[Steven Lyle Jordan]

9: Misdirection

Fighting down panic, I started to walk. Almost immediately, I decided it would be better to walk the other way, so my laptop would face the buildings and wouldn’t be as easily seen from the street. So I spun about and started in the opposite direction. And immediately realized how obvious it would be to anyone on the street who might be on the lookout for strange behavior (say, a passing IT terrorist after NASDAQ) to see me walk one way, then the other. I cursed myself for seven kinds of a fool, but kept going, praying no one had noticed me.

As I walked, passing by other storefronts, I noticed many of them had glass entrances that I could use to catch a reflection and view behind me, without turning around. I used ‘em. And a damn good thing, too: Because at the last store on the block, I looked at the glass wall and caught a reflection of two guys in cheap suits and sunglasses, stepping out of the Starbucks I’d just left. A barista followed them out, and in a moment, I saw him point in my direction.

“See if I ever shop there again,” I muttered, as I increased my pace. Just as I was reaching the corner, I could hear rapid footsteps behind me, and I waited as long as I could before my inner rabbit got the better of me. I broke into a run and dashed around the corner.

And almost ran headlong into the passenger-side door of a white Eclipse coming up the road. I grabbed the handle and used it to swing inside with such force that I probably bent something, slammed the door, and yanked the seat down. The two suits appeared around the corner then, and kept running down the sidewalk past the car… I’d lost them.

“Go, go! Get us to Edward!” I whispered urgently, as Gail started to cut across traffic to make a left turn. “Jesus Christ, girl, you gave me a heart attack…”

“Well, what’d you expect?” Gail protested as she negotiated the streets. “I told you doing a U-turn here was crazy! I had to circle the block—”

“Whatever,” I said, trying to calm down. “It worked. Good job.” I reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. “And I got hit four.”

“So far… so scary,” Gail said. “I think they’ve got helicopters looking for you.”

“I saw it, too,” I nodded. “I don’t think they’ve actually ID’d your car yet, though. They’re sure to by Francis, though.”

Checkpoint Edward was on Market, and heading away from the cluster of Starbucks that were in the tourist areas. I prayed that that choice would throw their search pattern, and buy us more time. Just in case, I monitored for more wireless spots as we travelled, but every spot I hit was password-protected… and anyway, we were in open area, too easy to be spotted loitering around. So we kept going, using G street to get to 10th, then south to get to Market.

“Oh, mother,” I said as we approached Market. I could see unmarked cars… three of them… all within viewing distance of the Starbucks. I’d never be able to sneak into it.

Gail saw it too, and bit her lip silently as we approached, and stopped at the light. We were at the head of the intersection, and all three cars were in sight at that moment. I was still cranked down, but if we did anything suspicious, they’d pick us up right away.

The light turned green, and Gail had no choice but to drive through the intersection. Suddenly, she angled right and put the car at the corner, and shut the car off.

I looked around frantically. “What are you doing?”

“Can you connect from here?” Gail asked quickly.

I checked. “Yeah… just.”

“Good. I’ll buy you some time,” Gail said, and she grabbed her purse and climbed out of the car. She slammed the door, as if she was angry… which clued me in to something going on, but I didn’t know what. Slowly, I cranked open the Toughbook and looked for the next hit.

Outside the car, Gail walked around to the corner, in plain sight, reached into her purse, and pulled out her cellphone. She dialed, paused, and started talking, loudly… and I swear, I had to stop and sneak a look in awe. Gail sounded like she was channeling Marisa Tomei, straight out of My Cousin Vinny, and she was arguing with someone at the other end of the call, and pointing her arm up and down the street, then at signs, then peering up and down the street… pretending to get directions! And considering it was Gail—and Gail could make a corn sack look sexy—it was sure that she was getting more attention lavished on her, than anything else on the street. “Attagirl, Kato!” I muttered as I went to work. Hit number five came through, and I got busy. Once I sent the packet, I closed the Toughbook… then tried to figure out how to call Gail back to the car without being seen. After a few seconds, an idea came to me. I opened the Toughbook again, and started searching for some audio files. That’s what I want…

Gail kept doing the distraction bit on the street, until she suddenly reacted to a noise from her car. It took her a second to realize she was listening to the yap of a toy poodle, coming from her passenger side. After a second, she recovered her composure. She shouted into the phone, “You betta know what’cher talkin’ about, or so help me, when I catch up to you, I will club you!” Whereupon she snapped her phone shut and headed back for the car, saying in a loud voice, “Don’t worry, Killer, mommy’s ready to go now!”

She climbed into the car, looked down at me lying prone in the passenger seat, and she reached out and tousled my hair. “That’s a good boy.”

“‘Killer’?”

“You’ gonna criticize?” she said in her best Marisa accent.

“Oh, Hell, no,” I smiled. “Let’s get to Francis.”