Project Northwest (5 page)

Even with the engine running and the heater
at its highest setting, the forty-degree weather chilled him to the
bone so he leaned into the backseat, grabbed a bed sheet from the
laundry basket, and wrapped it around himself. He was still cold,
but it would work. His plan, as crazy as it was, just might
work.

* * * *

Bridget searched for a few moments, and found
Cindy’s cell phone in an unlocked locker and replaced it with the
note. She closed the locker and, for some unknown reason, decided
to lock it with her own lock and key. The cell phone had just
settled into her purse when a drunk busted into the room, almost
knocking her over in the process.

“Oh, I’mma sorry—I’mma looking for the men’s
rooms,” the drunk slurred and he smelt like a brewery.

“It’s the other way, down the hall to your
left, go back the way you came.” She directed with her arm and
index finger.

“Left? What?” stammered the drunk.

Bridget pulled the work schedule from the
corkboard and said, “That way.” She pointed, as she pushed him out
of the locker room and exited.

“Oh, okay, you aarre soooo pretty, what’s ya
name?”

“Forget it, buddy, I have a man, and he knows
where the restroom is.”

“Can’t blame me for tryin’, okay, so this
way,” the drunk said pointing back toward the bar.

“Yes, you can’t miss it, that way and on your
left.”

She had babied and built up the ego of many a
drunk. She considered herself a pro at it and made a decent wage
doing it, but she just didn’t have the time tonight. Drunks as a
rule immediately landed on her shit-list at the number three spot.
They quickly moved up if they touched her or became impolite. “That
way, good luck,” she said, and headed toward the back door, the
drunk nearly a distant memory.

She opened the door with the small of her
back and noticed the drunk going back into the locker room.
‘God, don’t let him piss in the locker I use,’
she prayed
and was out the door, into the back of house area. Minutes later,
she was on the street heading toward the car.

By the time Bridget arrived at the car, James
had burnt a gallon of gas and raised the interior temperature to a
toasty seventy degrees. James knew Bridget would customarily balk
at the heat. She enjoyed the cold and loathed the repulsive heat of
summer. A Seattle native, she believed that seventy degrees was
blistering heat. When the temperature hit about seventy-five,
Bridget would almost shut down; she felt it was so oppressive. She
had tried Bikram yoga, but bailed during the first ten minutes
unable to deal with the one hundred plus degree heat and, in her
mind, couldn’t fathom why anyone would do that type of yoga.
Bridget was a struggling tree-hugger to be sure, but she was a
devout snow-bunny.

She opened the door and instantly noticed her
man, the guy she was going to marry and have children with, the man
she was totally in love with, was buck naked under a bed sheet.

She settled into the driver’s seat, removed
her coat, and purposely, sexually, far too slowly, placed her purse
at his feet. “Well someone feels better,” she said, implying sexual
undertones, totally intrigued with what she thought was on James’s
mind. “I got the schedule. Luckily, I’m off on Monday,” she
hinted.

James recognized the moment and so wanted to
see where it would go. He definitely wanted to explore it. Bridget
was a beautiful woman and had no fear when it came to sexual
attitude, but he had an agenda and laughed it off. “Shush, do you
remember the spot of our first picnic last July?”

“Yes.”

“Drive there.”

“Okay, baby, whatever you want, it’s a drive
though, about thirty minutes,” she said, still mistaking his plan
as sexual innuendo.

* * * *

The noise canceling programming worked like a
charm. No matter what James and Bridget said in the car, with the
cancellation CD of Concrete Blonde in place, what the surveillance
tech called “the source,” all ambient noise was almost completely
cancelled out by their sophisticated software. Simply put, as the
associate bragged days earlier–‘...regardless of the volume of
Concrete Blonde, it will be cancelled out and reduced to the level
of low ambient noise.’ His sales pitch turned out to be true and
the conversation between the two in the Honda was blasting across
the laptop speakers in the Tahoe.

They heard the request from James to get a
drink, the response that they would head to the Shell or get juice
from The Lounge.

They heard Bridget forget her purse and, to
the disgust of Mr. Wright, all of their technology was once again
negated by whispers, apparently near the trunk of the vehicle.

He pounded the dashboard as he loudly
criticized, “Why isn’t there a mic on the outside of the car
somewhere?” The technicians responded to the outburst, swearing
they could tweak the software parameters to the point where they
could, in fact, hear what was said. He crossed his heart and
assured Mr. Wright, “I can pull that conversation, sir.” The tech
didn’t really believe it, and Mr. Wright knew it was a lost
cause.

Parked on Union, just outside The Lounge, the
tech was still working on the voice parameters as the other techs
and Mr. Wright impatiently waited.

Impatience turned to panic as the next series
of events exposed themselves.

“She’s in the building,” directed the
technician in the Tahoe into the earpiece of the associate inside
The Lounge.

“I have a clear view at the front door and I
don’t see her. Where is she?” the associate asked.

“She’s entering the back of the house. She’ll
be in The Lounge in minutes, move to the backdoor. She’s not at the
front door—she’s entering the employee entrance, roger?”

“Got it, on my way to the back of house. I’ll
find her.”

Moments later, they received an update. The
associate had found her, she was in a hallway off the bar and
heading toward a room.

“What do I do?” The associate asked to his
team in the Tahoe.

“Pour beer on your hands and rub it over your
face. You’re going to pretend you’re drunk and you are looking for
the restroom. I don’t care, get into that room, and see what she is
doing!” Mr. Wright yelled.

They heard the door burst open and the
drunken conversation between the associate and Bridget. They
giggled when Bridget shot the associate down after the ‘you’re so
pretty’ line, but understood the associate was only doing his job
and they, oddly, took pride in the fact he was successfully passing
himself off as a drunken patron. And no one in the Tahoe could
argue that she wasn’t pretty. More importantly, she was buying it
and so were they.

“She’s exited the building, she left the way
she came,” directed the pretend drunken associate.

“Very well, we see her now,” Mr. Wright
responded.

“I find it hard to believe she was there to
collect a schedule with today’s technology, a simple phone call and
she can get it. It’s probably online somewhere. Mr. Spain is trying
to get the upper hand somehow. She was there for another reason,”
continued Mr. Wright.

“Turn that room, top to bottom, and let me
know what you find. There is something there I can feel it.” Mr.
Wright, in final contemplation, ordered, “She was there, they are
here for a reason, and it has nothing to do with a damn work
schedule. Find me something!”

“Yes, sir,” said the associate, who had
successfully passed himself off as a drunk.

He turned the room upside down, looked for
anything and after a few minutes realized he had no idea what he
was looking for. He had checked the corkboard. It consisted of only
notices of work schedules for the employees, shift trades, and the
occasional babysitting job, followed by items for sale. The
corkboard yielded little information and certainly wasn’t offering
up any clues.

He turned and noticed the nine lockers and
started pawing through each of the open lockers. He checked every
purse, looked at every phone, and didn’t notice anything that would
seem nefarious in any remote sense of the word.

He reported back, “The locker room is clean,
boss. From what I can tell, she got her schedule and left. Two of
the lockers are locked. Do you want me to bust them?”

“No, we don’t want to leave any hint that the
room has been searched. Women take their privacy seriously, and
they would complain if the locks are busted. Leave them and search
the rest of the room.”

He pushed aside the newspaper and clutter
from the small table that hugged the back wall of the locker room.
He picked up a work schedule. It was the schedule of those working
tonight, and took a seat in the only chair in the room. He perused
the schedule and noted that five girls were scheduled to work
tonight, a Bridget D., a Dawn J., a Tiffany K., a Keisha M., and a
Cindy S.

“I have today’s work schedule, but it only
shows the first name and last initial.”

“Take it, we’ll check on each and see if
Bridget made contact.”

“Yes, sir.” The associate stood, gave the
room a once over and grasped the door knob. At that exact moment,
The Lounge’s hired muscle, a brute of a man with pectoral muscles
so big they stretched the XXL security shirt to its breaking point,
busted into the room.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” he
demanded as he clutched the associates’ collar jerking him into the
hallway.

“Noth—Nothing. I was looking for the
restroom.”

“Right, the nearest one is about two blocks
away. Here let me show you.” The associate struggled with the
bouncer, who delivered a well-aimed punch to the stomach. The
associate hunched over and struggled to free himself, but it made
little difference. He was escorted to the front door and impolitely
pushed to the sidewalk.

“I’ve been thrown out.”

“Yes, we heard. Get your ass back to the
truck, swap positions with the driver. Give the schedule to the
driver. Driver two,” requested Mr. Wright.

“Yes, sir?”

“Get into The Lounge and find the last names
of the staff on that schedule, just the ones who are working
now.”

“Roger.”

“What’s our mark doing?” Wright asked the
associate in the back of the Tahoe.

“Nothing much, it sounds like he’s moving
around a lot. Maybe he’s seat dancing to the music or something.
Ms. Davies just arrived back at the car.”

“They will be on the move in a couple of
minutes heading to their first picnic spot,” the associate in the
back seat announced.

“Do we know where that is?” Mr. Wright
asked.

“No, sir.”

“Ah, great, just great! Okay, driver two, get
those names. You,” he said as he placed his hand on the shoulder of
the driver next to him, “get us in position. This time I don’t want
them to know we’re tailing them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir, what about the cricket?” an associate
in the back seat jokingly asked.

“What’s your number?” Mr. Wright
demanded.

“Associate number three,” replied the young
man, now fretting why he had even opened his mouth and wishing he
could disappear into the darkness of the back seat.

“Well, Associate number three, let me be
clear. Get!—The—Fuck!—Out!”

“What?” the shocked associate asked as he
gripped the door handle preparing to make his exit.

Mr. Wright paused for effect, “That’s how you
deliver a joke.” Wright laughed and the others nervously laughed
with him.

The moment passed. “Let’s go!” Wright
shouted, startling everyone in the Tahoe.

Chapter Four

~ Green Lake Tryst ~

Bridget let her right
hand wander to James’s left leg, just above his knee. She pouted a
bit when James stopped her progress. She was well on her way to his
inner thigh and didn’t plan on stopping there. She good-naturedly
slapped him on the knee, denoting her displeasure.

“Not here, baby. Let’s go to our spot.”

“You got it.” The car was in reverse and back
on Union heading west.

She passed The Lounge and saw the drunk on
the sidewalk. “I think that guy pissed in our locker room,” she
said, pointing.

James eyed the obvious drunk as he bent over,
barely able to keep himself from falling onto the sidewalk. “That
guy was in your locker room?”

“Yes, I think that’s him, he smelled like a
brewery.”

She turned onto University and made her way
to the I–5 on ramp. She loved this part of town. The renovations in
the area made the drive a pleasure and the entire area was a
postcard for the culture available in Seattle.

“We have to go to that,” she said, motioning
to the banner outside the Seattle Art Museum that read ‘Roman Art
from the Louvre.’ “Cindy said the marble sculptures were amazing.
She spent four hours in there and didn’t even see it all.”

“Sure, baby, sounds like fun,” James said
looking at the banner, noting the lights on the bank’s data room
floors outer offices were all dimmed. The financial system was
asleep for the weekend. Then he tracked the headlights in the
rear-view mirror and checked the side-view mirror. He didn’t see
the black Tahoe with the yellow fog lights and began to relax.

“I’m going to relax a bit,” he said as he
turned up the CD player. Moments later, Bridget was singing along
with Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting” and they were heading north
on I–5.

James let the music wash over him and enjoyed
Bridget’s energy as she sang along. He buried his head into the
seat rest and watched the traffic go by. When Bridget took Exit 170
to Ravenna, he checked the mirrors again and didn’t see the Tahoe.
He kept checking and didn’t see anything as they entered into Green
Lake Park and made their way onto the service road.

James waited for the perfect spot. He needed
an area of road that was secluded and, as Bridget rounded the Golf
Course area, he turned down the radio and said, “I think we have a
flat.”