Fringe 03 - Sins of the Father
Page 7
That went for Big Eddie himself, as well, sitting behind his ostentatious mahogany desk in his bespoke suit, diamond pinkie ring flashing, but you could still smell the rough, working-class sweat underneath the sweet miasma of his pricy cologne.
A bored Eastern European supermodel wrapped up in sparkling couture bandages that barely covered the legal minimum of her long, thoroughbred body was sprawled decoratively on a nearby sofa, chain-smoking and staring into her phone. Big Eddie shooed her out with a wordless tilt of his gray stubbled chin. She didn’t even pout.
“Sit down, Bishop,” he said in his thick Scottish accent, gesturing to the sofa recently vacated by the supermodel. “I must admit, I’m surprised to see you. Tell me, what dreadful misfortune has forced you to darken my door? Woman trouble, is it?”
“It’s nothing like that,” Peter said, taking the seat he’d been offered. The sofa was modern and very low, making him feel a little awkward. There wasn’t enough room between it and the desk for him to stretch his legs out straight, so he had to bend them up so his knees felt almost as high as his shoulders. It had to be a deliberate move on Big Eddie’s part, forcing him to scrunch into this undignified position and look up at the Scotsman in his tall desk chair.
“Well, then,” Big Eddie said, leaning forward in a mocking parody of earnest concern. “What exactly is it like?”
“I need twenty-five grand,” Peter said. “I can turn it around in five days.”
“Pounds or euros?”
“Euros,” Peter replied, shifting his uncomfortably bent legs.
Big Eddie nodded, taking out a small calculator from a desk drawer.
“Right,” he said, punching buttons and scribbling in a leather-bound note book. “Collateral?”
Peter put a hand into his messenger bag, knowing that if he hesitated for a fraction of a second or showed anything but nonchalant confidence in this moment, he’d be screwed.
He extracted a slender file folder containing a sheaf of documents proving his five-year ownership of an upscale New Town property over on Albyn Place, and agreeing to transfer ownership to Big Eddie in the event that he was unable to pay back the loan within the agreed-upon time frame. Every page was a fake—and not his best work, given the time constraints—but he’d backed it all up by hacking into the local records and doing some creative editing, in case anyone decided to dig deeper.
He hoped it would hold up.
Then Peter sat back on the torturous sofa, slinging one arm over the back in what he hoped was a casual, relaxed pose while Big Eddie looked over the contents of the file. The Scotsman’s weathered face was stoic, revealing nothing.
“Right,” he finally said. “You’ll have your money at…” He raised a hairy wrist, checking the time. Unlike Peter’s, his Rolex was real. “Half-seven tomorrow night.”
Then he stood, reaching out to shake Peter’s hand. Peter lurched to his feet and took the offered hand. It was surprisingly large, and squeezed his fingers just a little too tight. Big Eddie smiled, his blue eyes bright and disturbingly merry.
Peter had a little twinge of doubt in that moment, wondering if he’d made a terrible mistake.
But he trusted Micki. She’d never let him down. It was a sure thing.
Nevertheless, he felt a lot better once he was out of Big Eddie’s office—and out of range of that cheerful predator’s smile.
The next step of Micki’s carefully orchestrated plan involved wiring up her chosen love nest with hidden cameras. To that end, Peter paid a visit to a techie kid named Russel who could hook him up with all the necessary equipment.
Russel McNee was a tall, scrawny blond guy with glasses and a sardonic, gap-toothed grin. He was always home, day or night, and didn’t seem to have any source of income that would pay for his historic apartment on the Grassmarket, or support his expensive hobbies of espionage tech and robotics. Peter figured he either had family money, or was living off the illicit information he was able to gather by spying on his wealthy neighbors.
When Peter arrived at Russel’s cluttered bachelor pad, the kid was sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating Chinese food out of a take-out container and watching what had to be the single worst television program of all time on a massive flat-screen television. It looked as if it must have been shot in the late 1970s or early 1980s. There was goofy-looking guy with brown curly hair and what looked like a tiny middle-aged woman dressed up like a little boy. They were singing, badly.
Russel seemed to think this was the most wonderful spectacle of all time. When Peter walked in, the kid pointed at the screen with his chopsticks.
“You know what the best thing about the Krankies is?” he asked around a huge mouthful of some kind of slippery orange noodles.
“The fact that it’s not available in America?” Peter guessed, shaking his head at the painfully unfunny antics on screen.
“No, it’s the fact that they’re married.”
“Married?” Peter frowned. “What, the guy and the woman in the school-boy uniform?”
“Not only are they married,” Russel said, raising a thin, white-blond eyebrow, “They’re swingers. A couple of nasty perverts, they are. I’ll bet she wears the Wee Jimmy costume in bed.”
On screen, the man bent over and the woman kicked him in the ass, laughing and hamming it up for the camera.
Peter shuddered.
“I really didn’t need to know that, Russel,” he said, prying his eyes away from the television. “Have you got my order?”
“I surely do,” Russel replied, unfolding his long legs and leaving the box of Chinese food on the floor. “Right this way, sir.”
A large black cat appeared from between two boxes and headed over to investigate the abandoned noodles while Russel started digging through the piles and clutter.
“Ah, yes,” he said triumphantly, lifting a cardboard box that used to hold bottles of Irn-Bru. “Here’s everything you requested, plus extra cable and batteries which I’ve included out of the goodness of my heart.”
“You’re a saint,” Peter said, extracting a manila envelope full of clean credit cards under a variety of fake male names. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”
Russel took the offered envelope in exchange for the box, checked the contents briefly. Then gave Peter a big hammy grin and a thumbs up.
“Fan dabi dozi!” he said.
* * *
The next stop was the Lambshead Inn—a small boutique hotel that Micki had chosen for her command performance. It was perfect, tucked away in Newington apart from the tourist throngs along the main drag. The room she’d chosen—the one her accomplice at the desk would insist was the only one available—sat on the top floor. Directly above it was a low attic space that ran the length of the building.
That would allow Peter to install the main camera in the central light fixture, and then run a cable to the room next door—where he’d be set up with his laptop, monitoring the action. He had two other small, wireless black-and-white cameras he would install as backup, but the image quality wouldn’t be quite as sharp. It was important to Micki that the mark’s face be crystal clear and unmistakable in the footage.
The room was girlish and romantic, decorated in a flouncy Victorian style that did nothing for Peter. Lots of lavender and ruffles and chintz. On a pink velvet settee across from the bed was a stuffed toy dog, bearing a label proclaiming it to be a replica of the famous Greyfriars Bobby. Peter couldn’t resist enlisting the faithful canine’s assistance in this caper.
He made a small incision in the dog’s belly and pulled out few handfuls of acrylic filler. Next, he carefully removed one of the black plastic eyes, slipping it into his pocket. He pushed the rectangular body of the wireless camera into the dog’s belly, arranging it with the camera lens set into the hole where the eye had been. Then he used the complimentary sewing kit to stitch up the incision and set Bobby back at his post.
From where he sat, the pooch had a clear view of the bed.
Once that was done, he installed the second wireless camera in the ornate headboard to give him a reverse angle. That way he’d be sure to catch the mark’s face at some point, no matter which way he was positioned.
Then he headed up into the stuffy claustrophobic attic to work on the installation of the final camera and the audio feed. That was cramped, grubby, miserable work, and once it was done he had to take a long hot shower in the neighboring suite to get all the cobwebs and dust out of his hair. Clean and fresh, he synced the three cameras to his laptop, and set everything so it would be ready to roll as soon as the talent arrived.
He sent Micki a text to let her know all systems were go. She responded instantly, letting him know she and the mark would be there in thirty minutes, as planned.
Peter pocketed the phone and smiled. There was something about the giddy, electric feeling of a caper that was running smoothly, tasks clicking off like clockwork and everything going exactly the way it should. It was like a kind of drug to him. A high he’d been chasing for years, and so often failed to catch. But when he did, it was better than anything else he’d ever felt. He’d never actually been in love, but he imagined that it would feel much the same.
* * *
There were footsteps in the hall, and the sound of a door opening and clicking shut. Then Peter heard giggling through the wall, and Micki appeared in triplicate on his laptop screen. From the front, from behind, and from above. Twice in grainy black-and-white, and once in color.
She was dressed in a disturbingly childish fashion—a short pink skirt and glittery sneakers, and a T-shirt with a butterfly on it. The shirt was tight and short, showing off a slice of her pale, concave belly, and Peter was surprised to see that she’d covered her tattoo with some kind of concealer. She didn’t just look underage, she looked almost prepubescent.
He couldn’t help but feel a little queasy, considering the performance he was about to witness. But he reminded himself that it was all part of the act.
Her companion was a chinless older man, portly with a florid complexion and thick, bristly hair the color of steel wool. He was dressed in a conservative navy, double-breasted suit and striped tie. There was a wedding ring on his fat finger. He was clearly nervous, his paranoid gaze bouncing all over the room, and when it settled on the stuffed dog, Peter felt a hot flush of adrenaline. His fists clenched involuntarily as the man leaned toward the lens hidden in the dog’s eye.
“Isn’t he so cute?” Micki asked, scooping up the stuffed animal and causing the image to blur into a vertigo-inducing whirl. “Ruff ruff.” The camera settled as she held the dog steady, facing the mark. It was the perfect close-up of the man’s frowning face. “Oh, Stevie, you must buy him for me. Say you will.”
“Sure I will, pet,” the man said, his scowl melting into a foolish smile.
“You’re the best!” Micki said, kissing the man’s cheek, and then setting the stuffed dog down on a side table that actually gave Peter a much better view of the bed.
Atta girl, Micki.
* * *
Peter did his best to ignore the rest of the performance, briefly checking the screen every so often to make sure he still had the best angle on the action. The two wireless cameras were stationary, but the one in the light fixture could pan and zoom, so he made occasional slight adjustments when needed.
Micki was so good at her part of the job, he barely had to bother. She led that poor bastard around the room like a circus animal, making sure he was always positioned for maximum exposure, just the way she wanted.
When it was over, Peter uploaded the footage to her private server and backed it up on his own for safekeeping. Then he shut everything down and got the hell out of there.
Micki wanted to handle contacting the mark and laying out the terms on her own, so Peter had to sit tight for the rest of the night and the following morning, waiting for a text that would let him know it was a go.
The night was easily wasted in a large, flashy pub full of boisterous foreigners and ambitious local girls looking for a ticket abroad. While he’d had several passes thrown his way by females smitten with his “exotic” accent, he wasn’t really in the mood for company, so he just nursed his pint in a quiet corner and people-watched until he was tired enough to sleep.
The construction clamor woke him bright and early the next day, so he headed up the Royal Mile to lose himself in the slow-moving tourist hordes snapping photos of each other buying cheap, scratchy kilts and mealy shortbread. None of them gave Peter a second glance. He was leaning against a red phone box and contemplating whether or not he should check out the inside of the castle, when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
It was Micki.
The hook was in.
The mark had agreed to her terms without hesitation. They were on. She texted him the address of the bookie where she wanted to meet at eight o’clock that night, and told him to bring the cash.
He responded, letting her know he’d be there.
* * *
After killing the rest of the day wandering around Edinburgh castle and its grounds, he grabbed a quick steak-and-ale pie in a quiet pub, and then steeled himself to swing by Big Eddie’s and get the money. Once that was done, he’d head over to the bookie joint where he would be meeting Micki to place their bet.
When he arrived back at Big Eddie’s office, a hulking bruiser was there to greet him. He identified himself as Little Eddie, shook Peter’s hand like he was planning to take it home with him, and gave him a colorful, expletive-filled earful about how he’d better pay up on time.
“I see you’ve met my son,” Big Eddie said, appearing through a side door and clamping a heavy paw on Peter’s shoulder. “Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to be meeting him again.”
He was carrying a large manila envelope, which he handed to Peter. It was heavy for its size, and when he looked inside, he saw that it held a fat, banded brick of purple 500-euro notes. He knew he didn’t need to count it, but the solid, unquestionable realness of that money felt ominous in his hand. Not just the physical weight of it, but the invisible yet no-less-real weight of what it meant to be accepting it.
“See you in five days, Bishop,” Big Eddie said, flashing that wide sunny grin that made Peter’s blood go cold.
* * *
The bookie joint was in the back of a barbershop on Leith Walk. Big Eddie preferred to fly “under the radar,” so to speak.
It wasn’t a rough neighborhood or anything, but Peter still felt nervous about the lump of cash weighing down his messenger bag. The sooner he could get it out of his hands, and on its way to becoming a fresh crop of zeros at the end of his offshore bank balance, the better he would feel.
Inside the barbershop it looked like a movie set for a period film set in 1935. Black-and-green checkered floor, with a small heap of gray hair swept into one corner. Walls covered with old photos of boxers. A long, low counter strewn with various grooming products for which the packaging hadn’t changed in seventy-five years. Two pale-mint barber chairs, one with black cushions and the other white.
One occupied, and one empty.
No one in the room but Peter was under seventy. There were two customers. One was having the silver bristles shaved off his wattled neck with a straight razor wielded by a stooped and lanky barber with a full, lustrous head of white hair that had been slicked down and sharply parted on the left. The other sat off to the side, snoozing under a tented newspaper that flapped gently with the tide of his rumbling snores.
When the barber heard the bells above the door ring, he looked up at Peter then tipped his chin toward a curtained doorway in the back. Peter nodded, crossed the room, and pushed through the curtain—into the modern world.
The back room was lined with glowing screens, each flashing up-to-the-minute results of a variety of sporting events all around the world. There were several long steel tables covered in compute
r equipment and money-counting machines.
The humans in the narrow, crowded room were equally divided between brains and muscle. There were a couple of hard bastards in track pants and wife-beaters, one by each of the two doorways. The one nearest Peter was a ruddy-faced ginger pug with a missing front tooth and tattoos that looked as if they had been perpetrated by blind, malicious children. The one by the far door was tall, fat, and grim, with a shiny bald head and a wiry lumberjack’s beard.
Both were ostentatiously armed.
Seated at the center table was a nerdy pair who seemed utterly absorbed in the flow of information on the screens in front of them. The older of the two looked as if he could be Harry Potter’s dad, with messy salt-and-pepper hair and round glasses. The other was maybe Indian or Pakistani, with a ninety-eight-pound weakling physique and a nervous, bird-like demeanor.
The fifth person in the room, the one who didn’t fit so neatly into either of the two categories, was Micki.
She’d shed her fake cutesy girl drag and was back in her usual baggy sweats and trainers. She looked sleek and self-satisfied, like a cat that had proudly deposited an eviscerated mouse on your pillow.
“That was some prime camerawork, Bishop,” she said. “Way to go.” She glanced at his messenger bag. “You got the money?”
Peter nodded, patting the bag.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s do this, then.”
He handed the brick of cash over to the Indian kid, who unbanded it and ran it through a counter. Twenty-five grand exactly. The older guy with glasses started tapping away on a keyboard, while Micki handed over an identical stack of money for the younger guy to count. Same number popped up on the little screen. Twenty-five thousand.
“You sure about this?” the older guy asked.
She nodded, then winked at Peter. He couldn’t help but smile in return.
He gave his account information to the older guy, and Micki did the same. The guy handed them both printed receipts. Peter tucked his into his hip pocket, feeling giddy.