The Collectors cc-2

by David Baldacci

  “I’m anything I need to be.”

  A grin eased across his face. “Same old Annabelle.”

  Her gaze hardened slightly. “No, not the same old. Better. You in?”

  “What’s the risk level?”

  “High, but so’s the reward.”

  A car alarm erupted with eardrum-shattering decibels. Neither of them even flinched. Cons at their level that lost their cool under any circumstances became either guests of the penal system or dead.

  Leo finally blinked. “Okay, I’m in. What now?”

  “Now we line up a couple other people.”

  “We rolling all-star on this?” His eyes glittered at the prospect.

  “Long con deserves nothing but the best.” She picked up the black queen. “I’ll take my payment in dinner tonight for pulling the lady out of your ‘magic’ deck.”

  “Afraid there aren’t many restaurants worth eating at around here.”

  “Not here. We’re flying to L.A. in three hours.”

  “L.A. in three hours! I’m not even packed. And I don’t have a ticket.”

  “It’s in your left jacket pocket. I snaked it there when I was feeling you up.” She eyed his flabby midsection and raised an eyebrow. “You’ve put on weight, Leo.”

  She turned and strode off as Leo checked his pocket and found the plane ticket. He grabbed his cards and raced after her, leaving the card table where it was.

  Monte was on vacation for a while. The long con was calling.

  CHAPTER 3

  OVER DINNER THAT NIGHT IN L.A. Annabelle laid out parts of her plan to Leo, including the two players she was looking to bring on.

  “Sounds good, but what about the long con? You haven’t told me about that.”

  “One step at a time,” she answered, fingering a wineglass, her gaze wandering around the swanky dining room automatically searching for potential marks.

  Take a breath, find a chump. She flicked her dyed-red hair out of her face and made momentary eye contact with a guy three tables down. This jerk had been ogling and overtly signaling Annabelle in her little black dress for the last hour while his humiliated date sat silently fuming. Now he slowly licked his lips and winked at her.

  Uh-uh, slick, you couldn’t even come close to handling it.

  Leo interrupted this thought. “Look, Annabelle, I’m not going to screw you. Hell, I came all this way.”

  “Right, you came all this way on my dime.”

  “We’re partners, you can tell me. It goes no further.”

  Her gaze drifted over him as she finished her cabernet. “Leo, don’t bother. Even you’re not that good of a liar.”

  A waiter came by and handed her a card. “From the gentleman over there,” he said, pointing to the man who’d been ogling her.

  Annabelle took the card. It said that the man was a talent agent. He’d also helpfully written on the back of the card a specific sex act he’d like to perform on her.

  Okay, Mr. Talent Agent. You asked for it.

  On the way out she stopped at a table with five stout guys in pinstripe suits. She said something and they all laughed. She gave one of them a pat on the head and another, a man of about forty with gray temples and thick shoulders, a peck on the cheek. They all laughed at something else Annabelle said. Then she sat down and talked with them for a few minutes. Leo looked at her curiously as Annabelle left the table and walked past him toward the exit.

  As she passed the talent agent’s table, he said, “Hey, baby, call me. I mean it. You are so hot, I’m on fire!”

  Annabelle swiped a glass of water off the tray of a passing waiter and said, “Well, then let’s cool you off, stud.” She dumped the water in the guy’s lap. He jumped up.

  “Damn it! You’re gonna pay for that, you crazy bitch.”

  His date covered her mouth to hide her laughter.

  Before the man could reach out to grab her, Annabelle shot out a hand and clutched his wrist. “You see those boys over there?” She nodded at the five suits that sat staring at the man hostilely. One of them cracked his knuckles. Another slid his hand inside his suit jacket and kept it there.

  Annabelle said smoothly, “I’m sure you saw me talking to them, since you’ve been staring at me all night. They’re the Moscarelli family. And the one on the end there is my ex, Joey Junior. Now, even though I’m no longer technically in the family, you never really leave the Moscarelli clan.”

  “Moscarelli?” the man said defiantly. “Who the hell are they?”

  “They were the number three organized crime family in Vegas before the FBI ran them and everybody else out. Now they’ve gone back to doing what they do best: controlling the garbage unions in the Big Apple and Newark.” She squeezed his arm. “So if you have a problem with your wet pants, I’m sure Joey will take care of it.”

  “You think I’m buying that crap?” the guy shot back.

  “Well, if you don’t believe me, go over there and talk to him about it.”

  The man looked over at the table again. Joey Junior was holding a steak knife in his beefy hand while one of the other men was attempting to keep him in his seat.

  Annabelle gripped the man’s arm tighter. “Or do you want me to have Joey come over here with some of his friends? Don’t worry; he’s out on parole right now, so he can’t bust you up really bad without ticking off the feds.”

  “No. No!” the alarmed man said as he tore his gaze from murderous Joey Junior and his steak knife. He added quietly, “I mean, it’s no big deal. Just a little water.” He sat back down and dabbed at his soaked crotch with a napkin.

  Annabelle turned to his date. The woman was trying and failing to hold back her giggles. “You think it’s funny, sweetie?” Annabelle said. “This is a case of where we’re all laughing at you, not with you. So why don’t you try finding some self-respect, or little shits like him are the only slime you’ll be waking up next to until you’re so old nobody will give a crap anymore. Including you.”

  The lady stopped laughing.

  On the way out of the restaurant Leo said, “Wow, and here I was wasting my time reading Dale Carnegie when all I needed to do was hang around you.”

  “Give it a rest, Leo.”

  “Okay, okay, but the Moscarelli family? Come on. Who were they really?”

  “Five accountants from Cincinnati probably looking to get laid tonight.”

  “You’re lucky they seemed pretty tough.”

  “It wasn’t luck. I said I was practicing a scene from a movie with a friend of mine in public. I told them it happens all the time in L.A. I asked them to help out, that they were to look like the mob; you know, to give us the right atmosphere to deliver our lines. I told them if they did well enough, they might even get a part in the film. It’s probably the most excitement they’ve ever had.”

  “Yeah, but how’d you know that jerk would collar you on the way out?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Leo, maybe it was that tent pole in his pants. Or did you think I just threw the water in his crotch for the hell of it?”

  The next day Annabelle and Leo cruised down Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills in a rented dark blue Lincoln. Leo intently eyed the shops they were passing. “How’d you get a lead on him?”

  “Usual sources. He’s young and doesn’t have much street experience, but his specialty is why I’m here.”

  Annabelle pulled into a parking place and pointed to a storefront up ahead. “Okay, that’s where gadget boy screws the retail consumer.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Very metrosexual.”

  Leo looked at her quizzically. “Metrosexual? What the hell’s that? New kind of gay freak?”

  “You really need to get out more, Leo, and work on your PC skills.”

  A minute later Annabelle led Leo into a high-end clothing boutique. Inside the store, they were greeted by a lean, good-looking young man dressed all in chic black with slicked-back blond hair and a day’s worth of fashionable stubble on his face
.

  “You here all by yourself today?” she asked him, looking around at the other well-heeled customers in the store. They’d have to be wealthy, she knew, since the shoes here started at a thousand bucks a pair, entitling the lucky owner to stumble around on four-inch golf tees until her Achilles snapped.

  He nodded. “But I enjoy working the store. I’m very service-oriented.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Annabelle said under her breath.

  After waiting until the other customers had left the shop, Annabelle put the Closed sign on the front door. Leo brought a woman’s blouse to the cash register while Annabelle wandered around behind the checkout area. Leo handed over his credit card, but it slipped out of the clerk’s hand and the man bent down to retrieve it. When he straightened up, he found Annabelle standing right behind him.

  “That’s a really neat toy you have there,” she said, eyeing the tiny machine the clerk had just swiped Leo’s card through.

  “Ma’am, you’re not allowed behind the counter,” he said, frowning.

  Annabelle ignored this comment. “Did you build it yourself?”

  The clerk said firmly, “It’s an antifraud machine. It confirms that the card is valid. It checks encryption codes embedded in the plastic. We’ve had a lot of stolen credit cards come in here, so the owner instructed us to start using it. I try to do it as unobtrusively as possible so no one gets embarrassed. I’m sure you can understand.”

  “Oh, I completely understand.” Annabelle reached by the clerk and slid out the device. “What this does, Tony, is read the name and account number, and the embedded verification code on the magnetic stripe so you can forge the card.”

  “Or more likely sell the numbers to a card ring that’ll do it,” Leo added. “That way you don’t have to get your metrosexual hands really dirty.”

  Tony looked at both of them. “How do you know my name? You cops?”

  “Oh, much better than that,” Annabelle said, putting her arm around his slender shoulders. “We’re people just like you.”

  Two hours later Annabelle and Leo were walking down the pier in Santa Monica. It was a bright cloudless day, and the ocean breeze delivered waves of deliciously warm air. Leo wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, took off his jacket and carried it over his arm.

  “Damn, I’d forgotten how nice it was out here.”

  “Beautiful weather and the best marks in the world,” Annabelle said. “That’s why we’re here. Because where the best marks are . . .”

  “Are where the best cons are,” Leo finished for her.

  She nodded. “Okay, that’s him, Freddy Driscoll, crown prince of bad paper.”

  Leo stared ahead, squinting against the sun, and read the small sign over the outdoor kiosk. “Designer Heaven?”

  “That’s right. Do it like I said.”

  “What other way is there to do it but like you said?” Leo grumbled.

  They reached the merchandise display where jeans, designer bags, watches and other accessories were neatly arranged. The older man next to the kiosk greeted them politely. He was small and plump with a pleasant face; tufts of white hair stuck out from underneath the straw hat he wore.

  “Wow, these are great prices,” Leo commented as he looked over the items.

  The man beamed proudly. “I don’t have the overhead of the fancy stores, just the sun, sand and ocean.”

  They looked through the merchandise, selected a few items, and Annabelle handed the man a hundred-dollar bill in payment.

  He took it from her, put on a pair of thick glasses, held the bill up at a certain angle and then quickly handed it back. “Sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid that’s a forgery.”

  “You’re right, it is,” she said casually. “But I thought it was fair to pay for fake goods with fake money.”

  The man didn’t even blink; he just smiled at her benignly.

  Annabelle examined the bill in the same way the man had. “The problem is that not even the best forger can really duplicate Franklin’s hologram when you hold the bill at this angle, because you’d need a two-hundred-million-dollar printing mill to get it right. There’s only one of them in the States, and no forger has access to it.”

  Leo piped in, “So you take a grease pen and do a nifty sketch of old Benny. That gives anyone smart enough to check the paper a little flash and the illusion that he saw the h-gram when he really didn’t.”

  “But you knew the difference,” Annabelle pointed out. “Because you used to make this paper about as well as anyone.” She held up a pair of jeans. “But from now on, I’d tell your supplier to take the time to stamp the brand name on the zipper like the real manufacturers do.” She put the jeans down and picked up a handbag. “And double-stitch the strap. That’s a dead giveaway too.”

  Leo held up a watch that was for sale. “And real Rolexes sweep smoothly, they don’t tick.”

  The man said, “I’m really shocked that I’ve been the victim of counterfeit merchandise. I saw a police officer just a few minutes ago farther down on the pier. I’ll go and get him. Please don’t leave; he’ll want your full statements.”

  Annabelle gripped his arm with her long, supple fingers. “Don’t waste your cover story on us,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

  “What about?” he asked warily.

  “Two shorts and then a long,” Leo answered, making the old man’s eyes light up.

  CHAPTER 4

  ROGER SEAGRAVES LOOKED across the conference table at the mouse of a man and his pitiful comb-over consisting of a dozen strands of greasy black hair that vainly attempted to cover a wide, flaky scalp. The man was skinny in the shoulders and legs and fat in the belly and butt. Though still in his forties, he probably would’ve been hard-pressed to jog more than twenty yards without collapsing. Lifting a grocery bag would no doubt have taxed the limits of his upper body strength. He could be a poster boy for the physical degradation of the entire male race in the twenty-first century, Seagraves thought. It irked him because physical fitness had always played paramount importance in his life.

  He ran five miles every day, finishing before the sun was fully up. He could still do one-handed push-ups and bench-press twice his own weight. He could hold his breath underwater for four minutes and sometimes worked out with the high school football team near his home in western Fairfax County. No man in his forties could keep up with seventeen-year-old boys, but he was never that far behind them either. In his previous career these skills had all served one purpose: keeping him alive.

  His attention turned back to the man across the table from him. Every time he saw the creature a part of him wanted to place a round in the man’s forehead and put him out of his lethargic misery. But no sane person killed his golden goose or, in this case, golden mouse. Seagraves may have found his partner physically lacking, but he needed the man nonetheless.

  The creature’s name was Albert Trent. The man had a brain under the wretched body, Seagraves had to give him that. An important element of their plan, perhaps the most important detail, had, in fact, been Trent’s idea. It was for this reason more than any other that Seagraves had agreed to partner with him.

  The two men spoke for some time about the upcoming testimony of CIA representatives to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, of which Albert Trent was a prominent staff member. Next they covered key bits of intelligence gathering undertaken by the folks at Langley and other agencies in the U.S. government’s vast arsenal of spooks. These folks spied on you from outer space, through your phone, fax, e-mail and sometimes right over your shoulder.

  Finished, the two men sat back and drank down their lukewarm coffee. Seagraves had yet to find a bureaucrat who could make a decent cup of coffee. Maybe it was the water they had up here.

  “The wind’s really picking up outside,” Trent said, his eyes on the briefing book in front of him. He smoothed his red tie over his flab and rubbed his nose.

  Seagraves glanced out the window. Okay, now it was code tim
e, just in case someone was listening in. These days nowhere was safe from prying ears, least of all Capitol Hill. “Front’s coming in, I saw on the news. Might get some rain later, but then again, maybe not.”

  “I heard a thunderstorm was possible.”

  Seagraves perked up at this. A thunderstorm reference always got his attention. Speaker of the House Bob Bradley had been such a thunderstorm. He was now lying in a plot of dirt back in his native Kansas with a bunch of wilted flowers on top of him.

  Seagraves chuckled. “You know what they say about the weather: Everyone talks about it, but no one does a damn thing about it.”

  Trent laughed too. “Everything looks good here. We appreciate Central Intelligence’s cooperation as always.”

  “Didn’t you know? The ‘C’ stands for cooperation.”

  “We still set for the DDO’s testimony on Friday?” he asked, referring to the CIA’s deputy director of operations.

  “Yep. And behind closed doors we can be very candid.”

  Trent nodded. “The new committee chairman knows how to play by the rules. They already took a roll call vote to close the hearing.”

  “We’re at war with terrorists, so it’s a whole new ball game. Enemies of this country are everywhere. We have to act accordingly. Kill them before they get us.”

  “Absolutely,” Trent agreed. “It’s a new age, a new kind of fight. And perfectly legal.”

  “Goes without saying.” Seagraves stifled a yawn. If anyone was listening, he hoped they’d enjoyed the patriotic crap. He’d long since stopped caring about his country—or any other country, for that matter. He was now solely into caring about himself: the Independent State of Roger Seagraves. And he had the skills, nerve and access to things of enormous value to do something about it. “Okay, unless there’s anything else, I’ll be hitting the road. Traffic will be a bitch this time of day.”

  “When isn’t it?” Trent tapped the briefing book as he said this.

  Seagraves glanced at the book he’d given the other man even as he picked up a file Trent had pushed across to him. The file contained some detailed requests for information and clarification regarding certain surveillance practices of the intelligence agency. The massive briefing book he’d left for Trent held nothing more exciting than the usual dull-as-dirt overly complicated analysis his agency routinely fed the oversight committee. It was a masterpiece of how to say absolutely nothing in the most confusing way possible in a million words or more.