The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Nine Read Online Free Page B

giving us a heads up about what really happened at the Plattsburg meeting?”
    “We couldn’t get anyone to spill,” Amy said.  “Focus Keistermann is actually going to push the male Major Transform recognition through the Council?  This is why the Focus got attacked, isn’t it?”
    “I believe so,” Hank said.  “I can tell you what I learned, if you want.”  Which he did.
     
    ---
     
    Hank made a lousy woman.  No matter how they tried, Inferno couldn’t disguise him as a Focus, so they made him look like a passable female in her fifties.  Between the disguise as a woman, the makeup, and his plastic surgery, even his estranged wife wouldn’t recognize him.  The program listed him as a witness, a Dr. Wilma Orza.  He came in as one of Focus Keistermann’s people, and she vouched for ‘her’ bona fides.
    His disguise was a long step up from Sky’s.  The stocky-framed Crow wore a disguise as one of Keistermann’s Transform bodyguards, and they had gone whole hog.  Shaved head, fake tattoos, fake beer belly, the ill-fitting caterer’s uniform, the works.  Made the Crow look like he just deserted from the French Foreign Legion.
    Outside the German Alehouse and VFW meeting center in Plattsburg, Focus Rizzari ran security, coordinating with the bodyguard teams of Focuses Biggioni, Keistermann, Webb and Bentlow.  As far as the other Focuses were aware, Lori was just another Transform bodyguard.  Hank had been surprised to learn Focus security was one of Inferno’s side businesses, and they had been providing bodyguards for nearby impromptu Focus gatherings for years.  The Council would pay Inferno quite a bit more than normal for this one.  He knew not to mention that to Keaton.
    Lori had been checking up on the hunt for Gilgamesh, or making the attempt.  Attempts.  Carol and the rescue team were on their way from Memphis to Dallas, where Carol planned to use one of her Dallas know-nothing merc teams and flatten Guru Arpeggio’s place if he didn’t cooperate.  Hank thought the idea suicidal, given what he understood about the capabilities of the upper-end Crows, but he also knew he couldn’t talk Carol down when her blood was up.
    No talking to Lori, either, on the subject.  She had a hard time concentrating on the task at hand, security, and she needed to.  Given the timing on the Gilgamesh grab, this meeting was likely a death trap.
    He also had problems concentrating.  Gilgamesh’s kidnapping left Hank sick with worry, enough to make his hands shake when he didn’t pay attention.
     
    He ate a Mercury Catering provided breakfast muffin and walked into the VFW hall, trying to shake off lack of sleep.  He had managed to catch only a few short catnaps in the car ride from Boston, sleep he badly needed.  Although this particular New York tourist town in the Lake Champlain region was a busy place in summer, this was the off-season and hotel rates were affordable.  It used to be the Focuses could get university meeting rooms for these impromptu gatherings, especially during summer and holidays, but with the constant student protests, those opportunities had all dried up.  Last week’s ‘turn in your draft card day’ soured his stomach.
    Getting plane tickets to Plattsburg had been another problem, and even though the Focuses weren’t traveling with their full entourage s, it strained all their budgets.  Focus Bentlow had tried to beg off, unable to afford the tickets for herself and her guards, so anonymous donations from various sources, including his own lab account, covered the shortfall.
    Anyone who saw this shindig and recognized that four of the Focus Council members were meeting without the other three might have become suspicious.  They would have been right, because Council President Focus Keistermann was pulling a fast one.  Officially, this was an emergency meeting of the budget committee of the UFA, the United Focus Association.  It wasn’t.  Focuses Webb and Bentlow