Chapter 4

Sure, she could do it with POV, but where's the fun in that? Like any woman, Alice loved to window-shop, particularly along the string of stores featuring the latest fashions in the display windows, and she wanted to do it by walking along the street, enjoying the presence of the other people and the general joy of living. [She did cheat a little by using TK to take some of the load off her feet!]

Alice was engaged in this activity one beautiful Saturday morning when a car screeched to a stop behind her and a Molotov cocktail went flying over her head toward a display window containing some of the very latest in designer dresses. She had time to react before the bottle of gasoline with the flaming wick actually hit the glass; she extinguished the flame and made the bottle hit a TK shield over the window and fall to the ground as if it had been thrown short. Of course, the bottle broke, but the glass could be checked for fingerprints.

Nobody was paying any attention to Alice, so she jumped to EU and assumed her Harold Anderson persona. He jumped back to the Atlanta street, the scene of the crime, and ran to a telephone to call the police. He asked for Det. Sgt. Bob Tomlinson and quickly explained the situation. Bob promised to have a car diverted to the crime scene, immediately.

Hal stood over the broken bottle to preserve the evidence and prevent any accidental fires while he waited for the police to arrive. Meanwhile, he used part of his attention to use POV to follow the car containing the crooks. The patrol car arrived with two cops who cordoned off the small area containing the evidence while they waited for detectives to show up.

Hal followed the car to a dilapidated building in one of Atlanta's manufacturing districts and watched the two men get out of the car and enter the building. They walked to a freight elevator and pressed the "down" button. A few seconds later, they stepped from the elevator into an opulently decorated hallway and walked its length to a doorway guarded by two burly men holding Thompson submachine guns.

"We're here to see the big boss."

"He's expecting you. Go on in."

The door was opened for them and they entered an even more extravagantly luxurious office. The deep pile carpet was protected by a waterproof plastic runner which led to the immense ebony and mahogany desk where a bald-headed man sat leisurely puffing on an expensive Cuban cigar. "OK, how did it go?"

"It didn't go well at all, boss. You know me. I'm experienced and reliable with fire. I don't know what went wrong, but the bottle-bomb didn't hit the window and didn't explode. Just after the bottle broke on the sidewalk, some guy ran in the store, probably to call the cops, so we bugged out and came here."

"I swear we weren't followed, Mr. Boss. I've been a driver for years and I would know," whined the other man.

"OK. I'll let it go this time, but NO MORE SCREWUPS! DO YOUR HEAR ME?"

"Yes, boss"

"Sure, Mr. Boss"

Alice did a deep scan of the boss and found that this attack was only one act in a large scale campaign to set up a "protection" scheme. Several businesses had been hit already, and many more were scheduled to be targeted within the next month. The organization of the hits was dispersed among several criminal gangs in an effort to keep the police from being able to backtrack if a gang member was arrested and talked. This meant that Hal would have to follow several trails before he could stop the attacks, completely.

This was when the detective team sent by Tomlinson arrived on the scene and Hal was forced to drop his POV of the crooks. Hal gave a detailed description of the car and the two men in it, as well as the story of the attack on the business. The team gathered up the pieces of the bottle while Hal and the two detectives went inside to talk to the store manager.

The store manager, verified by a mind-scan, was surprised to hear of the attack. She had not been approached by anyone about "protecting" her business from vandalism. She promised to contact the police if she was approached and took the detectives' business cards so she would know who to call.

The detectives dismissed Hal with thanks for his quick action in calling them, so he walked away. As soon as he could duck into an alley, Hal jumped back to EU and returned to being Alice. She returned to her window-shopping spree, but her heart really wasn't in it: she was much more interested in busting the protection scam.

Alice ate lunch at a convenient restaurant and jumped back to EU. She got comfortable in her favorite chair and returned to POVing the crime boss she had met a few hours before. He was busy "entertaining" his secretary, and vice versa, so his mind was wide open to Alice's invasion. She dug around among his many nefarious plots and deeds until she found the protection scam details.

There wasn't much there! Somebody else had done the actual planning and implementation of the scam, but the boss was so egotistical that he was taking full credit for the operation and didn't even remember who had done the real work. Alice wondered if this mysterious other person was setting the boss up for a fall so that he could take over this portion of the crime syndicate. Stranger things had happened!

Alice was going to have to time jump to find the real instigator and planner of the protection scam, so she jumped back four weeks to see if the scam had been hatched, yet. Yes, there it was, so she jumped back another four weeks and looked again. Nothing! No sign of the protection scam, so she needed to jump forward two weeks to look some more.

There it was, so, now, she had the time bracketed. She jumped back and forth until she had found the day of the meeting where the protection scam was planned. This turned out to be the regular monthly meeting of the boss and his five top advisors. The boss was really pretty dumb, but smart enough to listen to good advice. He had risen to his current position, not by intelligent planning or guile, but by crude application of muscle. He had simply found a way to kill his predecessor without getting caught and had moved into the power vacuum.

He was not easy to work for; there was a high turnover rate among his top advisors because they had a tendency to die, and not of old age. Whenever one got too smart or whenever the boss felt any pressure from an advisor, that advisor just disappeared. So far, he was not overly worried about any of his current advisors; the one with the longest seniority had been with him about 19 months and did not seem to be much of a threat.

The meeting was pretty routine for the most part; they talked about the numbers racket and how they could increase their customer base. All of the advisors were against taking a larger cut from the take, since this might have the effect of alienating their customers. One of the advisors suggested that a smart move might be to increase the daily winnings; thereby, making the lottery more attractive and bringing in more customers. They decided, and the boss agreed, to increase the main prize by $100 and see what happened. If this brought in more customers, they would try increasing the lesser prizes, too.

They discussed their prostitution holdings and decided that they would leave this operation alone for the time being. The profit from this operation was too good to chance lousing it up, so they would just let it ride. Drugs were not a big profit center at this time, but moonshine was much more lucrative. One of the advisors said that he would look into getting more stills into operation; he was sure that the mob could move all of the untaxed corn whiskey that they could get.

Finally, the subject of new business came up and one of the advisors suggested that they try again to set up a protection scam. There hadn't been one in Atlanta in some time and the business community should be ripe for such an effort on their part. This idea met with general agreement, and the advisor whose idea it had been was appointed a committee of one to work out some details. They could talk about what he had come up with at their next meeting, or, even sooner, if the project looked promising enough.

At last! Alice now knew who to keep track of. She decided to take a coffee break and plan her upcoming strategy. The main thing she wanted to know was how to stop the attacks, preferably before they ever got started. If she had to, she could stop the individual attacks like she did today, but that would take a lot of effort. It would be better if she could stop the mid-range bosses before they could give out the assignments of targets. She had to wait until the planning had gotten a little further along.

She jumped a week ahead of her previous check and found very little progress by the advisor on the protection scam, so she jumped another week. This time she had something to work with. He thought that they could interest five or six of the teen aged gangs around Atlanta into taking a shot at being the frontline soldiers in this operation for a flat rate payment for each hit. The job was simple enough that he thought they would only have to pay $20 per hit, if they let the gangs hit as many places as they liked. He was sure that spreading the action out like this would keep the police guessing about what was going on and who was behind it.