Page 37 of Operation: Valiant Angel

Just then, Garcia received a text message from Cooper. Bianchi hadn’t shown at the Little Falcon yet. He wanted Garcia to give him a call if he was up. Wilson had to chuckle at that. Of course, Garcia would have been up and working by then. Coop knew that.

“Yeah, I’ve been up a while,” Garcia said into his phone. “Taco and I looked over the report from the Digital Team on Aiello and his three goons. Nothing there. And I looked over the rest of Bianchi’s work in the company system. There’s nothing there either, Coop.”

“With today being Saturday, Bianchi’s Senior will go visit his wife in the home. If Junior goes to his neighborhood tap at the same time, we can get in there and search the place,” Cooper said. The digital team had discovered that Bianchi’s father visited his wife every Saturday. He signed in at her care home at four in the afternoon every Saturday, had dinner with his wife, and then signed out at six-thirty sharp. “Why don’t you and Taco head over there and watch the residence? If they both vacate, enter, search, and plant some tech on Bianchi’s home computer.”

Wilson checked his watch. The timing could be perfect.

Wilson and Garcia watched Bianchi and his father leave the house. They got into his car, which was parked out front. They both presumed that Bianchi was driving his dad to his mother’s care home. They reported the movement to Cooper.

“Five will get you ten that Bianchi drops his dad at his mom’s home and then goes to the Little Falcon for dinner,” Wilson transmitted.

“Let’s calculate twenty minutes for Bianchi to deliver his dad, and then another fifteen to drive to the Falcon. I’ll go in, say, in about twenty minutes. I want to already be inside when he arrives,” Madison said.

“Taco and I are entering the house now,” Garcia advised. Then he nodded to Wilson and opened the car door.

Wilson walked with him to the front door. It was sheltered from the view of the neighbors on both sides in an alcove. Garcia rang the bell. Wilson knocked just to be sure no one else was in the house. They surveyed the area. There was no doorbell camera, no other security cameras in view.

After two minutes with no sounds coming from within, Wilson pulled the lock-picking tools from the breast pocket of his jacket. Picking locks was a new skill he’d just acquired. Just as he was about to insert the tools into the lock, the click of the deadbolt being opened came from the door. Wilson stepped back and hid the tools behind his back as the door swung open.

“Can I help you?” an older, Italian woman with the slightest of accents asked.

“You are not Bradford Bianchi,” Wilson said with a smile.

“You just missed him,” she said. She grabbed a tote full of cleaning supplies from the floor. They watched her turn the knob lock on the inside of the door knob. Then she stepped out andpulled the door closed. They stood in her way. “If you’d excuse me, please. And no one is home. You should go.”

They both stepped back and watched her walk between them to the car parked on the street in front of the house. They followed her away from the front door and got back in their own car. They pulled away from the curb before she did, but circled the block and returned after she’d left.

“Now that we know only the door knob lock is locked, that makes it easier,” Wilson said.

“And we know no one else is home,” Garcia added.

The two men returned to the front door and Wilson easily picked the cheap lock. They were inside quickly. They separated and began to search the house. Garcia found a laptop on the kitchen table and got to work on it, hoping it was their target’s computer and not his father’s.

Wilson easily discerned which of the two bedrooms was their target. The one without the support stockings, Bengay, and bookshelves filled with old Popular Mechanics magazines dated from 1990 through 2014. He searched the dresser, followed by the nightstand. Bianchi’s clothes were all crisply folded and arranged just so. He was careful to maintain the order in each drawer.

“Our boy is a neat freak,” Wilson broadcast. “His underwear is even folded in perfect, tight three by three-inch squares.” He lifted one of the little bundles of fabric and held it up, examining it. He wondered how Bianchi folded it so tightly, so compactly. And here he thought his method of rolling his clothes was best. He could learn a few folding techniques from Bianchi.

“He’s also a security freak when it comes to his laptop,” Garcia chimed in. “I find it odd that he has no security system on his house at all, but his laptop is Fort Knox.”

“Makes you wonder what’s on his laptop,” Cooper said.

“I’ll know in about three minutes,” Garcia said.

Wilson smiled to himself, hearing the glee in Garcia’s voice.

“If our target proceeds here after dropping Senior off at the home, he should be here any second,” Cooper transmitted.

“If not, if he comes home for some reason, that only gives us another five minutes or so before we’ll be rudely interrupted,” Wilson said, calculating Bianchi’s potential movements and the time associated with it. He’d moved on and was now searching the closet, which was equally organized as his dresser drawers.

Three more minutes clicked by.

“I’m in,” Garcia announced.

“It’s about time,” Wilson teased him through comms.

“Target should have been here by now,” Cooper said.

“Unless he goes in to see his mom, too,” Madison whispered. She was already inside the Little Falcon and had ordered a beer.

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