The Plan-B Bust: 1 / 5

An Altered Fates Story
by Iolanthe Portmanteaux

The music in the bar was loud — too loud — and that’s exactly the reason the three men were there: they didn’t want to be overheard. For the most part, they weren't. In fact, they could barely hear each other. Still, they persisted: leaning forward, shouting into each other's faces; getting the gist, even if they missed the precise meaning or the exact words. In a way, none of what they said mattered. It was all a huge unloading of frustration over wasted effort.

Suddenly, ironically, in the midst of the cacophony and confusion, someone dropped an empty wine glass, and the sound of its shatter traveled to every corner of the room. As if by magic, all conversation stopped, frozen, and in that unexpected silence, one of the three men shouted, “Fuck the rules! Fuck 'em! We need to break the rules on this one!”

Jaws fell open. People turned to stare. But only for a moment. Then, just as suddenly as time had frozen, it began to move again. The shouted conversations picked up exactly where they'd stopped. The too-loud music, the milling about, the general noise washed over the bellowed indiscretion. The clamor, the hubbub covered it over like a wave of sand, and the careless remark was quickly forgotten.

“Joe, goddam it, you have to be careful!” Bill cautioned.

“This isn’t working,” hollered the third man, Andy. “It’s impossible to talk here. Let’s go to my place. I’m 1000% sure it isn’t bugged.” Why was Andy so sure? He was an expert in electronic surveillance. One of the best in the state. For Andy, sweeping for bugs was a natural thing; part and parcel of ordinary housecleaning.

Joe hesitated. “Your place is too complicated,” he complained. What he really meant was that he didn’t want to deal with Andy’s wheelchair, Andy’s van, and Andy's handicap-accessible apartment. Andy understood and resented it, but he bit his tongue. “Fine,” he said. “But I’m tired of shouting myself hoarse and none of us hearing each other. I’m going. If you two want to come, you’re welcome.” He unlocked the wheels of his chair, dropped a twenty on the table, and gave a mock salute. He popped a wheelie, turned a 180, and propelled himself out of the bar.

He had just lowered the ramp from his van when Joe and Bill trudged into the parking lot to join him. They were tired. Spent. All three of them looked like hell, and with good reason. None of them had eaten a decent meal or slept for more than an hour or two in the past three days. Before either of his colleagues spoke, Andy preempted them, saying, “I need to eat some real food. I’ve got some steaks and salad fixings at home. AND, I’ve got plenty of booze.”

“Salad sounds good, after three days of fast food,” Bill admitted.

“I don’t understand why we have to eat that shitty crap, every goddamn stakeout,” Joe added. “It plugs me up.”

“Thanks for sharing that,” Andy commented drily. He rolled his chair onto his ramp and activated the motor to lift him inside. Before he shut the door and worked his way into the driver seat, he called, “See y’all there!”

 

---

 

It didn’t take long to cook the steaks, to throw together the salad, to toast some bread, and to uncork two bottles of wine. Soon the three were sat at table, digging in. Normally Bill and Joe wouldn’t touch a salad, but they all felt the need to change things up, and change them for the better. After the failed stakeout, none of them would be working tomorrow, so once the wine was gone, Andy set three glasses and a bottle of bourbon on the table. The hard alcohol had the paradoxical effect of sobering them up, and they began to seriously dissect their recent failure.

“There’s only one explanation,” Joe said. “It's something we all know is true: somebody’s dirty. Somebody’s tipping off Handsome Dan.” Andy and Bill nodded in grim agreement. “Somebody on the task force is in his pocket. They’re on the take. It’s the only explanation.”

“It’s likely there’s more than one mole,” Andy observed. “Plice is pretty damn careful. Judging from past experience, we have to figure he’s got at least two informants, and I’ll bet you they each think they’re the only one. That way, Plice can compare what they tell him, and know right away if one of them turns.”

Bill swore in agreement. He'd been burned that way before.

Joe Balisk, Bill Marazion, and Andy Niskin were members of a large, special task force whose mission was to put “Handsome Dan” Plice behind bars. Plice was a notorious, vicious criminal with a long reach. He was suspected — no, he was known — to be behind 27 murders. It was known; it was very well known, but it couldn’t be proven. He was also known to have his hand in drug and sex trafficking, as well as illegal gambling, arms sales, “protection,” and money laundering. If it was wrong, if it was bad, if it was illegal, Handsome Dan had a hand in it.

Even so, Plice had never been arrested, never charged, never indited. He was both too careful and too ruthless.

“We can’t even pin the guy on tax evasion, the way they did with Capone,” Bill said.

Joe swirled the liquid in his glass, and his face took on a very dark aspect. “I don’t trust anybody on that damn task force, except for you two,” Joe declared. The task force was composed of members from every law enforcement agency with an interest in Plice’s activities: including (but not limited to): FBI, ATF, HSA, federal, state, county, and local police, and some powerful but little-known law-enforcement entities. The stated aim of the task force was to make the efforts to bring Plice to justice more effective: it meant to do that by eliminating jurisdictional battles, sharing resources, focusing efforts… In reality, the taskforce seemed to sandbag every worthwhile effort, and to waste man-hours with paperwork, reports, protocols, and processes. Bill, Andy, and Joe came from the county’s Major Crimes Division. They’d worked together, chasing Handsome Dan long before the task force was created.

“This task force is holding us back,” Andy said. “We could have moved last week on the information we had. When we finally DID move, it was obviously too late. We didn’t need to waste three days on that stupid stakeout. We’d already given Plice all the time he needed to scuttle our plans.”

“We should have stayed by ourselves, at Major Crimes,” Joe said. “We should have kept our own council and laid our own traps. Loose lips sink ships, and boys, the ships are sinking.”

Bill tapped the table pensively. Then he spoke in a low voice. “Listen, boys. I got a tip late today, and I know what I’m supposed do with it, but it’s not what I want to do with it. I’ve got some information that could be a treasure trove of intel on Handsome Dan and associates. By rights, by all our high-falutin processes and protocols, I ought to turn this lead over to the task force, but after today’s shit show, I’d rather not. I’d rather we keep it to ourselves, and run with it ourselves. What do you say? Are you with me?”

“What do I say? I say hell to the fuckin’ yeah! That’s what I say!” Joe replied.

“I’m in,” Andy agreed. “What is it?”

“It’s about Plice’s girlfriend,” Bill began.

“Caresse Desmesne,” Andy said, with a smile.

“Jesus, what a hottie!” Joe declared. He traced the curves of an hourglass with his hands, followed by some vulgar thrusting motions with his hips.

“Right. You know who I mean. This is the deal: the day after tomorrow, Plice is going to close on a condo he bought for his girl. It’s in the Innovaer Tower.”

“How can he do that? Isn’t the building still under construction?”

“It is, yeah. But it's basically finished. He's buying it before the units are actually on sale. I've got a guy who works security for the building, and he can get us in there. My idea is this: as soon as the place is drywalled and painted, we swoop in and wire that place up the wazoo. We’ll use Andy’s latest and greatest cameras and mikes — the undetectable ones — and we will watch and listen to everything that happens there. I’m betting that once the place is set, and he starts visiting, we’re bound to hear something useful.”

“It’s kind of a long-term, long-shot effort,” Andy commented. “We might not get anything out of it.”

“But it’s doable. And we can keep it quiet, keep it ours,” Joe said. “We check the tapes once or twice a day, and if nothing happens, nothing happens.”

And so it began: Bill got the floor plan. Andy marked it up. Bill and Joe installed the hardware and wired it to the phone lines. They used the copper lines, the land lines. See, the thing that made Andy’s surveillance equipment “undetectable” was exactly that: rather than broadcasting on detectable radio frequencies, Andy’s equipment silently dialed out on old-fashioned phone lines.

When Andy turned on his computer and brought up the cameras, he balked. “Hey, whoa, fellas! — this is a no-no: You guys put four cameras in the bathroom. We can’t do that. Aside from the privacy issue, you know how hard it is to get anything useful over the sound of water.”

Joe laughed. “Loosen up, boy wonder! You’re forgetting that this whole thing is strictly illegal! Whatever we get here, whatever we learn, we can’t use any of it as evidence. It has zero legal value; it’s all intelligence, background. Unless we can attribute it to some other source, we keep it all to ourselves.”

Bill added, “We can delete the bathroom videos every day, after we’ve seen them. Unless of course, there’s something we’ll want to see again and again. Seriously, though, you never know: something — or somebody! — might go down in that bathroom, if you know what I mean.” Bill and Joe laughed, and Joe shouted, ”Ooolala! Zut allors! Comment allez-vous, suckers!” which was all the French he could manage to say. Although he had no idea what any of it meant, he felt sure it was dirty, or at least suggestive. The two men laughed uproariously and made coarse gestures. Andy only shook his head.

Now that the equipment was active and online, Bill brought his tip about the condo to the task force. He only did it for cover, but it turned out to be a clever move. Knowing it would never fly, Bill told the team, “We ought to bug the hell out of that place. I’m going to apply for a surveillance warrant.” Naturally, a judge turned the application down. And just as naturally, Handsome Dan was given the entire story by his task-force moles.

The unexpectedly happy result was that — since the task force refused to bug the place — it convinced Handsome Dan that the condo was a safe place to talk business. Right away — even before Caresse was able to move in — Dan and his lieutenants began holding all of their meetings there. Those meetings were a gold mine of information for Joe, Bill, and Andy. None of it was actionable, but it allowed them to create lists of associates, map out connections, track conspiracies, and record confessions of crimes, including murders. It was exciting but frustrating at the same time.

Speaking of exciting and frustrating, and in spite of Andy’s original misgivings, the three gave a LOT of attention to Caresse’s shower videos, and in fact, to anything she did in the bathroom. “Oh my God,” Joe said each time, “Look at her! Even the way she sits on the toilet is sexy! That goddamn woman is a sex bomb! If the atom bomb could be a woman, it would be Caresse Desmesne.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Bill would reply, “but I know what you mean, brother!”

Caresse had a tiny face with high cheek bones, great big eyes, a wide, smiling, mouth, and a small chin. Honestly, it was an odd combination of features, but it was incredibly attractive. Her hair was long, straight, platinum blonde. She stood about five-five, so she always wore skyscraper heels, which gave even more shape to her already shapely legs, and accentuated her lovely round ass. Her waist was tiny, and her breasts were huge. In a word, she had a perfect hourglass figure. Although her breasts, hips, and derriere were large, they weren’t gigantic. The three Major Crime detectives all agreed: Her proportions were perfectly pleasing. There wasn’t a moment of the day when she didn’t look good.

The detectives were greatly surprised to discover that Caresse was having an affair with one of Plice’s henchmen: a leg-breaker named DeRay Reagan, better known as “the Gipper.” The Gipper was surprisingly well-endowed: his tool was far larger and longer lasting than any the team had even seen, though none of them confessed to their own shortcomings. The three detectives watched in dry-mouthed silence whenever the Gipper and Caresse made love.

Then, after weeks of watching, listening, and cataloging facts, the three were finally able to act. At last, the chance arrived:

Plice decided to firebomb a certain store on a certain night at a certain time. It was clearly an idea that was known outside of Plice’s tight little group, so Joe used a voice scrambler and called in an anonymous tip. He timed it so closely that Plice’s moles weren’t able to send out a warning. The would-be arsonists were caught. The building (which was historic) and its businesses (which were many) were saved. Several insurance firms were spared a major outlay. As small a victory as it was, it was still a victory. It was, in fact, the first time in several years that anyone associated with Handsome Dan was ever arrested and successfully charged.

And so it began: Andy, Joe, and Bill would choose a bit of intelligence. If it could be attributed to anyone outside of the group that met in Caresse’s condo, Joe would make an anonymous tip, timed as close to the crime as possible. Arrests were made; guilty verdicts were handed down. Sure it was small stuff: It was nothing like a round-up. They couldn’t pretend they were bringing down Plice’s criminal empire, but they were whittling away at the edges of his activities. After more than three years of inaction and failure, it was nice to put some ticks in the winning column.

The arrests began to irritate Handsome Dan, and he wanted them to stop. No one had any idea that Andy, Joe, and Bill had anything to do with the new information and consequent arrests. Everyone — whether task force or mob — assumed that somebody in Plice’s gang, or somebody close to somebody in Plice’s gang, was talking. Whoever that “somebody” was, that somebody needed to shut up.

Plice began selectively spreading disinformation. He chose a couple of stories, a couple of fake leads, things that were likely to leak. He told one story here, another story there, and waited to see which lead the task force jumped on. It turned out that they didn’t jump on either one. Plice thought some more, and realized that he hadn’t considered his lieutenants as possible leakers. So he gave some stories to them as well, and waited to see which one ended up at the task force. Again, nothing happened. So, Plice thought some more, and found that he was left with only one possibility: Caresse had to be the leak. Caresse must be talking to the task force.

As much as Handsome Dan loved Caresse Demesne, he also knew that it was easier to find another girlfriend than to find another criminal empire, so he sent the Gipper to kill Caresse. He was completely unaware of the irony: he had no idea that the two were seeing each other behind his back; he simply trusted Reagan to “do the right thing.”

And so Reagan did. Andy, Joe, and Bill happened to all be present at Andy’s house when Caresse got a call from DeRay, telling her that he was on his way up. Joe called to Andy and Bill, “Get ready, boys, the porn is about to start rolling.” In fact, Caresse had already slipped out of her clothes, put the door ajar, and knelt on her couch, looking like the most adorable, innocent, big-eyed, sex kitten in the universe. The Gipper walked in and closed the door, but instead of pulling down his pants, he put his hands on Caresse’s neck and held on until she was dead.

It was a horrible thing to witness: her face, filled with fear and incomprehension, looking up at his expression of brutal efficiency and deep self-loathing, tears rolling down his cheeks.

"Jesus God Almighty!" Joe cried. "What the hell is going on? Has everyone gone crazy?"

Andy, too shocked to speak, stared unblinking, open-mouthed, at the screen.

Once the beautiful blonde was limp and dead, the Gipper let go of her and wiped his nose on his sleeve. The three men watched, barely breathing as Reagan, crying, wheeled a recycling bin into the apartment, and dropped Caresse in, head-first. Then he went through the apartment, picking up anything that could tie him to her, even going through the trash to pick out an old gum wrapper. He tossed her toothbrush in the bin, because he’d used it once.

He gave a last go-around of the place to make sure he'd erased all this traces, then flipped the cushions on the couch where he'd killed her.

"He should come clean my apartment," Joe sardonically quipped.

Then Reagan left, wheeling his blue bin, and Caresse was gone. The apartment was sadly empty.

“It’s like a fucking light went out on the Earth,” Joe observed philosophically. “I will never be the same. I swear to God.”

Andy shook his head in silence, and drew a long, heavy breath.

Suddenly, Bill straightened up in his chair. He seemed to have startled himself awake. "What an idea! Oh, dear God, boys! Dear God! You will not believe this!"

The other two men turned to look him, filled with incredulity. What on earth was the man talking about?

“This is a BREAKTHROUGH, boys! A breakthrough!” Bill shouted. “A 24-carat, 24-hour, gold-encrusted, fuel-injected breakthrough! Hang on to your hats, I'm telling you! Now... now..." he glanced around Andy's apartment, as if searching for something.

"I need... I need...," he said, absently, snapping his fingers.

"Bill, I think you need to sit down and take a few breaths," Andy counseled. Bill shook his head and waved Andy's comment off.

"Have you got a duffel bag someplace around this place, Andy?” he demanded. "Quick! Quick! Time's a-wastin'! I need to get over there! Now now now! Strike while the iron is hot!"

“Are you out of your mind?” Joe said. “What the hell are you smoking? A duffel bag? What are you going to do? Kill Reagan, and stuff him in the bag? You can’t confront that guy! He’s a fucking murderer, for Christ’s sake, and for another, how are you going to explain to anybody that you knew anything about this?”

“I’m not going to confront him,” Bill said. “It’s too late to stop him, anyway. I need the duffel bag because I have an unbelievable Plan B. Wait for me here. Watch for me on the little screen, okay? This is gonna blow your minds.” Clutching the duffel bag, he ran out the door.

Fifteen minutes later, Andy and Joe watched Bill enter Caresse's apartment and go into the bedroom. There, he began taking clothes out of Caresse’s closet: dresses, shoes, a jacket: all of them sexy, all of them her favorites. Then, from her bureau, he chose underwear and pieces of lingerie.

“What the hell?” Joe said.

“Don’t ask me,” Andy said. “Maybe he wants souvenirs?”

Bill, on the screen, took one last look around, then threw some of her perfume and cosmetics into a plastic bag. The bag went into the duffel, and Bill, with a mock salute to the camera, left the apartment.

“I think he’s lost his mind,” Joe announced.

"Looks that way," Andy agreed.

Fifteen minutes later, Joe’s phone rang. It was Bill, so Joe put him on speaker. “Listen, guys,” Bill said. “I’ve lined up something that will blow your minds out of their sockets. It’s my amazing, unbelievable, super-powered Plan B. Wait till you see!” He gave an address and asked Andy and Joe to meet him there in two hours.

The address turned out to be an empty office building. The place was run-down and not very clean. Joe and Andy entered through the loading bay. The floor was broken in places, so Joe (to his great irritation) had to help push Andy’s wheelchair. They found Bill in an otherwise empty, windowless room. Bill had laid a tarp on the floor. Andy’s duffel sat on the tarp, next to a wooden table. Bill was busy spreading a clean white sheet over the table. There was another man in the room, a strange-looking fellow. He was rail-thin, had a droopy brown moustache, and straight dark-brown hair that needed washing. He was wearing a limp white shirt, a bolo tie, and a pin-stripe suit that looked as though he bought it at a second-hand shop several years ago. The man was sweating. He looked nervous. He glanced fearfully at Andy and Joe, cleared his throat, and said, “I don’t have a lot of time, Bill. I need to get back to work before they miss me.”

“Right, right,” Bill assured him. “I'm almost done setting up, and then I need to have two words with my colleagues.” He straightened the tablecloth, though it was already straight, and began digging in Andy’s duffel bag: he pulled out one of Caresse’s favorite outfits and laid it on the table. It consisted of a coral-colored lace bra and panties, silver pumps, a pale blue skirt, and a blush top. He gave it a final appraising look, and mimed a chef's kiss.

The man in the bolo tie let out a loud exasperated sigh. Bill gave the man a calm down gesture.

Then he scurried over to Andy and Joe and spoke in a very low voice.

“Listen, boys, this guy is from WITSEC — but not from your regular Witness Protection — he’s from a special classified branch. Do not ask him his name or title or anything about him or his job. He’s going to do his thing and then he's going to blast off out of here. After that, we will not see him again until it’s time to to undo it.”

“What the hell—” growled Joe, while Andy asked, "Undo what?" but Bill cut them both off. “We don’t have a lot of time, so just listen to me. What this guy does is miles beyond ordinary witness protection. He doesn’t give you a new name and new documents. What he does is turn you — physically change you — into another person. He can make a black man white, or an old man young. He could turn a child into a old Chinese fella. He could transform you into a younger or older version of yourself, or make you into your own mother.”

Andy began to object: “Have you lost your—” Bill again cut him off. “Look: what’s important is that right here, right now, he can turn one of us into Caresse Demesne, and as Caresse Demesne one of us can testify to everything that the three of us saw and heard happen in her condo — except, of course, her murder. No, no — let me finish. I know you won’t believe me until you see it happen, so right here, right now, one of us is going to become Caresse Demesne. Obviously, it’s going to be Andy.”

“What? Why me?” Andy asked. “Apart from the imposs—”

“Why you? Why you, because you’ll get the most out of it: as Caresse, you’ll be able to walk. Also, you have the best memory of the three of us, so you have the best chance of pulling it off...”

“Plus, you already know how to cook and clean,” Joe quipped.

Andy scoffed in disbelief.

“Okay,” Bill said, wheeling Andy closer to the table. “Let’s just do this. Don’t anyone argue, don’t anybody say anything. Let’s just do it. Once you change, once you see it, then we can talk about it. If nothing happens, you can kick my ass and I’ll buy everybody dinner. Okay?”

The unnamed man asked Bill and Joe to take “three giant steps” away from Andy and the clothes on the table, and he instructed Andy to sit on his hands. “Just in case.” Then he opened his briefcase and took out a medallion, which he carefully lowered around Andy’s neck. It looked like a cheap piece of costume jewelry, and Andy opened his mouth to comment on it. An impatient glance from the strange man, and Andy closed his mouth. Then the man picked up Caresse’s underwear from the table, and after carefully making sure that his fingers were covered by the shiny cloth, he pressed it onto the medallion on Andy’s chest.

Andy gasped, and his back arched. Joe instinctively took a step forward to help his colleague, but Bill blocked him with his arm. A wave of warmth rolled through Andy’s body. He gasped in amazed pleasure as the warm surge flowed from his head to his toes. His toes! Andy hadn’t felt his toes in decades, not since he was hit by a drunk driver on the night of his high-school graduation. He could feel his toes now, though! He could wiggle them now. He could move his feet and lift his legs. His body felt good — oh, God, it felt so good, like it was budding and opening and ripening and maturing.

“You might want to open your pants,” the strange man suggested, and as odd as it sounded, it was good advice. Although Andy’s waist was shrinking visibly, his hips were widening and his derriere were getting larger and rounder and softer. Andy felt the buttons of his shirt strain, then pop open as his bust expanded. A pair of luscious globes grew and swelled on his chest. Andy’s legs were moving — moving! — and he shifted forward in his chair because his feet no longer touched the wheelchair's footpads.

“Don’t get up yet,” the man cautioned. He glanced at his watch. “Wait until the transformation is complete.” The thrilling waves continued to wash over Andy, warming him, caressing him, molding him, healing him, charging him, changing him. Hair cascaded down from his head, touching his forehead, his face, his cheeks, his neck, his shoulders.

His shoulders shrank, no longer the widest part of his body. His arms thinned, and his hands grew dainty.

The transformation took an entire thirty minutes. At last, the changes stopped. Only a pleasant tingling sensation remained. The strange man continued to hold the lace underwear against Andy’s chest for a few seconds more. He checked his watch and nodded. “Mmm,” the man grunted, and Andy could see an erection tenting the man’s pants. He set the underwear back on the table, and gingerly took the medallion off Andy’s neck. Mesmerized by Andy’s new-found cleavage, the man fumbled with the medallion, and dropped it on the floor. Embarrassed, he hastily picked it up, babbled something incoherent, and — eyes still locked on Andy’s chest — he dropped the medallion again. On his third try, he managed to put the medallion back into his briefcase, and muttering some sort of goodbye to Bill, he closed the briefcase on his hand. Ignoring the pain, he closed it again — this time, correctly — and stumbled toward the exit, to the last with his eyes glued to the transformed Andy. He very nearly walked into the door on his way out.

“Holy crap!” Joe shouted.

“Yeah, holy crap indeed,” Andy echoed, and was startled to hear the voice of Caresse come out of his mouth.

“Right,” Bill said. “What did I tell you? Amazing, huh?” Andy stood up, for the first time in 20-odd years, and started crying.

“Oh, no — oh, no,” Joe said. “You're ruining it, ruining it! No crying, for Christ's sake! Come on now, no fucking crying! You’re a woman all of two minutes, and already you're crying!”

“It’s not that,” Andy/Caresse snuffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ”I can walk again!”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s great,” Bill said impatiently, pressing his handkerchief into her hand. “Look, now, look: you need to get out of those clothes so we can get a good look at you.” And the two detectives started pulling at her clothes, Andy's clothes, that no longer fit her, and now hung comically on her. Bill and Joe practically ripping the clothes off her, until she was standing naked, completely naked, on that tarp, in the middle of that filthy room. Andy/Caresse was still in a state of shock, so she stood there, not knowing what to do or how to react.

“Dear God, will you feel that skin!” Joe marveled, as he passed his hand over her stomach and thighs. Bill let out a deep, groaning ohhhh as he lifted and released her buttocks, watching them bounce back into place. He prodded and kneaded her butt, and then placed a hot hand over her right breast. Joe, his face inflamed with desire, bent to put his mouth on her left breast, but —-

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” the new Caresse shouted, waving her hands, and pushing the detectives off her. “Hit the brakes on the grope-fest, you — you — just stop! Stop! STOP! What the hell!”

The two detectives, embarrassed and confused, watched her as she quickly struggled into the unfamiliar garments. “Fucking bra,” Caresse growled, but then remembering how the real Caresse used to do it (bending forward and gathering her breasts into the cups), she got it done and fastened. She straightened up, her face flushed.

“Sorry,” Bill said. “Didn’t mean, uh—”

“We just figured that since you’re a guy you’d be alright with that,” Joe blurted out.

“Well I’m not!” Caresse declared, as she secured her skirt button and zipped up the zipper.

“You are Andy in there, though, aren’t you?” Bill asked, tip-toeing into the minefield.

“Yes, I’m Andy in here,” Caresse growled. “But that doesn’t mean you can fucking grope me. I’m not some kind of sex doll, for fuck’s sake.”

“Okay, okay, got it,” the two detectives stammered in chastened tones.

“Alright. So what is the plan?” Caresse asked.

“It’s pretty simple,” Bill replied, and in two minutes he explained the whole thing. When he was done, he asked, “What do you think?”

“I think it’s fine,” Caresse replied, still feeling testy. “And when it’s done, your friend will change me back?”

“Yes, of course, yes,” Bill assured her. Then, watching her face closely, he ventured, “That is, if you want to change back.”

Caresse replied with a tight-lipped glare of flaming indignation. Bill quailed. Joe congratulated himself on being out of the line of fire.

“Now can I get something to eat?” Caresse asked.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the two men said at once, picking up and setting down the duffel bag together, then reaching for the empty wheelchair at the same time. They walked into each other, bumping heads. They apologized together, and both reached for the duffel at the same time again.

“I’ll meet you at the van,” Caresse told them, and walked out of the room. When she reached the exit, she heard Joe’s voice echo down the hallway. He asked, “Could she possibly be on her period already?” Bill nervously shushed him.

Caresse set her jaw and clenched her fists, and then she left the building.