The Academy Affair

“I’m not looking for work. I’d like to speak with Mr. Tendle for a moment.”

“Have you an appointment?”

“Actually, no. I don’t.”

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to make an appointment. He’s very busy.”

I leaned over her mahogany desk.

“It’s a personal matter.”

I saw her eyes scan me again, including my cleavage. Ahhh, was Jack Tendle that sort?” This one would have a standard script for women like that. It was time to shift gears.

“It’s about his daughter.” I flashed my badge briefly.

“Oh. I see.” She rose. “Please wait. I’ll see if he has a minute.”

She returned soon after.

“He’ll be a few minutes. Would you care for a coffee or tea while you wait?”

“No. Thank you.”

The few minutes stretched out, then longer, into half an hour. I took the opportunity to skim what Vlad had given me about John (Jack) Tendle. It wasn’t all that much, really.

Photos showed him to be very large man, beefy but starting to slide into fat. In his early 60s now, Tendle had played three years of pro football years before. His sporting career had ended when he’d taken a corner too fast in a sports car and learned that even golden-haired NFL linebackers can spend two months in a hospital.

Football being out of the question thereafter, he’d parlayed his brief fame and a business degree into a series of high-profile jobs, half Big Name and half real business skills, ending up as the Secretary and G.M. of one of the most exclusive country clubs in the continent.

There’d been a brief controversy about ten years ago, soon after he’d been hired, rumors of two cheerleaders from his football days alleging sexual assault, but the whole thing had died down so quickly that people quietly speculated about payoffs. The story faded, as things so often do if the flames aren’t fed.

There was a soft chirping sound from the Guardian’s phone. She picked it up, listened and rose.

“Mr Tendle will see you now.”

I’ve read that most people find the Oval Office in the White House smaller than expected, with the dignity and gravitas of the presidency providing the appropriate degree of awe. Whoever designed Jack Tendle’s office must have missed that memo. The room was big enough to make approaching The Man behind his huge desk a bit of a stroll. The walls were filled with autographed photographs of glitterati,   pictures of Tendle with footballs, pictures of Tendle with celebrities, pictures of Tendle by himself. There didn’t seem to be one of he and Shelly.

He didn’t rise.

“Taffy McFitch.”

It was less of a greeting than a challenge. His tone and gaze were dismissive and he didn’t invite me to sit down. Fine. I picked out a chair, sat down anyway and saw him bristle a little at my presumption.

“Mr. Tendle, I’ve been hired…”

“Let me guess,” he cut me off. “You’ve been hired by my wife to find her lost daughter.”

He didn’t seem all that cooperative. Visions of Grimm’s fairy tale stepfathers rose in my mind.

“Yes.”

“I can’t help you.”

Can’t  I thought to myself, or won’t?  It felt like the latter.

“Mr. Tendle, Penny called you three times before she disappeared.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I have her phone bill. She called The Havens three times, once for over an hour.”

“If so, she didn’t talk to me.”

The man was lying, it was clear. Nor was he showing any obvious interest in helping me find his missing stepdaughter - ok, his wife’s missing daughter. Still, short of calling him a liar to his face, I couldn’t do much with it.

“Did you know Penny was coming back to town, Mr. Tendle?”

“No. I did not.”

“How did you and Penny get along?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, frankly.”

“Penny’s trust comes to an end in a few months, doesn’t it?”

His face turned dark, his mouth set in a thin line.

“Just what is it that you are implying, Ms. McFitch?”

“Implying? Why, I’m not implying anything, Mr. Tendle. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting and obvious question, I would think.”

“I fail to see that my family’s personal finances are any of your business.”

“When it comes to missing heiresses, Mr. Tendle, the press might think otherwise.”

”Are you threatening me?”

The veins in his forehead pulsed and throbbed as he glared at me.

“Hardly. But it’s a question which is going to be asked sooner or later, increasingly so. I’m a quiet investigator; those who might ask later wouldn’t be so discrete.”

I could see him make a visible effort to calm down, not lose his temper.

“Anybody publishing such speculation will be sued for slander and I have nothing further to say about this, Ms. McFitch. My wife is extremely upset, extremely worried.”

“I know,” I replied. “She came to see me.”

“Well, we don’t need your help. Consider yourself dismissed. I’m out of time and you can leave.”

I stared at him as I rose. “I’ll leave, but my contract is with your wife, not you. Thanks for your help, though.”

You win some; you lose some,   I thought to myself as I walked through the parking lot. This had not  been a win.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying various sources, running down thin leads and basically learning nothing. Penny hadn’t changed her driver’s licence, hadn’t used her credit card and hadn’t visited the hair salon or coffee shops her mother said she used to frequent. I’d launched some inquiries to determine her phone’s present location, but it would take a while. I gave it up and headed for the office.

+

I was sitting at a red light near my office when my phone went off with the grinding, wailing, intolerable moan designating an emergency alert. I looked out to the cloudless skies above and decided it wouldn’t be a tornado, but gave a mental finger to the distracted driving law and opened it.

I find emergency alerts annoying. I find them especially annoying when they include my name, the picture from my driver’s licence and a notice telling the world I was wanted for kidnapping a 12-year-old girl. I was listed as armed and potential dangerous, do not approach, call 911 if spotted.

I suddenly felt as vulnerable as I’d ever been. I made a quick turn off the main drag, noticed flashing lights ahead of me, half a block down. I pulled over to the curb and parked. I had a clear view of the unmarked sedan in the No Parking zone in front of my office, a blue magnetic police emergency light pulsing on its roof. I sighed. Vlad was a big boy and, sadly, he was on his own for now.

I slipped a finger inside my blouse and shifted a bra strap as I watched. A hundred yards in front of me, people eyed the scene as they walked past on the sidewalk. Aside from the car, all seemed quite normal. Two dogs greeted each other’s tails as their owners chatted. The deli Vlad often bought lunch at seemed to be doing a brisk trade. I looked at myself in the mirror, ran my fingers through red-brown hair cut short. Brown eyes blinked back at me.

I glanced up at the building I’d parked in front of. The old brownstone had had a serious fire a year ago and had been vacant since then, empty windows like accusing eye sockets. A month ago, somebody had started renovating it. A very optimistic conceptual drawing was hung on the fence. Yup, gentrification incoming and no doubt the rent on my office would increase.

Two men came out of my office building and got into the car. I didn’t recognize either of them. One reached up and removed the blue light as the sedan drove off. I gave them a couple of minutes before getting out of the beater. As usual, the door stuck half-closed. I opened it, lifted it by the handle and tried again, harder. This time it latched.

I stretched, trying to relieve the feeling of a large bullseye target between my shoulder blades. I heard a dull clunk as something in my spine shifted. Better. I stood there for a moment, then started to step to the sidewalk.

.
There’s silence and then there’s silence. Most of the time in the city, silence is the rarest thing on the market. There’s always some sound – cars, dogs barking, voices, doors opening and closing, sirens. Every so often, however, for just one magical moment, everything goes absolutely quiet at the same time.

In that dead silence, there was a sudden tingling sensation on the back of my neck. For no apparent reason, I dropped.

The first bullet snapped by just about where my head had been. The second turned the beater’s passenger window into pebbles and the third left a long crease in its roof before whining off into the night. God only knows where the rest of the burst went, but I was moving like a methedrine bat to put the beater between the gunman and me. Crouching with my back to the car door, the PPK in my hand, I listened to the echoes roll down the street. People were staring, but nobody came closer to investigate. I thought it was a smart move.

I rolled to one side, crawled on my belly, peeked briefly around the bumper. A cartridge casing rolled slowly off a window ledge, fell to the sidewalk below. It made ringing sound when it hit.

I peeked again, saw a silhouette in the open window, a distinctive AK-47 magazine easy to see. I rolled across the pavement to the other end of the car, cursing inwardly at the damage to my clothes. At the far end of the car, I took a deep breath, tried to stop the somebody’s-trying-to-kill-me shakes. I took the .380 in my left hand, leaned out. As I’d hoped, the gunman was still aiming at the other end of the car. I fired two quick rounds in his direction.

I missed, of course. Off-hand and with adrenaline turning my arm to spaghetti, it’s surprising that I didn’t put both bullets into the curb six feet in front of me. The gunman ducked and that was enough. I had the PPK back in my right hand and pointed at the open window as I sprinted to the wall of the brownstone, pressing myself against it. I spent a couple of lifetimes trying to decide whether it would be more stupid to stay put and see what developed or to go inside and talk to my new friend. It was pretty much a tie.

From behind the building came the sound of a car starting, squeals and metallic bangs as it fishtailed its way down the alley, knocking over trash cans as it went.

I sagged against the wall, mouth open, trying to suck in enough air. From somewhere came the sound of a siren. Given that emergency alert, it seemed like a good time to be absent. Talking to Vlad would have to wait. They’d link the shot-up beater to me immediately and my office was the first place they’d look.

I grabbed my purse off the road where I’d dropped it. I saw one .380 casing on the road, kicked it into the storm sewer and ran, tucking the PPK into my purse as I ran.

Two blocks later, I stopped running; nothing draws attention like somebody sprinting. I walked quickly for another two, then slowed down for the next one before catching my breath while pretending to examine a store window. There were a lot  of sirens behind me.

I needed to become invisible. Quickly.

I put on my dark glasses and ducked into a second-hand store. Staying in the Special Sale section, I selected a middling-grey knee-length dress, some flats and a large purse. On the way to the cashier, I picked up a cute ball cap and a new pair of cheap sunglasses. I paid cash, went back and swapped clothes in the change room. I stuffed my old clothes and my purse into the new one.

Keeping a cautious watch behind me, I faded a neighborhood over, found a somewhat seedier thrift store and again went for the Sale rack. This place also had a couple of cheap wigs. 15 minutes later, I emerged in clean but very well-worn jeans, a far-too-large dark hoody and a different pair of shoes. A bra two sizes too small was darned uncomfortable but made me a bit flat-chested. The wig was itchy, too, but passing by a store window, I looked sufficiently different to make me smile a little. The frumpy blonde in granny shoes appeared nothing like Taffy McFitch unless you looked closely. I kept trying to tell myself that.

The .380 was now reloaded and tucked into my waistband and that would be a problem. I could handle the discomfort, but it wasn’t likely to stay in place without constant adjustment.

Quick visits to a couple of corner stores bought me two burner phones, both needing to be charged, but untraceable to me. I paid cash, tried to keep my face turned away from the security cameras.

I found a back table in a greasy spoon, ordered coffee. My mind darted back and forth. None of this made sense. I kept running through it in my mind, kept running into unanswerable questions. Right now, I needed to go to ground somewhere, but hotels were asking for photo ID of late.

Vlad.

He’d proposed to me one time and hadn’t walked away even after I’d turned him down. He knew me well enough — I hoped — to know that I wouldn’t get involved in kidnapping. Maybe he’d take me in. A spare couch at his place seemed a better option than finding a comfy alley. It was a fair hike, but I had time to kill.

The windows on his apartment were dark in the twilight. I went around behind the building, down into the underground parking garage. His car wasn’t there, so I tucked myself in behind a concrete pillar.

The wait seemed endless. There were times like this when I wished I’d taken up smoking or something, anything to pass the time. I could be patient enough in a stakeout, but this was different.

What if he was in jail?

Forty-five minutes later, the last of sunlight fading outside, I was still standing behind my pillar when I heard a car slowly enter the garage. A quick peek confirmed it was Vladimir and that there was nobody following him. I heard the car door slam. I waited until I heard his footsteps heading my way, then stepped out of the shadows.

His hand jumped to inside his jacket, paused. The light was dim and while he clearly didn’t recognize me, he didn’t pull the Glock I knew lived on his waist. Keeping my hands where he could see them, I reached up slowly, pulled off the dark glasses and wig, ran my hand through my hair and tried to smile.

“Hi.”

“Taffy? What in hell?”

His eyes darted around the silent garage before he took my arm and led into the stairwell, then up two flights of stairs to his floor. He peered into the hallway, deemed the way clear and towed me in his wake to his apartment door. Seconds later, we were inside with the door closed behind us.

“Wait here,” he whispered. I could hear him closing blinds. A radio started playing and then he was back.

“What in hell happened?” he said, looking down at me.

“I don’t know, Vlad. I was working that Higgins case and all of a sudden, I’m Duck Number One in a shooting gallery.”

“More than that, Taff.” His voice was gentle, but I could hear the concern. “There’s a warrant out for your arrest.”

“I know. The emergency alert said kidnapping, but that’s just silly.”

I looked up at him, uttered a silent prayer before continuing.

“You know that, right?”

He nodded.

“When the guys from Homicide showed up at the office, they had what looked like a legitimate search warrant. They seized your laptop and left this.”

Dully, I looked at the folded sheet of paper. I couldn’t make out the signature, but letterhead looked genuine and the suspension of my licence was clear enough. I let my arm fall, sagged for a moment against the wall before straightening up.

“You say you saw the arrest warrant, Vlad. What’s it for? I mean, really?”

His eyebrows went up.

“Kidnapping and human trafficking.”

”What?”

“Oh, and kiddy porn.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

“Kiddy porn.”

“That’s what they said.”

“That’s crap, Vlad!”

“I know.”

The sight of a man’s arms extended for a hug had never looked so good, even if it was my own secretary. I snuggled in against his chest, felt his arms embrace me. One hand around my waist pulled me in, the other stroked my head, softly, gently.

I tried to relax, sink into the comfort he was offering, but my mind was doing acrobatics. There was nothing on my computer to substantiate charges of trafficking or pedophilia, even if they managed to crack it. My laptop had pretty good security software on it in any case; it'd give conniption fits to anyone short of the NSA

“I drove by your place on the way home, Taffy.” His voice was very gentle.

“Oh?” My voice was muffled by his jacket.

“There’s a double stakeout there.”

“Double?”

“Mmm-hmm. One looked like cops. The other one didn’t, a woman I think. I don’t think either of them knew the other was there.”

What in hell had I got myself into?”

“Is that it?”

“Not quite. I was tailed coming home.”

I pushed away from him, my eyes wide.

“Then I need to leave, Vlad. Right now. I don’t want you...”

His arms pulled me in again, squashed my protest with a strong bear hug.

“Just one car, Taffy, very easy to spot. I think it was a rookie or something, just making sure I went home like a good boy. If nobody saw you come in here, then I think I’m OK.”

Vlad’s strong arms around me right then were precisely the what this big, strong, tough, independent girl needed. I whispered into his shoulder.

“What’s going on, Vlad?”

His squeezed me for a moment.

“I dunno, Boss, but it looks like you seriously annoyed somebody.”

I thought about it.

“Two somebodies, I think.”

He was silent for a moment.

“Right. That makes sense. Why would somebody put both a warrant and a hit out on you at the same time?”

“Hold on!” I said. “You said Homicide?”

“Yeah.”

“Why Homicide? For kidnapping and… those other things?”

“Damfino that either, Taffy, but that’s what they said.”

It didn’t make sense, but for right now I could hug Vlad, lean into him, take comfort in his male scent, feel assured by his presence. I found I could work with that. He spoke gently from above my ear.

“For now, Taffy, you’re safe here.”

That tender, comforting remark almost launched me into a full-scale meltdown, something I hadn’t had since being dumped by a trash boyfriend at the age of 14. I tried to breath, found I couldn’t, gagged, gulped air,, pulled myself together. Vlad, bless him, continued to provide that traditional strong male shoulder, soft murmurs, gentle pats on the shoulder and back.

The moment passed, leaving me shaken, drained, embarrassed and worried sick about my tough-girl image.

I guess I hadn’t realized how taut I’d been wound.

Yes, OK, bravery isn’t the same thing as not being afraid. I know that. Once, in an earlier incarnation, I ran into a burning airplane and didn’t think much of it until things had settled down, then got hit by shakes measured on the Richter Scale. But, safe now, it was clear I’d been burning pure adrenaline for too long. I leaned further into Vlad’s arms, felt his arms around me, one around my waist, the other sweeping slowly up and down my back.

His comforting hand briefly touched my bum. Barely. I don’t think he meant anything by it, but it was enough.

It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even lust, for it was Vlad I needed and no other man would have done. It was, I guess, an instinctive, overwhelming need to prove to myself that I was still alive, still functioning.

My hands grabbed his head, pulled it down to mine. I ground my lips into his, my tongue diving for his soul, seeking my own.

Vlad pulled back for just a second in surprise, then realized I was serious and responded immediately. His hands flowed over me, caressing and fondling me.

I was almost frantic, hissing with a raw, physical need I’d never imagined.

“God, Vlad,” I groaned. “Do it. Do it now! Don’t make me wait!”

His hands seized the neckline of my faded hoody, tensed, then the worn fabric tore top to bottom like tissue paper. My own hands started tearing at the buttons on his shirt, pulling it down off his shoulders and arms and I felt his hands magically release the too-small bra and I could breathe but found I didn’t want to as they swept over my bare skin, leaving fiery trails behind them.