The Paranoid Thief (7 page)

Randolph put the steaks on “keep warm,”
then tasted the meat sauce, deciding it needed a little more red pepper, when
the nice voice told him Jill was at the door. With an unconscious wipe of his
hands on the apron he ordered with the ingredients of the meal, Randolph made
certain all was ready by a mental check list in his head before he removed the
apron and crossed to open the door.

The first thing Randolph noticed, as Jill
walked in with a light smile and a twitching nose to the aroma of his cooking,
was she’d changed clothes yet again. Now she wore an old-fashion long, pleated
yellow skirt, an off-white short-sleeved blouse complete with ruffles, a
delicate silver necklace and a set of ear rings bearing the universal female
symbol of her sex. In her hands, which she held together in front, was a
matching yellow purse, accented in silver. The whole outfit, right down to her
two-inch yellow pumps, showed off to best advantage—that her athletic figure
would allow—her small breasts and thin waist. Taking up the skirt in one hand,
she moved it side to side, commenting. “I love these simple, free flowing
outfits—they allow one total movement.” Jill stopped a few steps within so
Randolph could close the door without thought before she turned to him and asked,
“So what do you think? I’m a bit self-conscious about my short hair in this
type of outfit, but since it’ll be only you and I for the evening, I thought it
would be okay.”

Randolph looked at her, speechless; it was
as if he were meeting Jill’s twin sister!
Hell,
even her voice seems timid and vulnerable, a total reversal to her act in the
cells!
“Uh, you look fine, Jill,” he decided to answer, keeping his voice
even.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she replied with an
old fashioned curtsy. “Would you mind inviting me in?”

“Uh, sure, but you’re already in,” Randolph
said, wondering what the hell was going on.

Jill seemed to ignore that fact. “I know
the pocket book is over-accessorizing, but I haven’t had the chance to try it
out with this outfit.” Then she gave into her interest of the meal he’d prepared
and smiled. “
Mmm
, that smells delicious. Do you mind
escorting me to my seat?”

For Randolph, the ensuing evening carried
on in the same manner, just as if they were in a fancy restaurant, making him
feel severely under-dressed in the gray sweat clothes he’d found in the
bathroom earlier.

Around 9 p.m., Randolph took away the
dishes as their conversation of normality seemed to wind down and their meal
was digesting very nicely. Once at the washbasin, Randolph heard Jill get up
and sit on the couch-chair where he’d eaten his dinner. As he set the
dishwasher, Jill composed herself like earlier in the day when Mr. Bennett was
here. She began a new conversation with an air of disbelief in her hard-edged
voice. “Well, I’ll say one thing. You have manners and can function reasonably
well in polite society. I take it you learned this from your mother?”

“Up until I was eleven,” Randolph answered,
leaning back on the counter, trying to figure her out.

“So what changed to make you take up your
current occupation, if I may ask?”

“The restaurant owner,” Randolph answered
bitterly, remembering the guy and still finding the memory a raw wound.

“Somewhat of a sore spot, I gather. What
happened?” she asked with some interest.

Randolph put away some of the supplies he’d
left for the meal and considered shrugging her question off, then he sighed and
figured,
why not tell her.
“The owner
made my mother give him sexual favors to further her skills. But when he
discovered she’d become pregnant with his child, whether intentional or not, he
dismissed her like yesterday’s garbage and put her on the Blackball list for
disreputable chefs. A death sentence for any aspiring chefs, as no respectable
outfit would touch anyone on it with a ten foot pole. And as she never reported
him to the ethics board in favor of learning her craft to better our future,
all he need do was pay her a small amount of child support and she couldn’t
touch him. So needing to help support our growing family, I started stealing.”
At this point in his story, Randolph decided he needed a drink to wash out a
bad taste in his mouth. So he pulled out of the refrigerator a bottle of
vintage wine he’d ordered for the meal but had forgotten when Jill walked in,
and poured her a glass as well. “About four years ago, after finding my skills
were far better at this job then helping in the kitchen, I broke into his home,
and using his own computer, made up transfer of ownership documents to his son
by my mother and sent it though the court system with his signature.” Randolph
set the bottle down and handed Jill her glass before he sat and remarked, with
a slight curve of his lip, “I dearly wished I could’ve been there when my
half-brother, sixteen at the time, walked in with my mother and claimed
ownership of the place and the three other spin-offs he’d sold franchises to.”

“But why didn’t you make your mother owner
of the place? She has the experience,” Jill asked with honest curiosity.

“True, but other than birthing my
half-brother, my mother isn’t related to the bastard which would’ve stood out
like a red beacon when he took the matter through the court system. But since
the documents were in my brother’s name, and any blood test would confirm Mick
to be his son, the man hadn’t a leg to stand on.”

“So did you tell your mother what you did?”
Jill asked.

“No, but I think she suspects it.
Regardless,” Randolph said as an afterthought, “I couldn’t tell her. If he
managed to get her in court, the knowledge I’d done the deed would’ve come out,
giving him grounds to revoke the ownership.” Randolph took another sip of the
wine, liking the way the bouquet smelled and the delicate taste added to its
overall character. “You now know a little of my story,” Randolph said in a
decision to learn more, “so how is it you found yourself on death row, if I’m
not mistaking Mr. Bennett’s favored recruitment method?”

Jill eyed Randolph like she was put-off by
his question, but in standing, she swirled the wine in her glass, heading over
to the curtained window to look out for a moment before answering in a low and
meaningful voice. “I was in charge of 129 raw recruits, given the task to
toughen them up for combat duty inside 3 months, when my commanding officer
gave me orders midway in their training to take them out for a reconnaissance
mission. Having just come back from a forced two-day march through a quite
zone, I argued the mission on two facts. One, they were not combat ready and
two, I wore them out deliberately to weed out the ones who couldn’t cut the
mustard.” Jill downed the wine in one swallow, as if trying to wash away a bad
taste in her mouth similar
to his own
before she went
on. “Refusing his orders as was my right being they’d not finished training and
I didn’t consider them ready for combat. He stepped out of
regs
and had me arrested for disobeying a direct order from a superior officer.
Later that day, he assigned a desk jockey my unit, who foolishly volunteered,
as he needed the combat time for a political career.” Jill let go of the curtains,
leaned into the corner of the wall and crossed her arms a bit tightly in
remembrance of that incident.

“By the time I landed at H.Q. to await
trial, I’d learned my entire unit had been wiped out, save for five men. After
my court marshal and stance of five months in the brig for cowardice in the
face of the enemy, a friend of mine in the correspondence center gave me a hard
copy of something he had been ordered by top brass to file away without
inquiry. Reading the documentation, it showed my unit had been wiped out due to
a tragic clerical error. Reading further, the report went on about how a
routine search and destroy mission had been given out to the air-boys along the
same coordinates as I’d been ordered to scout.” Jill wiped away a stray tear then
tried to square up her chin. “Anyway, the scuttle butt around H.Q. as I was
packing told of my commander’s wife, having been insulted by one of the raw
recruit’s parents at some function, had demanded my CO give her satisfaction.
With minimal research on my part, it became quite clear my CO knew of the
fly-boys’ orders. This fact was denied by my CO in court, under oath, who then
gave testimony on the stand that the very major who took over my unit and lead
my troops on the ill fated mission, had misfiled the information. Thus he held
no knowledge of the mission.

“So dressing in my finest military uniform,
I drove my car to my CO’s
,
 
two
-story home on base and informed his house servant that I’d
been asked to come over. Without permission for entry, I followed her into the
living room, ignoring her request to wait on the front porch. Upon the sight of
my entrance, my former CO stood in anger, demanding, ‘What’s the meaning of
this?’ Without the need of words to explain myself, I pulled my laser pistol and
swept his legs off with the maximum setting. He yelled to the sudden lost of
legs and fell to the floor. His servant, a step to my left screamed and ran
from the room. With gun still at the ready, I eyed her antics in little concern
as I held no animosity towards her. However, I held an entirely different
feeling towards my CO’s shocked and alarmed wife. Her, I
holed
in the chest and beheaded before her body slid from the chair to the floor.”
Jill’s eyes took on a gleam of angry memory as she stared past Randolph in
finishing her tale. “Before cutting him into little pieces for the med boys to
try and put together like a jig-saw puzzle, I told the son-of-a-cowardly-dog he
should’ve had the balls to confront the parents instead of wiping out my men!”

Jill let out a breath of tension at this
point, having realized she was tightening up. She then looked over on Randolph
and shrugged off the ugly memories. “The next thing I knew I was here,” Jill
commented, rolling her eyes about the place. Jill pushed off the wall and
walked over to the couch-chair then looked at her watch. “Well, with that bit
of unpleasantness behind us, I think we’ve made a good start.” Jill picked up
her handbag and started for the door. “Get some sleep tonight. We start
training at six in the morning, and I’ve a full day planned to ferret out your
abilities.”

Before Randolph could comment on her early
morning activities and where she could shove them, Jill was out the door,
leaving him bemused, wondering why she’d divulged such powerful emotions to a
complete stranger.

The next two months of Randolph’s life were
a living hell of exercising, endurance tests, and even physical games of
coordination and speed.
I tell
ya
, I thought I was in pretty good shape,
he commented
to himself one day, holding his sides, standing beside Jill, who was merely
breathing fast,
but to hear the tale from
her, I was a blob of useless muscle masquerading as human.
Also during this
time of forced endurance-building exercises, Randolph was introduced to two
other two-man teams who took up exercising with them, whereby he learned
Hendrix was a downright bully, Joe was a shifty-eyed weasel, Mitch was a
personable fellow on his good days and Patrick was just plain fun, for Patrick
would have them all splitting their sides with just the right look at the right
time. However, Jill made certain they never stuck together long, always laying
down a reason for some other activity.

When Randolph approached the subject, Jill
answered matter-of-factly, “I’ve been on three missions and lost two partners.
Joe and Hendrix were recruited before you and not one of the teams have been
here longer than five years. So it’s been decided, unannounced, we should stay
aloof.”

The next morning, Jill took Randolph to the
elevator which led down to the cell block he’d escaped from; however, when the
doors slid open she pushed a button which had not been present during his
initiation. This lowered the elevator beyond the cell block level by at least
four floors or more. Opening up, Jill took the lead without comment to Randolph
and led them along an echoing twenty-foot hallway that ended in darkness. Not
a darkness
for lack of light, Randolph could tell, but
rather darkness emitted by a great expanse of openness. Turning to a panel,
Jill touched a LED, turning on a lighting system which revealed five floors of
openness filled with small buildings and scaffolding to some sort of theater.

“This,” Jill said, motioning with her hand
at the open area, “is our training facility. Every so often the buildings are
shifted around and a new scenario is presented for us to solve. Nothing
elaborate
, mind you, but just enough to keep our wits
sharp.”

Randolph followed Jill down the two-story
ladder and found her holding a clip board when he touched the ground floor.

Jill showed Randolph the board and read
aloud, “You are at a convention center of two political parties. Somewhere,
there is a bomb, or bombs, set to explode in five hours. Find the bomb, or
bombs, and disarm it or them.” Jill returned the board to a hook, rubbed her
hands, and set her watch. “Well, let’s get to it.”

“Why?” Randolph remarked, looking sideways
at her. “We could always use a few less of those cretins.” To his statement of
dislike for the men and women governing the continent, Jill looked sternly on
Randolph, but he only shrugged, indicating he couldn’t help it if he was so
cynical about those people.

“Get serious, Randolph. We’ve less than
five hours, so put your thinking cap on,” she snapped.

“All right,” he answered with a grimace and
started walking out, only to have her pull him back.

“As I’ve said,” Jill began scolding him,
“this is an exercise. Everything in here, the bomb and dummies, represents real
people, real life—and that includes security alarms and video cameras.” Jill
pointed at the both of them as she explained. “As we’re not supposed to be
alive, every pair of eyes in the dummies will be registering our movements. If
we’re seen too many times, or we trip an alarm, red lights will flash over head,
giving us just five minutes to get on solid ground before a debilitating
migraine sends us to the floor for half an hour or more. After which your
equilibrium will be shot for twelve hours.”

“You’re serious?”

“Damn straight I’m serious,” Jill glared at
him. “I’ve had it happen once, and I’ll not go through that again. If I do, I’m
going to pulverize you up one wall and down the other—you understand me?”

Even though Jill was much thinner than Randolph,
he took her threat to heart. Raising his hands in surrender, Randolph
acknowledged her threat. “Okay, okay. You get a headache, I get beat to shit.
Got it.”

Jill nodded, folded her arms and leaned
back on the wall. “Bombs are messy and often times non-directional if made by
amateurs. Thus a good number of people could be killed just to get the one
he/they/she is after.” She rubbed her chin, thinking aloud, reasoning still
further, “Conventions are notorious for changing schedules and shifting personnel
around. A time-set bomb can conclude the object is not a certain person but a
statement. Video cameras would be all around so he/they/she could be miles away
watching the results.” Jill eyed the scaffolding around the theater and
pointed. “That would be our best bet.”

“You’re forgetting under the stage,”
Randolph remarked.

“Not so,” Jill reasoned. “The blast would
be restricted to a small area, while an overhead blast would put forth a
concussion, stunning the crowd, sending down debris of the scaffolding into
their midst.”

“That’s supposing the intention is a
statement and not a person,” Randolph injected.

“It’s nice to see you’re thinking, but
you’re missing the wording of our mission. Our job is to disarm a bomb or
bombs. For someone to apply a bomb in a public place, they would be looking for
exposure, so it stands to reason the more people killed or injured the more
exposure given on the videos.”

Unable to fault her in such reasoning,
Randolph shrugged assent. So taking the lead, avoiding the eye path of the
dummies as was possible, even though in real life, if a well-trained thief
looked as if he belonged there, the average person would never take notice save
for a mild curious glance, including most security guards. In this way the pair
made the scaffolding and began their search.

They weaved themselves among the metal
beams, ever watchful for the eye in the sky, and were moving up to the fourth
layer of beams when Randolph put out a hand to Jill. “Hold it. I may have found
something.” Randolph took out a piece of paper he’d picked up in the dirt, tore
and folded it till satisfied with its size, and inserted only the tip into what
he thought was a low-wattage beam of light. His action confirmed the
near-invisible beam and he discovered two more like it radiating out of a small
black box before he looked a little closer.

“
What’cha
find
?” Jill asked, shifting to see, nearly pushing him into
one of the beams.

Randolph caught his movement and push Jill
back with a hiss of warning. “If you must move, don’t do it crowding me!”

“Okay, sorry. But tell me,
what’cha
found?”

“A trip beam, three to be precise, and of
such low wattage, they’re housed in a box with an amplifier, which was why I
saw it. Very professional,” he added, “far too complicated for standard
security measures.”

“Then we’re getting close.” Jill smiled,
looking at her watch. “And about time, we’ve less than three and a half hours
to work.”

“Which in no way suggests we speed things
up,” Randolph warned her, looking back on the box, sighting in on the three
directions and taking note of another box attached to a cross beam some
distance away. Randolph got the impression this other box also spread into
three beams. This small bit of information told him the whole area could be
spider-webbed with them.
Neat,
very neat.
Send out one beam
and make them breed with beam splitters and amplifiers. Very time-consuming to
install, but guaranteed to waste one’s time in tracking them down to their
source.
Randolph sat back on his haunches with a sigh and said, more to
himself
, “We’re in deep
kimchee
.”

“What’s that?” Jill asked with concern.

“It’s a pickled vegetable dish, seasoned
with different spices, sealed up in a jar, and buried in the ground for a span
of weeks. At least so I’m told. Either way, I’ve never liked the stuff,” he
answered off-handedly, trying to reason out the best approach to their problem.

“So what’s it got to do with this?”

“It’s my polite way of saying were in deep
shit,” Randolph explained, wishing she’d let him think.

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” Jill
admonished, slapping his shoulder.

Randolph turned his head and glared at Jill
as he reminded her, “Look, I’ve worked alone for eighteen years and only three
years with a partner. I’ve my own way of doing things and I tend to talk to
myself on occasion. So cut me some slack!”

Jill looked about to fire a group of
selected words at him, but swallowed them back, having read his facial
expression. Randolph nodded acceptance of her silence and set his mind back to
work.

The
problem with this setup, he considered while looking about, is that scaffolding
are never built to remain perfectly steady, thus a plus and minus factor had to
be installed into the triggering device. Regardless, though, not knowing the
parameters of the program would necessitate our assent to a time-consuming
crawl and as for turning it off? Yeah right.
For a moment more Randolph
traced the lines in case the builder slipped up. But even if he did spot its
origins, Randolph conceded without the proper tools the task would take longer
than Jill would permit to deactivate, if her sigh of irritation and impatience
behind him was any indication.
And then
again, it stands to reason if the maker is of any intelligence, the bomb will
go off if the beam is cut, assuring the maker of the same results.
Randolph
sighed and told Jill the bad news. “To break or turn off the beam will probably
set off the bomb. We’ve no choice but to ascend. You’re going to have to follow
me, do as I do, and put feet and hands where I do.” With a look skyward for
guidance, Randolph admitted, “Even if we are careful as the best acrobats, it
may still do us no good. All it will take is for one of those bars to shift out
of position half an inch. Got it?”

After a second of consideration, Jill
reasoned, “As I’m lighter than you, it’ll be best for me to climb up alone.”

“What about disarming the bomb?” Randolph
asked, watching her face.

“I’m trained in such matters. As I see it,
I’ve the military mind and know how on weaponry. Your job was to get me by the
security blanket which you’ve done.”

“Jill, this might not be the only kind of
device,” Randolph injected into her reasoning.

“If it’s not, we were doomed to fail at the
start, and Mel doesn’t work that way.”

Randolph looked sideways at her for such
flawed reasoning, but decided it was her head, and only reminded her, “It’s
your headache.”

“Just show me what to look for and shut
up,” She snapped.

Randolph did as asked, then remained still and
watched as Jill inched her way up into the web of poles, moving ever so slowly
to keep from shifting any out of place while not breaking the light beams.
Although Jill needed only to cover two floors, at four sets of railing per
floor, the forced pace took her a good half hour to make six sections of
railings. From his place, Randolph observed Jill as she nosed around for
fifteen minutes at a single place before motioning he should climb up and join
her. At her beckoning, Randolph rolled his eyes and shook his head in disgust
before he moved on up a bit faster than her, knowing what to expect but still
slower than his usual, as he did weigh more.

Once Randolph came abreast of Jill, she
pointed out a lattice work of very exposed red beams and admitted. “I’m a fool,
Randolph. I should’ve learned by now Mel likes teamwork.”

To Randolph, Jill appeared to be out of
sorts.
Most likely berating
herself
on the need for my help and loss of time.
Instead of stating the obvious, Randolph sought a way around their lattice work
of beams, a task which after a few minutes of looking did indeed require the
both of them. “Do you think you can support my weight for a short while?” he
asked.

“You’re kidding, right?” Jill answered with
narrowed eyes, telling Randolph he had asked a really dumb question.

“Okay.
Fine.
I had
to ask,” Randolph answered without apology. After he showed her what he wanted,
Jill positioned herself on an outside pole in a squat. With her balance set and
her arms holding tightly to a pole, Randolph climbed up onto her shoulders,
whereby she pushed him up to the top level with her leg muscles. Not having any
room for swinging about, Randolph took a hold of the upper pole, pulling
himself up with practiced ease, before locking his legs around the same pole
and stretching back down for her. Jill then reached as high as she could, where
Randolph caught her wrist and pulled her full weight up. She grabbed Randolph’s
arm. He shifted his hold to her elbow and continued lifting till she latched
onto his belt. But as using her legs to help herself up was out of the
question, Jill remained little more than dead weight in Randolph’s grip, save
for her hold on his belt. As for helping Jill up, Randolph could only think of
one sure place which would give her the support she needed to reach the pole
above him. Randolph hesitated.
But
believe me if this were a true job, I wouldn’t hesitate.

“What are you waiting for? Help me up!”

“I uh, I only know of one way, and—”

“Randolph, my sex shouldn’t be an issue
here. Now do what’s necessary and get me up!” Jill hissed.

“Okay...” Randolph answered, reaching a
hand between her legs and taking a firm grip of her crotch. Releasing her
elbow, Randolph grabbed her sweats and pulled and pushed Jill up his body till
she had a firm grip of the pole he hung from. Once Jill was stable, Randolph
got himself up and found her glaring at him.