A sudden burst of music caught her ears as Tasìa's long limbs pushed her up the wall. She flipped over the rooftop gutter drain trough and quickly oriented herself towards the sound. Multiple tambourines and a bongo drum filled out the rhythm of a tarantella. She also heard a horn and an acoustic guitar strumming along to the bouncing pattern.

Tasìa crawled to the front side of the building, a dozen yards just above the entrance vault door, so she could peek through a bent-up fan grill to spy on the transients below.

Tasìa grabbed the pistol scope she kept in the fanny pack before putting eyes on her targets.

As the transients all appeared harmless enough, she had taken little notice of their presence before. This set of transients possessed the air of long unemployed musicians cultured to a mostly gypsy-like existence. They wore clothes of faded motley that still bore some dignity in how the suits were pridefully maintained in their upkeep.

Now the men greeted the plump streetwalker, availed so richly in ornate cloth, in a near cacophony with instruments accompanied by hoots and whistles. The woman clasped her hands and giggled with unabashéd delight.

As she approached them, the señora surprised Tasìa with a set of deft high kicks that snapped out through the dress slip in a most balletic fashion. It was a move common to the two-thousand-year-old dance.

Tasìa could see from the señora's quite expressive and erotic performance how the dance got banned for its lewd display back in the days of the old Roman Empire.

The señora lept and sprung over to the musicians while clicking her heels on the tippy-toes of her boots.

Tasìa chuckled to herself, trying to imagine the streetwalker as the skinny showgirl she likely once was a decade previously.

She still has those quintessential moves that made a showgirl well renown, Tasìa thought, admiringly.

As the buxom danseuse corroused, Tasìa counted six men in the ensemble. Given the manner the señora wiggled against each in his turn, as she danced in the middle of their assembly, Tasìa had little doubt that the señora was going to have a busy and fulfilling rest of the late eve and coming morn ahead of her.

Tasìa rose above her own feelings of envy in an internalized salute of congratulation.

Living the dream, doll. You are living the dream.

The look-out was amongst a group of four other transients who sat further down the lot around a park bench near the popping roar of a burning fuel barrel that smelled of the oils of cured hemp leaf. He propped himself up along the crook of his shoulder blades, curved severely in a vulture's repose, against the red brick wall. His arms folded together stiffly.

He looked as if he hung there with his heels pushed rigid against the wall.

Tasìa smiled. She knew why he stood that way. Lookouts often assumed this very pose to keep their bodies attentive while simultaneously giving some rest and relief to their backs. As practical as this stance was for him, it was going to prove exploitable in Tasìa's estimation of what she would need to do to get to the Cadillac.

Hence, why Tasìa now smiled in a full gobliny while licking her lips. The Serbian spy's question about violence pressed upon her conscience as she considered shooting the lookout as a possible distraction.

Damn it! You are going to take all the fun out of it, Silvia!

Tasìa examined the lookout's crew, all four of the men appeared significantly older than him. They had the futile look about them of cast-out flunkies who had once served malevolent capos in the most venial of capacities.

If a body had to be sawed in several parts and then discarded piece by piece in the ditches of a long stretch of highway, these were the mezquinos who would commit such a nefarious and foul deed.

Now, look at them, Tasìa thought. Laid so low in life, they were too broken to be of any concern to anyone.

That troupe of weird cockfighter kids would easily best these slouches.

Among this crew, she realized right away, Ferenzi had made the only viable choice. The lookout possessed a pride in his mannerism that eluded the others. He had some ambition set deep in the scope of his constantly darting eyes.

As the others watched the sway of the dancing señora's delectable rump while sipping from forty-ounce cans of maize-based malt liquor, the lookout kept his eyes busy elsewhere. When on the occasions that most volup of sashaying body masses got in the way of his line of sight, it annoyed him to the point that he snarled and muttered swears to himself with a putter of spittle on his lips.

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And she could read from those lips the name of the Blesséd One.

Assuredly growing up, he had known the way of the head mistress's wooden straight ruler, in the same way that the children of guerillas come to know the way of the gun.

Tasìa finally concluded that he was going to stay put in his current position, so she eased back, turned around, and crawled to the east side. She pulled her head up with care, first checking behind herself.

Now, it was she who cursed silently to the Sacré Madré.

The easier solution she had hoped for was foiled, for her head would be in the lookout's line of sight. The way he kept his head in motion like a true pro, it was too great a risk for her.

No good.

Tasìa pulled her head back down and she consulted with the neoPalm's display of camera outputs. Ferenzi stood by the passenger door, leaning on the roof, as he smoked at a cigarette that fumbled around in his mouth while he jabbered on his phone.

He had no line of sight on her from his position, but as for his driver . . . Tasìa determined that the driver would see her if she crawled down the wall either down from here, her current position, or if she chanced to risk going down the back south side wall.

Well . . . she sighed, almost reluctantly to herself as if she were breaking a sacred vow, a distraction it just has to be then.

Tasìa pulled the .32 caliber semi-auto pistol out of her boot.

For the pity of it, I so committed myself to a peaceable solution this time.

Tasìa scooted with elbows pulling her along back up to the fan grill once more. She made solace with herself while deep in thought about the lookout's own culpability in all of this.

He did take the job of his own volition, and he did so with no care to the well being of those of whom he so eagerly surveilled.

She had no time for the shrill, shameful journey of a guilt trip. Too much rode upon her success.

Tasìa laid the neoPalm down propped up on a loose clutter of small, thin bricks so she could keep an eye on Ferenzi and his driver.

The pistol she held in her hand with its gas-powered chamber lock was designed so as not to amplify the sound of a discharge. A .32 was a low caliber projectile, and that helped minimize the volume of sound as well. However, Tasìa needed at least some actual sound suppression to muffle the source direction so no one would be jerking their heads her way in the aftermath of her taking down the lookout.

Tasìa took out a roll of gauze fabric from her fanny pack. She tested the diameter against her barrel. With the gauze fabric tightly restricting its bendable mass, the roll would not fit around the barrel.

Easily solvable.

Tasìa stripped out the thick wad of gauze wrapping from the body of the roll. She then eased the cardboard cylinder along the shaft of the barrel to mold it to the solid structural shape beneath it.

With four rubber bands wrapped tightly around it, the roll was now well set in place. Lastly, she pulled the wad of gauze around the barrel in a stiffly drawn wrap. The remaining dozen rubber bands in her pack she used to hold the gauze in place.

Tasìa looked over her handy work with an appraisive grimace. It was well done, it should work just fine in theory, but - she glanced over to the diligent lookout - how was she going to aim the thing?

My special needs ability? The one that makes my pee-hole burn with a venomous bite and steam out in a scalding geyser?

Her gut answered her in turn, yup, that would be the one. Do it, otherwise you risk maiming or killing the kid. That gun doesn't have anything even close to a proper sights line-up with only the rear iron now exposed.

Tasìa shook her head as she breathed in deeply and tightly held the breath in place. She found that concentrating her psyche's intensity just beneath the skin of her abdominal wound caused the effect of her overdrive perception to shift into being nearly instantaneously.

Warm vapor rose from her sinuses.

Tasìa glanced at the lookout. He looked elsewhere, eyes focused at something across the street, fortuitously not in her direction. Good, as she needed to lean her torso into the bent-up fan grill which increased her potential exposure to the people below. Tasìa pushed the gun up against the fan support. The broken wire above, she noticed, curved into a bead.

Perfect!

She lined up the rear iron sight in congruence to the makeshift bead. She had to pull the backside of the .32 up a few inches so it aimed just above the curve of his right foot.

Now, with a proper triangulation, the laser dot could be easily set in place.

She merely wanted to shave the leather of his shoe so he would feel the hot projectile as it skint the side of his foot to cause a good, distracting scare.

Tasìa pulled her mind inward, focused upon the layout of her vision of his foot from across the parking lot and she adjusted the subtle but remaining differentials accordingly. Most naturally, the sight aligned against the apex of the shoe curvature. It would graze right between his arch joint and his ankle joint.

Before she was even fully aware of it, with an easing of the trigger, it was done. The lookout lunged face forward into the ground. He twisted around on his back as he grabbed his ankle with a bellowing shriek emptying out of his lungs.

As Tasìa threw her head down, the bongo drum ceased playing in a dead stop. The other instruments followed suit while the men raised their voices in alarm.

Tasìa grabbed the NeoPalm and she studied the camera feed. Ferenzi was barking an order while he pounded on the roof, to which the driver shuffled out of the car before slamming the door behind him. Soon, he was on his way briskly strolling up to the adjoining lot to check out the commotion.

She knew this was likely how Ferenzi would play it out. She gathered from her brief acquaintance that he was an overly cautious man. Naturally, he sent the driver.

Tasìa pocketed the gun and neoPalm before she began to hustle down the street side wall.

So far, so good, Tasìa said to herself, in a hopeful state of mind.