Thief's Odyssey

by John L. Monk

  The way she said it, I wondered how she knew so much about jail.

  “You’re taking it back, right?”

  “Tonight?” I said. “That’s just pushing my luck.”

  “What about tomorrow night?”

  I shook my head. “With the owners sleeping in shifts and the cops watching outside? You’re really bad at this, you know.” And as I said it I knew it was true: girls sucked at being accomplices.

  “Well I’m not wearing it—how am I gonna explain something like that on my finger?”

  She had a point.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  A minute later, I returned with some of Mrs. Swanson’s yarn, which I fashioned into a loop through the ring.

  “Here, put this over your head,” I said, handing it to her.

  Anna looked at me like I was the dumbest kid in the world. “You’re so hopeless. You’re supposed to put it on me, noodle-brain.”

  She only called me noodle-brain when she was happy with me.

  When I slipped it over her head, she leaned in and kissed me. My first kiss. Then my second kiss. Then on like that for a while, and a million years later she got up and said, “Come on.”

  It was a night of firsts, at least for me. I left her room shortly before dawn, lest anything like a scandal descend upon the house. When I woke up to the sound of a clanging triangle, I was the happiest I’d ever been. There wasn’t a thing in my life that wasn’t the best it could possibly be, because I was in love.

  Having missed breakfast, when I showed up for lunch I noticed something wrong right away. Mrs. Swanson wasn’t barking orders for spoons or bowls or wire whisks, and nobody was laughing or talking.

  “What’s wrong?” I said to Michelle, one of the younger girls and a great source of gossip. “Why’s everyone so… Where’s Anna?”

  Over near the stove, I heard Mrs. Swanson give a loud sniff, almost like she’d been crying. She was crying! Looking around, I saw tears in not a few eyes.

  “Where’s Anna?” I said again, louder.

  “She’s gone,” Michelle said, grabbing me around the middle and sobbing. “Her parents came this morning and took her.”

  Chapter 5

  “Anna’s in trouble,” Mrs. Swanson had said. Then she’d shown me one last picture: of Anna, going in and out of an establishment in Washington, DC, with an Open sign outside and blackened windows. Some strip club.

  “What kind of trouble?” I said.

  Mrs. Swanson dabbed her eyes. “She’s been missing for several weeks, and no one will say where.”

  Her snoops said Anna had left everything behind in an apartment she shared with another girl. The roommate wouldn’t tell them anything, even when they offered her money.

  Mrs. Swanson apparently knew things about me I didn’t, because she said, “You’re a resourceful person. Will you talk with this friend of hers? Find out where Anna went? My employees can be off-putting to certain types of people. You’ve got that angel face.”

  What am I supposed to say to a nice old lady with her own private army calling me angel face? I said yes. Also, Anna was an old friend, and I was worried about her.

  Mrs. Swanson asked when I could go over and I said tomorrow.

  Then I got out of there.

  That night, I met my new coworker, Brian. A friendly enough guy, a little older than me. It was fun watching Sean tell him the story about his kid on the way, his second job, and how available he was if anything difficult came up.

  After Sean huffed off to nap, I took over and showed Brian the ropes.

  I didn’t know why Milestone had hired a third person for the normally slow shift, but it was their money. My problem was they’d sat him next to me—very difficult to be sneaky when he could look over my cube wall and see what I was doing. Until I got to know him better, I’d have to hold off running my scripts. Or maybe I’d connect from home, though that had its own dangers. Our security guys weren’t bad, necessarily—mostly they were just overworked. And there were audits all the time, some regular and some random. An hourly guy like me logging in from home to do unpaid work could draw unwanted attention.

  Brian proved an able study—way able. When he took notes, it seemed like he was going through the motions more than anything else, and I didn’t need to teach him any Linux. At one point, while showing him the way we detected thousands of bounced spam messages and auto-dropped them, a semi-manual process, he showed me how to string a few commands together in a clever way that saved an extra step. He suggested scheduling it to run every ten minutes, but I said we weren’t authorized to make those kinds of changes.

  With his skills, I wondered what he was doing slumming in the third shift, but it was none of my business. Maybe he had a second job, like Sean.

  After work and four hours’ sleep, I grew a pair and logged in anyway, but not to run my scripts. I had decided on my next score.

  Danny Fleer was the dirtbag owner of Fleer’s Used Cars and Fleer’s Motorcycles. He had affairs going with married women at each dealership, and Milestone hosted his company’s website and email. He also had a girlfriend in the Bahamas who he sent a lot of jewelry and expensive clothing to, and that’s how I found him—using a different script designed to look for transactions from several big online stores. For the last year, I’d kept tabs on him mainly as an exercise in wishful thinking. It’d be nice to go to the islands. Now, with Brian on board, I thought I might be able to relax a little. Besides, what thief worth his salt doesn’t want to go international?

  I scrolled through Danny’s messages over the last month and found what I’d seen before and been forced to dismiss: airline tickets for next Monday, flying out of Dulles.

  He’d told his girlfriend, Alvita, he’d meet her at the house, adding that he was coming alone this time. By that, I assumed he wasn’t bringing his wife. Or as he normally called her, “that miserable bitch” or “that ugly bitch,” though occasionally just “that bitch.”

  I wondered how much the bitch would win in court if I sent her some of his email. Not that I’d ever do anything like that, but it was fun to imagine. He was lucky I wasn’t into blackmail—he and every other Milestone customer, I suppose.

  Since Danny never deleted anything, I’d worked out the length of his affair in the Bahamas: about two years. He usually sent Alvita a nice delivery once a month, sometimes for several thousand dollars a pop. As nice as that sounded, I was more interested in the other deliveries he’d been making every month to a post office box in Nassau, the contents of which I could only guess.

  Going after Danny had a lot of unknowns. Looked at properly, the worst that could happen, short of getting caught, was I’d enjoy a few weeks of rest. It’s tough to be me sometimes.

  I pulled up his flight online and smiled when I found several seats available, including one in first class right next to him.

  What kind of person gets a first-class ticket on the same plane as his mark and then flies down, sitting next to him, chatting and sharing magazines and all that? It took me all of half a second to decide I needed to buy that ticket now or hate myself forever. So I bought it, along with a hotel and a rental car using my real name and bank account—I wasn’t about to test my fake ID skills with the TSA or U.S. Customs. Besides, I only had one passport, acquired a few years before and never used.

  Danny’s email said he’d be staying at the house. I searched online for 12 Blue Sky Place in New Providence and zoomed in as close as the map would go. The house was a bit smaller than the others in the area, and it had a pool. What Danny lost in square footage he more than made up for in green space. Trees grew behind the house for a hundred feet, thicker on the sides, then across the road for another four hundred feet.

  That’s the best thing about the wealthy. Unlike normal people, they could afford seclusion, and that made them vulnerable.

  I shut everything down and got something to eat. After that, I drove out to the Springfield address Mrs. Swanson had given me f
or Debbie, Anna’s roommate. If she was a stripper like Anna, the chances were good she’d be home during the day.

  Debbie lived in a gated apartment complex with the gate missing, so I sailed right through. I had to climb three flights in ninety-five-degree heat. Working nights, sometimes I forgot it was summer. I didn’t want Debbie answering the door and seeing me all sweaty, so I took a moment to wipe my head, and that’s when Scott called.

  “Bo? Scott Horton.”

  I moved away from the door, back near the stairs.

  “Uh, hey, Scott. This is sort of a bad time, can I call you back?”

  “Oh? Yeah, sure. Listen, I—”

  “Gotta go, Scott, sorry,” I said and hung up.

  Two flights down, a beautiful blonde in heels was working her way up. When she got to the third landing, she ignored me and went to her door.

  “Debbie?”

  She looked at me and shook her head.

  “Christ, not another one,” she said, then turned and unlocked the door.

  “Another me?” I said, smiling to show how friendly I was. “I was told they broke the mold.”

  “Fuck you, creep,” she said, and opened the door.

  I thought quickly. “Wait a minute, hey—does Anna still want to be a flight attendant?”

  Debbie walked in and slammed the door shut behind her.

  Way to go, genius.

  I leaned against the opposite wall and waited. Maybe a minute later, the door opened again.

  “What do you want with Anna?” she said, her tone menacing.

  “Nothing you wouldn’t approve of, I promise. We knew each other when we were kids. I heard she was in trouble and wanted to help.”

  Debbie stared at me for a while. With nothing to do, I stared back. She was barefoot now, wearing a tight T-shirt, and she was awful fun to stare at.

  “You don’t look like a private eye,” she said at last.

  “I get that at least twice a week.”

  Another moment passed while she made up her mind about something. “Is your name … you’re not Bo, are you?”

  After all this time, it was odd that Anna had thought to mention me to her friend.

  “Bo Mosley, himself,” I said. “Be honest, it was my angel face that gave it away, wasn’t it?”

  Debbie smiled. “Come on in, Bo. Don’t mind the mess.”

  Crossing the threshold drenched in sweat felt a little like stepping into a restaurant freezer, the apartment was so cold. Pizza boxes and magazines vied with empty wine coolers and unopened mail on a glass dinner table, and the air smelled like hairspray and perfume.

  “So,” I said. “You’re a stripper?”

  I’m great at icebreakers.

  “Pays the bills,” she said, then stopped on her way to the kitchen. “Wait a minute, how do you know about me? Shit, you are with them, I knew it!”

  She glanced around as if for something to throw.

  “Hold on, will you? I’m not with anyone. Anna told you about me, right? She must have said where we met.”

  For a second I thought she’d throw me out.

  “Make it good,” she said.

  “Right. So, Anna and I met at a big house with a rich old lady and four other foster kids. She’d run away from home. I didn’t know her that long, but we became friends.” When I realized Debbie was still waiting, I added, “And now I’m here.”

  “I can see that,” she said. “But it doesn’t explain how you knew I’m an exotic dancer.”

  I smiled at the correction. “Well, this old woman, she hired some PIs to find Anna, and when they couldn’t she asked me to come over. Since we’re friends.”

  “Friends, huh?”

  A moment passed where I thought she was going to say something interesting. But she just shook her head.

  “What?” I said, pressing her.

  Debbie seemed to relax. “Must be nice to have friends who notice when you’re gone.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way. The way she said it, a little wistfully, I wondered if maybe Debbie had people somewhere not-wondering where she was. I made a note not to tell Mrs. Swanson.

  “You want some water?” she said. “It’s boiling out there.”

  “Sure would, and yeah, it is.”

  I was fine with tap, but she got me a bottle from the refrigerator.

  “Thanks,” I said, and took a sip. “So how did you hear about me?”

  “I asked her about that necklace she always wears,” Debbie said, smiling now. Cute dimples. “The one on the string. She never wears it on her finger. Did you really steal it for her?”

  I took a sip to cover my surprise.

  “You make it sound so crooked,” I said.

  “Funny how that goes, huh? So what are you gonna do with Anna when you find her? She’s a grownup now, wears a bra and everything.”

  “I just want to make sure she’s okay—make sure being missing was her idea. That’s it.”

  Debbie folded her arms and stared at nothing. I left her alone.

  Out of nowhere she said, “If I asked if you wanted to sleep with me, what would you say?”

  Jesus…

  “What, uh, you’re not actually asking, are you?”

  She held me with a level gaze, her expression almost seductive. “What if I was?”

  Of all the people I wouldn’t mind saying yes to, she was it.

  “I guess I don’t think so. But then, you’re not really asking.”

  “Well, Bo,” Debbie said, snorting, “you’re the first man I’ve ever met who’d tell me that.”

  She didn’t sound conceited when she said it—she sounded accurate. I just didn’t know why she was being so explicitly accurate this soon after meeting me.

  “I told those rent-a-cops if Anna didn’t want to be found that was her business,” she said. “And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I think it’s still true. But it’s also a problem.”

  “In what way?”

  “Because she’s with that crazy fucker, that’s why. Calls himself Fruit.”

  Debbie told me about Fruit, a guy who came by the club on a regular basis, but not to watch. For him, it was more like window-shopping. He’d talk to the girls, and they’d listen—because Fruit always had fruit for good little girls who didn’t mind doing favors for friends, and Fruit had a lot of friends.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “slow down. You’re saying he brings them food?”

  Debbie laughed, and when she did she bounced a little. Great laugh.

  “That’s just what he calls drugs,” she said. “Thinks he’s clever, but he’s got a real mean streak.”

  She told me how a girl she knew, Candace, quit the club and went to live at his place, somewhere in Southeast DC. The rent wasn’t bad if you didn’t mind sleeping with twenty men a day and not being able to leave or keep the money they paid for you. When Candace tried to leave, Fruit made an example of her.

  “What did he do?” I said, half-hoping she wouldn’t tell me.

  “Cut her up real good,” Debbie said. “Her face. Made sure the other girls saw it, then dumped her in the street like garbage. Poor Candace.”

  Her eyes welled up, but she didn’t cry.

  “Those PIs who came by,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell them all this?”

  “Maybe I should have,” Debbie said, dabbing her eyes. “I’m sorry. Anna’s … pretty hooked. Ever since I met her. I didn’t think they could do anything, even if they wanted to. That’s all I need, that crazy son-of-a-bitch thinking I told someone about him. My manager doesn’t even stop him when he comes in. He’s too afraid. Everyone is, even the bouncers.”

  “So how do I find this guy? You know where he lives?”

  Debbie shook her head. “No, but one of the girls keeps his card taped in the dressing room at work. I’ll call you tonight, if you’re serious. But listen, if you talk to him, you can’t mention me.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Anyone cou
ld have given me that information, right?”

  She wiped her eyes again, then smoothed her long hair back and took a deep breath. Cute dimples and a great profile. Purely from habit, I gave her the number to my throwaway phone—not my smartphone—and told her to call me anytime tonight.

  “Anytime?” Debbie said, making it sound playful. Probably to lighten things up.

  But still, when I left, I wondered how I ever thought her apartment was too cold.

  ***

  The afternoon traffic was just picking up by the time I got home. I needed to get some sleep for work, but I also wanted to talk to Scott. Despite what Mrs. Swanson had said, I didn’t think he’d give me up, not unless he was squeezed. I’d made a huge mistake in revealing my real name to him. Chalk it up to me quitting college to follow a dream and eager to get a fence. Now I needed to find someone new who didn’t mind doing business on a fake name basis.

  I called Scott’s number and waited. He picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Scott,” I said. “It’s me. Any news on the thing?”

  Even if nobody was listening in, it felt kind of cool talking like a made man in the mafia.

  “As a matter of fact, yeah, it’s handled,” he said.

  “All of it?”

  “Damned near. Come up and collect, and I’ll pay you outright for the … uh, whatever’s left over.”

  Scott was pretty good at the mafia thing, too.

  “I can’t come this week—or next week. Probably not till early next month.”

  “You can’t come sooner?”

  “Is there some rush?” I said.

  Scott laughed. “Eh, just thinking of taking a few days off, that’s all. Wanted to, uh, close the books. So you can’t come sooner, huh?”

  “Would if I could. Just hang on to it. You keep the interest.”

  The more I talked to him, the more I never wanted to go to Jersey City again. But dammit, he knew my name. I wanted him out of my life, but I had to do it in a way that preserved whatever friendship may have sprung up. That way, if he ever got caught and had to give someone up, he might choose someone else. Maybe one of those guys who came and went every five to ten years. It had to be bad, this coming up seven years after meeting the man. Like I was long overdue for disaster.