The Brummie Con

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  I push past the glass door out into the wintry night and can’t stop the smug thought from entering my head, I got you now, assholes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I CROSS THE multi-lane traffic at a stop light several streets over from the Brummie Co-op Artists building into a cobblestoned pedestrian area of restaurants and bars. The night is cold, cutting across my cheeks, which are still hot from my run-in with that ass-bag Ty. I scurry across into the area lit by streetlights and multi-colored signs.

  The area is busy with patrons. Couples walk arm-in-arm hurrying to their destinations. Girls’ boot-heels clack on the cobblestone as they pass. Lone people stand outside either talking or messaging on their pocket tablets, many with thin coats or none at all. And out of them all rise up streams of hot white air.

  How can they stand the cold waiting around like that? I search quickly for a half-empty pub (Fishy’s is several blocks northwest of here).

  The goal of tonight was to set the stage for arousing Ty’s suspicion, to get him to dig into my concocted backstory. The evening had a few twists and turns, but ended decidedly well when Ty so graciously planted a tracker on me.

  Except now I have a tracker with unknown capabilities on me (like possibly being able to intercept text) and I need to signal Puo, without alerting Ty, to send Winn out to meet me—I intend to use this to accelerate our plans and be days ahead of schedule.

  The thought awakens the jackknives, floats my father’s image of a broken and bloodied face across my mind’s eye. My breath quickens. I can feel the jackknives rising, spreading. Blood races, throbs through my neck. Oh, God. I’m starting to feel like I did on the train trailing Shǐ back in November, when I had that panic attack.

  I slow my pace and my breathing, take measured, deep breaths, fill my lungs with rich oxygen, hold it for a second and then imagine breathing away the jackknives. I feel my feet in my black winter boots connect to the cobblestone underneath me. The cold against my cheek. I hear the chatter of the pedestrian area, doors opening and closing, the sounds of the people gathered together. I smell the street, the cigarette smoke of a nearby patron. Breathe.

  It works. The rising jackknives recede. They’re still there, but in the background. I let out another deep breath. Back to functional, which I’ll take at the moment. I look for an opportunity to alert Puo about this tracker, and turn it to our advantage.

  The Gilded Crown fits the bill. No one is waiting outside and the pub looks subdued through the two front bay windows. I head straight for the long wooden bar towards the back, passing by the dining area filled with soft conversation and the rhythmic sounds of people eating.

  I open the comm-link to Puo and cup it in my hand, as I walk up to the wooden bar.

  The bartender, an old Englishman who’s bald like a friar and with a gut of stone, turns his attention from one of the float screens in the corner showing a soccer match. “What can I get for you, lass?”

  I cup my hands holding the comm-link in front of my mouth in an act of warming them up, and say, “An Easy Street Manhattan with a twist.”

  Easy street is eavesdropping in my and Puo’s vernacular. A twist is reversal. In other words, Puo should know I’m bugged and want to accelerate our plans by having an eavesdropped conversation.

  “How’s that different from a Manhattan?” the bartender asks.

  Uh. “I think it’s with vodka,” I throw out there. We’ve never actually ordered such a drink before. And, honestly, the last thing I want right now is hard liquor.

  “That’d be a vodka martini.”

  “Right,” I say uncertainly. “Do you have Falcon’s Flight? It’s a Merlot.” No it’s not, but now Puo should know to send Winn.

  “Can’t say that we have.” He barely manages to suppress a cocked eyebrow at the rather specific drink order.

  “I don’t know then. Is The Gilded Crown known for anything?” And now Puo will know where to send Winn to meet me—score three for Isa.

  The bartender nods to himself and says, “Yeah, I’ll fix ya’ something up.” He grabs a pint glass from a dishwashing rack, his belly brushing up against the edge of the bar as he leans down. He then proceeds to fill it from one the taps with a dark amber beer.

  The beer is set down in front of me with a thunk. White foam spills over the side and runs down the glass to soak the coaster. The bartender has a good poker face as he watches my reaction.

  I’m not in the mood for alcohol, but there’s little choice in the matter. The beer is well balanced with toasted malt and a crisp finish. “Not sure if you’re having fun with me or not,” I lie, still holding the beer intending to take another sip, “but I am in the mood for a good beer.”

  “Ha!” he says, his face breaking into good cheer. “There you are, then!”

  I take the beer and find an empty wooden table nestled into a corner outlined in wood paneling to wait for Winn to arrive. It shouldn’t take him long to get here, fifteen minutes tops.

  ***

  After thirty horrid minutes of just sitting there like a lump, working on calming the jackknives and waiting (waiting for a freaking man to show up!), Winn comes striding into The Gilded Crown.

  “How’d it go?” he asks as he slides his wool hip-length jacket off and lays it across the back of the seat across from me. He’s wearing a two-tone sweater, mostly gray with a slab of white across his wide shoulders. It does not look good, too retro for him.

  “That is an ugly sweater,” I answer. My anxiousness now has a target: the goob that took his sweet-ass time to get here.

  “That well, hunh?”

  I finish the beer I didn’t really want and have been nursing all this time, intentionally clinking it against my empty water glass for Ty’s tracking chip to pick up. I pretend to crack and massage my neck, showing Winn where the chip is hidden.

  He acknowledges me with his blue eyes. “Looks like you’ve got a good start on me,” he says motioning to the two empty glasses. “Can I get you another round?”

  “What took you so long?”

  “I had to find the perfect outfit for you.” Winn’s cheeks dimple into a grin. His eyes light up with mischief.

  Oh, boy.

  As Winn heads to the bar, I mutter under my breath for the benefit of Ty’s chip, “Asshole.” Internally, I have another feeling entirely. Those dimples are something else entirely when brought out with confidence. How does that even work? Jackknives clawing at me, and attraction still firing—separate parts of the brain?

  He audibly plops down two more beers on the lacquered wooden tabletop and sits down. He lounges in the chair. Drapes himself across it. An echo of his grin from before has faded into a small smirk.

  This better be his character, I think, getting annoyed with his cavalier attitude.

  “So how’d it really go?” he asks crossing his legs and running his middle finger around the rim of his pint glass. The chair creaks as he leans back into it.

  I continue to play the character Ty and the others came to know tonight, which culminated with me punching Ty in the elevator. “You need to wipe that stupid smirk off your face, jackass. We have a problem. They spotted the plant.”

  Winn sits up and exhales. He massages the bridge of his nose, “Did they confront you, or just passively note it?”

  “Confront.”

  Winn swears under his breath. He then looks at me in disgust and asks, “Do I need to send you back to the farm for retraining?”

  “Fuck you.” I sit up and lean forward, resting my elbow on the table to point at the prig. I know it’s an act, but I have way too much energy bottled up that I need to do something with. “I don’t need to be sent—”

  “First Zagreb, then this. You can’t even plant a simple bug on a mark.”

  That was, admittedly, deftly done: Zagreb was a widely publicized CIA bungled job a year ago. I retrieve my arm from the table and hold it across my lap. “It was the best opportunity I had—”

  “Save it.” Winn cuts me
off with a wave. He’s silent at the table, staring at the floor. His face is impassive.

  “I still have an in,” I say, stamping down annoyance at being cut off. “Ty, the leader, wanted to keep me. The group forced him to push me out. I can approach him on the side.” The original plan called for conning the whole group, but now we don’t have to. Now we have the perfect excuse to focus solely on Ty. I’ve spent the last thirty minutes thinking it through.

  Winn shifts his eyes from the floor to hold me in his gaze without moving any other muscles. His voice is deadpan, his tone deepening as he asks, “What exactly happened?”

  I explain the course of events in a hushed whisper.

  When I finish, he says, “This is your last chance.”

  “Understood.”

  “Gain Ty’s trust. Turn him on to finding Ham. Ham’s the key to unlocking the heist. MI5 is now aware of him.”

  I cringe—fortunately, it’s in character. Mentioning MI5 is a gamble. Ty might have connections there through his Army days or through his business which he could then check up on, debunking our story. Or it might inflame his greed to solve it before MI5 does.

  “Understood,” I say again, not touching the second beer Winn had retrieved for me.

  “If this doesn’t work out,” Winn says tapping the tabletop, “we will need to explore other options.”

  I’m about to add the trifecta Understood when he adds, “Without you.”

  I flick my beer glass and stare at him. His black curly hair tucks in and tickles his forehead in places. His cheeks are still rosy from the cold outside. Black stubble hides shadows on his cheeks.

  Movement over his shoulder draws my attention to two early-career girls out on the town that just left a table in the bar area similar to mine and Winn’s. They’re following a smiling gentleman over to another table with his waiting friend. The girls remembered to bring their purses along with them, but left their jackets. The tall one looks to have the same frame as me and left behind a nice yuppie-looking coat.

  “What are you looking at?” he asks, wisely not turning around.

  “An upgrade,” I say, quickly divesting my current jacket of my keys and my pocket tablet and preparing to make the switch. I need to get rid of the tracking chip while not alerting Ty I’m aware of its presence. This fits that bill. “Ty knows my coat, I need a new one if I’m going to shadow him,” I lie.

  Winn glances behind me and catches on. “No,” he says. “I forbid it.”

  Forbid it? That has to be in character, he knows that’s like double dog daring me.

  “Then, y’all need to pay me more,” I say.

  “We pay you more than you’re worth.”

  I stand up, knocking my full beer glass across the table onto Winn. “Whoops.”

  “Your going back to the farm!” he growls at me as I slide out.

  I use my body as a screen and switch the jackets fluidly as I pass by the empty table walking fast. I wait until I’m outside to put it on and disappear.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PUO AND HIS computer equipment have officially taken over the white kitchen table in the breakfast nook. We’re now forced eat at the kitchen island, perched on barstools like peckish birds. Displaced like second-class citizens to silicon and flashing lights.

  It’s later that evening, near midnight, and Puo is tucked behind his three retro monitors at the table—where he managed to scrounge the bulky monitors up, I haven’t the slightest clue. I only knew he would somehow. They’re one of his many quirks—insisting on retro monitors he can smash his finger against when working on some code or pointing something out.

  Winn and I are leaning up against the built-in bench behind him, watching him work. We had to carefully pick our way over the tangle of cords running everywhere to get there. Most systems are cordless these days. Not Puo’s. I may like entertainment from the past, but sometimes I think Puo tries to live in it.

  Puo sits at the table with an air of strained concentration. His nose is less than a foot away from the rightmost monitor and he keeps holding his breath and then letting it out in great big gobs. At least, I think he’s holding his breath. Bit hard to tell from this angle. He is, at any rate, not complaining. A sure fire sign he’s concentrating.

  The first thing I did when I got back to the flat was give Puo his Christmas present early: the drone. I practically threw it at him in my haste to plant the real bug and do something to quell the rising jackknives of sudden inactivity.

  His right hand is hovering over the drone’s joystick, a simple black device Puo repurposed from somewhere. As soon as he unwrapped the drone he declared its controls over-complicated and had the remote stripped and connected to his computers in less than a half an hour. So now all the balancing, wind compensation, and whatnot is automated while Puo steers nimbly with the crook of his thumb.

  We need to plant the surveillance bug that I couldn’t earlier due to the camera in the ceiling at Margaret’s studio—the bug we don’t want them to find. And we need to get into Margaret’s computer system. Digital artist she may be, but that’s not all she is. So Puo got to open his drone present early. I’m still clueless on what to get Winn.

  Birmingham slides by on the monitor in a twist of streets and sparkling streetlights as the drone flies random legs, ultimately toward the Brummie Artists Co-op building. Rooftops hide shadows and HVAC units. Windows are mostly dark. Lone groups of people scurry against the cold.

  “What’s the timeline for Ty?” Winn asks, holding his arm against his body and his right hand on his face as he stares at the city of Birmingham zooming by.

  It’s not really a question for information, but for filling the silence. And not even a good question at that. Based on the conversation at the bar with Winn, Ty will be expecting me to make contact first. But I answer Winn all the same, “Let him sit a day, then I’ll make contact.” A day, that’s all I’ll risk now. The image of my father threatens to form again, but I focus on the drone flying over the streets.

  “Try not to punch him,” Puo says, not moving his nose an inch from the screen.

  Winn cracks into a smile at that.

  I let Puo’s comment pass on account of I don’t have the energy to verbally spar with him at the moment. Ever since I saw that image of my father, it’s been like someone has been stepping on my adrenaline gland, squeezing a steady dose of adrenaline into an already overloaded system which only feeds the jackknives.

  “How much farther?” I ask. The smell of Winn’s baking oatmeal-raisin cookies fills the flat with what should be a warm pleasant smell, but right now just makes me aware of my lack of appetite and parches my mouth.

  “Patience,” Puo chastises, still not moving his head, his ponytail cascading down his hunched back. The black hair is dry, cracked; split ends tuft out at irregular intervals.

  “You need a haircut—” I observe.

  The timer for the cookies on Winn’s pocket tablet shrills. Winn goes to retrieve them.

  “Moo-milk, please,” Puo asks in a tone that’s clear he’s making an effort to behave as if nothing happened earlier with my father.

  His tone gives me pause. I know Puo is eager for a cookie the way a schoolboy is eager for the last bell before vacation. I decide maybe he’s onto something, pretending nothing’s happened. “No food until we’re all done here,” I declare in my boss voice. Then, to build on Puo’s effort of normalcy, I add more snidely, “Patience, remember?”

  Puo makes a farting sound, but doesn’t deviate from his position. “Speeding up, aye.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I say.

  “Heh.” He starts to say more but instead suddenly falls silent and sits up straighter in his seat.

  The Brummie Artists Co-op building at the top edge of the monitor quickly moves to take center stage. It’s made up of red and sliver metamaterials and has curving edges that makes it look like the building shouldn’t support itself. I call Winn over.

  I say to Puo, “Her studio i
s on the third floor on the east side, two studios to the left from the far edge of the building. You should be able to see it from there.” I point to a rooftop across the street that is several buildings over.

  “Got it,” Puo says, all trace of the back-and-forth snark between us gone. It’s time for business.

  The drone swiftly takes position over the indicated building and turns to beam back a steady shot of the east side of the Co-op building. The building is dark; only reflections of streetlights and passing hovercars mark the curving, undulating surface. Underneath the ribbons of metamaterial skin are balconies, pockets created between the outside of the building and a flat inner wall of windows and a door into the studios.

  “That one,” I say, pointing to one of the dark balconies on the monitor. “That’s hers.”

  The drone’s camera zooms in on the balcony as it continues to hover over the nearby building. The jackknives kick into gear—while zooming, the edges of the screen are curved away like the photo of my father. I can’t stop the image from forming. My breath catches in my throat.

  Winn puts a comforting hand on the small of my back. “You okay?”

  Someone needs to get this damn foot off my adrenaline gland.

  Puo turns back to look at me in concern.

  I freeze.

  I’m suddenly overcome by the two of them staring at me, by the two people who actually care about me.

  I’m not alone. The thought nearly breaks me. I nod once, unable to speak.

  They continue staring at me.

  Oh, for goodness sakes. “Get back to work,” I manage to get out. Puo bobs his head once and goes back to flying the drone.

  To Winn I say, “Thanks.” He withdraws his hand. It’s both a relief and a regret. The contact was comforting, but Winn and I will not fall into old patterns because of a moment of weakness.

  Puo drops a marker on Margaret’s studio and shifts his attention to his other monitors, typing in short rapid bursts. “I don’t see anything,” he says in between one of his bursts. “Although the angle isn’t great,” he mutters.