
account. Now, she’s looking for a way to get it back from him, and she thinks
I’m the man to help her.”

“Excellent work, Dennis. Excellent
work.” Ham rubbed his chin. “Our friends at the FBI will be very excited to
hear about this. You know, they are offering a sizeable reward for locating
Muller’s ill-gotten funds. It goes without saying that this wonderful discovery
of yours is going to bring lots of assignments to our agency. It’s almost as
good as getting an update on Libby. How’s that going by the way?”

“It’s going,” Dennis replied evasively.
“We just need a little bit more time.”

“You’ve got a week tops, Dennis. After
that I’m going to have to go back to the client and say that we couldn’t find
anything. Getting back to the Muller lead: when are you meeting with that Mila
Brabec character?”

“Tomorrow night. I’m supposed to meet
her in her boyfriend’s apartment. She sent me the model of the safe; it
shouldn’t be that difficult to break into.”

“Have you had lots of experience with
that sort of thing?”

“Some.” The truth was that Dennis’s
experience with safes was cursory to say the least. When he had been
freelancing for the Feds, he had been given a crash tutorial on the subject,
but he had never actually exercised the skills he’d been taught.

“I think it’s time for a little
refresher. While you’re at it, you should brush up on your hacking skills as
well. Breaking into a bank account is no simple matter. I’ll arrange for a
training session with a buddy of mine. He used to work for the Feds, but now he
mostly does contract work.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose—”

“Dennis, it’s anything but imposing.
We’re going to deliver a major piece of missing evidence to the Feds, and you
can rest assured that I want this operation to go off without a hitch. The
reward amount posted by the FBI is ten percent of the total sum. So you do the
math.”

“What about Mila? Shouldn’t she get a
finder’s fee?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because she’s the one giving us the
lead. Because I feel sorry for her,” Dennis added. “She’s got no one here, and
I feel that she should receive some compensation for everything she’s been
through.”

“I never took you for a sentimentalist,
Dennis. Tell you what, you make sure that tonight goes off without a hitch, and
then you can do what you will with your bonus.”

“Are you saying there’ll be a bonus?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Get
the job done first. Now, there’s the matter of Janet’s undercover involvement
at Panther. Given the recent developments, it’s imperative that she terminate
this engagement.”

“Sir, we still aren’t any closer to
learning about Libby’s connection with Kovar than we’ve been in the beginning
of the assignment—”

“Precisely my point, Dennis. You and
Janet gave it your best, and you weren’t able to discover any additional information.
So Kovar happened to buy a majority stake in a company that Libby had invested
in, so what?”

“Nothing much, except for the fact that
Libby turned his initial investment of fifty thousand into five million
dollars. You don’t see these kinds of returns every day.”

“No, you don’t. Still, it is possible.
Think about all those people who invested into Yahoo stock when it first went
public. Were they also in cahoots with Kovar?”

“Kovar didn’t buy a majority stake in
Yahoo.”

“I know that,” Ham snapped. “I was just
trying to make a point. Look, Libby is no longer an investor in the company, is
he? And Kovar didn’t own the company at the time of Libby’s initial investment.
For all we know it could have been a coincidence.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Ham exhaled loudly. “No, but frankly I
don’t care. Libby is a small fish. I’ll just have to go back to the client and
say that our findings are inconclusive. The facts are in Libby’s favor: his
office financials are clean, and he has an outstanding public record. The party
management should be satisfied with that.”

“What if things surface later on?”

“Who says they will? Maybe Libby is
clean. Look, let’s be realistic here. Sure, I like chasing after the bad guys,
but the bottom line is that I’m running a business here. We had an assignment
on Libby—“

“We have an assignment on Libby.”

“Effective immediately, you and Janet
are both off the Libby case. I want you to focus on that Mila character and
retrieve Muller’s missing funds. I’ve got a nice little background check job
for Janet to start working on. It’s time she got back to the office.”

“Sir, Janet’s waitressing job at Panther
was the link that brought us to Mila in the first place. Now you want to assign
the Muller case to me and put Janet back in the office?”

“That’s right. Janet is great at doing
the prep work, and you are great at nailing the leads. At least you usually
are, and I hope that you won’t disappoint this time.”

“No, sir. However, I hope that you’ll
agree with me that Janet deserves another chance to finish her reconnaissance
at Panther. She just needs a little bit more time. Libby and his wife had
dinner at Panther last night. It was their anniversary.”

Ham leaned forward. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. They ordered lobster bisque for
the first course; Libby had steak and his wife had duck, followed by chocolate
soufflé, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.”

“Did they dine on the house?”

“No, they paid the bill, although Libby
turned out to be a cheap tipper.” Dennis repeated Janet’s feedback.

“Anything else besides Libby’s
gastronomical habits?”

“That’s it for now, but there’s got to
be more. Janet and I both got a hunch.”

“Well then, it’s time to close the Libby
case.”

“With all due respect, sir, this just
isn’t right.”

“With all due respect, I’m still your
boss and you’ll follow my orders. Unless, of course, you’d like to open your
own agency; then you can pursue any assignments you see fit.” Ham rubbed his
forehead. “I’m sorry, Dennis, that didn’t come out right. What I mean is that
we’ve spent more than enough resources on Libby; it’s time to move on. I trust
that you will communicate my decision to Janet, or should I do it personally?”

“I think it will be best if I deliver
the message, sir,” Dennis said, wondering how he was going to break the news to
Janet. It was a rotten situation with him getting all the credit, and Janet
being pushed to the side. He hadn’t intended for this outcome; at least not
consciously, or could it be that Janet was right, and he just couldn’t help
being in the center of things? “Can you at least give her until tomorrow to
wrap up?”

“Fine.” Ham nodded. “Now let’s get down
to business. I have to call the Feds to tell them about the nice little present
that we have for them and to arrange for some training for you. You’ve got to
be at the top of your game tomorrow, Dennis.”

***

Janet checked her watch; she still had
hours to go before the end of her shift. Mila was back at work, but it was
really busy at the restaurant, and the two of them didn’t get a chance to talk.
It was probably for the best, lest Janet inadvertently betray her knowledge of
Mila retaining Dennis’s services. Somehow, Janet found herself torn between the
obligations of her job and a desire to warn Mila. It’s a trap, get out while
you still can, she wanted to whisper into her ear, even if their friendship was
only make-believe. Sure, finding Muller’s money would be great for Dennis and
her, but somehow it just didn’t seem right to do it at Mila’s expense. She
wondered if Dennis was ever bothered by such scruples. He claimed that he was,
but he seemed to have a lot less trouble with it than Janet.

She had just finished servicing her last
table, which left her with a fifteen-minute window before the next one. She
needed some air. To avoid passing the hostess stand, Janet opted for the
delivery entrance, exiting on the other side of the building. It was getting
chilly, and she only had her uniform on. She wrapped her arms around her
shoulders and inhaled the cool air in an effort to clear her mind, but it was
no use. Her brain kept wondering about Mila’s reaction to Dennis’s true
identity. Would she scream and claw at his face? Or would she break down in
tears? Or maybe she would channel her seductress streak to get him to run away
with her? Not that Janet worried about Dennis’s moral compass; when it came to
their job, she knew that he would always do the right thing. It was just that
sometimes doing the right thing required making very tough choices.

Janet was about to go back inside when
she noticed Roman walking toward her. Shit, she thought, looking for cover.
Luckily, he was still a block away and was too busy talking on his cell phone
to notice her. She ducked inside and was about to sprint back upstairs, but
curiosity got the better of her, and she left the door ajar, pressing herself
against the other side of the wall.

Roman’s footsteps neared the door and
Janet felt herself trembling. What if he walked inside and saw her? She hadn’t
thought of that, had she? She was about to seek cover in the depths of
Panther’s delivery room when she heard Roman’s footsteps halt.

“What do you mean we’re short staffed?”
Roman growled. “Marina called in sick? Then go and yank her out of bed. Drug
overdose? Jesus Christ! Sampling the latest shipment? Whose idea was that? Just
wait until Petr hears about this! You’ll be the one sick.” Roman spat on the
sidewalk. “Can’t you use one of the escort girls to fill in?”

Janet felt her adrenaline pumping.
Escort girls? Drugs? So all those rumors about Kovar were true! She wished she
could morph into the wall to keep listening.

“They’re all busy?” Roman smirked. “At
least some good news. I’m not surprised; Americans love Czech girls. Then
you’ll have to be the host tonight. Yeah, I know you’re a bouncer, but I can’t
just bring in someone off the street. It’s your problem—you fix it.”

Roman cursed loudly in a mixture of
English and what Janet assumed was Czech. She heard the sound of a lighter
being lit and a faint smell of cigarette smoke trailed through the door. She
took her cue and sprinted back upstairs where she literally bumped into Mila.

“Where were you? Your table is waiting
for you,” Mila snapped.

“Sorry,” Janet panted. “Just taking a
break.”

“Everything all right?” Mila gave her a
once over. “Is Roman bothering you again?”

“No, no, everything is fine. Just needed
some fresh air.”

“Listen, I’m going to take tomorrow off.
I need to run some errands; I’m planning a surprise for Anton’s return,” Mila
added, eyeing Janet closely.

“Sure,” Janet replied, careful not to
reveal her knowledge of Mila’s arrangement with Dennis. “Do you want me to fill
in for you?”

“That’d be great. Or I’ll never hear the
end of it from Roman.”

“I’ll be glad to do it.”

“Great, thanks.”

“No problem. Happy to help.” Janet
ducked her head and made a beeline for her table. Her heart was beating like a
sledgehammer; somehow, some way, she had to get Roman to pick her as a hostess
replacement for Petr Kovar’s secret club.