xp_logs | The Journeyman Job, part 2

Doug and Hope continue their work.

"So... the bellhop takes jewelry and then does what with it?" Hope commented after she had spent some time digging through work rosters and backgrounds of employees. "To me he does not seem to have the skill or the connections to act as a fence as well as a minor thief."

Doug grinned. And he hadn't even had to lead Hope to this particular line of reasoning. He didn't quite pat himself on the back for teaching her well, but it was close. "I agree. This guy doesn't have the chops to fence his own stuff. Which means...?"

Hope looked up from her papers. "Meaning there has to be a fence somewhere..." She tapped the papers thoughtfully. "Maybe we can set a little trap for him. Offer up a little bait and then follow him?"

"Use the smaller fish to catch a bigger one," Doug affirmed. "Ready to tail someone for real?"

"You know I have been practicing. And what do you know..." Hope commented after consulting the work schedules. "He gets off in an hour and it seems he has struck today."

***

A two-person tail was much easier to run than a one-person. With every person you add to the team, the ease of keeping the target in sight increases. Of course, the tradeoff was that there are more people for the mark to potentially catch following him. But Hope had been practicing, and Doug was very very good at staying anonymous in a crowd. He'd given Hope an earpiece, and he started the tail, plain sunglasses and a gray henley leaving nothing distinguishing about him to set him off from the throng around them.

A simple, yet elegant winter coat, her own sunglasses and the bags of a shop or two were all Hope needed to blend in the crowd herself, a shopper simply moving along, occasionally slowing down a little to study the products behind the window. The bellhop suddenly sped up and Hope was forced to do the same.

"Slow down, he's trying to see if someone is chasing him," Doug murmured into his mike. "I'll take him for a few." He was across the street, with a wider field of view for the moment. "Remember, you don't want to stand out." And the bellhop did for now, moving quicker than the people around him. A simple way to see if you were being tailed, but it also stood out more - a sword that cut both ways.

"Sorry..." Hope murmured back, as she slowed down slightly, going back to doing some window shopping as she kept moving steadily. "Is it me or are we moving to a more seedy part of town?"

"No need to apologize, that's what I'm here for." Doug continued watching the man. "And naturally - most fences don't exactly have their shops on Broadway." The bellhop scanned the street and the lights at the end of the block. "Get ready, I think he's going to either cross suddenly or cut down an alley."

"Got it." Hope briefly wished she could just ghost out, since that would make following him so much easier. "Heads up, he is indeed crossing to your side of the street. If you can keep an eye on him, I'll use the crossing slightly ahead."

Keeping the bellhop in their overlapping fields of view, Doug and Hope formed the second and third points of a loose triangle as the bellhop nervously checked himself a few times. "Amateur," Doug said with a snort. "He's so obvious it hurts." Not to say that an amateur couldn't get lucky, but this guy might as well be shouting his intentions to the rooftops.

"Must mean he is close, doesn't it? I cannot think of anything else why he suddenly would be so shifty." Hope replied as she used the crossing. Now we just need to know where he is going... There... he is slipping into that store, isn't he?"

Doug examined the storefront out of the corner of his eye as he passed it. Nondescript signage, various clutter in the front window blocking obvious sight lines... "I'd say we have a winner."

"And now we just need to catch the two of them..." Hope remarked thoughtfully as she drew up to him.

"Well, what are your thoughts on a plan?" Doug asked. He knew what he'd do, but the point of this little exercise was to get Hope to make her own plans and decisions, not his.

"Perhaps we can wrap them up nicely and leave them and their loot for the authorities to find... We need a place where I can hide, so I can ghost out and do a little scouting of the building." Hope looked around her, spotting an alcove in an alley, hidden by trash cans. "Over there might work."

Having a ghost to do reconnaissance and gather intel was a very nice perk. Doug could think of plenty of times where advance notice of a building's layout would have come in handy on past missions. Doug made sure Hope was settled into a stable seated position before taking up a spot to watch for anyone coming into the alleyway.

"Be right back!" Hope sent before she dove into the ground.

Fifteen minutes later Hope slipped back into her body and slowly opened her eyes. "They should be there for a while. Do you want to discuss it here or somewhere else?"

Doug glanced around at small puddles of standing water and the other general debris that always seemed to collect in an alley, no matter how clean. "Somewhere else. We passed a diner about two blocks back."

***

Hope frowned, her hands busy sketching out the layout of the pawnshop and it's backroom as carefully as possible. Scanner had started the process, but last year’s tutelage under Wade had developed her scouting skills quite a bit more. "I was surprised how much security he had in his place." She commented idly.

"Fences aren't exactly the trusting sort," Doug said. "And if he's moving illegal stuff, it's not like he can depend on the police to come and help him out - too many uncomfortable questions."

"Even so. There were even glass breaking detectors. Above all the normal stuff, like infrared and microwave detection. Not the easiest place to break into..." Hope finished the layout and started adding the various security measures she had observed, another part of Wade's training.

"Well, 'not the easiest' doesn't mean impossible," Doug reminded Hope. "No system is foolproof." Oh, you could devote resources to making things as secure as possible, but he knew from long experience on both sides of the equation that one-hundred-percent completely secure was a myth, along the lines of the saying about how two people can keep a secret if one is dead.

"Here you go." Hope pushed over the map to Doug to look over. "He has a safe in the back where he keeps the stolen jewels... and this backroom. It has a barred window high up. It might be a good place to leave the bellhop and the shopkeeper?"

"Smart. The human element is almost always the weakest point in a security setup." Doug grinned. No matter how many bells and whistles you added, physical security could never truly account for a nervous mark. "What'd you have in mind?"