CHAPTER TEN #2
“So,” Lesley says, standing from his chair, “enough with hypotheticals. On to the real deal. Tomorrow is mission number one: Noon, right by Leicester Square. A bloke posting under the name Vincent Skaggs. Now, what do we know about Mr. Skaggs?” He grins, hands spread in a suspense-building wait for it gesture, then announces, “He’s a pedicab driver. ”
The words hang in the air as he looks between me and Grant, his smile fading. “That’s it. That’s all we know.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Grant mutters.
“There’s not much to go on,” says Lissa.
“We can link him to two missing person cases—both blond tourists, both last seen getting into a pedicab. But everyone hates tourists, so it’s not like he’s got a unique motive to narrow things down.
Otherwise, there don’t seem to be any identifying clues—unless the police have any leads, but that’s beyond our scope. ”
“Wait a minute,” says Grant, sitting forward. “Why aren’t you working with the police? Couldn’t you just show them all of this, the Facebook group and everything, and let them take it from there?”
Lesley stiffens, crossing his arms. “And where would be the fun in that?”
“Fun?” Grant asks incredulously. “People are dying.”
“In a book,” I mumble for his ears only. He ignores me.
“It’s better this way,” Lissa says. “We are … not on the best of terms with the police, ever since—”
“Thank you, Lissa, that’s quite enough,” Lesley rushes.
“The point is, we don’t need the police.
All they do is shuffle around eating biscuits and looking at crime scenes with a shrug and a dunno before they file it away to be forgotten.
But us? We do this for the love of it. From our souls’ primordial cry to fight for a better world.
And because rich people need hobbies. But the point is: We’re free from the shackles of the bureaucracy.
These killers are dancing round like marionettes, and we have a chance to follow them straight to the puppet master.
We can make things right, cutting through the jungle of murder with the machete of justice.
” This, he delivers with immense feeling and an enthusiastic approximation of chopping through thicket.
I have to admit, it is a little inspiring.
“Okay,” I say. “So what’s the plan?”
“Simple,” says Lesley. “You pose as a tourist at the scene of the crime and get in his pedicab. Then, you know, do your thing. Restrain him, call us, and we’ll take him to the Fake House for interrogation.”
“The Fake House?” I ask.
Lesley snorts. “What, did you think I’d bring serial killers into my actual home? Please. With my luck, they’d get one whiff of my aesthetic and realize I’m Banksy.”
“You’re not Banksy,” Grant says.
“It’s a decoy house in Hammersmith,” Lissa continues, more helpfully. “Just for interrogation and holding suspects. More secure. Less personal.”
“And it’s where we’re going to crack Mr. Page and bring down this whole operation,” says Lesley.
“All you have to do is … whatever it is you do.” He wiggles his fingers at us nonchalantly, as if it’s all very simple.
As if nabbing a killer isn’t something we’ve done exactly once, by accident, with fatal results.
“So, what do we have for gear?” Grant asks. “Hidden earpieces? GPS trackers? Handcuffs, I assume?”
“I’ll do you one better: iPhones, a whiteboard, and a party pack of zip ties.”
I stifle a bitter laugh. Poor Grant is about to get a crash course from the Anna Matthews school of technology. Frankly, I’m surprised even Facebook is involved here; with that alone, Anna’s probably congratulating herself for her technical prowess and calling it a day.
Lesley throws up his hands. “Why complicate things? All that high-tech rubbish is police nonsense. And every time a hidden earpiece is involved, there’s some hilarious misunderstanding about what you’re meant to repeat, and the next thing you know, you’re trying to order a sandwich from a serial killer or something.
We don’t have time for that. Besides, I’m not such a Luddite. I even do texting.”
Grant lets out a long breath and wrings his hands, and it occurs to me that at least one of us is going to have to hold it together.
“We’ll be fine,” I force out, though I’m not sure I’m convincing anyone.
Lesley punches the air and flops back into his chair. “That’s the spirit. Roxie with Moxie, Grant the Great, and the Pedicab—” He screws up his face in thought. “He needs a cheeky little nickname. They always have cheeky little nicknames. Dewey Decimal Demon, New Money Mangler, so on.”
“New Money …?”
“Mangler,” he almost growls. “Worst of them all, takes snobbery to new heights. Lurks wherever old money windbags gather and targets anyone who doesn’t belong.
I’ve been after him for years. Catch him for me, Roxie Balboa, and you’ll be my best friend and the new owner of my Jag.
” He frowns and sinks farther into his chair, rubbing his chin. “Pedicab, Pedicab, Pedicab …”
“Pulverizer,” sighs Grant, as if he didn’t mean to speak but couldn’t resist the chance to show off his vocabulary.
Lesley snaps his fingers. “The Pedicab Pulverizer. Whammo. Grant, I like your style.” He quickly scans Grant’s rumpled shirt-and-sweater combo and adds, “Figuratively speaking.”
A gasp bursts from Lissa and she jumps to her feet. “That reminds me. We need to get going!”
I ask her where, and she puts a solemn hand to her heart.
“The happiest place on earth.”
· · ·
I DON’T KNOW if I’d call Harrods the happiest place on earth, but it certainly is something. It’s like if Disney World and Macy’s had a very expensive baby. It’s all lavish carved pillars and art nouveau mosaics and money, money, money.
It also makes for a very practical field trip for us.
If I were a millionaire looking to outfit two first-time spies for any number of unforeseeable circumstances, this is exactly where I’d take them.
Need to go incognito in a Vegas showgirl getup?
You’ll find it here. Need a solid-gold knife set?
That too. Grass-fed salmon for an undercover dinner party? Food hall, ground floor.
So far, it’s been a whirlwind through the clothing departments.
Lissa, who I’m beginning to suspect is the result of Anna Matthews overdosing on cold brew, is treating this like a high-budget episode of Supermarket Sweep.
She’s gotten us everything we could possibly need and then some: Jeans and T-shirts for keeping it casual, formalwear for keeping it fancy.
Sneakers for running. Wellies for running in the rain.
Sweaters and swimsuits and bow ties and stilettos with heels that could crack marble.
She’s now off gathering accessories, leaving us to try on the mountains of clothing we’ve accumulated. It’s Grant’s turn, and judging by the grumbling coming from his fitting room, he’s having severe separation anxiety from his professorial look.
“We might have to dress up,” I point out from my bench. “You need a suit.”
“Fine, but does it have to be this suit? It’s ridiculous. It’s too look at me.”
“It’s chic,” I counter. “And look at me is kind of the whole—”
My words stall as he abruptly exits the room.
It is a nice suit. It’d have to be at that price point.
But what looked like hunter green on the sales floor is more of a jarring emerald under these lights, and the Euro-chic ankle-length cut isn’t quite right on his lanky frame.
It’s giving the impression that he’s actively outgrowing the suit before my eyes.
“I look like Gumby,” he says.
I swear I’m prepared to politely disagree with him, but a snort of laughter betrays me.
“Not Gumby,” I say, struggling to keep my voice even.
He plods down the carpeted hall to the mirror at the end of it, and seeing the ensemble in motion is even worse.
I don’t know if it’s the suit or just his discomfort, but it does give him a vaguely Claymation effect.
“At worst, you look like a lovable, dorky Pixar character.”
Grant shoots me a skeptical look through the mirror.
“Lovable?”
“I believe I said dorky.”
He rolls his eyes and glowers at his outfit some more. I suspect he’d be acting the same way no matter what clothes he had on.
“Come on, Grant. You have to admit this is off to a great start.” I may be out of my depth here, but I know a makeover montage when I see one.
Even if it requires deep denial about what tomorrow holds, I’m determined to enjoy this part.
It’s nice to see Anna Matthews hasn’t lost all of her rom-com sensibilities, anyway.
“A day luxuriating at Harrods, with money as no object? It doesn’t get much better. ”
“We’re being wined and dined for our last meal on death row.”
“Well, you know what they say: it is better to be wined and dined and executed than never to have wined or dined at all.”
Lissa bursts into the room, gaping delightedly. She drops several stuffed shopping bags as she gives Grant the once-over. “Well, well, well! Hell-o, Mr. Movie Star!”
If this is Grant as a movie star, he’s the kind that exclusively appears in stark dramas about white families mumbling at each other.
As he stalks back to his fitting room, Lissa sidles up to me. “Wow, he is determined not to enjoy himself.”
“Don’t take it personally. I think he determined that at a very young age.”
Lissa gleefully shows me what she’s collected: hats, scarves, sunglasses, jewelry, you name it—in every color and pattern discernible to the human eye.
“I may have gone a bit crazy,” she says, looping a turquoise feather boa around her neck. “I couldn’t resist.”
I reach into the bag and pull out a chunky Lucite cocktail ring. “This is all more or less a bribe to do the dirty work later, isn’t it?”
Lissa fluffs up the feathers around her neck. “Is it working?”
The light glints off my ring, illuminating pink sparkles within. “Maybe.”
We help ourselves to various odds and ends from the bags, layering on necklaces and modeling hats to our hearts’ content.
When Grant emerges from the fitting room, Lissa’s in a cowboy hat and I’m rocking a floral headscarf with bedazzled star-shaped sunglasses.
Grant blows past with a small assortment of shirts and pants in hand, disappearing back onto the sales floor. Lissa peers at me and cracks a grin.
“Bet you a tenner you can’t make him smile.”
I offer my blinged-out hand to shake on it. “You’re on.”
But Grant is a tough nut to crack. As we meander through the departments, I make a game out of pointing to an absurd luxury item and guessing its target customer.
(Artisan beer for dogs: Trevor, crypto wunderkind.
Marble potpourri dish: Judith, expat from Long Island who now pronounces “literally” as litch-rally.
Exfoliating anus mask: Gwyneth Paltrow.) He has no response.
I’m running out of Goop jokes in the sportswear section when I break.
“Okay,” I sigh. “What’s your problem?”
Grant’s brows lift in surprise. “My problem?”
“We are not in immediate mortal danger. We’re shopping. With a multimillionaire’s credit card, I might add. And some of us are trying to make a nice day of it.”
He drops his voice to a tense hush and leans in close. “Are you forgetting what we have to do tomorrow?”
A small shiver ripples down my spine. “No,” I say.
“But that’s tomorrow, and today is today.
And today”—I hold up a dramatic feather-trimmed dressing gown from my bundle of clothes—“I want to be Bianca, who did not kill her husband and does not appreciate the insinuation. Now you go.” He stares blankly at me, and I let out all my breath in a huff. “Come on, Grant. Live a little.”
Something in his jaw tightens. It takes a solid few moments of hesitation, and there’s no smile, but he finally walks to the rack and pulls out a solid-gray extremely ordinary sweatshirt.
“Bob,” he sighs. “Very gullible. Told by the salesperson that seven hundred dollars is standard for a sweatshirt.”
“HA!” I clap him on the shoulder. “Oh, Bob. You poor idiot.”
I don’t earn my ten pounds in the end, but by the time the jolly doorman helps us to a car with bags in tow, Grant isn’t wringing his hands quite so much and I swear he’s standing a little taller.
Like maybe his shoulders have downgraded from carrying the weight of the world to a mere continent or two.
It’s not nothing. And given what tomorrow holds for us, I’ll take it.