"So you're banging her all the time," McGrave says, turning to Russell.
"C'mon, John, let's be reasonable about this."
"Thanks for the job offer, Frank. But I think I'll pass. I'm glad to hear about the swell dental plan, though, because I think you're gonna need it."
McGrave smiles and shoulders past Russell, who tenses up, as if expecting a blow. But McGrave keeps on walking.
Doesn't mean the blow won't come later, and Russell knows it.
Russell closes the doors, turns around, and watches the security monitors as his former partner strides out of the house, gets into his police-issue Crown Vic in the cobblestone motor court, and drives off.
Only then does Russell relax.
He sits down in a chair, takes out his cell, turns his back to the monitors, and calls McGrave's ex-wife.
"This is gonna get ugly," he says.
McGrave speeds down the hill in his car, passing a Comcast cable service van parked on the street and a repair guy working at an open junction box, where he's plugged some kind of iPad-size video device into the wiring.
The repair guy is wearing an earpiece transmitter and looking intently at his iPad, where several windows are showing either an interior or exterior video feed of the Wallengren mansion.
"I'm in," the guy says in German. "Switching to recorded feed now."
Russell is so involved in his phone call with McGrave's ex-wife that he doesn't notice a split-second flicker across all of the command-center screens, including the one that shows the empty entry hall, which isn't actually empty.
Two men, all muscle and sinew, and a woman with a body suitable for a successful career as an Olympic gymnast or a porn star, walk in the front door all dressed in black and wearing ski masks.
They each have earbud transmitters and are carrying matching silver cases and gym bags.
They split up, moving with silent, practiced precision into the house.
Out on the street, at that open junction box, the repair guy is watching all of this go down on his iPad when someone taps him on the shoulder.
He turns and gets a fist in the face, breaking his nose like a water balloon.
It's McGrave.
If the repair guy had been more aware of his surroundings, and less focused on watching the robbery, he might have noticed that shortly after McGrave drove by, he'd made a sharp turn into a driveway just two houses down from the junction box.
McGrave punches the repair guy in the face again, mostly because it just feels so good after his conversation with Russell.
He bends down and snatches the iPad from the ground and plucks the transmitter out of the unconscious repair guy's ear and sticks it in his own.
McGrave glances at the iPad screen, toggles through the feeds, and sees the three thieves in different rooms, taking antiquities and placing them into cases lined with foam padding precut for each individual piece that they are stealing.
Pros with a shopping list.
He yanks the added wires and clips from the junction box, tosses the iPad on the ground, then opens the back of the van. The real cable guy is on the floor with a bullet in his forehead.
McGrave closes the door, takes out his cell phone, and dials Frank Russell as he hurries back down the hill to his car.
Russell is sitting in his chair, his back to the monitors, talking to McGrave's ex, when he's interrupted by a beep.
"Hold on, baby, I'm getting another call."
He takes the phone away from his ear to look at the caller ID.
It's John McGrave.
Fuck.
He puts the phone back to his ear.
"It's him. Do you think I should take the call?"
McGrave is getting into his car when one of the thieves asks him something over the transmitter in German. Not once, but twice.
So McGrave says, "Ja wohl."
It's the only German he knows. It's what Sergeant Schultz said all the time to Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes.
He yanks the transmitter from his ear, takes an extra ammo clip from his glove box, and starts his car.
Sebastian Richter hasn't survived and prospered as an assassin and thief simply on his intelligence, his lethal skills, and his physical prowess, though those qualities are certainly a plus on the rйsumй.
His edge has always been his natural predatory instincts.
And those instincts were telling him he was fucked even before McGrave said, "Yes, indeed," to him in German.
Richter drops his silver case, takes a gun out of his gym bag, and heads for the double doors of the command center.
"I've got to take his call, Sharon. If I don't answer, he'll think I wet myself over his stupid threat. I got to be cool about this. Hold on," Russell says, then answers McGrave's call. "Change your mind, buddy?"
"You're being robbed," McGrave says as he's backing the car out into the street. "There are three perps in the house right now."
Russell swivels around in his chair, stands up, and looks at the monitors, where he sees rooms with empty display cases and one thin guy and one hot woman busy stealing more.
He tosses the phone on the chair and is about to slap the big red emergency button on the console when the doors behind him burst open.
Out of flawed reflex, the kind Richter has subdued in himself with years of training, Russell turns around and Richter pistol-whips him across the face, taking him down.
Richter picks up Russell's phone, looks at the caller ID, and then pockets it.
He then says this in German into his earbud: "Abort. We have a guest coming. Otto, you stop him. Serena, warm up the car."
McGrave is speeding up the street, peeling rubber on the steep grade, when the repair guy, his face splattered with blood, staggers into his path with a gun and starts shooting at him.