In Plain Sight
By: Dale E. Lehman
Tags: Short Story, Mystery, Fiction, Crime Fiction, Flash Fiction

In Plain Sight

The best place to hide things

Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash

This could be dicey. I’d avoided Yumi for three and a half weeks by traveling to New York, Atlanta, and Chicago, discreetly seeking appraisers, potential buyers, hiding places, but now I was back, and she demanded a meeting that I had neither an excuse nor the courage to refuse.

When her instructions arrived by text the moment I debarked the plane Friday evening, cold dread overtook me:

Tomorrow. Noon. Sheldon Park. Bench by the playground. Bring the books.

A more reckless man would have already sold them and vanished on the proceeds, but she knew me. I took my time and did my homework. That’s why I was her top operative. Ironically, it now proved my undoing. Sold one at a time, her books would have provided a comfortable retirement; sold as a collection? Visions of wealth danced in my head. Thus the trip, the appraisals, the quiet search for a buyer. My instinct proved right. The take was so high, the numbers hardly mattered. The trick was completing the sale without drawing attention, a feat still in the works. And now here I was, Saturday noon, the loot in my hands, about to lose it all.

A treasure like that, and she wanted me to hand-carry it through a public park? Well, of course. She always hid her secrets in plain sight. Take Yumi herself. Seated on that park bench, she looked like a mother enjoying the summer day while her children played. Warm sunlight reflected — or did it emanate? — from her yellow dress. A gentle smile graced her glowing, round face, while her small hands cradled a white clutch bag in her lap and stroked it like a cat. You couldn’t help but look. She’d ignore you, of course, lost in the antics of the kids at play. You’d hold your breath or smile at her, her serenity, her beauty, her happiness, hoping maybe for her to notice you and smile back, but lost in her, you’d never realize that among the white, black, and Hispanic children swinging on swings and sliding down slides and brachiating across the monkey bars, not one looked remotely like her, not one the smallest fraction Japanese.

She was no child’s mother. That fact stared you in the eyes, but you’d never realize. You’d never guess the darkness within.

I came to her side, a doubled and tied plastic grocery bag in each hand, a baker’s dozen books in one, a common man’s dozen in the other, none visible to the passerby. She had eyes only for the swinging, running, squealing children, so I settled the bags beside her and sat next to them. A light breeze rustled our hair, hers jet black, mine sandy. A glance at her, a slight twitch in her smile, told me what she was thinking.

Oh, Christopher, you’re such a gentleman.

Sarcasm, of course. I a robber of the rich, she an empress reigning over thieves and thugs, and this transaction but to avoid unpleasantness. As valuable as they were, I should never have stolen those books. I should never have allowed myself to notice them. In true Yumi fashion, she had stored them on a shelf lined with fakes. Print books had faded into oblivion, inflating the value of those that remained, but as décor, book-lined shelves never became passé. Few noticed the difference. None who did dared take them. None but me. I knew Yumi, knew her ways, knew my own skill. I fancied she’d never suspect me.

Yumi touched one of the bags and shook her head. No, Christopher, I could almost hear her say. It wasn’t that. You’re too full of yourself. You must prove yourself smarter than me. Smarter than a woman.

Maybe so. If so, she’d torn a gaping hole in that hot air balloon. I knew who I was up against. I planned this job more carefully than any in my life. I’d disabled the surveillance, allowed no witnesses, left no evidence, conjured a perfect alibi. Even a clairvoyant wouldn’t have pinned it on me, yet somehow Yumi knew.

I would have to live with that failure, if she let me live, but the pain of a crushed ego quickly gave way to a worse agony: I, Yumi’s right-hand-man, would be turned out, persona non grata, to make my way on my own. I had grown up in her organization. I had nobody apart from her and her people.

Especially her. In that moment, I realized I loved her. Not in a romantic sense, but in some convoluted fashion bordering on religious. I couldn’t lose her and live.

Yumi looked down as though embarrassed by my realization. She probably had known it long before. Maybe she even felt something in return. She opened her clutch and took out a small object, an item so perfectly her it nearly made me laugh: a rare Captain Hook Pez™ dispenser that she’d bought for over a thousand dollars. She slipped a candy from the dispenser and with an elegant little toss popped it in her mouth. Her eyes misted over. She watched the children. The candy dissolved. She ate a second candy, then a third, while working out what to say, or rather to signal. She wouldn’t say a word. Not here. Not now.

She turned, hesitant, a tear in the corner of each eye, and held out the dispenser to offer me candy. I opened my palm, and she dropped a piece into it.

I’ll miss you, too.

Her whole being broadcast it. It was the truth, unspoken but undisguised. With a nod, I closed my fist around the treat and stood.

The truth, yes, but not the whole truth. Without looking back, I passed by a trash barrel, dropped the candy in, and left. I didn’t need to see her to know her thoughts.

Beautifully done, Christopher. You’re not smarter than I, but you’re damn close.

Maybe, maybe not, but I knew her. She hid things in plain sight. And I had no stomach for poison.