by Tim Dorsey
Ziggy had been tripping out on the sight of the guns so that he completely forgot about all the briefcases the men had carried into his office. And now they were popping open on his desk to reveal an obscene amount of cash.
“Whoa!” said the lawyer. “I’m definitely calling that weed guy back.”
Rogan allowed the effect of the money to settle in. “I wanted you to see how serious I am.”
“About what?”
“We are going to become business partners. It’s not negotiable.”
Ziggy had never seen so much cash, even on TV. “You sure you have the right lawyer?”
The leader nodded. “You come highly recommended.”
“I do?”
“On TV, you advertised that you cash in winning lottery tickets,” said the leader. “And as I mentioned earlier, we do the same, but our connections have become unreliable as of late. I’d like to start bringing you our winning tickets.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“To launder money.”
Ziggy covered his ears and made a high-pitched beeping sound—“Didn’t hear that, didn’t hear that, beep, beep, beep . . .”
The leader looked around oddly at the others.
Ziggy dropped his hands. “Let me explain attorney-client privilege. You’re free to tell me anything you’ve done in the past, but the privilege doesn’t extend to unlawful acts you’re planning in the future.”
“But you will do this thing for us?”
“Like ringing a bell.”
“One more item,” said Rogan. “This is my territory. Any other tickets that come your way from your TV commercials or otherwise are mine. You’ll still receive a cut. I’m sure a businessman of your stature will see the mutual benefit.”
Another fit of giggles. “Why not?”
“That’s very good. That’s what we like to hear.” He pulled a brown envelope from his jacket and tossed it on the desk. It slid into Ziggy’s lap.
“What’s this?” He looked inside. “Trippy!”
“Your retainer,” said Rogan. “How much flow do you get?”
“Depends on how lucky people are.” Ziggy thumbed through the cash. “Some hit the Fantasy Five, or one of the big scratch-offs. A few thousand on a slow week, maybe five figures on the better-than-average, unless someone hits a really big one, then we’re looking north.”
“You’re probably already taking five percent off the front end.” Rogan began standing. “We’ll give you another five. Buy some furniture.”
“How will I get in touch with you?”
“You won’t. You’ll hear from us.” He walked toward the bead curtain and turned around. “When you do business with us, your word is your bond. From now on, you will not cash in anyone else’s tickets without running them through us . . . I will take your silence as your word.”
Giggles.
Rogan rolled his eyes. “I will take that as silence.”
They let themselves out.
Ziggy went to the front window and watched the Benz drive away. “Where’s that number for the weed guy?”
Biscayne Boulevard
The same perpetual rhythmic sound came from a dozen directions at two-second intervals. It filled the store. Chss-chss, chss-chss, chss-chss, chss-chss.
It was one of those new copy shops where you could do almost anything. Send faxes, mail overnight packages, buy colorful gift bags and greeting cards, order posters, connect to wireless Internet. You could even make copies.
Coleman was stoned and tipsy at a display for office supplies. He repeatedly discharged a staple gun into the air until an employee asked what he was doing.
“Nothin’.”
He wandered over to an unoccupied copy machine. There were buttons to press. He changed all the settings for the next customer—darkness, contrast, magnification. There were little organizers next to each printer with scissors and tape and complimentary paper clips. Coleman decided to load up on rubber bands.
Serge stood at the service counter, handing over cash and running a program on his phone. Someone bumped into him from behind.
“Coleman, there you are. What have you been doing?”
Coleman reached into his pocket, producing a wad of rubber circles, and put them back.
“Case solved,” said Serge.
“What are you doing?” asked Coleman.
“I explained back in the nail salon,” said Serge. “Working on that case for Mahoney.”
“But why a copy shop?”
“It’s the coolest thing ever!” Serge clasped his hands in effervescence. “This place has one of those new 3-D printers that I’ve been reading about. I found all kinds of tips online about what you can make with them. Shot glasses, birdhouses, clips to seal opened bags of pretzels, combs, Star Wars figures, dildos, and combinations of the last two. But I’m thinking, where’s the imagination? The possibilities are mind-numbing, so I decided to brainstorm and download some images to my phone, which I just sent to this store. For only a few bucks, that guy in the back room is whipping up my idea right now!”
“What is it?”
“A surprise,” said Serge. “But think historical significance.”
“Far out.”
“And I’m going to need some of your rubber bands.”
“But they’re mine.”
“What possible use could you have for that many?”
Coleman swayed and looked toward his pocket. “Play with ’em.”
“We’ll negotiate later.” Serge turned around and leaned with his back against the counter. “I love copy shops! Know why?”
“Paper?”
“Multi-cultural harmony.” Serge nodded to himself. “I might just be the first person to recognize it, but copy shops are the ultimate bellwether of ethnic relations. We may eat different food, wear different clothes, but every race and creed needs copies.”
“Never thought about it that way.”
“And that’s the mistake CNN makes. Every time there’s some civil unrest somewhere, reporters descend and visit all kinds of businesses for interviews with the common man—breakfast diners, Starbucks, massage parlors—but never a copy shop.” Serge waved an arm over the room. “Look at the arching bridge of humanity! Those Muslim women over there, that Asian guy, the African Americans, Latinos, whites and, not pictured, Eskimos. See, everyone receives shit in the mail that needs duplication, and we’re all bonding under that oppression together, brothers and sisters! At least until there aren’t enough available copy machines, then it could get tribal.”
“. . . Sir? . . . Sir! . . .”
Serge turned around. “What?”
“Here’s your purchase.”
“Oh, thank you.” Serge looked down into the bag. “Excellent work. May I ask you a question?”
“I guess.”
“What happens when there aren’t enough copy machines? What do the people do?”
“Uh, wait?”
“God bless America! . . . Come on, Coleman!”
They hopped back in the Corvette and headed south to Miami Beach as night fell. The lights of the Miami skyline filled the air with electricity as Serge picked up the MacArthur Causeway.
Coleman chugged a bottle of Mad Dog. “So that dude back at the self-defense class is really being stalked?”
Serge gritted his teeth. “I hate stalkers!”
Stretch limos jammed Collins Avenue all the way up nightclub row. Serge accepted a ticket from the valet and went inside a dinner-show lounge called Hips. They waited for their eyes to adjust in an ultra-dark room with a flickering array of candle lamps, martini glasses and lobster. Faces glowed with anticipation. Stage lights came on, curtains parted. Applause for the Barbra Streisand experience.
“Is that also a dude?” asked Coleman.
“You’ll get the Audubon field guide later.”
“. . . The way we were . . .”
The show swelled toward a highly anticipated climax. A brown-haired man sa
t quietly in the dark as a baby spotlight hit the curtains and a head of platinum-blond hair.
“. . . Diamonds are a girl’s best friend . . .”
Serge elbowed Coleman. “It’s time.”
The vocals dropped to a sensuous whisper. “. . . Happy birthday, Mr. President. Happy birrrrrrrrrthday to youuuuuuuu . . .”
The crowd was on its feet as Marilyn disappeared through the curtains, and the house lights came up.
The gals crowded around Chuck in the dressing room. “That was incredible.” “Honey, you keep getting better with age.” “You’re back to your old self!”
Knock, knock, knock.
One of the performers opened up. “Who are you?”
“I need to see Marilyn,” said the stranger. “She’s expecting us.”
From behind: “It’s okay, Liza,” said Chuck. “They’re friends.”
Serge strolled over. “Just remember what I told you. From this point forward, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I can’t thank you enough—”
Suddenly an explosive commotion at the door.
“I have to see Marilyn!”
“Hey, you can’t just barge in here like that.”
“Marilyn! I brought these roses for you.”
Streisand blocked his path. “Get out before you get hurt!”
Serge glanced down. “Coleman, quick, give me rubber bands.” Serge reached into the bag from the copy shop.
“So that’s what that thing is.”
“Marilyn, tell them it’s okay! You sang that song again for me! . . .”
The gals formed a protective phalanx. “We’ll call the police!”
Coleman laughed. “Serge, where did you get the idea?”
“Soon as I saw those three-D printers, I said to myself, ‘History has just come alive.’”
“Marilyn, I love you! . . .”
Serge approached the defensive formation from the back. “Girls, I’ve got it from here.” They parted and let him through, wearing a plastic Halloween-style mask held over his face with the skimpy rubber bands.
He stepped up to the man with the roses. “I’ve been looking all over for your presidential ass! Figured if I hung around Marilyn long enough, you were bound to show up.”
The brown-haired man stumbled backward in terror. “Oh my God! . . . Not you!”
“That’s right,” said Serge. “Lee Harvey Oswald.”
“Get away from me!”
“We’ve got business. How about a pamphlet? ‘Fair Play for Cuba.’”
The bouquet flew into the air, and JFK took off through the club, crashing into people and knocking over tables.
Serge was right behind him leaping over chairs. “Destiny knocks!”
“Stop following me!”
Serge pulled up short at the front door and cupped hands around his mouth. “Meet you at the grassy knoll.”
Chapter 31
Setting the Table for the Climax
News of yet another lottery rollover spread like only lottery news can, and the greed typhoon whipped from Florida to the rest of the country and Latin America.
It was still the wee hours before dawn, but a group of men in the nation of Costa Gorda were paying particular attention to a big-screen TV. The luggage had remained packed and waiting since their last unsuccessful visit to Miami.
The new jackpot was announced, and all heads in the room turned toward the same person.
He gave a curt nod, which scrambled the others into a military-style operation. The dark of night had begun to dissipate when the men trotted briskly across a mountainside plateau. A Learjet lifted off, climbing into the orange light of the sun still below the horizon. The passenger manifest was in the name of one Ocho Pelota.
The last time around he had been caught off guard by an inability to buy the whole board in one fell swoop. Insufficient time or boots on the ground. And a tidy sum down the drain. He would not make the same mistake twice.
“Pablo, come here,” said Pelota, sipping a mimosa. That’s how it worked. Don’t speak until spoken to.
Pablo took a seat in the jet next to his leader. “What are you reading?”
“This cheap lottery magazine. I bought it in a convenience store on our previous trip.” Pelota flipped back to show him the cover. “It gives advice on how to increase your odds of winning.”
“But mathematically you can’t predict randomness.”
“Usually,” said Pelota. “But one thing that’s not random is the weight of the Ping-Pong balls. This fascinating article explains why there have so many record-breaking jackpots in a row this year, like when they had that unprecedented conga line of hurricanes back in ’05.”
“What’s it say?” asked Pelota.
“That the lottery changes its set of balls from time to time, and they did so again at the beginning of the year. The magazine statistically analyzed the new set and determined that the balls with the most favorable weights were high numbers.”
“How does that cause a bunch of big jackpots?” asked Pablo.
“The lottery numbers are one to fifty-three, but this article says most people like to play birthdays—their own, spouses’, children’s—or anniversaries and other occasions. The months limit the numbers to twelve, and the days of the month to thirty-one. Hence, lots of rollovers.”
“That makes sense,” said Pablo. “We lost last time on a high-number drawing.”
“So we do it in reverse this time.” Pelota stirred his drink. “Start buying combinations of the biggest numbers and work backward. That way if we can’t complete the board in time, we’ll at least be in a better position . . .”
The Lear touched down at Miami International in time for brunch. Pelota and his coterie cleared customs. He had called ahead from the plane, and a luxury motor coach was already full of cheap Latin labor.
After his earlier failure, Pelota had done the math five ways. It was all about the proper design of an organizational pyramid. Each of the men who had flown down with him would supervise ten local associates with their own crews. And each of them was given a specific spread of permutations descending from fifty-three. It worked on paper and, unbeknownst to Pelota, had actually been done before in the nineties by a group of legitimate venture capitalists who, as they say, hit the jackpot.
Pelota’s gang all met in the conference room of an extended-stay business hotel near the airport, and the local bank vice president even accompanied the armored car that delivered the needed currency.
“So happy to see you again in Miami,” said the executive. “With all this cash, will you be needing any protection?”
Pelota gave him the look.
“Oh, right.” The vice president left.
Ocho’s lieutenants fanned out across the city to put their plan in motion. Underlings were dispatched in geometrically precise quadrants. They worked all day and well into night, then the next day, and the next. They cut in line. They sped on the highway. Parked in handicapped spots. Rushed back to the hotel to refill with cash on hand. Then back out again.
Pelota remained in his suite, receiving hourly rounds of phone calls with progress reports. Traffic was thick and the crowds thicker. Ticket machines crashing from the volume.
By the last evening, they were still on schedule, and then they weren’t. It came down to the wire. One way or another they would know by the end of the night . . .
10:40 p.m., sales cut off.
10:46, last piles of Pelota’s tickets collected.
10:51, rental sedans raced back to the extended-stay hotel near the airport.
Crime lieutenants crowded into the elevator for the top-floor suite. Pelota was already sitting at the table when they whipped out notebooks and entered results on the master spreadsheet.
Much, much better than the last time. But . . .
“You didn’t get all the tickets?” Pelota asked the first lieutenant.
“It was impossible . . .”
“I don’t pa
y you for impossible.” He turned to the next one for an answer.
“The places were crazy . . .”
On down the line, same story.
Pelota had adopted a saying he’d picked up in prison. Don’t get mad until it’s time to get mad. He was roundly feared for his erratic and ruthless temper, but in truth his emotions were a highly polished chest of tools, and he orchestrated erraticism to an advantage. He had known these men going back forever, his most trusted and dependable. If none of them was able to fully complete the task, then maybe he was asking too much, but it was not something to admit. He folded his hands in pregnant thought. He quietly raised his eyes. “How much?”
It was all entered into a calculator, and the equal sign punched. “We were able to buy ninety-two percent of the board.”
Not perfect, but definitely better than last time around. As long as the numbers didn’t fall into the low end. Pelota downed a double of Johnnie Walker Blue to stop the anxious calculus in his head. Nobody spoke during the last five minutes as they waited in front of the television. Pelota was closest to the set, sitting on the front edge of a padded lounger. The rest stood in a semi-circle around the back of his chair.
11:15 p.m.
Hyper-optimistic game-show music came on as a pink flamingo logo swirled to the center of the screen. The Miami skyline lit up the back of the studio as Ping-Pong balls ricocheted around a clear chamber. Vacuum tubes sucked up a half dozen of the balls in succession as the emcee read them off: “Eighteen, twenty-nine, thirty-six, forty-five, forty-eight, fifty-two . . . Thank you and good night from the Florida Lottery!”
Silence.
Everyone in the room knew.
The men standing around the chair began jumping and whooping and hugging. Pelota simply shut his eyes in relief.
The only question now was how many other winning tickets, and that data would come the next day. With jackpots this large, there was often more than one, but the split would still be exceedingly ample. The celebration in the hotel suite lasted almost till dawn. Big cigars puffed out on the ninth-floor balcony. Cart after cart of room service arrived, and the mini-bar guy was called in to restock. They ignored front-desk complaints about the blaring TV. A local commercial came on with sitar music and a swaying lawyer in a tie-dyed T-shirt.
