Frankie frowned, her eyes a slate color as she leaned over the counter and growled at the clerk. "What the fuck do you mean you can't tell me that?!"
"You heard me miss." The clerk backed up a bit and pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "I can't give you that information." He looked the woman up and down disdainfully. Such language was certainly up her alley, dressed as she was in a pair of tight leather pants, a pair of spike heeled leather boots and short jacket over a tank top. What bothered him was that she was poking into Miss Charles' files.
"Oh you most certainly can, Mr. Martin!" She reached down out of his line of sight. The clerk screamed like a girl and cringed before he peeked one eye open to look at her hand. He'd been expecting a weapon of sorts - instead he found a battered leather wallet with her driver's license and a Private Investigation license for the state if Illinois.
"You're not licensed here in the District of
Columbia. I can't help you." He said snottily.
It was all Alex could do to keep Frankie from crawling over the counter and down the clerk's throat. "Look," Alex shoved Frankie towards the waiting chairs and turned a beautiful smile on the wormy looking geek. "We've got clearance to look into dead case files. Director Burkholtz has given her authorization. Besides, the law of the land permits an investigator to view all documents pertaining to his or her case permitting the chain of evidence proves the point."
"Really?" Frankie blinked, muttering more to herself than to anyone else. "Damn, I didn't know that…"
The clerk lifted his chin defiantly and stared Alex down. "I can't show you what isn't here. I'm sorry, but the files for Agent Charles and Agent Donovan are not here."
Frankie shot up out of the chair and glared thunderously at him. The clerk and the staff behind him, who up to this point, had been trying to keep from laughing at the whole situation, all cringed back a step. "They... WHAT?"
"They are not here. For a file that old, you would have to go to the archives. Which means a file request form," he laid one out on the desk in front of them. "Then you'd have to wait 5 days for the file to be located…" his voice faltered at the murderous glares he was getting from both women. "Um, then you'd have to… have… a security escort to the building…"
Frankie snarled as she whirled around and threw the door open in front of her. Alex followed her as she stalked out into the hallway.
"I can't believe it… I can't GODDAMNED BELIEVE IT!!"
"Believe it. This is the Federal Government. If they can't change your mind, they'll bury your ass in paperwork."
"He knows something, Alex… I can feel it." Frankie headed down the hallway.
"I really don't get you, Frankie." She held open the door to the ladies' room and followed Frankie in. Leaning up against the wall near the mirrors, she listened as Frankie reasoned things out in the stall.
"He knows about this fiasco."
"How so?"
"He was all smiles and eager to help until he found out we were looking into the Donovan files. Then he started stalling and refusing to help."
Alex listened for a moment, then turned her head towards the door as Frankie fell silent for a moment.
"I can't believe it!" the male voice said. "Yes, there are two women here poking their noses into the old case files - YOUR case files!"
"Alex?" Frankie leaned over the sink to wash her hands and adjust her clothing as needed.
"Shh!!" Alex pressed her ear to the door and listened as best she could. "It's that clerk!"
"What?" Frankie frowned and stood up from the sink and hurried over.
"It's him! I heard his voice! He's talking to someone. I think he went into the men's room!"
Frankie grinned and winked, then snuck out past Alex. Tiptoeing down the hall, she paused at the men's door and listened. "There's definitely someone in there!"
"Get back here!" Alex hissed in a whisper. "Francesca Marie Shaw don't you dare go in the men's room!"
"You are SO conventional!" Frankie goaded and pushed open the door.
Alex groaned and eased out of the ladies' room and then entered the men's room. She reached up and silently locked the deadbolt in place as Frankie wrinkled up her nose. Then it hit her. Things were definitely different in a guy's bathroom than in a woman's. "They could use some air freshener in here!" She whispered.
Frankie held her finger to her lips and winked as she tiptoed along the tile floor silently. There was one stall at the very end that was closed and Frankie motioned Alex to follow her.
Both women listened quietly. "This is the only place I can make a call where no one in the file room is going to hear me. I'm the only guy in the office, as you well know… Yes, they've gone. I think I got them so frustrated and pissed off that they've given up this end of it. No, I don't know what specifically they were looking for, but they got nothing out of me."
Frankie smiled evilly and looked at Alex. Alex's expression was near murder as she listened. Both of them stood up straight and out of sight from behind the door. Alex and Frankie both drew their weapons and silently cocked them.
The man sitting on the toilet stopped and listened. He could have sworn he heard something. But he leaned forward a bit and peeked as best he could under the door of the stall. "Yeah, I'm here. No, I thought I heard something. No, no one else is in here with me. Miss Charles, your trust in me is well merited. I better go. If I'm gone for longer than 10 minutes, someone will come looking for me. Yes, thank you, too. Good-bye."
Frankie looked at Alex, and then held up her left hand to count down. Three… Two… One…
Fred Martin was just starting to think his day was going smoothly. He'd put off two very pretty and very insistent women who were looking into something he'd been trusted to keep secret. His employer, Daphne Charles was beginning to trust him implicitly to keep her secret safe and he'd managed to keep from sitting in something gross this time and ruining his trousers. His excuse to use the restroom was just that...an excuse; he didn't have to go at all. He just needed a private place to talk to Miss Charles where no one would interrupt him. But his day was about to go horribly wrong.
He was reaching for the knob to open the door when he heard something like a tap-tap on the tile floor followed by a momentous BANG and the stall door flying open in his face. Fred Martin stumbled back and hit the wall, bounced off of the tile wall and landed with a splashing thud in the commode seat underneath him. For the second time that day he screamed like a girl, the scream echoing off the tile in the men's restroom as he saw the two women from a few minutes ago, guns drawn and held on him, with murder in their eyes.
"Hello, Mr. Martin. We never got to finish our discussion."
***
to be continued...