Chapter 31

‎Since it was the Tuesday, before the conference began on Thursday, I had to gain access to the rooms in the B and B. Ordinarily I would just book a room, so that I could slip in to leave my little bugs. Since our client was the wife of a city councilman, I decided on something a little more risky.

‎Lynne, my ex-wife, had a brother who was a retired fireman. He loaned me an old ID card of his, and I made a copy of it with my picture. It wasn’t a hard fix at all. Then I just showed up in a car driven by Gerome. Since the work uniforms of our firemen is just a tee shirt and blue work fatigues pants, we managed to pull it off with junk from the good will store.

‎What was it we pulled off? We got access to the six bedrooms. Yes I was tempted to put a camera in each and make some amateur porno. We had Mr X’s room number from his reservation. That came from his wife. We checked all the smoke alarms in the building. We added a little addition while we checked Mr X’s room.

‎I would love to take credit for all of that, but the fireman who checked the smoke alarm, and also added the bug was played by Gerome. truth be known he simply wouldn’t trust me with the cameras. Since we absolutely did not want to show the film to anyone I understood completely.

‎Why the reluctance to show the film, you ask. It might prove Mr X was an ass, but the film also would proved we had entered the B&B and filmed Mr X without his consent.

‎We only did it because Gerome had the camera, and complained until we gave in and agreed to film it real time. If we had to use the footage, we were in for some really bad shit, legal wise.

‎While we did all that, I made sure my equipment was ready to do it the old fashioned way. If you could call shooting every angle of his public persona with a digital camera, actually it was two cameras. Lucinda would be using one as well. Just to get a better angle, I told myself.

‎Lucinda and Gerome had decided that they were going to be our muscle, in addition to their other duties. Tommy and I didn’t really need the muscle assistance. If we couldn’t talk the bad guys down, I would just hit them with the folding baton, must likely breaking some small bone.

‎Tommy chose the stun gun option. I had zero faith in those things. I trusted the .357 more. It seemed to be the most reasonable alternative, if the Baton proved ineffective.

‎Since Lucinda spent a couple of hours every day in the Gym beating up on various size rag bags, I allowed her to think she was my muscle. What the hell it was harmless. My ego wouldn’t have allowed it ten years earlier. My testosterone levels must have dropped since my retirement, I thought.

‎Gerome was even more complicated. He saw Tommy as his surrogate dad. Tommy had gone to bat for Gerome with the local and state agencies. He managed to walk Gerome through some business license things. Gerome couldn’t carry a gun, but I had a feeling Tommy carried an extra ‘throw down’ piece for Gerome. That was in response to the expensive pardon route.

‎‎”Kid this will make you think twice before you pull my throw down piece. You will be asking yourself, Is this really an emergency. That is a good thing.” Tommy had insisted. “But if it is an emergency, you know where to find the piece.”

‎So Lucinda and I planned to follow the councilman in one car, and Tommy and Gerome in a second car. Our roster include Mary Beth and her husband Michael. Michael Williams was a soon to be retired department of fish and wildlife department executive. He was some kind of expert on birds, according to Mary Beth. She didn’t like to talk about him.

‎Michael and Mary Beth agreed to be our eyes inside the Bed and Breakfast. It would be nice if they could befriended the younger couple, but it wasn’t necessary. Michael and Mary Beth could blend into the background allowing them to do things the others of us couldn’t.

‎We spent the two days before the operation began making preparations. Like the camera in the room. Gerome’s new camera was really quite good. It was a tiny camera lens inside a large plastic replica of a water bug.