Chapter 37
Saturday night, still in the storage closet
F ran stood in the open doorway, fluorescent kitchen lights silhouetting her like a woman in the opening sequence of a Bond movie, but in a pair of pleated khaki pants that would give even the skinniest supermodel a front butt.
Fran raised a gun. “Hello, Camille. Or should I say… Gabby?”
For a moment, it didn’t compute. Why did Fran have a gun and know her name? The answer was obvious, but it didn’t make sense. Fran was annoying and frumpy and approaching middle age before her time. Could someone so worried about making sure no one ate her yogurt be the bad guy?
“Jan!” Kramer called out. “So glad you found us.”
“It’s Fran!” she said. “You idiot.”
Fran was the mole.
Fucking A. After the initial shock passed, a wave of relief hit. It wasn’t Markus. She hazarded a glance his way, and her heart squeezed. Just an innocent heartthrob, tied up for no good reason.
Confirming it, Fran smiled at Smirnov and said, “Eduard, I’m sorry this happened. Give me a minute, and I’ll get you out.” Her tone of voice was sweet, almost tender. Gabby recalled Darcy’s notes about Fran being hung up on an ex. She was willing to bet it was Smirnov and that Smirnov could give a shit about Fran.
Smirnov grunted. “Hurry up, would you?”
“Eduard, you wouldn’t be here if you had just trusted me instead of hiring this incompetent bimbo.” She turned to Gabby. “Take your gun out of its holster, set it on the ground, and slide it to me, slowly,” Fran commanded in a used-to-guns, been-a-spy-for-a-while kind of way.
Gabby laughed. “You know they wouldn’t trust me with a gun.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“No, I really don’t have a gun.”
“What’s that then?” Fran pointed to the dart gun. “I’m not blind.”
“Oh, this?” She didn’t say “old thing,” but her tone strongly implied it. Gabby held up her dart gun. “It’s not lethal.” When Fran gave her a hard look, Gabby gave up and slid the gun across the floor. For all the complaining she’d done about it, she’d never been so sad to see something go. Goodbye, only hope.
“Are you people serious?” Fran looked at Alice and Markus. In an accusatory tone, she said, “She’s not even armed. Didn’t you think she could handle a gun?” She shook her head slowly and looked meaningfully between them, zip-tied on the floor, and at Gabby, the one who’d restrained them.
Maybe Fran was the bad guy, but Gabby appreciated the vote of confidence.
“So what is the endgame here?” Fran said looking around the room, obviously confused. “Were you going to tie them all up and… what… have an open, honest conversation? A little restorative circle.”
Restorative circle—that sounded like some Waldorf School lingo. Fran and her kid’s tuition. Was this the reason that Fran was doing all of this? The LA schools weren’t good, but were they that bad?
“Or is this Scooby-Doo ?” Fran smiled. “You gathered everyone and are about to unmask the owner of the fairground who has been disguised as a monster…” Fran arched an eyebrow. “Which I guess makes me the monster.”
Whoever decided to bring back mom jeans was the real monster. But Fran was right about Scooby-Doo . Fran had her there.
“It didn’t even occur to you that I was the mole, did it?”
Gabby shook her head slowly while Fran gave her a disappointed look that burned to her core.
“I’m sorry.” Gabby was the same as the rest of society, dismissing a woman in unflattering pants as a credible threat.
“You’re not the only frumpy mom flying under the radar in the spy world,” Fran said.
Frumpy? Fran could speak for herself. But she was guilty. “I’m sorry for underestimating you,” Gabby said.
“Gabby, you’re apologizing to a woman threatening you with a gun,” Markus said sounding exasperated, stating what should be obvious.
That was a good point. Fran deserved to be taken seriously as a bad guy instead of called Jan and forgotten. But there was more to it than gender. The person walking through the whole office with a take-out container demanding, “Is this yours?” could not be a spy. That was a deep embed, someone who’d been there for years, not only blending but defining the office culture.
Softer, Gabby said, “You killed Darcy, didn’t you?”
Fran shrugged. “You can imagine my surprise when you showed up a week later and didn’t try to kill me.”
“Why didn’t you rat me out to Smirnov?” Gabby asked.
Smirnov answered that one. “Because she couldn’t tell me she killed Darcy. They both worked for me.”
“Can I just clear something up?” Gabby said. “I thought you had to be Russian to join the Russian Mafia.”
Fran rolled her eyes, and Smirnov made a palms-up gesture. “There’s some gray area.”
Gabby was still struggling to put it together. Fran had seemed like such a committed eStocks employee, such a brownnoser. “I thought you wanted to be Kramer’s assistant,” Gabby said. She had been one hundred percent convinced.
“I said I wanted your job. I didn’t say which one. You have several.”
Gabby flashed back to the conversation at Starbucks:
“And then, wham, someone else is hired from outside the organization and given the good work. Happens every time.”
“Who was hired above you?”
“You, Camille.”
Fran had never wanted to be a personal assistant. She didn’t give a damn about eStocks Enterprises. She wanted Darcy’s job, to get a cut for selling the codes.
“How long have you been working for Smirnov, Fran?” Gabby asked.
“How long has it been, Eduard, four years? And I’ve been waiting for a real assignment.”
Gabby winced. Fran wasn’t getting love from any of her bosses. “That must have been a slap in the face when Darcy walked in off the street and was about to make some real money stealing codes.”
Fran smiled tightly. “You think?”
Gabby said, “Okay, Fran. You have the gun. You’re in charge. What do you want?”
She shook her head. “It’s your call, Eduard.”
“Do you have the codes? For all this talk, you are no better than her.” He pointed to Gabby. “Also, un-fucking-tie me, right now.”
Fran walked over to Kramer. “Let me get the codes first.” With a smile, she said, “Mr. Kramer has them memorized.”
Gabby flashed back to her code research. She’d learned two things: 1) a code was just a bank’s address, and 2) men were still struggling to accept that women preferred larger penises. She said, “I’m just thinking of this now, but if Mr. Kramer hasn’t laundered Mr. Orlov’s money yet, then the codes are no good, right? There’s no way he’ll move it to a location you know about.”
Smirnov said, “He already moved it, right?”
Fran nodded yes.
“Okay, so if you steal it while Kramer and Orlov are still tied up, you’re good to go.” When everyone else seemed to already know that, she held her hands up defensively. “Just catching up.” This was her first money-laundering party.
Gabby looked around the room. It was only a matter of time before Fran untied Smirnov, and they took off. When they left, they would probably kill the rest of them, either here or at a secondary location. Probably the latter. She, Markus, Alice, and Orlov were some very big loose ends. After spending a week working with Smirnov, she suspected he wouldn’t be leaving any of those around. As the only person who wasn’t tied up, she had to do something.
While her wheels were spinning, Fran had approached Kramer. “Don’t be coy, George. I’ve been at this company for five years, and I know it better than you. Those codes aren’t in that safe that everyone and his brother knows about.”
Ouch.
“They’re not on a Post-it note. They’re in your head. This can go one of two ways. I can make you tell me. Or—this would be the less painful option—you could just tell me.”
“Yes. Yes,” he relented. “I memorized the codes.”
“Thank you,” she said, all ladylike.
Guaranteed he wouldn’t be calling her Jan anymore.
It was just Gabby and a woman who was trying to get in deeper with the Russian Mafia, all the actual trained operatives inconveniently zip-tied and drugged thanks to her. Why had she ever thought Markus could be the mole? He was an absolute heartthrob of a man, in evening wear no less—and what had she done? She’d tied him up. He’d been in her ear all week with nothing but the best intentions. He’d asked her out. This proved it—Gabby Greene was an idiot.
She caught his eye and softly mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
He gave her an almost imperceptible nod, a “you can do this, Gabs” nod of approval. He trusted her. For whatever incomprehensible reason, he made her feel it.
“Does anyone have a pen and paper?” Fran asked, apparently to write down the codes.
And that is when she knew the answer. “I do.” Gabby smiled and reached into her back pocket. She handed Fran Lucas’s spy decoder pen that she’d confiscated earlier.
Except for a discreet “Spy Kidz!” label, the pen looked completely normal. It wrote normally at first, but within an hour the ink fully disappeared, only to reappear some days later and be harder than hell to wash. If Gabby had to repaint her bathroom to cover up decoder ink butts, she might as well get something out of it.
Fran shifted her gun to her left hand to accept the kiddie decoder pen and said, “I’m waiting, Kramer.”
He blew out a defeated breath and looked around the room. Gabby almost felt bad for him. If he shared the codes, Orlov would probably kill him. If he didn’t, Fran would. Effectively reminding him that she was the more immediate threat, Fran trained her gun on him.
His voice too high and cracking like a preteen boy’s, Kramer croaked, “How is a guy supposed to get ahead in this world? All I wanted was a nice house for my family and a couple of cars?”
Fran kicked him with one of her clogs.
Kramer winced. “Fine. You can have them.” Looking defeated, he started listing the numbers in a shaky voice, “Nine-five-two-three-four—”
Orlov shot Kramer a look and said his name in a menacing tone.
Kramer stopped talking for a second, probably weighing his options again until Fran reminded him who had the gun.
“One-six-seven-four-zero-one-two,” he finished.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Fran said, like she was talking to a child. After the ink disappeared, it would look like every other page in the book. If she didn’t transfer the money in the next fifteen minutes or so, she would be out of luck. Gabby couldn’t be sure of the exact timing. It’s not like she knew when Lucas drew the butts.
Fran smiled at everyone and said, “Well, that’s all I needed. I’ll be going.” She looked at Gabby and sighed. “Although I guess I can’t just leave you here. What’ll it be? I could tie you up or shoot you?”
Gabby didn’t wait for Fran to decide. She charged.