Authors: Don Bruns
“Mr. Moore, I want you to gather conversations from office number one.”
“One?” One? That couldn’t be right. And yet I realized Feng was number one in my thoughts.
“Office number one. Sandy’s office. My husband.”
“It’s impossible, Skip. You can’t fall into this much crap. Nobody can get themselves into this much of a mess.” Em sat wedged between James and me as our truck chugged down the highway toward Delray Beach.
I’d attached the GPS unit from our truck to the UPS truck that stopped twice a day at Synco Systems. Learning from my mistakes, it took me about two minutes this time. Let Feng follow “Big Brown” for a while. So I didn’t think the complaint was entirely warranted. I mean, I was adjusting.
“Em,” James shot her a glance, “it’s not like we’ve been exposed to this kind of thing before. You can be as critical as you want to be, but we’re in virgin territory here.”
I heard her growl. “James, I blame you for ninety percent of this.”
“Your boyfriend is innocent. I take all the credit.”
I wanted to strangle both of them. “Why don’t the two of you grow up and quit throwing blame around?” I used the popular phrase that seemed to be the dumbest one of the decade. “It is what it is.”
“And that’s exactly what it is.” James jerked the wheel, avoiding a Porsche that cut us off, and kept his eyes straight ahead.
“Look, we’re going to be at Jody’s store in about ten minutes. We have a mission, and I’m—we’re being paid well for it.” This had started out being my project. Obviously I wasn’t comfortable in my own ability. I’d asked these two people to participate. A bad decision.
No one else spoke for the next seven or eight minutes. We listened to the tinny radio. There was an electrical short somewhere in the system and it cut in and out. The sound quality was second only to the crappy rap music selection James had chosen. Finally, we pulled up next to Jody’s spy store.
“You know,” James said, “we don’t really need three people to buy a simple bugging devise.”
“No.” I agreed. “I volunteered to do this myself. But you two decided it couldn’t be done without your expertise.”
The three of us walked into the store, and Jody greeted us from behind the counter.
“Hey, Skip, James.”
“You remember Emily. My—” I remembered how he’d almost made a play for her the last time.
“Girlfriend.” Emily finished the sentence. “He has a hard time with that.”
“No.” I corrected her. “It’s just that I still can’t believe I’m dating someone as hot as she is, and I stumble every once in a while.” I wasn’t going to let this sleazy guy move in again on Em.
James rolled his eyes. Em grabbed my arm and squeezed it.
“As we said on the phone, we need a listening device.” James was scanning the walls, checking out the inventory.
“Well, there are several things I would suggest. First of all, there’s the power strip.” He pulled a three-outlet power strip from behind his counter and handed it to me. “I showed you this the last time.” Jody beamed a smile at Em. “You turn on the red
switch, just like you always do. Then, you plug it in. No one has a clue, and you hear every voice in the room.”
“That’s what we need, pard.” James was nodding his head up and down.
“Hold on, friend. Then there’s the light switch, the body microphone, and the motion detector.”
James nodded as if he understood. Trust me. He didn’t.
“If you need to move it around to different locations, the power strip is good. I’ve also got a ball.”
“Ball?” I looked around. Didn’t see a ball.
“Right here.” He opened the palm of his hand. “Barely the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Now this is a camera and a microphone.”
Jody set the ball on the counter as we hovered over it. He pointed to a flat-screen moniter on the wall, and we could all see ourselves.
“You guys are setting up a security system, right?”
“We are.”
“Then these two items here would be perfect. Remember these?” He pointed to the wall behind him. “You thought it was a motion detector. Pretty good imitation, huh?” The small, curved plastic apparatus was mounted on the wall, facing us.
The thing was dead on. To the eye there was no way to tell it was a camera. I dealt with motion detectors on every installation. “It looks exactly like a motion detector. If it was a real detector, anytime something moved in front of it, it would trigger an alarm. The alarm is usually programmed to call the security company and they send out the cops.” But it wasn’t real.
Jody walked back to the monitor, flipped a switch, and we were all treated to another live shot of ourselves. “It’s a really good camera and a microphone. So you’d be getting quality video as well.”
“Wow.” James stared at me. “If it can fool an expert, it should fool a layman. Pretty good.”
Em watched the monitor and brushed her hair back from her face. “So Skip could have that installed and it would appear perfectly normal for the security system?”
“Exactly.”
“Wow.”
“But I’m thinking the item up there might be the best of all.” He pointed above our heads. A smoke detector was mounted to the ceiling, and again we all appeared on the flat-screen monitor. “That baby covers the room, and the sound is great.”
James looked at me, a big grin on his face. “I told you that Jody would come through. These are pretty cool, eh, amigo?”
I had to admit. There were companies making a living inventing these spy things, so there must be a lot of sneaky people in the world. “You must sell a lot of these to industries for espionage. Or maybe checking up on employees?”
“Some. Most of them, they’re used by spouses.”
“Woman checking up on cheating husbands?” James smirked.
Jody shook his head. “No. Men checking up on cheating wives. Mostly.”
It was Em’s turn to ask a question. “What?”
“I know, you think of straying husbands, not wandering wives. If I was in business, let’s say north of Atlanta, I’d be dealing with philandering husbands. But south of Atlanta, it’s where the rich sugar daddies retire. The old men bring their money and end up marrying girls half their age or younger.”
“Ah,” James seemed to get it. “And the old geezers need to keep an eye on the little fillies because they know that most of them married for the money.”
“Something like that.” Jody pointed at the monitor with all
the locations clearly marked. “Twelve out of fifteen clients are men tracking wives.”
“A clear case against marriage.” James laughed.
“So, my choice would be the smoke detector.”
I let out a deep breath. “How much?”
“This one I can sell you for about a hundred seventy-five dollars. All you need is a computer, and when you remove the secure digital card, what the industry calls an SC card, you can plug it into your computer and see and listen to everything that happened in the room.”
“That’s a steal, Skip.”
I gave James a sharp look. He hadn’t put up one cent yet. Oh yeah, the truck. That was always his investment. As long as it continued to run.
“The card inside?” I was thinking about taking it out, putting it back in, taking it out—
“Well, if you want to do this fast and easy, you just mount the detector. The card inside is motion and sound sensitive and should last about six hours. As I said, you just take off the cover, take out the card, and play it on your computer.”
“Just?”
“Well, you could hardwire the thing, but there’s cable and drilling and running it into ceilings and walls and—”
“No, no.” That’s what we were doing for the legitimate part of our business. This had to be quick and easy. “Never mind.” I looked up, studying the white piece of plastic. What had I gotten us into? So someone, probably me, has to go into the office, climb up on a chair or ladder, remove the card, replace the cover, and get out of the office alive.
James was looking up too, and I noticed Jody was looking at Em. “And, amigo, someone has to go back in and replace the card.”
“There’s that too.”
“You can buy an extra card.” Jody looked anxious.
“I’m not sure I can afford the one I’m buying now. Any chance we can lease this smoke detector? Rent it?”
“Can’t do it. You have to do a permanent mount. But I can let you have it for half down and half once you get it up and running.”
I had one hundred dollars on me. Not much more until the bonuses and commission came in. I reached in my pocket and pulled out three twenties. “Can this be the down payment?” I was netting a minimum of $10,000 from Carol Conroy. Another $5,000 if this camera picked up any evidence that she was interested in. James was right. I had to make this investment.
“Sure. I can take that. And I can expect the rest in what? A week?”
“Maybe two?”
“Because we go back, Skip.” He winked at Em. I never did like the guy too much, but he had good taste in women.
Jody dropped the detector in a plastic bag, wrote a receipt longhand, and we concluded the transaction.
“There’s one other thing you should be aware of.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a camera detector that’s pretty hot right now.”
James leaned in. “A camera detector? To detect the camera that is used to detect something else?”
Jody gave him a funny look. “Let me show you.” He walked to one of the shelves and pulled off a small chrome mechanism with an eyepiece. “Here. Look through this at any of the cameras I’ve mentioned.”
James aimed at the smoke detector. “There’s a red light.”
“Yep. Try the motion detector.”
“Wow. There’s a red light.”
“And on it goes. If you ever want to see if someone has infiltrated your place with a camera, all you have to do is—”
“The Teddy Bear has a red light.”
“All you have to do is—”
“And the calendar. Wow. This is so cool.”
Jody cleared his throat. “All you have to do is aim this at everything in your home or office and you’ll know immediately if there’s a camera, secretly recording what goes on. If you want, I can add that to the sale.”
Em was faintly smiling. “Ah, the tangled webs we weave.”
“No.” I was emphatic.
“Skip, it may come in handy, pard, I mean—”
“James. No.” I turned to Jody. “So, we’re all set.” I was anxious to leave.
“Um, Skip. We’d talked about another GPS to switch out while the other was charging.”
Jody smiled. “Can’t let you try two of them out, but I can make you a great deal. Why don’t I wrap up the second one and—”
“No. No thanks. We’ll recharge the other one and take our chances.” I glared at James. I knew very well he’d demand an equal split of the money, but he had yet to pay a cent. “A fake smoke alarm and we’re in business. That’s all we need for now.”
“Fake?” Jody looked very disappointed. “Skip, not so fast.” He pulled a pack of matches from his pants pocket and tore one off. He struck it on the pad, let the flame burn down and held it up to the ceiling. The piercing siren started immediately.
“What the heck?” I plugged my ears.
“It actually works.” He was shouting against the loud noise. He waved his hands, apparently stirring up an air current, and the noise abruptly ceased. “Nothing fake about it.”
“Son of a gun.” James had that toothy grin on his face. “That’s even better.”
Jody walked back into the rear of the store, and James put
his arm around my shoulders. “Wise decision, my man. Wise decision.”
Em rolled those eyes. “I doubt if you’ve ever made one yourself, James.”
“Teaming up with your boyfriend, miss. That’s always been a good decision.”
And what was she going to say about that?
On the way back I pulled out the laptop, stuck in the card, pulled out the short antenna, and logged on. With the stroke of a key I had Feng’s car. “James, you won’t believe this. He’s back at the laundry.”
“Guy has issues with clean clothes. Maybe it’s the place all the guards have their uniforms cleaned. You’ve got nine guards over there, pally.”
“And,” Em pointed out, “you can’t be sure he didn’t figure out you had installed a GPS on his car. He might have planted it somewhere else and we’re following someone else.”
That would mean he was as smart as I was, and I doubted that. “We’ll know in a minute.” I pointed at the screen. “He’s leaving, and—” I waited, watching the little blip on the map, “it appears he’s headed back to Synco Systems.”
“We should arrive about the same time he does, pard. We’ll just see.”
Everyone was quiet as we drove back. The truck ran rough, and James managed to hit most of the potholes in the narrow streets, but other than that the ride was uneventful. We were
probably going to arrive about twenty minutes late, but no one from my company was watching the clock. Wireman would probably notice, but he’d never say anything. He never seemed to sweat the small stuff. Until after work when he was loaded.
I was thinking how I could get the smoke detector installed. It was similar to the ones my company used, but ours were connected by phone line. I would have to concoct some story about how we had to install a separate detector in office one.
“James,” I broke the silence, “Jody seemed to be pretty sure that no one installing this thing would know it contained a camera.”
“Pretty sure.”
“So there’s only the one drawback.”
“Getting that chip in and out. Yep. There’s that.”
We didn’t say anything else until we got back to Synco Systems.
When we pulled into the parking lot, Feng’s car was there and our UPS truck was parked in front of Synco Systems. I wondered if the little guy had figured it out yet. Or was he tracking a large brown truck and a guy with brown shorts and shirt? And the scary part was, if he knew we’d switched the GPS unit, then he’d figured out that we knew he was a suspicious character.
Em left in her brand new powder blue 335i BMW, heading back to her luxurious condo, and James and I went back to work. Eden gave James a big smile when he walked in, and I had a hunch that their date on Friday would go very well. She was a good-looking girl, even in her uniform, and if I didn’t have two girlfriends at the moment, I would have been interested.