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"Let me do the talking." Leonard said when they reached the doors that led into the church.

"Okay." Penny accepted, knowing that she was only there to observe.

The church was spacious and mostly empty, only two people sitting on the benches, looking like in prayer. A nun was caring for a candlelit alter for what looked like a crime victim, removing burned-down candles and replacing them with fresh ones. Leonard approached her slowly, considerate of the atmosphere.

"Sister?" Leonard got attention.

"Yes?" the woman looked at the two of them.

"Is Father Malloy here?" Leonard asked. "I need to talk to him."

"He's in the confessional." she pointed to the booth, one side closed, the other open, awaiting a penitent.

"Thank you, sister." Leonard nodded and led Penny to the booth, getting inside and mentioning for her to join him.

"Good afternoon." Father Malloy greeted him, having noticed that someone entered the booth.

"Forgive me father, for I am about to sin." Leonard said, visibly surprising the man in the other booth.

"Excuse me?"

"You placed a contract on a certain board to... remove a certain gang leader." Leonard explained. "I'm the one who accepted the contract but without more information, it will be impossible."

"Come with me to my office." Father Malloy said and exited the booth, Leonard getting out of his own with Penny. "Who is she?"

"My associate." Leonard told him.

"By the way, who are you?" Father Malloy asked him when they had entered his office.

"No names." Leonard stated. "I had other associates dig into your contract. You gave us only a first name, which may not even be his real one, a loose description based on witness accounts and the fact that he remains hidden."

"Yes, unfortunately." Father Malloy nodded. "A former member of his gang is a member of my congregation and during confession, he told me that this man only gives his full name to his inner circle and that they regularly switch headquarters."

"Is there anything you can tell me?" Leonard asked. "At least a general location, maybe a part of the city?"

"All I know that he usually stays in Downtown." Father Malloy sighed. "I'm sorry I can't be of more help."

"What about his gang?" Leonard wanted to know.

"Small, compared to others." Father Malloy told him. "The man I talked to said there were fifteen other gang members, excluding himself and the leader."

"Okay." Leonard nodded and stood up. "I'll see what I can do. But based on the lack of details, I don't make any promises."

"Thank you anyway." Father Malloy held out his hand as he stood up. "At least someone cares enough. If you have further questions, feel free to ask them."

"I have two." Penny interjected, causing Leonard to look at her with a smile, proud of her initiative.

"Go ahead." Father Malloy nodded to her.

"One, isn't placing a contract for having someone killed something that goes against your religion?" she wanted to know.

"Yes, but I accept the responsibility that comes from it." Father Malloy sighed again. "The alternative would be to do nothing and let him continue his evil ways."

"Alright and two, where did you get the reward money from?"

"Well, it comes from... um... donations to the church." Father Malloy was visibly uncomfortable.

"But that's not all." Penny continued, feeling sure about this. "There's something else."

"Please, mam, let it go." Father Malloy pleaded.

"Thank you, Father, we'll contact you with the results once it's done." Leonard interjected and grabbed Penny's arm, pulling her out of the church.

"Why did you pull me out of there?" she asked. "I was getting information."

"About the wrong person." he retorted. "So, what are your impressions?"

"Of what?"

"Our employer."

"Well, he came over as very guilty during the conversation and at the beginning I thought it was because he is essentially stealing money from the church to pay for this contract." she started. "But there's something about him that doesn't sit well with me."

"He used to be part of the gang." Leonard stated.

"How do you know?" she was surprised.

"I got a glimpse of a snake tattoo on his right arm when he sat down." he told her. "His sleeve pulled up a bit."

"So, a former member of the gang turned priest wants the rest of the gang killed?" she mused. "I wonder what make him leave."

"I doubt his real name is Malloy." Leonard shrugged. "But it doesn't matter. We have a job to do."

"So, what do we do now?" she asked, accepting his decision since it was his contract.

"The only thing we can do absent more information." he said. "Gather them ourselves."

"How?"

"By driving around Downtown and look."

"But Downtown is huge, how are we supposed to find this guy?" she wondered.

"We look for something unusual." he shrugged and began driving.


"Are you okay?" Leonard asked Penny as they drove down the street, having noticed how she became quiet and tense while they were looking for someone or something that could give a hint about their target's whereabouts.

"This is the street I usually stood on." Penny said quietly. "Lots of bad memories here."

"This isn't where I picked you up." he pointed out but put his hand on hers, gently squeezing it.

"No, by that point, Kurt had moved his territory after another pimp got killed." she said. "More money there, he claimed."

"So, if the memory isn't too bad, can you tell me something about the area?"

"Well, I never went here on a social or recreational basis. After my shift, so to speak, I usually went straight home and stayed there." she recounted. "The street is more or less separated into territories. You can see it where one pimp's area ends and another one begins when you have a man standing on the street after the girls."

"So, what about this part?" he asked when they reached another street without any prostitutes standing outside.

"This is Madame Lily's area." she remembered. "See that building there?"

"Yes." he nodded when he saw what she was pointing at, a rather nice looking, large building that didn't even have graffiti on it despite its white walls.

"She runs a legitimate brothel there, even though it's illegal in California, so don't ask me how she does it." she told him. "Her girls are all employed as workers, have health coverage, she even has building security, it's clean and so on. Essentially, any prostitute that wants to stay in the business dreams of being employed there."

"No pimp ever tried to wrestle control away from her?"

"Not as far as I know." she shook her head. "Once I overheard Kurt talking to several other pimps and he suggested making a move but all the others refused an explained that going up against this Lily woman would mean either death or something else really bad."

"Interesting." he mused and suddenly turned the car around.

"What are you doing?" she asked when he parked on one of the spaces in front of the brothel.

"Following a hunch." he smiled and got out of the car, Penny following.

"Good evening sir." a well-dressed man greeted him from behind what looked like a reception desk in a hotel before he saw Penny as well. "Good evening, mam."

"Hello." Leonard smiled when looking up.

"If you have certain... couples fantasies, we can indulge you here." the man offered.

"No, no." Leonard shook his head and pointed to the portrait behind the man. "Is that Madam Lily?"

"Yes, she is." the man nodded, confused at Leonard's inquiry.

"Can I see her?" Leonard asked and pointed to a door behind the man. "Is that her office?"

"Madam Lily, there's a man here to see you." the receptionist spoke into an intercom.

"I'm not to be disturbed." a voice loud enough for even Penny to hear came from the speaker.

"I'm sorry, she..."

"I heard her." Leonard chuckled. "May I?"

"Sir, I don't think..." the man started but Leonard's demeanor shut him up as he walked behind the reception to use the intercom himself while at the same time, two security guards approached him.

"Who's the old crone that can't even get a blind man hard?" Leonard spoke loudly into the intercom, Penny's eyes going wide at his strange behavior.

"Why you little..." Penny could just hear before the connection cut out and stomping was being heard as someone was walking aggressively towards the door.

"Leonard, what are you doing?" she asked as the door flew open, revealing a somewhat stocky but still pretty woman, her size and built reminding her of Bernadette, only older and with a bit more body mass.

"Who's the little shit that..." the woman started before seeing who smiled at her. "LEONARD!"

"Lillian." Leonard smiled. "You're still as beautiful as ever."

"Oh my boy!" Lillian shouted and grabbed him in a bear hug, which Penny found quite amusing to watch, seeing Leonard being lifted into the air by the smaller woman. "You still haven't learned how to lie to me."

"I never tried to become better at doing so." Leonard chuckled when she put him down.

"How's Albert?" Lillian asked as she led him and Penny into her office after whispering something to the receptionist.

"He's well." Leonard nodded, sitting down on one of the chairs on front of Lillian's desk, Penny taking the other one.

"Too bad he was living so far away, I would have loved to climb that tree when he was younger." Lillian grinned.

"Um, yeah..." Leonard didn't quite know what to say about that.

"Well, I don't think you're here just to reminisce about the past or to peruse what my business offers, since you came here with your girlfriend and protege, so tell me, what brings one of the world's best assassins into my humble business?"

"How do you know she's my girlfriend?" Leonard was surprised.

"Oh please." Lillian laughed. "Your body language is as subtle as a fireworks display."

"Also, how do you know she's my protege?"

"Why else would you bring her here to see me?" Lillian pointed out.

"Lillian, I never would have imagined you ending up being a madam." Leonard tried to change the subject away from himself.

"Given my history, why is it so hard to believe?" Lillian asked.

"You were an assassin too?" Penny threw in.

"That took a while." Lillian laughed. "Of course I was, darling."

"Lillian's code name was Black Widow." Leonard explained. "Like mine is Lone Wolf."

"Not so lone anymore." Lillian winked.

"How did you get that name?" Penny wanted to know.

"From the way I killed my targets." Lillian shrugged.

"You poisoned them?"

"In a sense." Lillian winked. "My targets always died with smiles on their faces."

"I don't understand." Penny admitted.

"I killed them with sex." Lillian revealed.

"How is that possible?" Penny wondered, while Leonard just sat back and smiled as he listened.

"Young lady, do you know what our bodies go through during sex?" Lillian asked her.

"Um... we feel good?" Penny didn't quite understand.

"Pupils dilate, arteries constrict, core temperature rises, heart races, blood pressure skyrockets, especially during an orgasm, respiration becomes rapid and shallow, the brain fires bursts of electrical impulses from nowhere to anywhere, secretions spit out of every gland and your muscles spasm as if you are lifting three times your body weight." Lillian listed. "It's violent, ugly and messy."

"I... didn't know that." she admitted.

"And if evolution hadn't made it so unbelievably fun, the human race would probably have died out long ago." Leonard chuckled.

"Now add a little specific concoction to a man's drink before I drag him to bed and everything of what I just told you is increased ten-fold." Lillian finished. "We have sex, man climaxes, man dies."

"That's not quite how I remember the stories." Leonard interjected. "I heard you liked to play with your food."

"Well, sometimes a man is too good in bed to kill him right away, so in those instances I had a little more fun before I let him die."

"That's... I don't know what to say to that." Penny shuddered.

"Young lady, have we met before?" Lillian asked. "You look kinda familiar."

"I've never met you." Penny shook her head.

"Wait, you used to be a working girl, I saw you on the street a few times when I drove by." Lillian realized. "You were one of Kurt's girls."

"I... was." Penny sighed.

"Wait a second." Lillian looked at Leonard. "Was Kurt ending up with a broken neck your work?"

"It was." he nodded. "She told me to."

"Do you by any chance know what happened to Kurt's other girls?" Penny asked.

"Two did the smart thing and left the city." Lillian told her. "One, a little Asian woman was gobbled up by a rival pimp but apparently, when he tried to... break her in, she grabbed his gun, shot him and then herself. And the other two..." she added before pressing a button on her intercom

"Penny!" a high-pitched voice made her turn around.

"Roxann, Svetlana." Penny was surprised at seeing the two women. "How did you end up here?"

"Madam Lily made us an offer." Roxann replied.

"They're pretty and they add to the catalog I offer." Lillian said. "You want to talk a bit?"

"Later, okay?" Penny looked at the two. "We're actually here for business."

"Yes, we really should get to that." Lillian said and nodded to the two girls, who left. "Why are you here?"

"Looking for a gang leader who may or may not have his base of operations in the area." Leonard said. "First name Lane, might not be his real name, last name unknown. Assault, rape, possibly murder as well. His hallmark seems to be his elusiveness, apparently nobody can find him."

"The man you seek is Owain Brostin." Lillian said, writing down the name and an address. "His base of operations is a a two-room shack next to a warehouse complex three blocks east of here. He leads a comparatively small gang, only fifteen guys but they know what they're doing. They run a legitimate business out of one of the warehouses as a front."

"You just knew that from the top of your head?" Penny was surprised.

"I keep tabs on criminal elements in my vicinity, especially the raping kind." Lillian told her. "Just in case some of them haven't smarted up to the fact that my girls are off limits to them."

"Any identifiers?"

"Apart from everyone around him treating him with fearful deference?" Lillian smirked. "Snake tattoos on his arms, spider on his back."

"That's oddly specific." Penny pointed out.

"As I said, I keep tabs and I have eyes and ears in a lot of places." Lillian shrugged. "The snake tattoos are a kind of gang tags and we do have some of his men as customers once in a while but when they drink a bottle of vodka in three swigs, they tend to become chatty."

"Thank you, Lillian." Leonard smiled and pushed a gold coin towards her.

"Nah, keep it." Lillian waved him off and to Penny's surprise, Leonard pulled the coin back, not insisting that she takes it. "And could you, by any chance, give me your dad's phone number?"

"I'm sorry Lillian, I don't give out his number without his permission." Leonard apologized.

"Then at least give him mine, maybe he'll give me a call." she gave him a card.

"Lillian, you know my dad is out of the game, right?"

"I am too, it would only be a social call." Lillian winked.

"You realize that he's out of that particular game too, right?"

"Lenny, I wouldn't just hop on a jet for a tryst with a old man in his sixties, no matter how much I wanted to when I was younger." she grinned. "I just wanna shoot the shit again, like old times."

"I'll give him your number." Leonard promised. "But one more thing."

"What?" Lillian asked, looking confused when Leonard came around her desk and leaned down as if going to give her a kiss on the cheek. "Never, ever, call me Lenny." he added in a whisper.

"Get out, you!" Lillian laughed and playfully pushed him away. "And don't be a stranger."

"Bye Lillian." Leonard smiled and left her office, Penny following, still a little bowled over from the interaction.

"Her, your university president, just how many former assassins are in this town?" she wondered.

"Well, some people like summer in January." Leonard shrugged. "You want to talk a bit to your former colleagues?"

"No, I rather let the past lie." she shook her head as they got back into the car. "So, how do you know her?"

"I met her when me and dad... uh, went on our revenge killing spree." he confided. "He used her services when we were tracking the culprits and she taught me some basics about poisons."

"So, by services, you mean you had some physical release?"

"No, Lillian had a different vocation back then." he chuckled. "She was essentially her generation's Bernadette."

"She was a crazy microbiologist?" Penny grinned.

"No, a chemist." he shook his head. "Except that unlike Bernadette, she also was an assassin, so she made her own poisons for her jobs."

"Poisons that make sex lethal." she pointed out. "I still can't get my mind around the fact that she literally rode her victims to death."

"Well, not always, sometimes her victims took her doggy style when they climaxed or simple missionary." he shrugged.

"Very funny." she rolled her eyes. "So, what do we do now?"

"We have an address and a description." he shrugged and started a phone call. "Howard, I need a favor... yeah, I'm sending you an address. I need blueprints... yes, everything... thanks."

"Blueprints?" she looked at him.

"Because?" he looked back.

"Find out possible entrances and exits?"

"Was that a question?"

"Um, no." she said, trying to sound assured.

"And why do we need to know about that?"

"To prevent the target from possibly fleeing." Penny said and saw his expectant expression, knowing that he wanted more. "Maybe find ways to get in there without anyone noticing."

"Very good." he smiled proudly. "Lets find out if we can find some place to observe our target."

As he drove, he received a message on his phone, Penny seeing the attachment and knowing it was Howard doing his usual quick work. Leonard used an adapter to attach a USB drive to his phone and copied the blueprint to the drive, disconnecting it again and pocketing it. He took a turn and stopped at a copy shop, where he got out of the car and grabbed a round cylinder from the trunk.

"Do you have an A2 printer?" Leonard asked a bored-looking clerk hitting buttons on his smartphone.

"Yeah." the guy replied, not even looking up.

"I need this printed." Leonard got his attention, handing him the USB drive.

"It's password protected." the young man looked expectantly at Leonard.

"Right." Leonard nodded and grabbed the keyboard, holding it in a way so the clerk couldn't see the keys that Leonard typed in.

"Coming up." the clerk said as the printer left to him started working.

Penny watched as the large piece of paper came out of the machine, Leonard pulling it once it was done. He rolled it up and put it into the cylinder he had brought with him, making Penny realize what that thing actually was. He paid whatever it cost and led her back out, putting the container into the backseat before getting back in.

"So, that's why you packed that blueprint carrier." Penny chuckled after he had started driving again.

"Always be prepared." he winked.

"So, what now?"

"Now we're going to look at our target location, then we'll try to find a location from where we can observe it and possibly our target as well and use the blueprint to plan any approach." Leonard explained.

When they arrived at the address they had gotten from Lillian, Penny saw that it was a moderate warehouse complex, only three of them with a small office building between the first two warehouses. She surmised that the target was in there, making her wonder why the police wasn't able to find the guy, given that he seems to run a legitimate business, as Lillian had told them. She voiced those thoughts to Leonard, who looked doubtful.

"I don't think he's in that building." he said.

"Why not?"

"Lillian said that he runs his business out of one of them. The office building is most likely occupied by the complex administrator, the ones that rent out those warehouses." he explained. "We'll can set up position up there."

"But there are curtains in every window, so are you going to rent out one of the rooms?" she wondered.

"No." he chuckled and led her into the building, the entrance open.

"Ah." she realized once they had arrived on the top floor and Leonard climbed the stairs to the roof access. "Lets hope the elements don't surprise us."

"Imagine doing this in New York." he winked at her, making her shiver at the thought of having to squat on a roof in a New York winter.

Leonard produced a monocular from a pocket of his hoodie and used it to observe the warehouses before handing it to Penny so she could take a look while he unrolled the blueprints he had gotten earlier. A gentle tap on her shoulder made her turn around, and she saw him mentioning to the blueprints.

"He's in the left warehouse. Your assessment?" he looked expectantly at her. "Possible entry? Method of assassination?"

She looked at the plans, wondering why he was asking her, since it was his job. Then it hit her. It was his way teaching her, making her act as if it was her job and to see how much she already knew just from being in his proximity. She grinned at him and walked around the air vent the print was placed on to give him a kiss, an action he rewarded with some confusion as she went back to studying the plans, interspersing the paper with some observations directly from the roof to the warehouse in question.

"Front door next to the gate would be unwise, they seem to be either watching it or have it in full few, at least according to these prints The area where this guy would be staying has no windows, so there's no entry through those." she said. "Although I may be reading the plans wrong."

"No, you're reading them right." he smiled proudly.

"So, either the bull in the china shop strategy and going in through the open gate during the day and shoot everyone..."

"Which is unfeasible and not exactly my style." he interrupted.

"Or go in at night, through..." she stopped, looking at the plans again. "Hey, how about this?"

"What?" he smiled.

"Well, those warehouses and the office building between them are all connected to each other with doors along these maintenance walkways. There's also air shafts." she pointed out.

"Which would you choose?" he asked.

"That depends." she shrugged. "Unlike TV shows, climbing through air shafts is noisy. So, unless they're blasting loud noise, that would be unwise."

"And what do air shafts also provide?" he asked.

"Um... air?" she hesitated, not quite knowing what he wanted.

"What can Bernadette provide?"

"Poison." she realized. "Get it into the air supply and watch the guy drop. But wouldn't that also endanger the people in the other warehouses and office building?"

"Yes, if they were there." he nodded.

"Ah, doing it in the middle of the night." she realized. "The only people there would be compound security."

"And speaking of compound security, what do you think about that?" he asked.

"Um... I would do the utmost of not alerting them to our presence." she said.

"No, keep thinking." he prompted.

"I don't know." she admitted after almost a minute of thinking and watching the compound.

"These guys are running a criminal operation from that warehouse, using it as a legal front, right?"

"Yeah." she nodded.

"Which means that they're most likely doing the illegal things at night." he explained.

"Right." she conceded. "But wouldn't that be also suspicious?"

"Not necessarily, lots of warehouse facilities operate at night or at least very early in the morning, especially those dealing in perishables. They need to get to stores early." he told her. "And given their criminal enterprise, I would surmise that the guards are either part of the gang or at least in their pocket."

"In that case, I would ask Bernadette to mix me an airborne poison that works fast and quickly dissipates so if some gets into the other warehouses, it's not endangering anyone else."

"What kind of poison?" he prompted her again.

"Um... one that makes it look like something in the warehouse got them." she suggested. "Can Bernadette mix a poison that would make it look as if they had been killed by a gas leak?"

"Yes, she can, but creating a gas leak can be dangerous if too much escapes, we don't want to create a huge bomb." he pointed out.

"We wouldn't have to create a gas leak, just make it look that way."

"How would you make it appear someone died from a gas leak without a gas leak?" he looked at her. "Any investigator worth his salt would figure that out."

"What about planting a gas bottle?" she made another suggestion. "One with barely something in it but we leave the valve opened so it seems that the gas inside escaped and killed the leader. And everyone of his gang with him."

"Sounds like a good preliminary plan, though we will have to do some surveillance to see if they have certain rhythms." he said.

"Do we have to stay up here for days?" she whined.

"Nah." he laughed. "We're too modern for that."

Wondering what he meant, she watched as he installed a small camera directly against the wall of the roof, impossible to see from the roof itself unless one leaned over the ledge. He checked the picture transmission from his tablet and nodded satisfied before leading her off the roof and back on the streets, where trucks and vans were entering and exiting the warehouse complex.

The whole enterprise so far had been quite a ride and she had learned quite a lot. First and foremost, that connections in the business can go very far, Leonard's acquaintance with a former assassin turned Madam giving them the actual target and saving them possibly days or weeks of searching. And with the help of a certain diminutive blond friend of theirs, Leonard might even finish the contract without ever having to get close to the target. On the other hand, seeing Leonard truly in action would be better learning experience for her.

But she would just have to wait and see.


Chapter ends here.

Review please :)