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Letty took a moment to glare at Baxter, who looked flustered, then said, “Okay. What do you want us to do, anyway? Tell us or get out of here.”
“There’s a big pharmaceutical supply house here in town, called Benillos,” Sue said. “It has an alarm system with motion detectors and cameras, hooked into a computer that’s hooked into the Internet. The security people can look around the store anytime they want. They do it several times a night. We need you to freeze the cameras for an hour and cut the alarms out. Not that big a deal.”
Letty: “What, you’re drug dealers?”
Sue said, “We’re associated with a church group that distributes prescription drugs to the street people and the elderly poor. We’re not opiate dealers or anything like that.”
“But you’ll take the opiates,” Letty suggested.
“We take everything and sort it out later,” Sue said. “We can get you as far as the computer, but we’re uncertain about how to freeze the cameras and cut the alarms out. We have the guys to do the entry, but so far, we can’t get around the alarms and the cameras. If you could do that...”
“I can do that,” Baxter said. “How much?”
“We can give you five thousand up front and five thousandlater,” Sue said. She opened her purse and took out a stack of currency and held it out to Baxter.
Baxter reached for it as Letty, smelling the rat, blurted, “Wait, wait, wait, wait...”
But Baxter took it, and Bob said to no one, “He took the cash, he’s got the cash.”
Letty: “Ah, shit,” and flopped back on the bed and waited.
Not for long.
The door popped open, kicked, and three men pushed inside. They were wearing blue nylon jackets with foot-high yellow letters that read “FBI.” They all had drawn guns and one of them half-shouted at Letty, “Where’s the gun, where’s the gun?”
Letty held up her hands. “In my jeans pocket. Under me on the bed.” She was furious and made no attempt to hide it. “Dickwad.”
The lead agent frowned at her. “What did you call me?” Another one, talking to Baxter: “Give me the cash.”
Baxter, dumbfounded, stood up and held out the block of cash, but stumbled. The agent may have thought Baxter was getting aggressive, and punched him in the eye, hard, and Baxter dropped the money and fell back on the bed, one hand to his eye, groaning, “Ow, ow, ow, you asshole!”
“It’s the circus,” Letty groaned. “The circus just came to town.”
“We’re definitely not in any circus,” Sue said, with a smug smile.
“Not talking about you,” Letty said. “You’re just a couple of stupid hapless snitches.”
The smile drained away: “What?”
The lead agent said to Letty and Baxter, “You’re both under arrest. On your feet.”
Letty shook her head. “No, we’re not. I want to see your ID,before either one of us does a fuckin’ thing.” She got louder. “Then you and I are going outside, where I’m going to give you some critical information. This is your only chance: if you don’t do that, all three of you can bend over and kiss your fuckin’ brain-dead careers good-bye.”
“What?”
“You heard me, dumbass.”
The third agent goggled at her, confused, while the second had pulled the 938 out of Letty’s jeans pocket. He showed it to the leader and said, “Nice little pocket piece... not a Saturday night job.”
“Put it back,” Letty said. “And show me some ID. You want to arrest us, that’s your call, and we won’t fight you. Like I said, you do it, you can kiss your careers good-bye.”
Baxter said, “My fuckin’ eye.” And, “Easy, Charlie.”
“What are they talking about?” Bob asked the lead agent.
“I don’t know.” The agent stared at Letty, then looked at Baxter, who was supine on the bed, still moaning, sputtering. The agent shook his head, turned back to Letty, dipped into his jacket pocket, pulled out an ID case and held it so Letty could look at it. She’d seen a few dozen federal ID packs and this was a good one.
She nodded, stood up, and said, “Outside. Let me put my pants on. You other assholes, you can stay here in case Paul makes a break for it. He could squeeze out the bathroom window and he can really sprint when he puts his mind to it.”
