Gaynes spoke softly. “Your every movement will be tracked by Special Ops, Mrs. B.” Everyone on the Crimes Against Persons unit called her this. “Just as the Lieu probably told you, I need you to follow my instructions closely and do exactly as I say. Me and the girls urge you to ask questions whenever you’re unclear. We’ll repeat or explain ourselves as necessary, though time is of the essence. Okay? We want to get this right the first time. Okay?” She waited hardly a second. “Good.”
Liz found it hard to breathe.
Lou had explained the operation to her, but it had seemed at the time that little would be expected of her. Now, even that little bit felt like too much.
Gaynes continued, “This here is Gina.” The woman stood about five feet, and had to be a size two. She had Italian coloring, a sweet smile, and a firm handshake. “If you ever seen Cats up on Fifth, you seen Gina’s handiwork.” In front of Gina, on the countertop between two sinks, a series of open fishing tackle boxes offered a wealth of cosmetics, from eyebrow pencils and blushes to hairpieces and bras.
A woman with dark hair, average height, stood next to Gina, her blouse unbuttoned and hanging open. She looked familiar, though Liz felt certain they’d never met. No introduction was made. This woman remained firmly fixed on Gina.
“Your bra size, Mrs. B.?” Gina asked, the familiarity of her addressing Liz this way unsettling, as if she, too, were a part of CAP.
“Thirty-two A,” Liz answered, embarrassed by what two nursing children, chemotherapy, and drastic weight loss had done to her breasts.
The other woman peeled her blouse off and removed her bra, leaving her naked from the waist up. Gina positioned Liz to face the mirror while she worked on this other woman’s face. Gaynes and Gina wrapped the stand-in’s chest to flatten her high breasts.
Gina explained, “Believe it or not, and I’m sure you will, it’s the first thing a guy’ll notice-the chest.”
“What the…?”
Gaynes interrupted, “Gina’s done all our S.O. work for the past couple years. Best in the business.” Special Ops was a prestigious though dangerous posting.
The woman who had not yet been introduced by name redressed herself. Only then did Liz realize this person wore the exact same clothes as she.
“Is this what I think it is?” Liz asked.
Gina asked Liz for the brand and color of the lipstick she wore. The cosmetologist then directed Gaynes to one of the tackle boxes, all the while using small pieces of foam rubber dabbed and coated in various bases and blushes to build the coloring onto the woman’s cheeks and brow. She worked incredibly fast, her hands nearly a blur.
Gaynes reported, “Two minutes.”
Gina explained, “We don’t want you to spend more than five minutes in here, because after that it can raise eyebrows. Speaking of which… ” She grabbed up an electric razor and zipped it along the other woman’s brow, then turned to a pair of tweezers.
“Officer Malone here is going to take your place,” Gaynes said. “It’s a bit of a tricky deal, so you’re going to want to play this heads-up. If we blow it, either something happens to you or to Officer Malone here-not that she doesn’t know the score. It’s just that we want to give this the best shot.” Gaynes unzipped the coveralls and handled a police radio apparently clipped to her belt. “One minute,” she announced. The thing spit back at her. A man’s voice, but not Lou’s.
Malone looked at Liz for the first time and Liz gasped aloud at this woman’s similarity.
“Pretty fucking good, huh?” Gaynes said, slipping into her more familiar self.
Backing up, she gained just enough distance to where she could see the woman clearly; the hastily applied makeup blended perfectly into the surface of this woman’s skin, shallowing her cheeks, stretching her chin, transforming her looks. Gina put finishing touches to the hair-clearly a wig that had been chosen ahead of time.
Gaynes said, “Malone’s with Washington State Bureau of Criminal Investigation, on loan… it’s a shared operation, Mrs. B.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Malone said, stretching out her hand.
Liz Boldt’s hand shook of its own accord as she stepped forward and greeted the nearly perfect reflection of herself. Malone’s hand was hot; Liz’s was bone cold.
“Okay,” Gaynes said, “party’s over, girls. Time’s up.”
Gaynes quickly briefed Liz on how to execute the substitution as Malone zipped herself back into a pair of housecleaning coveralls and Gina placed a dark scarf over the stand-in’s head.
“The good thing,” Gina said calmly as she pulled the scarf forward to hide as much of the face as possible, “is that no one pays any attention at all to the help. We’re invisible. It’s straight to the elevators for us.”
For Liz, who was to return to her office for exactly five minutes, their behavior took on the feel of choreography, and she envied them their cool. Her role was to be fleeting, with Malone carrying the brunt of the load, and yet she still felt light-headed with anticipation.
Back in her office, she shut the door and paced, watching the time and wondering how it could slow so drastically. Only childbirth produced a slower clock than this. The phone rang, but she let her assistant pick up. When Lou was announced, Liz snatched it up.
“Thank goodness,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Can you go through with this?”
“Yes.”
“Gaynes briefed you.”
“Yes.”
“Three steps,” he said.
“I understand.”
“The most important of which-”
“Is turning around and hiding,” she interrupted. “I got that.”
“The black raincoat,” he said. “Turn around once you’re in there.”
“Small steps.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ve got it,” she said.
“Scared?”
“You bet.”
“That’s good.”
“How can you say that?”
“There will be a diversion once you’re out. You get to that door-”
“She told me.”
“A plainclothes will be waiting for you on the other side.”
“I wish I were there now.”
“We can call this off,” he said, his expectant voice clearly preferring this choice.
“No. I want you to catch him. I want this over.” They had discussed this. Once the money was delivered, Hayes was guilty of extortion. At that point they had the pressure to negotiate a deal to get Liz out of the middle and Hayes to cooperate. If all went well, a matter of hours and she and Lou could begin the process of rebuilding.
“Time’s up,” he said.
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“At any given moment, there’s one of us within three or four steps of you.”
“It’s her I’m worried about… this Malone girl. What if he harms her? How am I supposed to live with that?”
“No matter what, you stay inside the bank. Gaynes explained that?”
“Time’s up,” she said, impatient now to have it over with. She added, “She explained it, Lou. Twice. I’ve got it.”
“Be safe,” he said.
He hung up before she had the chance to tell him that she loved him. Maybe he’d sensed it coming, she thought. Maybe he couldn’t handle that right now.
The building’s lobby contained WestCorp’s flagship branch. It looked like a downtown men’s club with teller windows elaborately decorated in dark wood paneling, reproduction partner desks, green banker desktop lights, brass and smoked glass chandeliers, and a rich green carpet with borders of twisting gold braids. The phones purred, they did not ring. Voices traveled only a few feet.
Wearing her black, full-length raincoat and carrying the aluminum briefcase she’d purchased in the WestCorp Center’s small mall only minutes before, Liz entered the branch office as nervous as on her wedding day, keenly aware of the elaborate charade and her role as a participant. To anyone else, the bank’s main floor appeared no different than on any other business day, but to her the abundance of familiar faces made this seem more like the staging of a Christmas play. She immediately identified no fewer than five familiar faces from Crimes Against Persons: two behind desks, posing as bank officers; one up a ladder affixing to the wall a bright orange banner offering low-interest car loans; two others just behind the bank tellers, pretending to be busy with paperwork. Seeing their faces calmed her.