Hot Scores

by Bud Connell

  After all, I’d promised Cahoone I’d take care of her.

  38 – Begging Like a Beagle

  Ramon picked up on the first ring and turned down flat my idea to stage a second story heist. I figured he had the history of knowing where people stashed money, and considering his sizable investment in my future, would be willing to accompany me.

  “No way, José. Yer on yer own.” Ramon wanted no part of me trying to recoup three hundred and forty-six phony Benjamins from Milagro, the fire clean-up guy. “Furthermore, I ain’t going door-to-door pill pushing until you got that little item handled, comprender?” I said yes and agreed to keep Ramon out of the mix until that big fat loose end was tied up, if it could be tied up without me wearing an orange suit for the rest of my life.

  “Yah, I understand,” I said. “I figured you wouldn’t want to touch it, so just in case I actually got a Plan B.”

  “Well, I hope yer Plan B is better than yer Plan A.” Ramon clicked off without bothering to say goodbye.

  No point in wasting time. I pulled out the scrap of paper with Milagro’s number on it and punched it into my cell phone. Plan B, Mr. Honesty, was officially in operation.

  +++

  So I explained to a grossly suspicious Milagro, my made-up story of how I sold my car and was paid in phony cash, and I had no idea until I saw the buyer’s photo on the news when he was caught for counterfeiting. Milagro bought the story, but for a price.

  “You son of de beach, lucky for you I steel have all your play money.”

  Yesterday, Milagro had tried to buy a box of cigars with one of the hundreds, and his friend, who fortunately owns the cigar store, hit it with a purple pen and handed the Benjie back to him and said, ‘Milagro, my friend, I know you would not knowingly try to give me a counterfeit hundred. Who gave it to you?’

  “That about scared the frijoles rojos out of me,” he said.

  “What’d you say back? Please, I hope you didn’t tell him it came from me.” I’d have dropped to my knees and begged like a beagle if I thought it’d make a difference.

  “Well, señor, lucky for you, I told heem I do not know where it came from; but I do know I have over three hundred of the little sons of de beaches and I do know that you are going to make theem good or I have freends who will beet the sheet out of you.”

  I met Milagro in person and convinced him that I was paying him out of my pocket because I was the one who caused the fire, and not to bother the Cahoones since they knew nothing about the bad money.

  I told him I had a new job making big cash, and that I would replace the phony hundreds with real ones as soon as possible, and to show my good faith, I gave him fifty almost worn-out hundreds from my ten thousand dollar advance. He smiled about as broadly as anybody I’d ever seen.

  “Now that you know I’m gonna be good for it, give me the three hundred and forty-six bad hundreds.”

  “Not a chance, señor. They are my ensurance policy. When you pay back all the owed plus twenty thousand, I geeve you your leetle phony bills back, all of theem.”

  “Twenty grand extra! That’s robbery!”

  “So? Sue me, señor!”

  Well, shithouse mouse. In chess that’s called checkmate. Milagro had me by my nuts and was twisting like Chubby Checker.

  +++

  I was so good at convincing Milagro of my solution, I went back to Ramon with my Joe Oaks skills finely honed. After all, I needed Ramon to help make the hot scores that would quickly get him, and Milagro, paid back pronto. He bought my act and we booked the rest of the week as a team with me playing straight man at pharmacies and with club owners in the seedy part of town.

  39 – Benny from New Jersey

  “Ver para creer.” Seeing is believing, I told the club owner as I turned the big dealing over to my second-in-command.

  “You can speak English. Benny here is from New Jersey,” Ramon said in a half-disgusted tone. “So, Benny, how many drop-pops do you want? XTCs, flunitties, R’s & T’s, whatever; you name it. Minimum order, a thousand.”

  “Three thousand of each,” Benny said from behind his cluttered desk. “What about some good stuff?” He picked at his teeth with somebody’s business card while he was waiting on my response.

  I shook my head no, “Later,” I said. “Not now; let’s get to know each other first.” I felt like the true big time drug dealer. Ramon glanced over at me and squinted out his customary ‘I don’t approve’ look. I figured we’d talk about that one later, and we did; but not before we collected eighteen grand cash and I popped the trunk of the Mustang and delivered the goods to Benny. Imagine that, I made almost two thousand of my advance back in one sales call. If we could do ten calls a day–

  “Are you frickin’ kidding, Joe Freak? What d’ya think we’re doin’, selling advertising to strip malls? Further, you get eight-hundred, I get one-thousand. Now you only owe me twenty-four grand even.”

  “I thought we were fifty-fifty.”

  “We are, after you pay me back.”

  “What about Milagro?”

  “Work it out.”

  +++

  I drove through Hialeah on the way to the next target before Ramon brought up my performance, which I thought was pretty darn good.

  “Dumbass thing to say.”

  “What?”

  “’Let’s get to know each other first’, real dumbass. You’re selling drugs, not trolling for a date.” Ramon had more than criticizing my acting on his mind. “Tell you what. If they want heavy-hittin’ goods, I’ll sell from my own stock and cut you in.”

  That little wrinkle certainly provided a way to do double-duty and cash-in big time, but my Joe Oaks common sense kicked in right away. “No, it might get back to Cahoone, and he might have us both snuffed.”

  Ramon just kept looking straight ahead with his knees propped up on my new Mustang dashboard. Eventually, he came around and applied his worldly approval.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Cahoone’s gonna graduate you to the big time as soon as he knows you can sell the little shit.”

  I took a long lead before coming back on his last remark. “So, what we need to do is sell lots of little shit quick, right partner?” I asked in kind of a smartass way.

  Ramon never looked at me. He just screwed up his mouth and gave me the two-fingered V-sign with his left hand. I kept on driving toward our next appointment, a big time mail-order prescription drug dealer, and all the time I was having a big chill run up my back while thinking about selling real dope to big time hustlers. I didn’t know if I had the spine for that.

  +++

  “¿Cómo estás, amigo?” How are you, friend, I asked the mail order guru as I nodded to my partner to take over. I was getting pretty good with this Cuban lingo.

  Ramon didn’t miss a beat and before I knew it we were walking out of our newest customer’s rundown office in Miami’s west side with an order for ninety-four thousand geetus worth of fake name brands to be delivered in one week for cash on the barrelhead. Way to go. Less than ten more hits like that and I’d be even with the boys and ready to replace Darragh Cahoone’s funny money behind the paneled wall, not to mention that I’d also be on the way to major big bucks, preparatory to the good life on Miami Beach.

  Then I thought about my earlier chill at the idea of pushing drugs that could get me locked up for the rest of my life and I forced it out of my mind, replacing it with Katya and how sweet she was, and I got kind of an ache in my groin.

  40 – Collecting “Bahd” Money

  The next few days went like a Hummer on high test. I made… actually Ramon made the sales and I collected enough commission to pay him good money for the bad, and to pay back Milagro, including the twenty grand spiff he conned off me, minus the five grand I’d already paid him.

  When I counted out all the real hundreds on the edge of Milagro’s desk I guess I showed my sadness while looking at practically every penny I owned laying right there in front of me.

  Milagro picked u
p a ten-grand stack and held it out. “Here, boss. Take thees back, you’re a good man. You keep your word, señor.” Then he pushed a manila envelop toward me. “All your bahd money’s in there.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Naturally I took the ten big ones, fist-bumped Milagro and he smiled until his big gold tooth showed like he’d just dropped a bundle into the collection plate at the barrio church. People sometimes do unexpected things, and I guess that includes both of us.

  +++

  Next, I had to get Cahoone’s funny money back behind his paneled wall and not get caught. He was out of the country again, and I still had my duplicate key to the penthouse.

  Besides, every time I gave Cahoone the week’s payoff, he always asked “Are you sure that’s all?” and that made me increasingly nervous. I was champing at the bit to finish this dumbass mistake once and for all.

  I made sure Katya would be occupied getting her nails done and a new hairdo while I did the deed. I told her the visit to the Plage beauty salon was an all paid for-no-reason-at-all present from her cousin and she squealed, kissed me on the phone and said she wanted me to take her to dinner tonight.

  Well, what do you think I said?

  Hotcha, yeah!

  41 – My Ass Into the Next Dimension

  I took an inconspicuous seat with the lizards in the Plage lobby, nestled the freshly sealed brown box containing eight-hundred grand in phony Benjies securely in my lap, and watched Katya enter the front door and head toward the salon. She didn’t see me ‘cause she wasn’t looking for me.

  As soon as she was out of sight, I tucked the box under my arm and headed for 7777. I had exactly one hour to get in, replant the funny money in the exact place I found it, seal up everything nice and neat just like it was, and get back to the Plage before Katya came out from under the dryer.

  Cahoone’s doorman was signing for a resident’s FedEx so I just breezed past him and he didn’t look up. If the rest of this reverse heist went as smoothly, I’d be on my way back to the hotel in ten minutes or less.

  +++

  Nothing went right. For some dumb reason, the piece of folded up Milk Dud box was shoved so far into the strike plate hole that I almost couldn’t jimmy the office door lock, and after fifteen minutes of screwing around with credit cards and case knives from Cahoone’s kitchen, I got a thin plastic business card from my wallet to do the deed. Open sesame.

  But before I looked inside, I had this chill up and down my backside that the big man himself would be sitting behind his desk, elbows on his chair arms, palms and fingers doing push-ups in front of his face, gaining muscle tone before he casually dropped his right hand into his middle drawer and drew up the 45 that would send my ass into the next dimension.

  I slowly pushed the door open and peered into Cahoone’s inner sanctum. Everything looked like it did the last time, except no Cahoone, and there was a small table with an ashtray on it in front of the panel concealing the crawlspace. I moved it aside and went to work.

  The previously knocked out wall panel seemed to be tighter, but it caved under a little pressure and I picked up the box of hundreds, closed my eyes and pictured which stack I took it from just four weeks ago.

  It’s a damn good thing Cahoone didn’t need to distribute his phony stash in the past month or there would have been a lot of questions, and fingers would have probably been pointing at me because I was the only… cousin around.

  Sweat was popping out all across my forehead and I took out my handkerchief and wiped myself down while I counted the boxes just to make sure they were all still there. They tallied out and I picked up my little brown box and placed it exactly where it originally had been.

  Too bad the boxes weren’t stuffed with real C-notes, because if they had been I’d have grabbed three or four more, talked Katya into coming with me, and we’d be off with new names to some far away sunny beach.

  Okay, dreams… so what.

  When I backed out of the crawl space sweating big and all hunched over, Katya startled me upright and I let out one big yelp.

  “What are you doin’?” she said in a soft but firm tone.

  She was leaning against Cahoone’s office door with her arms crossed and a serious look on her face that I’d never seen before. I must have turned whiter than an albino in a dungeon.

  “I didn’t get color; I just got a quick style so I got out early. What are you doin’ in here, Joe?”

  I didn’t have an answer yet; I just looked at her with my mouth open and she kept staring at me with that same serious expression and her arms crossed over her rack.

  “We need to talk,” was all I could think of to say.

  “We sure as hell do,” she quickly replied.

  “But not here,” I said.

  I quickly replaced the panel, moved the table back in front of it, and pried the piece of Milk Dud box out of the strike plate hole, gave Cahoone’s office-den one last check, and closed the door behind Katya and me.

  I had to take charge, and the only way out of a mess like this was the truth. “Get your purse, coat, whatever. We’re going to dinner and we’ve got a lot of territory to cover.”

  “We sure as hell do,” and her look didn’t change from the last time she said it.

  42 – While Snapping at My Pastrami

  We didn’t talk on the way to dinner. Katya sat rigid in the Mustang looking straight ahead with her pretty mouth painted pink and fixed firm. Every time I glanced over she hadn’t changed. There was no doubt in my mind that I had no choice but to tell her everything.

  I figured the little deli on Arthur Godfrey Road about five miles from the condo would be a good quiet place to have my come to Jesus moment with the new love of my life and I was right. When we walked in, the place was dead, a suitable location for the possible funeral of my love life.

  I guided Katya to the backmost table, the furtherest spot away from where the waitresses and busboys gather and chat on slow nights. I sat her down, and took the chair where I could see anyone coming, and I opened the conversation.

  “Well–”

  “Well, what? This better be good, Joe Oaks.”

  “––Let’s order first, and then I’ll spill it all.”

  Studying the menu, getting the waitress, waiting for the food, all in silence, gave me time to put thoughts together, and when I finally began to lay out the sequence of events starting with the fire and my accidental discovery behind Darragh’s wall and the reasons for my decisions, Katya didn’t touch her matzo ball soup or corned beef sandwich while she sat back and listened with her arms still crossed.

  I kept going, talking and snapping at my pastrami on rye, and by the time I hit how much I thought about her, how much she was on my mind, and how I loved her and wanted to protect her, her arms came uncrossed and she took a spoonful of soup without even looking at it.

  Now, mind you, it was not my object to swoon her right there over her matzo balls, but it was happening. The part about me risking my whole life in federal prison by paying people with borrowed counterfeit money and by selling phony drugs just so I could balance the books and back out of my deal with Darragh… the part about me clearing the way to finding other income so I could talk her into leaving her present risky relationship… the part about me giving her everything she deserved and so much more… the part about me laying awake at night wishing she was by my side… if this woman was only a little bit in love with me before she caught me in Darragh’s office, she was a whole lot in love with me now.

  But it wasn’t a one-way street. By the time I finished telling her everything, I had a bad case of cavernous, bottomless, tender and devoted deep affection, tugging at my external and internal body parts—it was love sickness. It hurt, and I was scared.

  43 – Fast Talking & Twitchy

  “So what do we do now?” Katya asked as her cell phone beeped an incoming message. She plucked the noisy phone from her purse and punched around on its keyboard while the word ‘we’ echoed around in my h
ead, ricocheting off bits and pieces of recollections from the last few days’ events—one long reverberation of ‘we’ as I tried to force my mind around the idea that it was now Joe and Katya and not just old lonesome Joe by himself.

  “I guess––I guess we––make plans for the future,” I finally said.

  Katya got really nervous, fast-talking and twitchy-like. “Well, we better make plans pretty fast, Joe, because Darragh just texted me that he’s flying in tonight, three days early.”

  I sat stunned for a few long seconds realizing the implications. I had to get her out of this restaurant and into the condo and we had to decide on how she’d handle Darragh; and how I would too, tomorrow. I flipped out a ten and a twenty to cover the check and we rocketed out of the deli.

  I mashed the gas pedal and the Mustang roared all the way up Collins. Katya started crying part way there, and said she didn’t want to go up to the penthouse, but I told her to cool it. I told her tomorrow was another day and we’d take it one day at a time. I used my old Joe Oaks smooth persuasion and she finally caved.

  The plan was simple; everything nice and normal, and then Katya would do something that would make Darragh want to throw her out. She’d cry and pack and go to stay with her cousin Joe until she could get a job and get started financially again. Meanwhile, I’d restart my music promotion business and give Darragh the old ‘so-long, it’s been good to know ya.’ I had planned to do that anyway. Easy, over, done, and out.

  +++

  I pulled into the 7777 parking garage and what should greet us in the formerly unoccupied parking space was the cobalt blue Bentley that Darragh had driven to the airport.

  “Oh, Joe! I need time! I need time!”