Kill The President's Women (Joe The Magic Man Series Book 2) (8 page)

The bartender hardly took a glance at the photo. “No, never seen the lad before.”

“Have any of you gentlemen seen this boy hanging around here?” Campbell asked, raising the sketch and walking over to the two men playing chess. They both said “No”.

Burrows, who had been studying the pool table at the far end, suddenly whispered in Alice’s ear. “That looks like our boy playing pool over there. I’ll cover here while you go back there with Agent Campbell.”

Alice pulled the old army badge out of her pocket and started to roll it through her fingers as she made her way towards the bar. She heard Campbell asking the man sitting on the bar stool if he knew the boy in the photo and thanking him when he said he had never seen him before.

There were four boys sitting down watching the two boys playing pool; three of the watchers were Pakistani, as was one of the players. Campbell showed the sketch to the boys sitting down while Alice leaned over the pool table, trying not to show that she had recognized the boy opposite her as Kahn. She accidently let the badge drop on the table and as it spun towards one of the pool balls, Kahn caught it, preventing the collision.

“The boy we’re looking for is Asian,” Alice said to the other boy, “possibly from Pakistan; he’s in his early twenties and is about 6 feet tall.” Alice could see that Kahn was about 5 feet 8 inches, and as expected, he relaxed a little.

Campbell came over and casually placed the sketch on the table without looking at Kahn. “If you see this guy around, let us know.”

He tossed his card on the table and picked up the sketch, saying, “Sorry to have spoiled your game.”

Alice was holding her hand out for Kahn to pass her badge back, when Joe popped into her mind. Joe asked her what was going on, and before Alice could tell him telepathically. Joe said excitedly,
“That’s him, that’s the boy I saw in Mr. Woo’s dream.”

Alice was frozen for a moment and she felt a cold shiver pass through her body. Steeling herself, she asked Kahn, “Could you pass my lucky charm back to me please?”

He quickly picked it up and handed it to her. “Thank you, you boys stay out of trouble okay?”

Some of the boys murmured some replies and as Alice turned and walked away, her legs were shaking. She tried communicating with Joe but he wasn’t replying, so she knew from experience that he had jumped into Kahn’s mind. She was dying to tell Burrows and Campbell that Joe had recognized the boy from Mr. Woo’s dream, but she couldn’t. As far as anyone knew, Joe could only communicate with Alice through her dreams.

“I think that went okay,” Campbell said as they got back in the car, “I’m not 100% positive he’s our guy but if he is, then let’s hope we’ve spooked him into making a phone call.”

Campbell looked down the block and suggested. “Let’s go over to that coffee shop just in case he’s watching us. We’ll let him think we’re doing a door to door.”

“I could do with a cup of coffee to calm my nerves.” Alice said, as she flopped down in the back of the car.

“You did great in there, Mrs. Timberlake.” Campbell said, smiling.

“Oh please, stop calling me Mrs. Timberlake. Just call me Alice.”

Campbell considered it briefly and said, “Fair enough, I’ll call you Alice when it’s just us, but in the office or in the presence of any other agent, I’ll stick to protocol and call you Mrs. Timberlake.”

Burrows rolled her eyes; Agent Campbell was probably the stiffest of them all.

Back at the bar, Joe silently remained in Kahn’s mind as he tried to convince his friends that the sketch couldn’t be him. The sketched person could be any Pakistani, he argued, besides, he was too short to be the one they were looking for.

Joe whispered manipulatively in Kahn’s thoughts,
“You better phone your other friends to let them know the FBI is looking for you.”

Kahn said goodbye to his pool friends, telling them he had something to attend to. His exit through the front door gave him a glimpse of the Feds as they leisurely walked into the coffee shop. He walked the other way and after putting a reasonable distance between himself and the coffee shop, he took his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number.

It took quite a while for the owner of the phone to pick up and when he did, Kahn said hurriedly, “Look Ricky, I think the Feds are looking for me.”

Joe could hear a ma
n with an American accent reply to him, telling him to stay calm and asking for details. Kahn told him about what had happened at the bar.

“Okay, this is what you’re gonna do, for a start don’t use any names over the phone anymore, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You remember the place where my friend paid you last time?”

“Yes.”

“Good, go there and find him. You tell him what happened; he’ll make sure you’re not being followed and give you help, got it?”

“Yeah, got it.”

“I’ll tell him to meet you there. Now I want you to smash that phone to pieces and throw it away, do it now and go.” He hung up.

Kahn looked at the phone, then reluctantly let it fall to the ground. He stomped on it twice then picked it up and dropped it in a nearby waste bin.

Joe stayed in his thoughts as he hurried to his meeting. Joe asked questions to uncover exactly what role Kahn had in the whole operation and Kahn answered freely, thinking his subconscious was speaking to him.

“Why are the Feds after you
?”

“I don’t know,” Kahn thought, “it must be about those two men I had to pick up. Shit, I hope they don’t think I’m helping them.”

“Where are the men now?

“I don’t know and I won’t do any more work for Ricky. If he wants to get mixed up in this kind of shit, then he can go ahead without me.”

Kahn was relieved to see that he was very close to his rendezvous point with Ricky’s friend. Crossing the back alley that led to the building, he heard someone behind him call his name. He turned quickly to take a look and what he saw was a frightening image – a man holding a pistol, steadily training it at his chest. Through Kahn’s eyes, Joe saw the man pull the trigger once. The gun roared and the bullet slammed furiously into Kahn’s chest. Kahn fell to the floor and put his hands weakly to his chest. In a second, the assailant was standing over Kahn. He pulled the trigger again and as the bullet entered Kahn’s head, Joe exited his mind immediately.

“Holy shit!”

Joe was at work, at a building site and he made an excuse to his Boss that he needed to go fetch something from his car. Sitting in his car in L.A. with his eyes closed, he recalled with horror what he had just witnessed in San Francisco. It had been especially frightening because when the bullets had entered Kahn, he had felt the blinding pain for a split second. Joe concentrated hard and tried to contact Kahn again. He detected a little whiff of consciousness in Kahn’s body and he zoomed into his mind.

“Who was that man? Who shot you?!”

There was no reply.

“Who shot you?”

Listening closely, he realized Kahn’s body was empty. There was no life in him.

“No, no, no!” Joe screamed, punching the steering wheel and crying in frustration because he was unable to do anything. His first thoughts were to tell Alice to go help him but he knew Kahn was beyond helping and Alice would then have to reveal to the Feds how she knew that Kahn had just been shot.

The eventual revelation that Alice and Joe communicated telepathically was also something that would be hard to explain away especially since the Feds would ask how long the telepathy had been going on. Hopefully, he didn’t have to deal with that now; Kahn was a dead man.

*

Alice was enjoying her coffee and listening to Burrows and Campbe
ll banter. They both seemed to think that Kahn was the exact person they were looking for, and that he’d do something stupid. She was in an excited mood as they waited for a phone call. Campbell thought the next call he’d receive was to say they had the boy under surveillance and that they could to return to the office.

Joe popped into Alice’s mind and seeing that she was enjoying her coffee with Burrows and Campbell, he whispered,

“Alice, could you go to the rest room, we’ve got to talk.”

Alice could feel the tension in Joe’s words. “Guys, I think this coffee has gone right through me,” she said, pretending to blush. “I need to do a quick number 1. I’ll be right back.”

Alice stood up awkwardly and both agents smiled at her polite way of saying she was heading to the toilet.

“I got bad news for you,”
Joe said sadly before Alice reached the toilet.

“What, how?” Alice blurted out loud as she opened the door; luckily no one was in earshot.

“Kahn has just been murdered. Shot!”

“Oh my God, no!” Alice felt crushed.

“I was in his head when it happened and I saw and felt everything, it was like being actually shot.”

There was an overwhelming fear in Joe’s thoughts, he was close to being hysterical and Joe stammered as he recited his trailing of Kahn from when he had made the phone call to when two bullets had ripped through his fragile body.

He ended his account with,
“He was shot. Really shot.”

Alice was horrified by what she had heard but her fear was even more intense when she realized that Joe, Joe the freaking Magic Man was frightened. It came to her in that moment that Joe wasn’t bulletproof; he sure as hell wasn’t invincible.

“That’s right, Alice,”
Joe said, hopping on her recent train of thought.
“I’m no Terminator.”

Alice shivered and said, “This is awful! Do you think they killed him because he talked to us?”

“I’m inclined to think so. The killer called Kahn by his name then shot him twice. They were probably spooked by your visit. And obviously, Kahn was mighty dispensable!”

“Joe, you’ve got to calm down. You’re freaking me out. And you’ve got to go now, because I do really need to pee now.”

“Just close your eyes, I won’t be able to see a thing. Or look straight ahead... or at the ceiling. Look, we’ve got to talk this over; I’ve never witnessed anything like this before.”

“Joe, I’m losing my mind right now! And no, I can’t pee with you in my head, so PLEASE... give me some privacy before I pass out!”

Joe was a little taken aback by the harshness in her voice so without uttering a word, he left Alice’s head.

Two minutes later, with Alice back at the table, Campbell had a call. He listened intently and then suddenly jumped up.

“What?! Where were our men?” He motioned for Burrows and Alice to get up quickly and added, “We are on our way.”

“What’s going on?” Burrows asked as they ran to the car.

“Someone has just shot the Pakistani boy,” he replied tautly.

The three of them hopped haphazardly into the car, Campbell put the siren and lights on and after spinning the car around, he headed in the general direction of the garage. Flying past it, he kept looking sideways according to his directions and a few alleys later, he saw their intended target. Sprawled carelessly in the middle of the alley was a body and it was very visible from the road. He turned in carefully as he realized they had arrived before the local police. There were two men standing over the body but Campbell recognized them as FBI.

“Alice, you stay in the car,” Campbell said. It was an order.

She nodded and watched Campbell and Burrows hurry towards the two men standing over a body in the middle of the alley; they had their FBI badges on display. Alice guessed they were the ones that were tailing the boy. In no time, the local police had arrived and had the place sealed off. Alice sat in the car for about thirty minutes watching the scene before they came back. Campbell didn’t say a word; he simply put the car in reverse and drove quietly through the police barrier.

Alice was the first to speak. “Do you think they shot him because he spoke to us?”

Burrows nodded sadly. “It looks that way. He was shot in the chest and in the head. A professional hit. The kid didn’t stand a chance.”

“How terrible... and he was so young,” Alice said, guilt oozing from her words.

“Yeah,” Burrows said, “our command picked up his conversation on the phone. He was told to come meet someone. I guess they didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut, so he must have known something.”

“So what now?” Alice asked.

“Back to the field office to try and work out what went on down here.” Campbell chimed in. “The kid called his contact Ricky, so I guess we’ve got to help find this Ricky or we might be sent to help find that car up in Pennsylvania.”

Alice was told to go back to her hotel and stay for the night, while Campbell and Burrows would help to try and find this Ricky. They would bring in any dodgy guys named Ricky and then they would have Alice ask Joe to get into all their minds to find out which of them ordered the execution of Kahn.

Alice called John back at her hotel room to tell him what had been happening so far. Without going into too much detail, she told him that they still might need Joe’s help and that she would be staying another night.

Joe contacted Alice several times that night but since nothing new seemed to be happening, he wished her “Goodnight” and told her he would contact her in the morning.

*

Abel grabbed a few hours of sleep when he got home from work, and he tried to relax and put the shooting out of his mind. He hoped Alice wouldn’t need his help that night for Joe knew no better way to relax than to go on a date with the lovely Jean Thornton in her dreams. Abel knew Jean enjoyed it and would be hoping for Joe to come to her in her dreams and then take her on another thrilling sexual adventure.

Abel took a deep breath and thought of Jean Thornton. In no time at all, he was in her head.

*

Abel Lazarus became acquainted with Steve Bateman on the very day he was leaving prison. Steve was a trainee prison officer; a rookie at the prison. He was also the boyfriend to the beautiful Jean Thornton.

John Timberlake was showing Steve the ropes at the prison facility and the entire time, Steve kept boasting to John and anyone else who cared to listen about how incredibly lovely and beautiful his girlfriend was. He declared that she had won a beauty competition a few years ago and should really be chasing a career in Hollywood but unfortunately, she was too shy to perform in public.