“Too wrapped up in your little plans for revenge?” Fiona said.
Junior actually smiled. I think we might have been having a moment of some kind. “Just happy to cook for myself again. You get a little tired of burgers and fries in prison.”
“You do have a lovely kitchen in your house,” Fiona said.
Junior checked his watch, but didn’t say anything.
“You late for something?” I asked.
“I asked a friend of mine to stop by, too,” he said. “You have a problem with that?”
“No,” I said. “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.”
“We’ll see,” he said, and just then a police cruiser, followed by a tow truck, pulled into the lot beside my Charger. “You may not want to tell me who you are, but I’m going to bet that you have fingerprints on file somewhere. I got to watch a lot of CSI in prison, so I asked my friend Officer Prieto to get a few… what do they call them? Latents?”
I had to hold myself back from clapping. It was a great move by Junior. Instead, I said, “Junior, if you attempt to move my car without using the key? It will blow up.”
“You bluff.”
“One way of finding out,” I said. “But from this distance? We’ll all be dead, too. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to go behind the building. I’ll pop inside and see if I can get the birthday party to cower beneath the tables.”
Officer Prieto and the tow-truck driver stood behind my car, presumably waiting for some sign from Junior. He didn’t make any, so I went ahead and decided to rectify the situation on my own. “Just tell our friend that I’m happy to give him my prints.”
The advantage of being a covert operative, and one that has had certain nebulous organizations proctoring his work recently, is that I happen to know my prints aren’t in the system. Or if my prints are in the system, they don’t come up as belonging to Michael Westen.
But Fiona’s just might be. Not that she couldn’t handle herself, but it probably wouldn’t do anyone any good to have certain government agencies aware that she was in town.
Junior stood up and whistled. Officer Prieto and the tow-truck driver exchanged a few words, and then the truck drove off. “Give me a minute,” Junior said, and started off toward the policeman.
I got up from the table when Junior was far enough away that he couldn’t hear me. “Here,” I said. I handed her my phone. “Take some candid photos for our memory book, won’t you?”
“Love to,” she said.
“Keep my face out.”
“That officer is very handsome,” she said. “I’ll focus on him.”
“Good,” I said. “When I go over, you wait here. But keep snapping photos. You never know when we’ll want to relive this experience.”
“That was a smarter move than I would have anticipated,” Fiona said. “The fingerprints? The car? Very savvy.”
“He’s had a lot of time to think of great ideas.”
“Are you sure you’ll be fine?”
“What’s the worst that can happen-he finds out I’m a spy? Spy trumps local cop every day.”
“I hazard to remind you that you’re not a spy anymore,” she said.
“You know what I mean.”
Officer Prieto dipped into his car and came back out with something small and square. Probably an ink pad. Junior waved me over.
“I’m allowed to use a real gun here, right?”
“Try not to shoot the kids,” I said.
By the time I reached the Charger, Junior and the cop were already back in conversation. “You must be the crooked cop,” I said. I extended my hand to shake, but instead, Officer Prieto pressed my fingers into the ink pad and then onto a piece of paper. He did it in under ten seconds. It was fairly impressive. Since I knew it was coming, and since I thought maiming a cop would be more trouble than I needed that afternoon, I opted not to stop the process by breaking his arm in two. All that, and I don’t even think Prieto made eye contact with me, though it was hard to tell, since he wore mirrored aviator glasses.
“You got anything to hide?” Officer Prieto said.
“I’m a criminal mastermind,” I said, “but that’s probably pretty apparent. Other than that, you now have all the clues you need to my existence.”
“I find out you’re not who you say you are, I’ll bring your whole world down,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Good luck with that. I can tell you right now, I’m not really Cy Rosencrantz.”
The three of us stood there for a moment without saying anything. It was a nice form of posturing, one usually only seen in the wild. I decided to wait it out a few moments longer and then said, “You done?”
“A real joker here,” Prieto said.
“I’m just concerned that we have a job about to jump off, and you’re trying to stare me down. Either you’re a crooked cop or you’re not. If you’re not, just go on and run my prints. If you are, you need to decide how you’re going to get everyone out of that warehouse in the next twenty minutes or so.”
Prieto reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone and a phone number. “You want some diversion? You make the call,” he said, and gave me the cell. “My voice isn’t appearing on anything. I’ll do my job, but you do yours.”
I examined the phone. It looked like a burner, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I went into the Charger and took out one of my own disposables from the glove box. “I come prepared,” I said, and then dialed the number.
“Harding Pharma, this is Dan.”
Huh. Dan was a good choice.
“Dan,” I said, “this is Kirk Peterson from Diagnostic Partners. You in the warehouse?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ve got a report here that the cooling systems are going nuts there. What do you have?”
“Uh, well, I’m just on duty for the loading dock, sir. You got the loading dock on the line.”
“Then I need someone in the lab,” I said.
“No one like that here. It’s a Saturday.”
“Son,” I said, “I’m going to make your life real simple for you. You’re about fifteen minutes from a stage-three collapse in the CDH units. Who’s on call?”
“Uh, uh,” he said. Panic. It makes you sputter.
“Settle down, son,” I said. “Just calmly get everyone out of the dock. I got a call in to the police. They’re on their way.”
“We’ve got a truck leaving in the hour,” he said.
“Leave it,” I said. “And get your ass out of there, son. Police will be on-site in a few minutes. God help you all if this gets into the water.”
I clicked the phone off, took out the SIM card, and then crushed it on the pavement.
Junior and Prieto just stared at me.
“I told you,” I said, “you’re dealing with a criminal mastermind. So, why don’t you get moving there, Officer Friendly, before someone gets smart and starts actually thinking over there at the warehouse?”
Officer Prieto got into his car without saying a word and drove off. Within a few seconds, we could hear his siren.
“Nice work,” Junior said. He extended his hand.
Old friends. That’s what we were. I took his hand and said, “You ever try to corner me like that again, and I’ll torture you to death in a way that will make your ancestors hurt. We got a deal, hoss?” Junior said nothing. “Great.” I patted his hand lightly. “Good talk.”
I waved Fiona over. She sashayed across the parking lot, and when she got close to Junior, she gave him one of those smiles she normally reserves for men she’s about to hurt. “Always a pleasure,” she said, and then she got into the car.
I looked at my watch. “If that truck isn’t at Honrado within the hour, I’ll assume you want that ancestor thing
