Henchmen (16 page)

5 p.m. is still early by Albuquerque bar standards.  Hell, 5 p.m. is early by any bar’s standards, which is a good thing.  I’m sitting at the bar, nursing an old-fashioned and waiting for the action to begin.  Eve and Jacob are sharing a table in the back.  Frank’s downtown, keeping an eye out for Brance. He’ll text us when he leaves.  As soon as Brance gets here, Eve or Jacob will text Jessica so she can work her magic.

I’m sitting a couple seats down from where Brance usually sits.  I like to believe we’ll blend in, but there are only six people in the bar, and we’re three of them, so we’ll just have to see what happens.  In the interim, I’ll finish my old-fashioned and probably drink another one.  The bartender is your regulation-issue bartender, not too trendy, not wearing horn-rimmed glasses, just making good drinks.  I’ll have to become a regular.

At 5:10 Frank’s text comes through:
The fat man walks alone
.  Brance isn’t that fat, but considering the NSA is watching everything, we’re trying to be at least somewhat under the radar.  Granted,
the fat man walks alone
is pretty childish, but the phrase common enough that it should get lost in the noise.  We could have said anything: “I like burgers” or “Donkey Kong kicks it old school” would have had the same effect. 

That’s crypto for you in a nutshell.  All cryptography is essentially scrambling a message, and sharing a key to unscramble it.  If you all agree on the message from the get-go, you assign whatever meaning you want, and the message will make sense to each party.  Since we all know each other and see each other every day, it’s easy enough to exchange the key.

Brance makes it to the bar about 20 minutes after Frank’s text comes through. He walks in and sits in his favorite seat.  At this hour of the day, he can easily have his pick of the bar stools.  I find myself idly wondering if that’s why he comes in at this time every day. 

If Brance works in security, he’s used to routine, since routine provides security. 

Well, kind of. 

The process of maintaining organizational security is routine; the process of maintaining personal security is to break routine.  I know - it’s a contradiction.  Think about it this way: in an organization routine is important because it means there are steps that everyone goes through to make sure no one gets access to something they shouldn’t have access to.  The routine means you always do the exact same thing in the exact same order: sign in, check the log, open one safe, close that safe, open the other safe, close it, lock the first door, lock the second door.  The fixed routine drives a lot of people nuts, but it is the structure of the system that provides the security to the system, because the structure is designed to make it automatic to follow the routine.  People who work in that system for a long time tend to develop habits that follow the system. 

Ironically, personal security requires the exact opposite.  When you become predictable in your personal activities, you become inherently less secure, because now someone can figure out where to get you and probably have a very good idea of when you’ll be at a particular location.  So, there you go: follow the security routines at work and become as unpredictable as possible when you leave.

Geoff Brance probably follows all the routines at work to a T.  He has the appearance of someone who has become so inured to the system that the routine of it has become second nature.  He also looks like someone who’s not into thinking in general.

Frankly, I love people like this, because they make it so damn easy to exploit them.

As soon as Brance walks in, I catch Eve out of the corner of my eye fiddling with her phone.  The last two nights he’s been here, he’s stayed for exactly 45 minutes, had two drinks and eaten pretzels.  He always sits in the same place, always has the same drinks, and always pays exactly fifteen dollars for two drinks and a tip.  Forty five minutes sounds like a lot of time, but that really isn’t that much time to set up everything we need to do, and pump this guy for information.

Brance looks briefly at me, like I’m invading his space by simply being in the bar, and orders a scotch on the rocks.  He calmly sits sipping his scotch, eating pretzels and watching the game on one of the TVs behind the bar.

Jessica arrives about five minutes later and she looks incredible.  She’s wearing a black dress, cut low enough in the front to attract attention, but not low enough to attract the wrong kind of attention.  She’s showing some cleavage, but just enough to make you want to see more, not enough to make you believe you’ve seen the whole package.  The dress is cut to just above her knees and, while it isn’t skin-tight, it is definitely fitted down all the way down and shows her curves to amazing effect.  There’s a sash around the waist that ends in a bow tie that dangles off the front of her right hip.  She’s got black hose and heels, and looks like someone who’s not just important, but someone who knows what she wants.  Her lips are a deep, but somehow still subtle, red.  She’s stunning. 

More importantly, she’s smart and dedicated. 

If she wasn’t half my age I’d… 

Well.  Fuck.

Jessica asks Brance if the seat next to him is taken, and as soon as he recovers a bit of his composure, he shakes his head “no.”

She puts her purse down next to Brance and sits on the stool between us.  The bartender is in front of her in the beat of a heart, asking for her order.  It must be nice to be attractive. Unfortunately, it’s nothing I’ve ever experienced.

She looks at Brance, and tells the bartender she’ll have what he’s having.

Brance actually looks proud of himself for a moment, like he’s just gotten validation from the Goddess of Drinks that he made the correct beverage choice.

“What kind of Scotch?” The bartender asks.

“Whatever he’s having,” she responds.

I think I just saw Brance smile and blush.

When the bartender asks to see her ID, she makes a show of getting up and bending over to get her license out of her purse.  Brance’s eyes zero in on her, and he looks her up and down her long legs, his eyes following the seams on her stockings.  She knows this is happening.  She knows exactly what she’s doing, and she gives me a knowing smile when she stands back up to hand the bartender her ID.  He glances at it and hands it back.  Jessica repeats the whole process to put her ID back before she sits back down, running her hands across her ass to smooth her dress out.

Brance thinks he’s smooth.  His eyes are back straight and center before she sits down.  He’s obviously an expert at surreptitiously ogling women.  He tries to act calm and debonair, but all he can come up with is “I like your pantyhose.”

I can almost feel her eyes rolling from here.

She pats his hand gently and says, “They’re stockings, sweetie.”

Jessica looks at him and smiles.  I think it was
Starship Troopers
that talked about the idea of weaponizing a woman’s smile.  It’s a wonderful idea, but Jessica’s would probably be considered a weapon of mass destruction.  Jesus, she orders the same drink and smiles at him, and he’s already all hers.

It’s time for me to make my move.

“Hey,” I ask her, “Why Scotch?”

She shoots me a look that would peel paint, and looks away.

“Seriously.  Why scotch?  I mean, you look more like a Cosmopolitan type of chick,” I tell her.

I’ve been glared at by pros, but Jessica’s gaze is withering.  Brance is starting to get a little irritated that she’s not paying attention to him anymore.

“Excuse me,” he says.  “Is this guy bothering you?”

This is the standard guy way of trying to get focus back on us.  We’re all about the chivalry, especially when that chivalry could lead to sex.

“No,” she tells him, putting her hand on his hand.  “He’s just another drunk asshole.  Let it go.”

“Seriously,” I say, ignoring their conversation, “let me at least buy you something more appropriate for a girl as fine as you.  Scotch is for hairy old women, not at all like you.”

“Fuck off, asshole,” she tells me.

Brance is starting to get edgy.

“Come on, babe.  Why do you want to hang out with a loser like this guy?” I ask, gesturing to Brance.  “I’m a VP.  I can take you where you want to go.”

Brance starts to get up, but Jessica puts her hand on his arm again, and he calms down a bit. But it’s not going to take much to get him riled up again.

“My BMW is a convertible,” I tell her.  “At night the stars are amazing, if you follow me.”

I catch a glimmer of smile from her before she points at me.  She starts to say something but I interrupt her before she can get it out.  “Come on.” I tell her.  “I get it.  I like to slum too, sometimes, but you could honestly do so much better.”

Brance is up, and he’s got a knife in his hand.  It’s a small one, maybe a four inch blade. But I was expecting to get slugged, not take a few inches of steel in my gut.

Most martial arts expose you to dealing with knives at some point or another, and Kenpo is no different.  Like most systems, we trend toward avoiding the conflict whenever possible, but responding quickly when we have to.  I don’t want Brance going to jail tonight, and I can’t afford to let him get kicked out right now, since I need Jessica to get some information out of him.

Brance is holding the knife out in front of him, which puts the knife close to the target (me), but leaves him somewhat exposed.

Did you know you’ve got a nerve that runs along the inside of your arm?  It’s called the radial nerve, and it hurts like hell when the nerve gets hit.  It doesn’t hurt when you hit your radial nerve yourself, but it hurts when someone else hits it for you.  Like any nerve strike, it feels like an electric shock when you get hit, and whatever is in your hand winds up on the floor.

I chop Brance in the arm and he drops the knife.  This isn’t some huge chop where I bring my hand way up and yell “judo chop!” before dropping my hand down in a big arc.  This is more of a straight-line punch - but instead of using a fist, I hit his arm right above his wrist with the edge of my hand.  He drops the knife and backs up a bit.  I immediately kick the knife under the stool and out of everyone’s line of sight just before Jessica slugs me.

Getting hit in the jaw fucking sucks, but I’ll take it over a solid shot to the nose any day of the week.  She’s got one hell of a roundhouse, and I’m on my ass before I completely grasp what just happened.

“That was a cheap shot, asshole,” she says.  This gives Brance an out: if he thinks I cheated, he won’t lose “man points” for letting a woman step in for him.  In fact, good ol’ cognitive dissonance is setting in right now, and he’s convinced himself that not only did I fight dirty, but he let Jessica hit me because I was beneath his worth.

“You bitch,” I tell her from my solid position on my ass.  Her face darkens and I worry for a second that I’m about get hit again.  Brance steps in and kicks me in the ribs.  Nothing breaks (because he doesn’t know what he’s doing), but the kick doesn’t feel good either.

There’s an art to taking a dive in a fight. 

Yeah, it sucks. Everyone wants to win, and be a rock star, but sometimes you have to lose the battle to win the war.  Such is the difference between tactics and strategies.  The strategy is to get Jessica to empty this guy’s skull of all his secrets.  The tactic is to make him feel good about himself by taking a dive and not fighting back.  The art of using tactics to accomplish strategies is having the presence of mind to think about the ultimate win, while you’re sitting on your ass in a bar holding your jaw.

Jessica puts an arm on Brance’s shoulder and says, “Come on.  This guy’s not worth your time. Let me buy you a drink for saving me, hero.”

That’s an awful lot of ego stroking in one sentence, and Brance sucks it up like a man in the desert who’s just been handed a tall glass of water.  If he hadn’t just pulled a knife on me, I’d almost feel sorry for him.  She’s playing him like a violin, and he’s just happy someone’s plucking his strings.  He must’ve forgotten that age-old adage about pretty women picking him up in a bar.

I’ve got another saying I like to live my life by: if you’re looking around the room and can’t figure out who the sucker is, it’s probably you.

Jacob walks over and roughly pulls me to my feet.  “You’d better get out of here, asshole.  This is a classy joint and you’re nastying up the place.”  The bartender nods and reaches for the phone.