Murder Miscalculated Read online

  As for me, I kept us stocked in new and used books and handled the online orders that were coming with increasing frequency. Tonight there was a stack of books to put in packages and, in the morning, taken to the post office.

  Lynn and I finished our paperwork chores about the same time. I poured two glasses of cold white wine, and we took them out into the store. We made ourselves comfortable in the twin easy chairs we provide for our customers. Junior saw us and jumped down from a nearby bookshelf. He walked over, climbed into my lap and began washing himself.

  Lynn read a dance magazine, occasionally turning back the corner of a page to mark an article to save. I paged through the latest issue of Publishers Weekly, mentally making notes of new books.

  At eleven Barbara came out to say goodnight to everyone. Lynn and I finished our wine and said goodnight to Tom. Junior’s tail twitched in protest when I placed him on the hardwood floor. Then he silently slipped away to begin his nighttime prowl.

  Late that night, after Lynn and I had retired to our room on the second floor, I lay awake in the darkness as lights and shadows crept across the walls and ceiling. Outside the mullioned, iron-framed windows, the streets of the city carried on with their late-night ways. I suspected from the sound of her breathing that Lynn was awake, too. She must have sensed I wasn’t asleep.

  “Greg? Are you awake?”

  I rolled over toward her. “Yes. You, too?”

  “Yes.” She lifted a hand, reached over and touched the tips of her fingers to my cheek. “I’m worried about you. I’m worried that you miss working the street.”

  I forced a laugh. “Don’t worry. There’s no way I’m going back to that kind of life.” I took her hand from my face and kissed her fingers. “Why should I? I have everything I want right here.”

  She took her hand away from mine and raised herself up on her elbow. In the fragmented light I could see a shadow, not cast by any physical object, cross her face. “Greg, I’m serious. I’m worried you might be tempted too much by,” she paused, searching for words, “by your old way of life, by your life as The Kid. And you need to know something.” Her voice had a quiet urgency. “If you do go back, I don’t know that we can stay together.”

  I felt as if the shadow that had crossed Lynn’s face had passed through me. If there was one thing I had learned from the events of the previous year, it was that Lynn meant more to me than anything.

  I lifted myself up onto my elbow, matching Lynn’s pose. I reached over and stroked her hair, then her face. “Lynn, I promise. I’m done with picking pockets. I’m done with all of that. I promise.”

  Lynn started to say something, then nestled back down onto her pillow. “I hope so. For everyone’s sake, I hope so.”

  I lay back down next to her, my arm around her. In a few minutes she was asleep.

  I stayed awake long into the night, listening to the sounds of the street outside and unable to will myself to sleep. I truly meant what I’d told Lynn. I really was through with my old life as a pickpocket.

  Or so I thought.

  Chapter Three

  Trouble walked into The Book Nook at a quarter past ten the next morning.

  I was on the rolling bookshelf ladder, standing with my head up near the whitewashed, stamped tin ceiling, dusting the books on the upper shelves. Junior sunned himself on a ledge under a store window as he supervised my work. A selection of ‘40s swing tunes played on the stereo, and I was moving in time with the music while trying not to sneeze as dust motes swirled around my head.

  The shop door opened and the bell over it jingled.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” I called over Artie Shaw’s keening clarinet without looking behind me.

  “Take your time. I can wait.” There was an edge in the man’s voice that caused me to leave the dusting until later and attend to him.

  I gave him the eye as I came down the ladder, well aware that he was watching me in return. He looked to be on the far side of forty. He was heavyset without being overweight and wore a conservative dark suit. His well-groomed dark hair had a touch of gray, and his face was clean-shaven. There was an intensity in his eyes that reminded me of the way a dog studies someone new. Perhaps Junior felt the same way, as he came from his place in the storefront window and joined me behind the counter.

  My visitor quickly dispelled any notion that he was a customer by displaying an FBI badge and identity card as he stated more than asked, “Mr. Gregory Smith, I presume.”

  I switched off the stereo. “Yes, that’s me. What can I do for you?”

  The man took a moment to slip his identification holder back inside his jacket pocket before answering. His right pocket, I couldn’t help noticing. Old habits die hard.

  “I’m Special Agent Lawrence Talbot. I’ve been told you have certain skills that may be of use to me.”

  I tried to keep my voice neutral. “How do you mean?”

  “I need someone to teach a member of my team how to pick a pocket.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Agent Talbot, but it’s no use. I’m done with that kind of work.” I waved my arm. “See? I’ve got a bookstore to run.”

  “We could make it worth your while, or …” his voice trailed off.

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “Or what?”

  “One year ago you were given a clean record, courtesy of my agency. That clean record could just as easily be rescinded.” My stomach clenched. I don’t like threats, veiled or otherwise. I had to choke back a reply before I said something I would likely regret. As I sought more temperate words, a voice came from the doorway to the back room.

  “I don’t think you heard what my husband said, Mr. Talbot.”

  Lynn pushed through the beaded curtain from the back room. She wore a black leotard, and her long, dark hair was down. As usual, she wore ballet slippers, and they made no sound as she stalked across the room. If Talbot reminded me of a dog, Lynn was a she-panther. I recognized the look on her face and would not want to be in Agent Talbot’s position.

  Lynn made no secret of the fact that she had been listening. She came behind the counter, took my arm and faced our unwelcome visitor. Her voice was cold. “Greg is through with that kind of work, and he’s not going back to it, no matter what threats you make.”

  “Ah, Mrs. Smith, how nice to meet you in person. I enjoyed reading your file. I understand you no longer perform at The Pink Poodle.” Talbot let his eyes wander up and down Lynn’s figure.

  I started to move, and Lynn tightened her grip on my arm.

  Talbot continued. “That’s a shame. I wish I could have seen you. But you have kept your professional name, haven’t you?” He pointed toward the sign that told visitors that the Lynn Vargas Dance Studio was two flights up. “Perhaps you are thinking of returning to stripping?”

  I decided I really didn’t like Special Agent Lawrence Talbot. “I believe you have our answer, Agent Talbot,” I said, making my words final. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  Talbot lifted his hands in a well, I tried gesture and turned to leave. When he reached the front door he stopped and looked back at us.

  “It’s too bad. Agent Cochran thought for certain you’d be willing to help him.”

  Damn and double damn. Of all the names he had to throw at us, it would be that one. Cochran had been in the thick of things last year and had proven himself to be a good and true friend. If he needed help, I would at least have to listen to what Talbot wanted of me. Lynn dug her fingers into my arm. I knew she shared my feeling about Cochran.

  “Wait,” I called. “You didn’t tell me Cochran was involved.”

  Talbot’s mouth tightened into a thin, humorless smile. “I thought dropping his name might help.”

  I ignored him and instead turned to Lynn. She searched my eyes as though looking for our future, and she looked troubled about what she saw. Then she dropped her eyes and nodded. I turned to Talbot.

  “Okay. We’ll listen to what you have to say, but we
make no promises. Let’s go into the back room, and you can tell us about it.”

  Talbot’s smile broadened enough to show his teeth. “Trust me when I say that I ask for nothing more.”

  Lynn led the way through the beaded curtain. Talbot followed her, and I followed him. If a customer showed up, we’d hear the bell over the door. We sat at the table with Lynn and I sitting next to each other and Talbot across from us.

  Our unwelcome visitor sniffed the air. There was fresh-brewed coffee on the stove, so Lynn must have been preparing it when Talbot arrived. Neither Lynn nor I offered him any. Our friends are welcome to share coffee with us anytime, but those who begin their acquaintance with threats go without. He must have sensed that as he turned his attention to us.

  “Right,” began Talbot, placing both hands on the table. “Here’s the situation. My team is on the verge of busting a major fugitive, but to nail him we need to intercept some information. That information will be stored on a data card in a certain person’s wallet. We want you to teach our agent enough pickpocketing skills that he can take the wallet without being detected.”

  I frowned. “Can’t you just get a warrant for it?”

  Talbot tugged his earlobe as he thought before answering. I wondered what sort of tell that was. Was he coming up with a plausible lie, or was he trying to decide how much he wanted us to know? After a few seconds he brought his hand back down to the table. “We need it to look like a random theft by someone working the street. We can’t let the target have any reason to suspect that whoever took his wallet was after the data card.”

  “How will you know the right day to take the card?” asked Lynn.

  Talbot shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ms. Vargas, but that information cannot be divulged. Suffice it to say that we will know with certainty.”

  “How much time do you have until this has to happen?” I asked, my mind working on the problem.

  “One month.”

  I stared at the ceiling and mulled it over. One month to train someone to lift a wallet. If he or she wasn’t too clumsy, it could be done.

  “Where does Cochran fit into this?” Lynn asked.

  “Agent Cochran is the one you’ll be teaching.”

  I looked over at Lynn. She looked at Talbot.

  “You said you could make it worth Greg’s time.”

  “We can pay a consulting fee to compensate for the time he has to spend away from the bookstore.” He named a figure that couldn’t help but appeal to us.

  “You said away from the store,” said Lynn, ever the practical one. “Couldn’t he teach Cochran here at The Book Nook?”

  Talbot shook his head. “No, Agent Cochran is already undercover and has established a routine. You’ll meet with him at Wykowski’s Gym.”

  I knew that gym. It was down by what remained of the city’s docks. I wondered what kind of undercover identity the normally button-down Cochran had assumed.

  Talbot continued, “Cochran has established a routine of going there every morning for a couple of hours. We can arrange for a private room where you can work with him without anyone knowing what’s going on.”

  “Why is Cochran working for you?” I asked. “Where’s Agent Riley?” Riley was head of the team of agents I’d first tangled with, and then eventually worked with, in my previous occupation. Riley was also the one who had made it possible for me to start with a clean slate.

  “Special Agent Riley is teaching a course back in Quantico, Virginia, for a few months. I’ve been assigned to lead his team in the meantime.”

  No one spoke. I studied Lynn’s face, knowing how much she hated the idea of my getting mixed up in something like this. We had spent the past year working hard to build our new life. While neither of us wanted to see that work endangered, I couldn’t help but feel that I should help Cochran if I could.

  “It would be fun to see Cochran again,” I offered.

  Lynn ignored my comment and got up from the table, an angry look on her face. She shook her head. “If you want to do it, go ahead, just as long as you don’t get involved in anything dangerous. The money’s not worth it.” She leaned over the table and tapped a long finger in front of our visitor.

  “Agent Talbot.”

  “Yes, Ms. Vargas?”

  “I want a letter on Bureau letterhead, signed by you, stating that the work for which you are hiring Greg is legal. No letter, no deal.”

  “You’ll have it.”

  Lynn nodded and went up the stairs to her studio without saying another word. Part of me wanted to go after her and tell her the deal was off, but instead I listened to her footsteps on the stairs and the door slamming as she went into her dance studio.

  It took only a few minutes for Talbot and me to work out the details. I’d meet Cochran at nine in the morning each weekday for the next month and spend an hour working with him. Talbot would arrange for a gym membership in my name. At my insistence he agreed to make it good for a full year and include a separate membership for Lynn. She and I had been talking about joining a gym anyway, and Wycowski’s was a good one, if a bit far from The Book Nook.

  Our business concluded, I walked with Talbot to the front door.

  “Trust me, Mr. Smith,” he said as he left. “You’re making the right decision.”

  I thought about his words as the jingle from the bell above the door faded away and the store became quiet again.

  Junior came back out from behind the counter, and I picked him up and held him in my arms. The late, great Fast Eddie Dupre once told me, “Kid, if someone tells you to trust them more than once in the same conversation, that’s when you shouldn’t.”

  “Did you hear him, Junior?” I asked the cat as I rubbed him between his ears. “He said we should trust him. I think I should trust him about as much as a mouse should trust you.”

  Junior didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

  Chapter Four

  Later that day I headed up the stairs to the second floor. When I arrived on the landing I could hear Lynn in her dance studio one flight above me, giving commands to her early afternoon class of exercising women. “Now rotate, one, two, three.”

  I reached out as I walked down the narrow hallway and let my fingers run along the old wallpaper, feeling the texture and the places where it was peeling. A lingering trace of oily smoke reminded me, as it always does, that Lynn and I still have much work to do repairing and restoring the old building.

  I was looking for a room that would suit my purpose. The second floor was a small warren of rooms, some reachable via the hallway, some found only by wandering through interconnecting doors. Most of the rooms on the second floor saw little use, and our very slow renovation of the building had yet to reach this floor except for two rooms at the front that Lynn and I had remodeled into a small bedroom suite. Barbara’s own bedroom was downstairs off the kitchen, harkening back to when she’d lived here alone.

  Halfway down the hall I pushed open a door whose hinges squeaked their need for oil. I fumbled on the wall for the light switch. It clicked loudly, and a single bare bulb in the ceiling lit up and illuminated a small, windowless room. Faded posters covered what wallpaper remained. The air smelled of dust, old clothes and time.

  In the center of the room was what I was looking for, an old dressmaker’s dummy that kept a lonely vigil over a clutter of dilapidated trunks and stacks of sagging cardboard boxes.

  I draped the sports coat I was carrying around the dummy’s shoulders, then stood back and contemplated it. It stood much too low to the floor for my purpose. I dragged a trunk over, picked up the dummy and placed it on top. My hands were covered in dust from the trunk and the dummy, and I wiped them off on an old shirt lying on top of one of the boxes. As I put the shirt back down I wondered whose it was and when it had last been worn.

  I looked at the dummy again. Now it was a little too high, but it was good enough for what I needed.

  I shook my head. If only Fast Eddie Dupre could see me having to go ba
ck to the basics. My guess is he’d be cackling that loopy laugh of his.

  “No, not like that. Smooth, smooth like the way a copperhead glides through the swamp.” Eddie took my wrist and pulled it back from the dummy wearing the coat. We were in the basement of his cheap apartment building. I was fifteen, a street kid who thought he was a pickpocket. Eddie had offered to take me under his wing and teach me the ancient art of picking pockets. “Now watch me,” he commanded. I watched.

  Eddie was in his early fifties back then, slicked-back black hair on the long side, handsome face showing his Cajun heritage and a body beginning to show the ravages of a life lived on the wrong side of the street. He took a few steps back and then walked across the basement as if going for a stroll on Bourbon Street in his native New Orleans. He glanced up at the dingy, pipe-lined ceiling as though admiring a cloudless, sunny sky. He looked to one side and waved and smiled at someone, perhaps a lady friend from his long-ago youth. He whistled a little, and then, when he was a few steps past the dummy, he stopped and turned and held up a wallet for me to see. It was the wallet I’d placed in the pocket of the jacket just a minute before.

  “I never saw you take it,” I said, amazed. “I was watching you the whole time, and I never saw you take it.”

  “You are wrong, my young friend. You thought you were watching me the whole time but I can guarantee you weren’t. Otherwise you’d have seen me do the dip.” He smiled at the confusion on my face. “Think back carefully, and then do what I did exactly, step by step.”

  I went over to the dark stone wall where Eddie had started and waited while he replaced the wallet in the jacket on the dummy. I took a step and stopped. “You want me to imitate the way you walked? I don’t think I can.”

  “Sure you can, Kid. Think about how I held myself and how I moved.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, visualizing Eddie’s walk. Then I opened my eyes and began walking, swinging my arms a bit, sauntering as best I could the way Eddie had sauntered down his imaginary street.