Michele Bravo Playing With Fire, Ch 1

I.

Gilbert McAdoo was a top operative in the Spindrift Security Company which was run by Michele Bravo. She had tasked him with staking out her house and finding out if anyone else were staking it out, and if so, who they worked for.

McAdoo took his team – the Spindrift Security sent out teams of three people on any particular job – to the streets, and within a week had discovered what Michelle wanted to know.

The other two members of his team were Drake and Vasquez. Those weren’t their real names, but he’d nicknamed them that after they’d started working together, after the duo from the movie Aliens. Both of them shared a deep affection and love for each other. It was a platonic love, for Vasquez was a lesbian and Drake was straight, but they both took their job very seriously and they spent their spare time working out together. They were like one person, split in two.

He hadn’t told them whose house they were staking out, of course. All they knew was that a client was being observed clandestinely, and they needed to find out who was doing the observing.

Gilbert, on the other hand, did know whose house the man was staking out, and the identity of the man made him nervous. Why would the Special Crimes Division be checking up on his boss, Michele Bravo? On the other hand, as he was about to call Michele and tell her, this guy did not seem to be working with anyone from SCD. He was on his own…perhaps he was just stalking her…

If so….he grinned…Michele could handle him easily.

McAdoo sat in his office, idly playing with his Newton's Cradle (that iconic executive’s toy which consists of five identically sized metal balls suspended in a metal frame so that they are just touching each other at rest. Each ball was attached to the frame by two wires of equal length angled away from each other. Set the end one swinging, and it hits its fellows and sets the ball on the other end of the frame swinging.)

He knew Michele was in Virginia, doing what, he didn’t know. He wished he did. He’d’ve liked to have visited her in person, using as his excuse the fact that the information he had was so important. Hell, he’d take any excuse to see her…she was soooo attractive and he’d had a crush on her for soooo long. And he was her favorite, he knew. Favorite operative, that was. She always seemed to choose him for the most delicate of jobs…he wondered if that meant anything…if she felt attracted to him, too.

Moot point – he didn’t know where she was, so he’d just have to call her on her cell.

McAdoo sighed, stilled the Newton’s Cradle, and dialed her number.

There was a brief delay, and then her voice came. “Bravo here. Speak.”

She sounded out of breath. He could hear her breathing hard over the phone. God that was hot.

McAdoo pulled himself together. He knew she knew who was calling, she’d have him on caller ID. Neverthless he said, “McAdoo here. I’ve got the info you wanted.”

“Very good, Gil. What’s the verdict?”

“A guy named Gus Keller has staked out the place for the last week. Pretty much of an amateur, for all that he works for the Special Crimes Division. He’s worked there about a year. He’s in the Art and Antiquities branch.”

“What do you mean, he’s an amateur?”

“Well, what I really meant is it’s just him. No one else from the SCD seems to be involved in the stakeout. I don’t need to tell you that if this were an official SCD operation they’d have a dozen operatives surrounding your house, ad it would’ve been a lot more difficult to spot them.”

“Ye-es…. Well, Gil, I recognize the name, and I know what this is about.” (Michele lied smoothly.) “I had a run-in with this guy several months ago when a client hired me to find his missing Matisse. I probably embarrassed him with his superiors when I found it before he did. So now he wants to try to find some dirt on me. Strange way of going about it, though.” (She said it before it could occur to Gil to think it.)

“Yeah,” said Gil. “Well, what would you like me to do? Lean on the guy?”

“No, thank you, Gil. I’ll handle this my own way. Keep up your surveillance of him until I tell you to stop. And continue to be discreet about it. I don’t want him making you.”

“Will do.”

“Very good, Gil. Thanks for your good work. I’ll be back in touch soon.”

II.

Michele hung up the phone and took a deep, calming breath.

She was feeling pretty relieved.

So, this Gus Keller had been the false Mr. Largo. And she probably had embarrassed him with his superiors when she’d disappeared as she had. But to learn that he’d been working for the SCD for only a year…that was pretty insulting. Did they think a rookie could have tracked down and captured the great Taran Tula?

So, she’d embarrassed him, and he was out for revenge. But how could he possibly have found out who she was?

She closed her eyes, replaying in her mind everything that had happened in their two brief meetings. And then she had it.

Michele twisted her hand as though she were holding a spoon. Most of her fingers were curled over…wouldn’t give a fingerprint, but her thumb would. And she’d been eating a hot fudge sundae, the last time the two of them had talked. Was it possible that he’d appropriated that spoon? Got her thumbprint off it?

And instead of rushing to his superiors with it, he was working the case on his own. He thought that he, one man, could capture Taran Tula???

Well. Well, well, well, thought Michele.

III.

“Michele,” called Fitz. “Everything okay?”

Michele quickly put her cellphone in her pocket and returned to the piste. “Sorry, Fitz. Now, where were we?”

She spoke this not to Fitz but to the young man with whom she’d been bouting.

She and Fitz had been driving through the Amberson town center when she’d seen a fencing salon. Mindful of her lack of exercise over the last three weeks, she’d stopped in, borrowed mask, jacket and French foil, and been bouting with some of the students.

She and her opponent put on their masks once more, saluted, and went to it.