The Brummie Con

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  “And what to do I tell them?” Ty asks.

  “He’s a long lost uncle,” I spitball. “He swindled you on a deal.” I shrug. “I can’t think of everything. As I said, if I could find him without you, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Ty cocks an eyebrow at me.

  “That’s what I get out of this,” I say. “He’s a former associate, and we have some unfinished business. If he sees me asking around for him, he’ll flee. And he might be watching the local Cleaners—so that’s why I need you. So you keep all the glory, I get my former associates whereabouts and one of your shares of the bounty.”

  “One share for doing nothing?”

  “Hardly nothing.” I keep the smile off my face. If he’s objecting to the money then he’s already mentally agreed to the other terms whether he knows it or not. Besides, I have no intention of letting him actually talk to Ham, and I’m sure as hell not going to lead them to anything that actually helps them figure out who pulled off the British Museum heist, à la Puo, Liáng, and me—did Liáng take the golden carrot we left for him? To Ty I say, with a mental shake of my head—getting Liáng out of my mind—“Without me you’d be stuck. Call it an advisory fee.”

  “Ten percent of a share,” Ty counters.

  I quibble for show, and we settle on fifty percent of one share. There isn’t going to be any bounty money to split anyway and as soon as Ham’s found we’re cooling Ty off and getting out of here.

  “I want it in writing,” Ty says.

  “Fine,” I say. “You wear a bug and a comm-link when investigating.” When Ty doesn’t say anything at first to this, I add with a smile, “Trust goes both ways.”

  Ty finally nods once. “The others aren’t going to like this.”

  “Then don’t tell them.” I drop the rendered picture of Ham’s face on the clear glass desktop and leave.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TY TOLD MARGARET of course, sitting in the yellow armchair in her studio while she stood working at her computer. Turns out Margaret is to Ty as Puo is to me: a sounding board as well as a tech expert. It took Ty less than an hour after I left to go find Margaret to discuss the latest development.

  And good thing he did, too—Margaret at least has some urgency and told him to make contact before Christmas. The indecisive dumbass was going to wait until after. All the while, the frightened eyes of my father’s beaten and bloody face haunt me, and Ty wants to sit around with his thumb up his ass being cautious. It’s enough to drive a girl insane.

  Margaret argued that the Cleaners’ Den wouldn’t be as busy the day before Christmas and they might even be more helpful, being in a holiday spirit and all. Clearly they’ve never dealt with the ass-glitter-loving narcissists, but whatever gets Ty moving is a good thing in my book.

  Winn and I are once again leaning up against the built-in bench overlooking Puo seated in his electronic nest. Puo is surrounded by three retro monitors, everything he needs within arms reach and optimally placed for minimal effort. We’re all focused on the leftmost and middle retro monitors. The left one pipes in the video and audio from the bug that Ty agreed to wear on his way to make contact with the Cleaners, while the middle one shows Ty as a white dot moving on a map toward the Cleaners’ Den.

  But the rightmost monitor is the coup de grâce. The insurance. The fuck you, you-aren’t-going-anywhere-we-got-you-by-the-balls insurance. Puo hacked Margaret’s system. He was able to simply watch what her passwords were through the bug on her studio. Sometimes old tricks are the best tricks.

  I stand there with my arms crossed, watching the white dot move through the map, but mostly I’m wondering what the hell I’m going to get Winn for Christmas. The stupid holiday is tomorrow and I’ve still got a whole lot of nothing. And freaking Puo refuses to tell me what Winn got me. Ever since the drone-alarm incident yesterday all he’ll say is “nipple clamps,” and if I press him he’ll add “the ones with the tassels.”

  Grrr.

  It’s chilly in the flat this morning. Not cold enough to see your breath, but it feels close. I briefly consider going to get my jacket—I’m still bundled up (sans coat) from having to run out and deliver the agreed upon bug for Ty to wear, but I pull the sleeves down on my puce-colored knit sweater instead and cross my arms tighter. I’m not sure how Puo can sit there in just a black t-shirt and not be cold.

  “Want a blanket?” Winn asks. He stands there, similarly dressed to me in jeans and a soft dark-gray sweater.

  I shake my head no. “Turn the heat up.”

  Winn dutifully slides out his pocket tablet to turn up the thermostat.

  “What do you want for Christmas?” I ask while he’s doing that.

  Before Winn can answer, Puo cuts in, “Party foul.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “You can’t ask what people want,” Puo says, not turning around. “We’ve all bought gifts—”

  “You bought your gift?” I ask.

  “Touché,” Puo says. “Correction: we’ve all retrieved gifts without asking input from the recipients. So no asking.”

  I look at Winn after he puts his pocket tablet away and silently ask him what he wants.

  “No cheating,” Puo reiterates as if he can see behind his back.

  Winn shrugs an innocent shrug and focuses back on the monitors on the table.

  I’m about to tell Puo what I think about this no cheating business in explicit detail when suddenly he sits up straighter and goes still, holding his breath.

  Something is flashing on the menu bar.

  Fear breaks off of him in great waves, like a black sun radiating tension.

  My heart has stopped beating, but all the while the white dot continues to steadily move toward its goal.

  “What is it?” I manage to ask.

  Puo tilts his head back, but doesn’t make any move to click on it.

  “What is it!” I ask, suddenly finding my breath, the jackknives awake and clawing.

  “I don’t think we should—” Puo starts.

  I lunge forward and click on it.

  My father’s face. Same picture. Same warped, curved edges. New text underneath it. A countdown: 47:59:28. Forty-eight hours.

  Oh, God. My chest is rising and falling, but I can’t seem to breathe. My hand tremors over the mouse. My forefinger is still extended, hanging over an abyss. Oh, God.

  “Turn it off,” Winn says. His voice is distant, clinical.

  Puo and I can’t move. Forty-eight hours. That’s not enough time.

  Winn puts his hand on my shoulder to gently try and pull me away.

  “Don’t touch me.” I jerk away from him. “Can you track it?” I ask Puo.

  Puo shakes his head no in a daze.

  “Try, damn it!”

  “I can’t, Isa!” Puo panics.

  “Do it!” I start to storm off.

  “Where are you going?” Winn calls after me.

  “To pack! Both of you pack up! We’re going to find those fucking bastards, and get my father back.”

  “How?” Winn asks.

  I whirl on him. “I don’t know how! But we can’t just sit here!”

  “How—?” Winn starts again.

  “Durante!” I sputter in response. “Durante! We find the place, Durante sends in the cavalry.” Fuck the body count.

  “Isa—” Winn starts, trying to calm a wild animal.

  “What!” I scream at him. “You got a problem with this?” I stomp over and get in his face. “Because this is what it’s come to. Between my father or them, it’s them. I don’t give a shit anymore. Fuck them. They’ve pushed and they’ve pushed and they’ve pushed. They’ve left us no options. So I’ll ask you again, you got a problem with this?”

  Winn stares at me silently. I’m inches from his face, looking up. I’m sure he can feel my hot breath on the bottom of his chin, but I can’t feel him breathing at all. He just stares at me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

  Puo is silent at his keyboards.

  F
orty-eight hours. There’s no way that’s enough time.

  Right when I’m about to pull away and start to go pack Winn says, “I’m with you, no matter where it leads. But—” I start to object but he talks over me. “The game with Ty is still our best chance.”

  “He’s right,” Puo croaks. “Ty leads to Ham, Ham leads to the Cleaners.”

  I can’t believe this. “There’s not enough time to finish the game. Forty-eight hours—”

  “Ty’s making contact,” Puo cuts in.

  All three of us turn our attention back to the three monitors. Ty is one block away, the entrance to the Cleaners’ Den is visible in the distance, a narrow brown door with weathered stone columns to each side supporting a mini roof over it.

  A part of me knows what they’re saying makes sense. But ... but I can’t just sit still. The jackknives have awoken and now some bastard isn’t just standing on my adrenaline gland, he’s fucking stomping on it with undiminished glee.

  “Move,” I order Winn so I can pace behind the monitors.

  Winn obliges.

  “And thank you,” another part of myself says, a quieter part, a part I’m surprised is still there amidst the raging tempest. The part that’s grateful for saying he’s with us no matter what.

  Winn head bobs once and then turns his attention back to the monitors.

  The leftmost screen flickers.

  “Something’s happening,” Puo says and starts typing on his keyboards.

  The flickering is getting worse as Ty gets closer to the Cleaners’ Den. The blinking white dot on the middle screen winks out. Five paces away from the brown door the leftmost screen goes blank.

  “What the—!” I am about to let loose when Puo violently waves to shut me up and points to he rightmost screen: the screen hacked into Margaret’s system.

  “I’ve scrambled their signals,” Margaret says, her disembodied voice floating out the rightmost screen like a trail of smoke in a crypt. “They’ve lost you.”

  That son of a bitch!

  “Isa,” Puo calls out after me, “where are you going!”

  I’m halfway to the door and throwing my coat on when I yell back, “To go get that double-crossing dog fucker!”

  “We have the feed on Margaret’s system,” Puo yells.

  “I don’t care!”

  ***

  There should be a special place in hell for double-crossers, preferably sharing cells with prison rapists who have been remade into male centaurs. Imagining this fate for Ty does nothing to assuage my fury.

  Forty-eight hours. We have to find Ham, get to him, and make him squeal, all before returning to the States and coming up with a rescue plan.

  Christmas Eve on the streets of Birmingham melt by in streaks of green and red. People’s smiling faces blur, infuriating me in their simplicity and ignorance. That double-crossing piece of shit.

  “The mark has given them the photo,” Puo says through my comm-link. Winn had caught up to me in the stairwell still wearing thick gray socks and given me the comm-link. He had said nothing, just took three steps down at a time and held out his hand like delivering a life-saving pill. I took it begrudgingly.

  I’m seven blocks away from the Cleaners’ Den, a red-hot ball of rage moving through a life-size map toward my destination. The half-hearted snow falling dares not touch my face, vaporizing within inches of it.

  “Queen Bee,” Puo rushes, “do you read me?”

  I grunt in response.

  “What’s your plan here?” Puo asks.

  The sound of salt crunching under my heel against the sidewalk is lost against the pounding blood in my ears. I satisfyingly crush the little clumps into a fine powder. I grind my way toward the Cleaners’ Den.

  “Queen Bee, what’s your plan?” Puo asks again. “You can’t go bursting in there. You’ll expose the game. They might recognize you—”

  “I wasn’t going to—” I bite off, and rethink accepting the comm-link.

  “Then what’s your plan?”

  I clench my jaw in response. I hadn’t thought beyond grabbing Ty by the throat and throwing him to the ground.

  “Queen Bee, fly back to the hive,” Puo pleads. “This is way too risky. There’s no upside here. You’re not thinking straight—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not thinking straight—”

  “Spare me your corner-store psychology.”

  “This has happened before!” Puo cuts in. “On the train from Hampstead Heath. You’re not thinking straight.”

  That bastard. How dare he bring that up in front of Winn? I could’ve made that lift of the cop’s badges if Puo’s warning hadn’t gotten into my head.

  “We’ve got a line on the situation,” Puo says in response to my deadly silence. “There’s no reason for you to be out there—”

  “And do they know that?” I ask. “What do they think happened?” When Puo doesn’t respond, I plow on, “He agreed to wear a bug, which they then promptly scrambled. Do they expect us to be okay with that? For us to say, ‘Gee whiz that sure was unlucky, but bring us up to speed in your own good time?’ ”

  “No,” Puo softly accedes.

  “No!” I snap, startling a mother holding the small mittened hand of her five-year-old. I’m already five steps away when I speak again, “I’m the only one who is thinking straight. They expect us to confront them. They expect some kind of response.”

  “You’re still not thinking straight.”

  I could strangle him. “P—” I’m so mad, I almost used his real name on the comm-link. “A response is necessary. They’ve dictated this part of the game.”

  “So what’s your response?”

  “Confront him!”

  “How?”

  Argh! “Shut up and let me do it! I’m not going to choreograph it. So get out of my head and stop second-guessing me.” I could’ve made that lift.

  “Fine,” Puo says, a petulant child with no choice but to go along. “What do you need from me?”

  “Nothing. I need nothing from you but silence.” I can make this lift.

  ***

  The fifteen minutes I linger in the front of the small toyshop with the narrow brown door in view does nothing to calm my fury. If anything, I think my rage has raised the temperature in the pastel showroom to stifling. All the adults seem to give me a wide berth, but their children couldn’t care less. I’m between them and toys—it’s almost endearing. Almost.

  What’s your plan? Puo’s voice rings around in my head. What’s your plan? What’s your plan? Ugh! Where’s one of those squeeze toys when you need it? The ones where the heads balloon out to the size of a baseball.

  Plan? Puo’s always going on about how I do my best work pissed off and flying by the seat of my pants. And he wants to reign me in now? Now? With everything that’s going on?

  The jackknives suddenly coordinate together to scrape off the next internal layer of my stomach. I nearly drop the toy spy kit I’m holding and clutch my stomach.

  Plan, I force myself to think. Plan. Puo wants a freaking plan. That hypocrite wanted us to play it safe, not confront Ty—which would expose us. Confronting Ty is the right play here. I’m slowly able to start breathing again. I set the spy kit down.

  A response is not only expected, they’ve probably planned for it. Thought of how and when I will confront them.

  I look up at the white ceiling tiles in exasperation, an actual plan forming. Fine, but I’m not letting Puo know this wasn’t the plan all along.

  I thread my way back to the register, being super patient and keeping the supreme annoyance off my face even though I’m sweating in the overheated shop. Parents shepherd their red-cheeked children out of my way, with half-smiles and avoiding eye contact.

  The early-thirties woman behind the counter smiles with a smile that looks like she laughs often and doesn’t have to deal with people trying to kill you or your family. She kindly gives me a piece of paper and a pen. I bet she sleeps well
.

  She was so nice about it that I give half a thought to actually purchasing the doctors checkup kit for toddlers for Winn, but the humor and wit just doesn’t seem to be there. Nothing I think of getting Winn seems to fit in with where I am with him.

  I go back to my post by the front window and whisper to Puo the information I need. He rattles it off quickly enough and smartly keeps his mouth shut otherwise.

  Ty emerges out the narrow brown door shortly after, looking both ways as he slithers off. I quickly drop off the pen back at the register and run after him. The bracing cold is welcome after the stuffy toyshop.

  The streets are full of people on a Saturday Christmas Eve morning, I blend in easily on the opposite side of the street from Ty, hurrying but not running. The light snow continues from before, coquettish in its ways, not sticking to the ground. Exhaust mixes in with the sterile smell of melting salt. Broken pieces of conversation rise above the general street noise.

  Ty spots me and stops to wait. Yeah, they were anticipating this. He was looking for me.

  I cross over the street with a patience that belies my rising pulse, clenching the piece of paper in my jacket pocket.

  He starts talking as soon as I’m in ear shot, “Is everything okay—”

  “Shut your lying mouth,” I say. I veer off to a nearby alley that’s out of the flow of traffic and crook my finger at him to follow me like a dog.

  “What’s going—” he tries again once we’re near the alley.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say. “You are officially bagged and tagged from here on out. Your tablet, your email, everything—”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Bullshit,” I whisper, stepping into his personal space, his nose still broken from the last time he made a poor decision around me. “You scrambled the bug so we couldn’t listen.”