Chapter 25

   
“What is this place?” Amy asked after sitting silently for so long. They had spent some time down at the city hall of records, mostly conning their way in through a relative of Tony’s, and that took them to a few real estate offices. Even the best of them appeared to be run down little affairs.

They were on their way to the next one, run by some guy named Smokes, when Tony exchanged a series of texts with somebody. He changed his mind about going there so he asked for the list they had gotten from his cousin at city records. He had thought long and hard about it and then decided to come to this place. Now they had been sitting here for at least a couple of hours. To Amy it felt more like an eternity.

Tony sat silently watching the entrance, with binoculars, to what was a very generic looking office building. It sat in a nice park that was full of new buildings just like it. That made it nearly impossible to tell one building from another. Even the address numbers, on the sides of the buildings, were small and could easily go without notice if you were driving.

Every now and then, Tony would signal Amy with a grunt, or at best a tap on the shoulder, and she would pull out her phone. She used the zoom lens on her phone to do what Tony’s binoculars were doing and then took a picture of the person walking out the door. She then fed that picture through an application on her phone which compared it to another photograph that she had been sent by Garcia, who was still at the station.

After Amy did it again, and was told by the phone that it was not a match, she grunted in frustration and then told Tony, “what is this all about? Who are you texting with? Why are we here?”

No one else was coming out of the office building so Tony put his binoculars down for a second and rubbed his eyes. He then checked the text screen on his own phone and the most current message was enough to raise his brows, “well what do you know.”

“TONY!” Amy growled. “We used to not be like this. You can’t drag me out here and expect me to operate in the dark.”

“I would tell you,” Tony replied easily enough, even if Amy was anything but, and said, “if I knew that much myself. The truth is I don’t really know what the hell is going on. They just told to me to watch my text screen and follow orders. That’s all I know, honest to god.”

“What?” Amy was both shocked and confused. She thought about that for a second and then said, “you’ve been texting with Barbara?”

“Norm actually,” Tony replied.

Amy suspiciously looked his way and asked, “and not Danni?”
Now it was Tony’s turn to blow up, “oh would you give that a rest already? I already told you there’s nothing between us and, even if there was, it’s none of your business.”

“None of my….?” Amy sounded aghast. “You’re my partner and she’s my friend and it’s none of my business?”

“Yes,” Tony said in a very matter of fact way. Then he went on by adding, “which brings me to another point Amy. You said it, she’s your friend. You could try and treat her like that, again, sometime.”

Amy was starting to look really self conscious, “I do. Of course we’re friends. She even took me to that club where I got arrested by the Germans.”

Tony rolled his eyes in frustration, “what was she supposed to do Amy? Pull out her pee shooter and fight off the Wehrmacht? She’s the reason you got out when you did. Danni did what any sensible person would have done. She called for help and then went and got you out of there. Besides all that, you already said it was no big deal. Why are you bringing this up now?”

Amy crossed her arms, looked forward, and then said, “you got another guy coming out.”

“Shit,” Tony snapped into action and pulled up his binoculars. He tracked the guy and then excitedly he said, “get a picture of this guy. He looks like he might be our boy.”

Amy had to snap one picture after another with her phone. The good news was that this man, in the expensive suit, was now standing still. The bad news was that he was constantly turning and Amy was getting one bad angle after another. Finally she got enough of his face to run an application and with a bit of excitement she said, “it’s him!”

Tony put down his binoculars and then told Amy, “be ready to come and pick me up if I signal.”

As he got out of the car, Amy protested, “don’t you want to tell Norm first? Where the hell are you…” Tony was long gone by that point and Amy’s protests were falling on the wind. Tony had even been in such a hurry that he left the car door open. Amy gave a short scream in frustration and then slid over to the drivers side.

Tony did not bother with subtlety or subterfuge. He did not even bother acting like he was not in a hurry. In this case, both his cover and his true intentions were one and the same. He jogged right up to the guy that was his target and he said, “hey mister? I’m…”

The man had been talking on his phone as Tony jogged up. The guy seemed a little frustrated and he was loud enough for Tony to make out some of what he was saying, even at a distance. The most interesting part of it was, “look, we already had these two Ranger people poking around here this morn… yes they’re real!” Of course, the guy cut his conversation abruptly short as Tony got closer, even if he still held is connection. The guy even put his hand over the microphone as he asked Tony, “can I help you with something?”

“Um yeah,” Tony stopped and feigned awkwardness, “me and my wife, well, we’re newlyweds actually. You see her mother and mine were not all that keen on the idea of us….”

The man was even more frustrated now, “did you want something in particular?”

“Well yeah,” Tony replied, “We’re supposed to be buying a house. It’s our first actually and, well, we’re kind of excited about it. You know we went through…”

The man snorted and then asked, “who’s the agent?”

Tony acted excited, “what? This is PBS Reality? You mean I really did find the place? Holy shit was that hard. You know we went to this one office down the way and it belonged to some company called Yoyodine Propulsion Labs and they told me…”

The guy held up his free hand, motioning for Tony to stop talking, as he put the phone back to his ear. He then told Tony, “stay right here,” as he walked a few paces down the sidewalk. Tony did not even bother pretending that he was not listening as the guy told whoever was on the other end of the phone, “I don’t care. You can get her out of there and you better had. We’re not paying you to… I don’t care what kind of protection you think she has. Lure her out if you have to. I have to go! Call me back.”

The man slipped his phone back in his pocket and came walking back up to Tony with a smile on his face, “sorry about that. Rental problems with a particularly destructive tenant. Now you were saying who your agent was?”

Tony played it all off with a laugh and stayed eager, “oh it’s some funny name. I’m terrible with names. It was like a couple of months out of the year.”

The man’s smile vanished and he went pale, “April May?”

Tony snapped his fingers, “yeah that’s it! We were supposed to be meeting her about an hour ago but, she never showed. I was wondering if…”

The man quickly pulled out a business card and gave it to Tony as he said, “she had a very unforeseen problem this morning. I can’t really talk about it but, tell you what, give me a call in the morning and I’ll set you up.”
Tony gestured to the building, “any way, could I come in and we do this today? I mean, my wife is kind of anxious about all of this and, you see, her mother is…”

The man waived that notion off with both hands, “sorry pal. We don’t actually do that kind of stuff here. You just give me a call in the morning and I’ll get you squared away.”

When Tony reached the car, Amy had already slid back over to the passenger’s seat. As he sat down he hastily instructed Amy, “keep your eye on the guy, I think we just struck pay dirt.”

“What?!” Amy was now alarmed if anything else. She half watched the guy walk into the parking lot. The other half of the time she watched Tony scan a business card over his phone. Amy noted the name, “Gregory S. Beckett? That’s our guy?”

“Yep,” Tony replied with a bit of excitement, “that’s our boy and, Norm said his name turned up on his end too.”

“Tony,” Amy said keeping her eyes on their mark, “he’s getting into his car.”

“Get a picture of it,” Tony mumbled as if it were a side issue. Then he started texting.

Amy complied but, she also asked as she did, “how did Norm turn his name up? I thought Norm was looking for our shooters?”
Tony finished his text and then started the car. As he pulled slowly out he looked for, and spotted, the only other vehicle moving in the parking lot. He then told Amy, “I have no idea what Norm is doing. He won’t tell me.”

It would seem that their Mister Beckett was not paying too much attention to anything but the road. Tony was guessing that, due to the nature of the phone conversation, the guy had other things on his mind. He sure drove that way and it would make following him easier.
That is exactly what Tony began to do as the guy left the parking area.

Amy was slightly concerned, “why would Norm keep that a secret from us?”

“I have no idea,” Tony told her. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Meekly, Amy responded, “cause he’d tell me to take a flying leap and not that nicely?”

“Which is why I haven’t,” Tony told her. Then he said, “sides I think I can guess why. He doesn’t want Barbara to know.”

“Oh,” Amy replied as she realized that did make a certain amount of sense or, at least, it did in a creepy sort of way. As they got ready to leave the lot, she then remembered to buckle up. As she did Amy asked, “so can you tell me what we’re doing or is that a state secret too?”

“I heard part of the guys phone conversation,” Tony told her as if it were a distraction, “I think he was talking with our two hit men. Unless I miss my guess, that’s exactly where he’s going. He seemed to be having problems with them so…”

“He’s going to meet with them,” Amy replied with less and less enthusiasm as her words continued. “Oh joy.” Then she blurted out in protest, “I thought Norm was supposed to be doing that! What an ass hole!”

As Amy fumed she happened to look down on the seat. She could plainly see the last text that Tony had sent to Norm. It was something of a relief, to her, that the text really did go to who Tony had claimed. The content of the message was an entirely different matter. It was very disturbing and simply read, “April in danger. Second hit in progress.”