Don Bruns: Stuff to spy for

“No.”

“Do you understand anything about women?”

“Now that you mention it-” his eyes were laser focused on the screen.

“So, it’s better left to the computer geeks.”

“Point well taken.” He kept stroking the keyboard, and as I sipped the lukewarm beer I could see images racing across the screen.

“If I take the job, we’d have installers come in and tear out the old system. Then, they’d do all the wiring, with the motion detectors and everything.”

“Uh-huh.” He was leaning into the computer screen, studying the pictures.

“James, you’re not going to find her.”

“So, there will be installers?”

“A job this big, we’ll need a couple of supervisors. A couple of people who get to know the layout of the building and will be able to work with the installers, getting answers for their questions, assisting the operation and stuff like that.”

“Uh-huh. Gofers, right?”

“Any chance you can get a week off from Cap’n Crab?”

“What?”

Cap’n Crab was the seafood shack where James worked. He cooked the crab. A far cry from his dream when he attended culinary school. But my security company was a far cry from my dreams when I attended business school at Samuel and Davidson University. James and I were still trying to find the American Dream. I was starting to think maybe, just maybe, I’d found a piece of it. “Can you get a week off?”

“Why?”

“James, I just told you. We need some supervisors.”

He glanced up from our computer, with it’s $40-a-month access fee that I usually ended up paying. “Me? A supervisor?”

“I was thinking.”

“How much does it pay?”

“Got to be more than you get boiling crab. And you won’t come home smelling like shellfish.”

“How much, amigo?”

“Twelve an hour. Eight hours a day. One hour for lunch.”

He gave me a big smile.

“Makes you happy, eh?”

“No. I’ll do your supervisor job, Skip, but that’s not why I’m happy.”

“What then?”

“Remember the movie Ten?”

“The little guy who played in Arthur? Dudley somebody?”

“No, a Belgian movie, came out about 2002.”

Usual obscure movie from James. While I watched most of the movies with him, I didn’t remember all of them. “What about it, James?”

“There’s a line in there. Two ladies are talking. One says, ‘You are wholesalers, we are retailers.’ ”

The movie didn’t ring a bell. James saw a lot of films and remembered a lot of quotes. To be honest, I didn’t have the interest in remembering everything about those movies. Sure, I saw the movies with him, but memorizing movie quotes happened to be a somewhat useless talent. I didn’t want to be reminded. “Get to the point, James.”

“I’ve got Sarah’s picture.” He nodded an exaggerated head bob and pointed at the screen.

“How did you find that?” On top of being a movie quote buff, James was also a whiz on Google and Yahoo.

“You just keep plugging in words, pard.”

“Give me a break. You found her?”

“Words like, Miami, date, executive, services. Stuff like that.”

When I needed information, James was always on top of it. “Sarah? She still has a profile?”

“No, Alexandra has a profile.”

“Alexandra?”

“Look.”

I took a swallow of beer and leaned over the screen. There she was, smiling back at me. There were face shots, upper-body shots, full-figure shots, and some casual shots of her in tight jeans and a halter top. God, she looked good. Sleek, tan, showing off a lot of smooth skin.

“Says here her name is Alexandra, Skip.”

She’d been a little cagey when I asked her about the dating service. And, when I’d asked if she knew Sandy was married, she said something like, “It wasn’t important.”

So she didn’t want anyone to know who she was. That’s no big deal.”

“You’re right. She didn’t want anyone to know who she was. Why do you think that is?”

“Don’t know, James.” With my roommate it was like playing Twenty Questions. He wanted to play it out to its conclusion.

“I’ll tell you, friend. This isn’t a dating service.”

“Then get to the point and tell me what it is.”

“The Empire Club.”

“Empire Club?” I took another swallow of my Yuengling, waiting for James to finally spit it out.

“It’s an escort service, Skip. The prostitute says to the housewife, “You’re in the wholesale business, we’re in the retail business.’ Your Sarah is a high-class prostitute. A hooker.”

“S arah, you remember James?”

She did. “James,” she reached out and took his hand. His eyes were wide and slightly out of his head. He was thinking about this hot Sarah, and the Sarah he used to know, and the Sarah now who was for hire. I only hoped he’d just shut up and do his job. Knowing James “Sarah, James is going to be one of our supervisors. As I told you and Mr. Walter, there will be seven guys who are doing the installation. It shouldn’t take over five days, and we will be as unobtrusive as possible.”

She gave me a sly smile. “Skip, does he know?”

He did. Em didn’t. “Yeah.” He knew I was the pretend boyfriend. He didn’t know anything else. At least he couldn’t prove it. And even if he could, he’d better keep his damned mouth shut.

“Sarah, if I was Skip, I’d play any kind of role just to be around you. You’re even better looking than when you were in high school. And I thought you were hot back then.”

She giggled. “Thank you, James. This,” she spread her perfectly manicured hands out, as if to emphasize the massive lobby of the building, “this is only temporary. I told Skip, probably a month. Sandy and I are out of here. Out of this crappy community, out of this state, maybe out of this country. But you can’t say anything, James. I’m really relying on you two to keep this confidential. Just between us, okay?”

Sarah the looker. Sarah the hooker. I can’t describe the feeling, but it was kind of cool and kind of creepy to know that I’d dated a girl who had become a high-class prostitute. A hooker. I mean, as a kid-maybe in junior high-we used to talk about hookers. Girls who made money having sex. There were jokes, stories, rumors, and legends about hookers. And now, I was the pretend-boyfriend of one. Too strange for words. God, I wanted to ask her all kinds of questions, but I knew if I let her know what I knew, it would all be over.

“Ralph will be by in a little while to walk you guys through the building. He wants everything to go as smooth as possible.” She pointed at the entrance door to the company’s inner sanctum.

Ralph Walters was Sandy Conroy’s right-hand man. As VP of the company, he pretty much ran things as he saw fit, and he’d let me know he was in charge from the second I’d met him.

“Nothing happens in here that I don’t know about. Got that Mr. Moore? Nothing at all.”

First words out of his mouth, swear to God. I’d just been offered twenty grand, so I wasn’t in a position to argue. “I won’t do a thing without consulting you, Mr. Walters.” My mother wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t a great mother, but she taught me to be nice to people who signed my paycheck.

“We’ll get along fine then.” The short, balding man gave me a curt nod, glanced at his watch, and walked away.

And now James was about to meet the second in command. I just hoped he’d use his charm, and not revert to the smartass he could easily be. “Twelve bucks an hour, James. Just suck it up and agree with whatever the man says.”

Ralph Walters had been with the company for ten years. He told me that he’d been born to work at Synco Systems. “Let me tell you something, young man. The first thirty years of my life were simply preparation. This company is the final result.”