Sting

by Jude Watson

  March felt a cavern of fear open up inside him. He almost didn’t have to hear the rest. But he asked anyway. “You mean everything is gone? What about the yacht?”

  “I’m afraid it just …” Hamish trailed a hand in the air. “Sailed away.”

  Darius began to roam the space, shaking his head. “There’s gotta be a mistake here,” he said. “It can’t be the same guy! Maybe he pulled the funds for investment. I’ll just text him.” Darius started working on his phone.

  March turned toward Darius slowly, as though every muscle in his body ached. It felt that way, like he’d been beaten up. “How did you meet this guy?”

  “At the bank,” Darius said. “Totally legit. It was that time we needed to withdraw the cash for the climbing wall. We struck up a conversation. He looked like a banker, all fine in an expensive navy suit. Handmade shoes. He gets ’em in London.”

  “He overheard you with the teller,” March said, rubbing his forehead. “We withdrew a bunch of cash that day. You were a mark. A pigeon.”

  “No way! I’m not stupid. I didn’t just hand over my wallet!”

  “Not right then, sure!” March roared. “You waited until you could hand over everything we had!”

  Jules put her hands on her cheeks. “I can’t believe this.”

  Darius swallowed. His voice shook as he said, “We just had a conversation. He said he worked for an investment firm. Gave me his card. I even went to his office. Some swanky place downtown. He had a gorgeous secretary and a huge desk —”

  March sank to the floor. “The Big Store.”

  The Big Store was a famous con. The con man just rented an empty office, or an apartment, or whatever he or she needed, then window-dressed it to impress clients. After the score, they cleared the place out.

  “Looks that way.” Hamish’s voice sounded muffled. “Could you refresh the screen, Izzy? I can’t see anyone.”

  But Izzy didn’t move. She had hugged the tablet to her chest. She was looking at Darius, her eyes wide with fear. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  “It is definitely not within a million miles of okay,” March spit out.

  Darius looked up from his phone. “His website is down. Text bounced back.”

  “He’s long gone,” March said. He looked out the window. “Probably on our yacht.”

  “You called it, March. I have information that he’s operating in the Cayman Islands,” Hamish said. “You were in Europe for ten days casing the job. He worked fast. I don’t know who bought the place. It has a certain black market smell to it. Probably sold it to someone for cash.”

  Darius backed up and sat down in a heap. He dropped his head in his hands.

  Izzy put the tablet on the counter and went to sit next to Darius. She leaned against him, but for once, he didn’t acknowledge her.

  “He said to put it all in a trust,” Darius said hoarsely, his head between his knees. “He said that’s what rich people do. They find tax-free investments, shelters, a portfolio with a thirty percent return.”

  “So we’re flat broke?” Jules asked. “Just what we have in our pockets?”

  “A thief is never broke,” Hamish said. “Just temporarily out of funds. But, yeah.”

  March felt as though the top of his head would come off. The money, the accounts, the home Alfie had bought, the life he had dreamed? Just gone? Just like that?

  Everything they’d built, everything they’d imagined.

  Gone.

  A volcano of rage roared through March, and he spun to face Darius. “How could you let this happen? How could you be so stupid?”

  Darius flinched, as if he’d hit him. A look came over his face, one that March had never seen before. Vulnerable. Young. Lost.

  “Hey!” Izzy said, rising to her feet. “We don’t talk to each other like parents! That’s a rule!”

  “Do you know what you gave away?” March yelled, ignoring Izzy. “Everything! Not just our home, but our safety! Do you know what money buys? Security, and passports, and IDs, and the future!”

  “I know that!” Darius shouted, his face contorted. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “It was almost twenty million dollars!”

  “I know how much it was! What am I supposed to do?”

  “Get it back!” March stamped his foot hard. He lowered his voice and took a step toward Darius. He pounded the wall. “I want it back. I want it all! I want the couches and the computers and the furniture and the blankets and the pillows and the dartboard.” With every item, he hit the wall with his fist. “I want the games and the trapeze and the sixteen-foot-long dining table. I want the waffle iron and the sneakers and the snacks. I want Jules’s wooden hairbrush and Izzy’s stuffed chipmunk.”

  “We never even used the waffle iron,” Izzy said.

  “You fell for the most basic con there is,” March said bitterly. “There’s nothing between us and the street now. It means we’re just another bunch of homeless grifter kids. We’re nobody now. We’re nothing. And it’s all because of you!”

  Izzy put her hands over her ears. “Stop it!” Tears ran down her face, and she sobbed. “Please, stop it, March.”

  Jules came to his side. She put her hand on his wrist. He shook her off. Why should he stop? Just because Darius looked crushed, because Izzy looked scared, because Jules was warning him he’d gone too far? He didn’t care.

  “It’s too late to stop it,” March said. “We’re done.”

  If it hadn’t been for Hamish, March didn’t know how they would have dealt with the next step. It was Hamish who offered them his condo, said he’d buy them tickets to Florida.

  It was Hamish who reminded them that they still had the sapphire.

  They had something left, at least.

  Rage churned in March’s stomach. He was furious at himself for letting it happen. For not asking the right questions. For not taking some of the money and putting it away someplace safe.

  Never forget your walking-away money.

  The group fractured into twos. He stuck with Jules, and Izzy, as always, stayed close to Darius. They left the house they’d once owned and trudged to the subway. They headed back to the airport.

  On the rattling train March’s anger drained, and a sinkhole of fear opened up inside him. It was a feeling he’d known all through his childhood. When chips were down and money was gone. What next?

  Home was the place they’d created together. There, they’d felt safe. Now he felt small, just a chump in a hard city that ground and gnashed around him like a machine.

  He remembered Dukey’s words: You’re kids.

  Gone. The river would glint outside the windows without him. His key wouldn’t open the front door.

  For a year, March had woken up thinking, Okay, Pop, I’m sad, but at least I followed through. I found Jules. We found your diamond. We made a home. Bummer you’re not here, though.

  Now he was back on the run. It was almost like losing Alfie all over again.

  * * *

  The Miami airport felt like a dream in a tropical land. People ambled along the corridors in shorts and sandals and baggy T-shirts. They passed a tiled wall full of blue and silver fake fish chasing one another in endless, lifeless loops. The lowering sun was too bright outside the windows, glinting off metal and glass.

  Nobody spoke as they exited to the humid Miami air. March scanned the arriving cars for Hamish’s frizzy silver ponytail.

  “We’ll have to wait,” Darius said.

  “Your powers of observation are amazing,” March said.

  Darius and Izzy drifted closer to the curb.

  Jules gave him an exasperated look. “That was lousy.”

  March pressed his lips together. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Just … give him the tiniest of breaks. He’s suffering!”

  “You think he’s suffering?”

  “Look, we all are, okay? It was a lot to lose.”

  “Which is kinda my point?”<
br />
  “Don’t you dare tell me to move!” The voice floated above the sounds of car horns and the squeals of hellos. It even cut through Jules’s air of exasperation.

  “I’m picking up my boy, so I am not moving until I see his face!”

  Darius whirled around, panic on his face.

  Jules gestured. “It’s Mikki!”

  A short, muscular woman in a tank top proclaiming MIAMI HEAT stood arguing with an airport employee, a crumpled sign in her hand. “You have some compassion,” she said, stamping her foot.

  “Mama, what are you doing here?” Darius asked.

  “Baby!” Mikki Fray wrapped her arms around Darius. She came up to his collarbone, but she rocked him like a toddler. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “I’m glad to see you, too, but —”

  “What, I’m not going to pick you up at the airport?”

  “But I didn’t tell you I was —”

  “I got my ways, Darius P. Fray. What kind of mother do you think I am?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that question?”

  “No, I do not,” Mikki said, smacking him on the arm, then hugging him again.

  Mikki Fray had been in prison three times. Although she was one of the best wheelmen in the business, she wasn’t so great at picking friends. She’d lost custody of Darius, and he’d been raised by his grandmother until bouncing into foster care. Mikki had pulled off a mysterious job a year ago and had made enough to retire — she claimed. Since then March had watched Darius waiting for her to ask him to join her in Florida, to finally give him a home, but the call never came. She was totally cool with his living on his own. She loved him fiercely, but she was happy for him to stay out of her way.

  The airport worker waved his walkie-talkie. “Move along, ma’am. There’s a time limit on how long you can stop here.”

  “I am moving along. Can’t you see me move? Honey, people should pay to watch my moves. Now leave me alone while I hug this sweet girl.” Mikki grabbed Izzy and hugged her.

  She released Izzy and hugged Jules and March. “C’mon, everybody, I’ve got a car right here. Unfortunately my T-bird had a little altercation with another vehicle this very afternoon. But lucky for me, I got a ride! Come and meet my driver.”

  “But, Mama, we’re supposed to get picked up —”

  “I know all about that. Your friend called me, asked if I could pick you up. I said, ‘Are you kidding? They’re all coming to Miami and Darius didn’t tell me?’ ”

  “Spur of the moment,” March said.

  Mikki waggled a forefinger at him. “I’ll get it out of you, don’t you fret.”

  She led them to a dented pickup truck that had probably once been blue, or maybe brown. It was hard to tell. “This is Dimmy,” she said, sweeping an arm to indicate a stocky man leaning against the car, dressed in baggy shorts that reached his knees. He wore a backward baseball cap. “I smashed into his car!”

  “Actually I smash into her car,” Dimmy said in a thick Eastern European accent. “She’s so nice, she won’t say this.”

  “He’s Ukrainian — or maybe Siberian, I forget — but what he is really, he’s a Good Samaritan,” Mikki said. “He drove me here for free!”

  Dimmy’s goofy smile was directed at Mikki. He shot her a look of intense admiration from his puppy-dog brown eyes. “I recognize wonderful woman in three seconds exactly. Mother devotion, so anxious to get her child. Mikki, which one is your son?”

  Darius looked at March, then Jules, then Izzy. “Guess.”

  “Ha! Stupid question. Right? Only boy of color. But I’ll tell you — the handsomest! Son of Mikki is best-looking! Oops, you are very good-looking, too,” he said to March. He reached for Izzy’s backpack. “Come on, plenty of room.”

  “Where did you find this guy, Mama?” Darius asked in a low tone.

  Mikki beamed. “On I-95! It was my lucky day!”

  “No, mine,” Dimmy said, overhearing her. “Because I met such a beautiful lady.”

  “Stop it!”

  “No, you stop it. Accept your beauty!” Dimmy waved his arms. “Not enough beauty to go around in world. Even in Florida, tropical paradise that hangs like pretty girl’s braid from rest of country. Come on, Mikki’s kids. Squeeze in.”

  Mikki ushered them toward the truck, steering them out of Dimmy’s earshot. “I’m an accountant, you got that? An accountant. Not a wheelman. And you’re kids on a vacation. No matter what you’re doing, I don’t want to know. You’re ordinary normal kids while you’re here. Got that?”

  They all nodded.

  “We’re always normal ordinary kids,” Izzy said. “In our own minds, anyway.”

  Mikki would not hear of them crashing at Hamish’s condo. If they were in Florida, they had to stay with her, or else.

  “Dimmy will drive you to your friend’s place tomorrow, but you got to eat dinner with me tonight. I haven’t seen you in forever, and that’s just terrible.”

  “Well, you could have visited, Mama,” Darius said.

  “I know, but I’m so busy.” Mikki patted his knee. “You know how it is around tax time for accountants.”

  Dimmy dropped them at a one-story concrete house with a red tile roof and a tiny pool in back, then waved cheerfully as he drove off, yelling, “Enjoy palm tree paradise, you dudes!”

  “Isn’t he sweet?” Mikki sighed.

  “Adorable,” Darius said.

  Mikki pushed open the door to the house. It was half-furnished, even though she’d lived there a year. The yard was overgrown. If she’d made money from her last job, it couldn’t have been much. She still played the lottery every week. She swore to Darius that she was out of “the criminal enterprise business,” but she’d said that before.

  “Look at my car!” she exclaimed, flourishing her phone. “It’s proof! It’s a turquoise vintage T-bird! What kind of a fool crook would pick a flashy car like that? Now, let’s talk about you. How’s New York?” She narrowed her eyes at Darius. “Something’s wrong with you. I can see it. You got boyfriend trouble?”

  “Nothing like that. I’m just hanging out, Mama.”

  “Okay. What do you think about inviting Dimmy over for dinner tomorrow?” Mikki peered at Darius nervously. “What, you don’t like him?”

  “I don’t know him. And neither do you. Didn’t you just meet him?”

  “Well, yes, but we had a soul connection.”

  Darius snorted.

  “Listen, Mr. I’m-Too-Cool-for-School, when you go straight, you know what happens? Nobody to talk to. You can’t hang, all right? Too much temptation. I told my friend Shonda, don’t call me for a while, girl, because I don’t even want to hear the news.”

  “He seems like he’s a few shots short of a venti latte.”

  “What? You know I don’t drink fancy coffee.”

  “He’s a bowl of chowder without the clams.”

  “It’s the language barrier!”

  Darius raised an eyebrow. Mikki shrugged. “Okay. He fits his name. But I’m not looking for Einstein. I’m looking for some company, that’s all.” She looked to March, Jules, and Izzy for support. “We’re all just looking for some company, am I right?”

  Darius sighed. “All right, Mama, whatever makes you happy. At least he’s not in the family business.”

  “That’s what I’m saying! He’s a hard worker, just like me! Except legal! Well, except for the whole green card thing. He works two jobs, livery cab and landscaper! He’s going for the American dream: work hard, get nowhere, win the lottery! Look, I got a house, a car, some money in the bank — you need money, baby? I’ll write you a check right now. What are you all doing here anyway?”

  They all spoke at the same time.

  “Vacation,” Jules said.

  “Visiting relatives,” Izzy said.

  “Surfing,” March said.

  “Seeing you, of course,” Darius said.

  Mikki tapped a purple fingernail on the Formica. “Uh-huh. I’ll tell y
ou something. You four look like you came here for a funeral. You’re on the straight and narrow, then?”

  “Straight as Robin Hood’s arrow, Mama.”

  “Don’t you go saying that, I say that. And you know Robin Hood was a crook. This boy knows how to play me!” Laughing, Mikki leaned over and swatted him on the side of the head, then landed a smacking kiss in the same spot. “I’m going to the fish store for some grouper. Just stay out of trouble until I get back!”

  The next morning, Hamish’s face was flushed as he carefully put the sapphire back on the black velvet cloth. It flashed blue fire with an ice-cold star at its heart.

  “It’s the Morning Star,” he said in a hushed voice. “No doubt about it. We are sitting in the presence of one of the three most famous sapphires in the world.”

  March let out the breath he’d been holding. At the last minute, he’d started to worry that the gem was fake.

  They sat in the living room of Hamish’s small condo. It was like being in a rain forest. Almost everything was green — carpet, sofa, kitchen chairs. Huge paintings of tropical birds hung on the walls and leaned against the shelving unit. Hamish had explained that his wife, Keiko, had taken up painting. A sweating glass of iced tea sat next to a stack of celebrity magazines.

  “What an amazing piece of luck,” Hamish said.

  March cocked his head as Hamish’s remark hit him. He glanced at Jules. She raised an eyebrow. He heard Alfie’s voice in his head.

  Sure, you can trust Hamish. But never forget he’s always out for the deal.

  Jules hitched herself up on Hamish’s round white dining table and swung her legs. “This is some lucky luck, Hamster,” she observed. “You hear about some rich guy selling a whole bunch of diamonds, and — whoa — the most famous sapphire in the world happens to be there, too, and you didn’t even know it.” She whistled. “Unbelievable.”

  “And when I show it, you identify it immediately,” March pointed out. “Over a computer connection. Incredible.”