Payback

29

Since Dean and Karr were going into the bank, Lia handled the task of doping the guards’ dinner by herself. Dean and Karr had already scoped out the arrangement: a waiter at a restaurant across the street took the plates and some bottled water and carried them over to the bank at eleven. The tray was prepared at the waiters’ station between the kitchen and the dining area in a hall that connected to another hall with the restrooms.

Two bottles with a heavy dose of a barbiturate ordinarily used to sedate patients for operations had been prepared; Lia carried them under her long skirt, strapped to her calves.

Her first task after getting a table in the restaurant was to plant a video bug near the waiters’ station; since it was out of view from the dining room the Art Room would have to tell her when to make the switch. But when she went to plant the bug, she found the corridor filled with waiters; they were gabbing about a soccer game, milling around making it impossible to simply sneak over and put the bug in one of the light fixtures as she’d planned. And she couldn’t just mount it on the baseboard, either; the shelf of the waiters’ station blocked the view.

One of the waiters noticed Lia as she eyed the corridor, looking for a solution. He asked if he could help her, and she said that she was looking for a job.

She could tell instantly from his expression that was the wrong thing to say. Not only was she too well dressed to be a service worker, but she was female — all of the servers here were men.

Lia froze for half a second before plunging into a more believable story — she was a chef in training who hoped to gain experience overseas. As the words rushed out of her mouth she began to feel more comfortable. The waiter’s face brightened and he insisted she come with him to the kitchen and meet the chef. Lia followed him around the divider into a small area of controlled chaos, where four rather large men threw pans and pots around, jabbering in a kind of kitchen patois about the food they were preparing.

Lia spotted a shelf that had a view of the window over the waiters’ station; she moved next to it, scratched her hair, and in a smooth, well-practiced motion, planted the video bug.

“Good. We have a full view,” said Rockman.

But now she was trapped by her own cover story. The chef had interned at a number of restaurants in Europe and the U.S. and apparently saw an opportunity to pay back the kindness of others — and not coincidentally gain some free labor and an attractive protégé. With great enthusiasm, he began telling Lia his philosophy of food preparation as well as his methods, giving a running commentary on what he was doing that would have put many a TV chef to shame.

He had just started to hold forth on the importance of fresh herbs when one of his assistants plucked some chicken out of a pile, spooned up some rice, and set out two plates for the waiter to finish and take over.

“Have to go,” Lia told her would-be benefactor. “Ladies’ room.”

It was an effective if overused excuse, and she escaped back into the hallway just in time to see the waiter who had introduced her earlier take the tray from the station and start toward the back door.

Lia followed, waiting until he was at the threshold to call to him.

“There you are,” she said. “I wanted to thank you. You’re very kind.”

The man looked at her with the puzzled expression he’d had earlier. Once again Lia felt herself freeze, her brain refusing to move ahead smoothly.

She got over it by touching the man’s shoulder, feigning something more than casual interest as she thanked him again. The look of desire in his eyes as he glanced down revolted her, even as she realized it meant that she would succeed. She reached up to kiss him — and as she did, knocked the tray to the floor. The contents went flying, the plastic water bottles rolling down the hall.

“I’m sorry; I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing them.

Exasperated, the waiter left the bottles where they had fallen and went into the nearby kitchen for replacements. Lia switched the bottles, holding the replacements out to the waiter when he returned.

“I’m sorry,” she told the waiter.

He forced a smile and this time kept his leers to himself as he walked out the back.