Chapter #21The Tea Room Caper by: Seuzz   "Dear, don't wander off," you say. The little girl—a serious-faced ten-year-old with long, dark, straight hair—sighs loudly through her nose. But you otherwise ignore her, and lift a blouse from the rack, to frown over it as you finger the material.
"You're the one who's wandering around," the girl says in a sulky tone.
"Don't cheek your mother," says the fattish, balding forty-year-old man who's keeping you and the girl company on this expedition.
"You're supposed to be keeping an eye on her," you say to him.
"Don't you cheek me," he retorts. To the girl: "Just keep to your videos." She makes a sour face and sinks to the floor by the department store window, bending her head over the face of her phone.
It's a sunny day for once, a welcome change from weather that has been dreary and drizzly. You wish you could enjoy it; you wish you could keep your nerves from vibrating so badly. You haven't been this nervous since your first infiltration. You pour your anxiety into your characterization, though, by clucking distastefully and distractedly over the merchandise.
"I'm hungry," the little girl loudly declares after ten minutes of silence.
"So'm I," says the fat man. "What say we nip into the—"
"Whatever you say, darling," you wearily reply, and reach to take the girl by the hand. But she shoves her cell phone into it. "What have you found?" you murmur, studying the screen as your trio marches briskly toward the front of the store.
Her screen shows a slanted scene, askew; so it would be, for it's a live video feed from another cell phone that's been stuck high onto a twee little bookcase in a tea shop across the street. It shows Knotts sitting alone at a table, glancing down occasionally at a newspaper but otherwise being alert.
You could curse her, though: She's not so alert that's she's spotted the man who's appeared behind her right shoulder. He's in slacks and a white dress shirt, and has a green apron tied around his waist. Bit by bit he moves toward her, checking on the tables as he comes, like the waiter he's pretending to be. But you recognize that mane of golden hair, and even in the low-res cell phone you can see the blinding white of his smile. "Isn't it cunning what your little girl found," you say as you show the same scene to the man.
"Oh, that idiot," he murmurs once he's grasped what he's supposed to see. Your trio quickens its step, and is out of the store in only a few seconds. That tea shop is directly across the street. There is nothing, not even traffic, between you and it.
No one between you and Cupcake as he moves toward the bait.
And then the shop and the street and everything between vanishes in a bloom of blinding light. An ear-splitting roll of thunder—carrying with it the sound of shattering glass—slams against you. Alarms go off for a mile around.
That flash of light lingers in the air, blinding you, and your ears are ringing so hard you can't hear anything. Is that someone trying to get your attention? Something pulls at your hand, then releases you. As your vision clears, you shout at the girl as she darts across the street, and you would run after her, but your companion pushes you back and runs after her himself. He sweeps her up, and runs back to hand her to you. Then he runs back to the tea shop.
That seems like a bad idea. This whole scene is wrong.
It takes you a moment to realize why. A massive explosion has seemingly just gone off directly in front of you, but there's no smoke, and precious little dust in the air. Only the windows to that tea shop have been blown out. The girl says something you can't make out. You put your ear to her mouth. Through a foamy deafness you barely make out her words: "There's no fire!"
Patterson is right, and you've just time to frown more deeply at the scene before a little red sports car darts from a side alley, takes a sharp corner, and races past directly in front of you. You only just glimpse the blonde head of the driver before it's away. And not too soon, as within a few minutes police and emergency crews come screaming to the scene.
Yet, aside from the shattered windows of the tea shop, there is no damage from what otherwise looked like a massive explosion. Dozens of people—looking dazed, but without a scratch upon them—emerge from the shop. The authorities cordon off the area, but when your other partner comes out—looking just as confused as the patrons—he tells you that there was not so much as an overturned table in the place.
But that doesn't mean there was no damage to your cause: The woman you'd been surveilling—the bait laid for Cupcake—has vanished in that blaze of light.
* * * * *
No one shifts until you're backstage. Patterson changes in the locker room, but you risk tearing your blouse and skirt by shifting back into your own skin without swapping costumes. It's easiest of all on your third: He drops his bulk into the chair in Knotts's office, wipes his broad brow, then puts his hand to the small of his back with a grunt and a long exhale as his body collapses into a more demure form: that of Paige Knotts.
"That is you, isn't, boss?" you ask. "I mean," you add as she glowers at you, "you gave White a copy of that gamine look just before—"
"Do you think I'd be sitting here if I was White?" she retorts. "Fuck, if I had a tat of him I'd switch over and pretend that's who I was, let you take over." She puts a haggard face in her hands. "Oh Christ, Kips," she says softly. "What did I just do?"
"You did what you had to do," you say. "White was on board with it, he played the bait—"
"We shouldn't have tried it—"
"There was no way you were going in there, where Cupcake could snatch you." You make your voice as hard as you dare.
"We shouldn't have gone in at all—"
"And what would we have done about Lamb?"
Her eyes are wide as she stares unblinking over your shoulder. "And they've got him too. Oh, Jesus, I'm so stupid! That's the whole reason I set it up this way, because I was sure they'd snatched him, that it was a trap, but this way we could grab Cupcake—"
"That's bullshit, Knotts! You didn't know that. You knew it was possible, but you knew we had to go to the meeting in case it was on the level. Sending White in your place was just insurance in case—"
"No, I knew it was a trap, Kips, I felt it in my—"
"Oh, you feel it now, when it's over!" You slam your own hand on her desk, and she jumps. "If you wanna feel my palm against your cheek, just keep talking this way. If you were so sure Cupcake was behind it, you wouldn't have done it. But you did it, so your gut was telling you—"
"We lost White!" she screams. "We should have been better prepared!"
"We had everyone but Liu and Cox there! But it's the celebrities! It's Cupcake, and he gets away under cover of that weird blast—"
"Then we shouldn't have gone up against him!"
You lean against the table, gripping it hard. "Fuck the celebrities, Knotts. Think of us, and what's really important. If you go to pieces on us," you growl, "who the fuck is gonna keep us all safe from Julian Dey?"
She stares at you, then— "Pah!" Her laugh is weaker and more nervous than you'd like, but the rallying light comes into her eye. True, the tears let loose as well, and her nose starts to run. But she smiles. "God damn you, Kips," she says, and wipes the mess across her cheek. "You would have to put things in perspective like that. I'll be okay, I just have to focus on what comes next. What does come next?"
Patterson saves you from having to answer, by leaning around the doorway. "Your phone's off, ma'am," he says; she frowns and pulls her cell out. "Gallion called me, says he tried you three times but didn't pick up. He says his team spotted Greystoke coming out of the back of that tea room with Cupcake and a female just after the explosion. Cupcake took one car, the other two took another, going different directions."
"So what are they doing about it?"
"Nothing. They were on foot, and the celebrities took wheels."
"Fuck." She sighs and bends over her phone, reading something. "Mm. Liu says he spotted Greystoke inside just before that explosion, but he doesn't mention a woman. Well, he wouldn't have been looking for one."
"Liu?" Patterson asks, sounding as surprised as you yourself feel, for you thought Liu was absent. "Was he inside? What was he doing there?"
"Last minute addition to the squad, didn't have time to tell you guys," Knotts says brusquely. "So why didn't Greystoke and his—"
"Greystoke!" you exclaim, and slap your hands together hard. "That's what's been bothering me!" The other two stare at you like you've lost your mind. "When Cupcake called you up yesterday, pretending to be Carrero, what did he say?"
"That he was in Hoxton and he'd made Greystoke."
"Is that exactly what he said? That he'd made Greystoke?"
"Yeah."
"He said 'Greystoke'? You're sure? Because," you explain when she nods sourly, "we're a thousand percent certain it was Cupcake making that call. But how does Cupcake know our codename for Greystoke?" You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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