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  Arturo, the team’s weapons master, took the cue and ran everyone through the arsenal at their disposal. The men were well versed in every kind of weapon available, and could field-strip and reassemble all types of assault rifles, machine guns and handguns with ease. He had various kinds of ammo for each weapon, depending on the task, including Taser XREP rounds that could be fired from a pump action shotgun and deliver a Taser round wirelessly to a range of one hundred feet.

  “So, Commandante, when is the first assault?” asked Luis.

  The Colonel again surveyed his men. A more capable team could not be found anywhere. “Saturday afternoon there is a house at 2730 Tower Road that will be receiving an unexpected visit from the gas company.”

  The men laughed and began to make final preparations to their gear.

  10

  Sandovan and Mitchell went to Rammi Vargas’s apartment. His roommate, a tanned, surgically enhanced young woman, introduced herself as an actress. She said Rammi was “out of the country,” but she was so unconvincing that Mitchell figured her acting career was mostly roles of the horizontal, physical variety.

  They went back to the precinct and put Vargas’s plate on the input list for the Salento PD’s automatic license plate recognition system. The ALPR used a number of specially equipped squad cars. Each car had three cameras on board, which continuously scanned traffic. The cameras were located front left, for oncoming traffic; front right, for cars in the right lane or parked on the right; and rear-right-facing, for cars in parking lots.

  Every week a database of license plates of interest was fed into the system. Rammi’s would be added to the database by a tech at the Eighth Precinct. The system could scan thousands of license plates every hour. If it scanned a match, the officers in the car would be alerted and could pull over the vehicle matching the description and the tag. Since there were hundreds of thousands of vehicles on the road every day in the city, it was like rolling a roulette ball, but Mitchell figured they needed all the help they could get.

  Tewks yelled across the squad room to Mitchell. “Hey, Mitchell, it’s Emilio on three for you.”

  “Why the hell’s he talking to you?”

  “How should I know? They just put it through to me. Maybe he called nine one one because he had too much smoked meat and he knew you and Sandovan were the men for the job.”

  Mitchell picked up the phone. “You’ve reached the health inspector, state your complaint.”

  He heard Emilio start to protest on the other end. “Mitchell, what do you mean giving that lady my number and telling her I’ll buy three dozen of her pastries? Every week! Plus the gas to and from her place to pick them up? How am I supposed to keep my store in business?”

  Mitchell held the phone away from his head during the tirade. Once the initial burst abated, he put it to his ear again and started to talk. “Look, Emilio, you know damn well that Sandovan will probably buy all three dozen.” Sandovan’s stress ball whizzed by Mitchell’s left ear.

  Emilio calmed down slightly. “I’ll try the arrangement for one week. If they don’t sell, there’s no way I can keep it up. One week is all!”

  “Come on, Emilio, it’s going toward fundraising for a school where the kids are all handicapped.”

  Emilio grumbled something about losing his shirt, then hung up.

  Mitchell put the phone down. “Sandman! Time to hit a few balls off the roof. You in?”

  Sandovan logged off the system and began rolling up his sleeves. “You know it.”

  They rode the elevator to the top floor, then went out the stairwell and took two flights to the rooftop. As he grabbed a dozen golf balls from a bin, Mitchell began to go over what they knew. “So we’ve got bits and pieces of four guys killed in a sophisticated explosion. One of the guys is ID’d as a registered handgun owner, but he’s otherwise clean. Rammi Vargas seems to be laying low. And Emilio’s pissed about us making him sell Mrs. Vargas’s butter tarts.”

  “Too much swirling around in your head my friend,” Sandovan said as he put his pitching wedge across his shoulders and stretched. “You’re going to shank a ball into the park.”

  “Hmhh,” Mitchell grunted as he threw a handful of golf balls onto the turf.

  His first shot soared gracefully through the air, landing fifteen feet to the left of their target—the duck decoy they had tethered to the bottom of the pond in the park across the street from the station.

  Sandovan lined up his shot. He swung the club effortlessly, and the ball splashed just eight feet short of the decoy. “That would’ve released and rolled forward into the cup.”

  Mitchell smirked. “Yeah right. You mean it would’ve spun backward off the green into a sand trap, resulting in a triple bogey.”

  Mitchell’s next shot was a knockdown to take the effects of the wind out of play, and what it lacked in trajectory, it made up for in accuracy. He missed the duck just four feet to the right. A jogger running with her dog did a double-take at the splash in the pond, but kept going.

  Sandovan set up for a fade but didn’t aim far enough to the left of the target, and the ball splashed eleven feet wide to the right.

  “This one’s for all the marbles, compadre,” Mitchell said as he addressed the ball. He hit a high draw, the ball curling toward the target like a heat-seeking missile. The splash was barely two feet to the left of the duck decoy.

  “And that’s all she wrote,” he said triumphantly.

  Sandovan grimaced, but said gamely, “Okay, how about double or nothing on that twenty bucks I won off you earlier this week?”

  “You got it, sport.”

  Sandovan lined up square to his target line. He drew the club back.

  Mitchell coughed.

  Sandovan stopped his motion and returned the club to rest gently behind the ball. “Seriously?” he said.

  “Sorry, must’ve been a flake of that pastry caught in my throat,” Mitchell said contritely.

  Sandovan began his routine again and took a measured, rhythmic swing. The sound as the club face hit the ball was crisp as iceberg lettuce. The ball lofted into the air without a trace of fade or draw. It was dead straight, as if hit by Byron Nelson himself. It plummeted toward the pond and clattered off the back of the decoy.

  Mitchell looked on, slack-jawed, as Sandovan pretended to blow smoke off the end of his club. “Pony up, suckah,” he said.

  11

  Three weeks after their disastrous presentation to Shalimar Toilet Paper, the DB&T creative team was ready for another round. The agency had run on take-out food and energy drinks for twelve straight sixteen-hour days and was confident of a victory.

  Conrad Helmsley the fourth sat at the head of the agency’s boardroom table. The other eleven people in the meeting waited with varying degrees of patience as he tapped out a message on his mobile. After five minutes, Helmsley put his phone down and said casually, “I just found the most perfect villa on the shore of Lake Como, just a stone’s throw from George Clooney’s Villa Oleandra in Laglio.”

  Mya could feel the tension in the room ratchet upward. She and Peter Dunn had given Jak Mosely and his team every imaginable form of support and encouragement in creating the new campaign. It was widely felt that the work they were about to present was a new benchmark for the category.

  They ran through the background slides and the consumer insights, setting the stage for the new creative. Helmsley alternated between the presentation and the screen of his mobile, but the rest of his executives were more gracious, following along and asking incisive questions. The new strategic direction seemed to have traction with the client, and Dunn confidently introduced Jak to present the creative concepts.

  Helmsley looked up from his phone. “You look quite pleased already, Jak. One could almost say you have a ‘shit-eating grin’ on your face.”

  Jak didn’t miss a beat. “Not as big as the one you were wearing the last time we met, Conrad.”

  Mya suppressed a laugh. Jak continued, “The team re
ally pulled together on this new direction. I think it’s really good.”

  Helmsley continued to joust with the creative director. “Just good? Shouldn’t you feel great about it?”

  The prize sycophant in the room, Garrett Lawrence, chimed in. “We’ll feel great when you feel great, Conrad.”

  His ego appropriately stroked, Helmsley waved his hand to give the go-ahead. The room lights dimmed, and the HD big screen came to life. Jak enthusiastically launched into the new campaign. Themed “The Roll of Art,” every detail was intelligently crafted, including the font Jak had specially designed for all facets of the advertising.

  Jak went through the new package design, television ads, print, and billboards, including a 3-D billboard in Times Square which featured a large roll of Shalimar toilet paper.

  The agency also proposed commissioning seven avantgarde artists to create works of art from Shalimar’s product. The proceeds from auctioning the art would go to helping bring proper sanitation to African villages where preventable diseases were commonplace. Social media, videos with the potential for viral repetition, a brilliant public relations strategy, and a massive sampling effort in stores rounded out the campaign.

  Helmsley’s entourage nodded in approval as Jak Mosely reached the final slide of the presentation, showing a visual of the elders from one of the African villages that would stand to benefit from the art auction. The tribal leaders radiated a magnificent dignity.

  The lights faded up in the room. The tension that had existed before the meeting was gone, replaced with a buzz of excitement. Several of the Shalimar executives asked intelligent questions, indicating they’d been following the presentation closely. One attempted to find a flaw in the campaign, but his question about the cost-benefit ratio from the incremental spending in the budget was quickly slam-dunked by Peter Dunn. Victory was within the team’s grasp. They could feel it.

  All eyes turned expectantly to Conrad Helmsley the fourth.

  He smiled at the room and took off his glasses. He chewed thoughtfully on one of the arm pieces for a moment, and then he spoke.

  “Jak, Peter, Mya, Garrett,” he began. “I can see why you were so confident and enthusiastic about this meeting. That’s a category-breaking marketing campaign. It goes beyond the two-ply, three-ply, ‘who has the softest toilet paper’ battles that we have fought like the opposing armies in trenches during World War One.”

  Jak interjected, “And we think it has the legs to go for a decade and become a new standard for socially-conscious…”

  Conrad held up his hand.

  “Please, Jak, let me finish.”

  Jak bit his tongue.

  Satisfied he had the floor once again, Conrad finished his comment. “The toilet paper industry has been so lacking in innovation that I know exactly why you’ve brought us this campaign. We’ve become a commodity business, filled with parity products. But I have some amazing news to break. Shalimar has made a technological advancement in bathroom tissue that is going to send our competitors scrambling back to their R&D labs. Our top scientist, Myron Dekker, has developed a one-hundred-percent-recycled-paper tissue that solves the age-old industry dilemma of tissue tidbits.”

  The agency team looked at Helmsley, not comprehending. Peter Dunn was the first person from the agency to speak. “Uh, I beg your pardon, Conrad, but what are tissue tidbits?”

  Myron Dekker fielded the question. “Tissue tidbits, or tissbits as we refer to them, are the tiny bits of tissue that remain in the rectal region following de-fecalization—what you would call wiping. For years, we’ve wrestled with this problem, and now thanks to an innovative cellulose-smoothing process, we’ve created a tissue that is tidbit resistant.”

  Conrad Helmsley completed the line of reasoning. “We are the only tissue company to have this patented process. So while I like the campaign you presented, I think we have to throw all our ad spending in the coming year toward making the public aware of this breakthrough in the quality of human life.”

  Helmsley’s people all burst into excited conversation. Evidently they had not been aware of the ‘breakthrough.’ A few slapped Myron Dekker on the back and shook his hand in congratulations. Mya looked at Peter Dunn, then at Garrett Lawrence. She stopped when she got to Jak. He was stone-faced. As she watched, the muscles in his neck began to tense. Mya tried in vain to get Peter’s attention, but Peter had his chin in his hands, no doubt mentally tallying the billable hours the agency had wasted.

  When Mya looked back in Jak’s direction, he had left the room. Her relief was short lived, however, as she heard a man’s screaming coming down the hallway and getting closer fast.

  She saw a sudden streak of movement from the doorway as Jak came running into the room and flew into the air. He slid across the polished walnut of the boardroom table, scattering lattes and laptops in all directions. A young Shalimar marketing coordinator fell over backwards in her chair, her skirt flying up over her head. Garrett Lawrence got up quickly to help her.

  To Mya, the next second-and-a-half seemed to happen in slow motion. Jak, rage embossed on his face, slid off the other end of the boardroom table and right into Helmsley, sweeping his mobile phone, large cappuccino, and leather-bound notepad with him. Helmsley gave a high-pitched squeak of alarm and then made a chuffing sound as Jak’s head hit him in the abdomen, knocking the wind out of him. The inertia of the two men toppled Helmsley’s chair backward, and Jak somersaulted right over top of the floundering client. His heels smacked against the boardroom wall, leaving two skid marks on the imported wallpaper.

  The room was in absolute disarray. For a moment there was silence. Then Mya heard a rumbling sound. It started slowly and built to a crescendo. Suddenly, like a dam breaking, Peter Dunn broke into an infectious belly laugh. He laughed so hard that soon there were tears in his eyes. Mya began to giggle, then lost it as well. Even Garrett Lawrence tore himself away from smoothing the skirt of the young woman on the floor and joined in the laughter.

  Shalimar scientist Myron Dekker was appalled. He helped Conrad Helmsley to his feet, and two of the Shalimar marketing people each took an arm, escorting him from the room. Dekker screeched at Mosely, who was still groggy on the floor. “You’re a disrespectful young hooligan! You wouldn’t recognize a scientific breakthrough if it jumped right into your lab coat pocket!”

  Jak noticed the rest of the agency team convulsing in laughter and began to chuckle, despite a rivulet of blood trickling from the side of his mouth.

  Dekker was the last of the Shalimar team to leave the room. Peter Dunn, just barely able to talk through his tears, called after him. “See you in Stockholm when you accept the Nobel Prize for tissue tidbits!”

  He burst out laughing anew and put his head down on the table. Other employees who hadn’t been part of the presentation started to trickle in to the boardroom to see what the shouting, commotion, and laughter were about. Soon the room was jammed with staff, all laughing at the events. Jak had picked up Helmsley’s chair and slumped down into it.

  Garrett Lawrence had regained his composure and voiced his concerns. “I guess we can kiss that sixty-million-dollar account goodbye,” he said gravely.

  Peter Dunn looked up, loosened his tie, and tossed a silver keychain at Lawrence. “Garrett, use this key to open the zebra wood cabinet at the back of my office. You’ll see a big bottle of thirty-five-year-old scotch. Bring it back in here, and let’s toast Helmsley good riddance.”

  Dunn called out to his assistant. “Cynthia!”

  Cynthia appeared at the boardroom doorway. “Yes, Peter?”

  Dunn, still wiping tears from his face, looked at Cynthia and said, “Call Eamonn at Mandy’s Fine Spirits and tell him to bring over a case of scotch, and four bottles each of vodka, tequila, and gin. Then put the phones on auto. We’re going to need to blow off some steam.”

  “Yes sir.”

  12

  Mitchell was sitting on the leather sectional in Mya’s condo when she stumbled through
the door. “Uh oh,” she slurred gently, “Looks like the cops are staking out my living room again.”

  She turned her ankle and fell to the cork tile floor. Mitchell was up in an instant and lifted her off the floor, carrying her back to the sofa. “Tough day at the office, honey?”

  “Nope! Not for me! But I think Peter Dunn’s going to feel it next quarter.”

  She recounted the story of the boardroom fireworks and Dunn’s surprising reaction.

  “Wow. I don’t think Captain Ramsey would back me up like that for putting an asshole in his place.”

  Mya gave him a sloppy, drunken grin. “I think Captain Ramsey would say, ‘Mitchell, you’re a fucking fuck-up who’s going to get fucked upside your fucking head by a motherfucking departmental review board. By the time they’re done with you, you’ll be so fucked up you won’t be able to fuck straight.’”

  He grinned at her. “That’s frightening.”

  She laid back on the sectional, and her hair fell over her face. “If you think that’s frightening, wait till I tell you about tissue tidbits…” her voice trailed off as she dozed off in his arms.

  He brushed the hair off her cheek and looked at her. The last vestiges of sunlight poked through the blinds and danced off her auburn hair. A solitary strand of grey sparkled amid the deep red. He smoothed it back into the fold. Then, sighing with regret, he picked her up and took her to the bedroom.

  Mitchell undressed her and tucked her under the covers. He smirked, as always, at a tiny tattoo of Opus the penguin on her left butt cheek. Mya had been a huge fan of the Bloom County comic strip in college, and on graduation night she and three friends had all gotten Bloom County tattoos on their backsides. Mya’s was cute, but a friend who became a prominent real estate agent wasn’t quite so lucky, having gotten Bill the Cat.