by Holly West
“What’s it say?” Larry asked.
“I can’t get back to the message but it said there’s a contract out on my life unless Esme and Liam’s biometric presence is verified in Los Angeles in twelve hours.”
“Let me see it,” Larry said.
He showed Larry the phone. “It’s gotta be fake. Right?”
Sam smirked. “You sure about that?”
“What the hell is a biometric presence?” Mack asked. If it had anything to do with facial recognition, he was fucked, because Sam was not going to be recognizable in twelve hours.
“It’s a method of authentication,” Larry said. “Like a fingerprint.”
That made Mack feel better, but only marginally. “You’ve got contacts,” he said. “They’re obviously competent if they helped you find Rachel and Sam so quickly. Call one of them up and ask them what’s going on.”
Larry regarded Mack like he was crazy. “What do you expect them to do? All that’s here is a timer.”
“Send them the app or something, see if they can disable it.”
“No can do. First of all, the phone’s locked. Second of all, I’m not going to risk sending them a potentially dangerous virus just to save your sorry ass. I do that and they’ll never do business with me again.”
“I can see you’re struggling with this,” Sam piped up. “So, let me give you some advice: whatever that message told you to do, I’d do it, if I were you.”
Mack cut his eyes to Sam. The asshole was playing it cool but didn’t seem to know exactly what the message said. “An important guy like you oughta know what it says,” Mack replied, testing him.
“That’s where you’re mistaken. I’m not the top man on the totem pole, not by a long shot. The guys upstairs don’t give two shits about me. But they give a whole lot of shits about their money, and they’re probably not too happy you’re fucking with them. These guys don’t play around.”
Mack balled up the fist that wasn’t holding his phone. Sam had finally admitted it was a con and that he was in it, but it didn’t matter now. He’d never wanted to deck someone so badly in his life, but the last thing he wanted to do was inflict any more damage to Sam’s face. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
“That’s your problem, cupcake,” Larry said. He stood up and retrieved his coat and hat from the bed. “Your money just ran out. You’re on your own.”
Arjun had made quick work of modifying the Yella app so that it pinged Mack’s phone with its ominous message. The oxy eased Rachel’s pain, if not her fear for Sam. She put the miscarriage out of her mind and concentrated on her phone, willing the ringtone she’d set for him to sound.
There was nothing to do but wait.
“Don’t go,” Mack told Larry. “I’ll give you a bigger bonus if you help me get my money back. Twenty-five percent of whatever we recover.”
Larry stretched the beanie over his head. “Nope.”
“Thirty percent.”
Larry shook his head. “The way I see it, thirty percent of nothing is nothing. You’re never going to get that money back. If I were you, I’d cut my losses.” He motioned toward Sam. “Including him.”
Larry turned and walked out the door, leaving it ajar. Mack thought about running to stop him, trying to force him to stay and finish the job. But then, he looked at the timer. He had eleven hours, fifty minutes, and thirty-three seconds left before it ran out. Plenty of time, but it took at least six hours to drive to Los Angeles—more if there was traffic or any other sort of delay. Was it worth taking a chance?
Outside, a car’s engine roared to life. Gravel crunched as its driver pulled out and sped away. Larry was on his way back to San Francisco, where, no doubt, he’d find no shortage of other suckers like him to fill the Radakovich and Associates coffers.
But Mack had a hard time caring about whatever was left of the retainer he’d paid. Instead, he thought of Maverick. He’d short-changed his son in so many ways. Geena was a bitch, sure, but he knew deep inside that the divorce had been his fault. For years she put up with the cheating rumors, his obvious lies, and even occasional phone calls from random women because she didn’t want to disrupt their son’s life. But when she walked in on one of the yoga instructors giving him a blow-job after a root yoga class at the Carmichael location six months ago, she’d filed for divorce the next day.
His phone pinged with a message, offering a quick surge of relief until he saw what it said: Your head will look good on a pike, pretty boy. A second later, the timer returned, continuing its countdown: eleven hours, forty-eight minutes, nine seconds.
Jesus. These people were monsters. But was he really any different? He’d taken money from his son’s future and thrown it away on a wild gamble, a quest for riches that never existed in the first place. And now, he’d kidnapped a man, for God’s sake. Threatened him with violence and murder. He wasn’t now, nor had he ever been, the father his son needed and deserved.
A reggae beat began thumping from his phone’s speaker. It was the theme from the television show “Cops.” Bad boys, bad boys, what ya gonna do, what ya gonna do when they come for you? The screen flashed red, green, black, and yellow, then the countdown continued.
Eleven hours, forty-six minutes, thirty-six seconds.
“What ya gonna do, bad boy?” Sam said. There was a smirk on his face underneath all that carnage. This asshole was actually having fun with this. “Better decide fast or you’re a dead man.”
Mack’s anger flared, along with his anxiety. The constant distractions made it impossible for him to think. He couldn’t figure out if this was an elaborate bluff or if he was hours away from his own brutal murder.
“You’re wasting time, thinking you have a decision to make,” Sam said. “But unless you have a serious death wish, there is no choice. My bosses will slaughter you if you don’t let me go.”
As though on cue, Mack’s phone pinged again. Except this time, it screamed like a fire truck on its way to a three-alarm blaze. Somebody sent a picture of his disembodied head, taken from the Foley Fitness website, crudely edited with black Xs over the eyes and animated blood dripping from the severed neck.
Mack Foley wasn’t the sort of man who liked to back down, but he’d be damned if he left his son without a dad. He hoped it wasn’t too late.
“Fuck it,” he said. He set his phone down and began untying Sam’s bindings. First his hands, then he moved down to his feet. Sam took advantage of the opportunity to reach for Mack’s gun. Things went black before Mack ever realized what happened.
Chapter Nineteen
Sam sat next to Rachel’s hospital bed with a concerned expression on his face. Rachel took his hand and smiled. “It should be you laying here,” she said. “Your face looks terrible.”
“I need to know you’re all right first.”
“The doctor says I’m fine. I’d feel better if I knew you were, too.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it. “I promise I’ll get checked out.”
“We got lucky, you know.”
Sam nodded. “I’m glad we discussed possible solutions in advance with Arjun in case something went wrong.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Fifty-thou for Mack Foley’s severed head. Arjun is fucking brilliant.”
“That was my idea, actually.”
He massaged the tops of her fingers. “I stand corrected. You’re the brilliant one. But then, I already knew that.”
“Well, it was his idea to send the texts.”
“I’m just glad you guys are on my team.”
“Where do you think Mack is now?”
“Probably out there somewhere, scared shitless some hitman’s gonna come and cut his head off. Once he's recovered from his injuries, of course. He’s probably nursing a massive headache at the moment.”
“Are we safe?”
“Safe as we ever were.”
They were quiet for a moment, both contemplating the events of the last
twenty-four hours. Finally, Sam said, “You could’ve told me about the baby, babe. Don’t you know that, after all we’ve been through together?”
A tear trickled down Rachel’s cheek. She could finally cry for her loss. “I knew it. I just didn’t know it.” She beat her chest lightly with her fist and the tears came faster. “I guess you have to learn some things in the hardest possible way.”
“It’s gonna be okay, Rache.”
“I’m so sorry, Sam.”
“And I’m sorry you had to go through all of this alone. We’re in this together, from now on and forever, no matter what happens. Promise me, okay?”
“I promise,” Rachel said. This time, she meant it.
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Photo Credit Mick West
HOLLY WEST is the author of the Mistress of Fortune historical mystery series. Her short crime fiction has twice been shortlisted for the Anthony Award and her stories appear online and in numerous anthologies. Visit HollyWest.com for more information.
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BOOKS BY HOLLY WEST
Mistress of Fortune
Mistress of Lies
Murder-a-Go-Go’s (as editor)
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Here is a preview from the ninth episode of A Grifter’s Song, The Sound of Breaking Bones by Eric Beetner.
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CHAPTER 1
Rachel hated straight-up stealing. It takes such little skill. It’s brutish and simple. Anybody can do it, and they often do. But sometimes, you gotta do it. But even for Rachel, her stealing had style.
She stepped up to the counter of the fast food joint. Grease hung in the air like a foggy day. Her phone was pressed to the side of her face and she spoke in a deep southern twang. The slack-jawed kid behind the register watched her approach like he was eyeing a snake slithering toward him; a little leery, ready to jump if he had too.
“I am asking. I’m here right now. Gimme a goddamn minute.”
Keeping the phone pressed to her ear, she first let out an exasperated sigh, then asked the kid, “Do you have a lost and found? My dumbass husband left his wallet here.”
She immediately went back to speaking in the phone, her annoyance at the dumbass crackled hot as a live wire.
“Gimme a goddamn minute, he’s gotta go check. Jesus Christmas.”
The kid didn’t leave his post at the register. He turned to the back where only one round-bellied guy could be seen standing next to the fryer.
“June? Can you check the lost and found?”
From the back office a young girl not more than twenty-two stuck her pimpled face out and called back like a pissed-off teenager, which she practically was.
“Okay, okay I will. Keep your panties on.”
Rachel cupped her hand over the phone and spoke to the kid again. “Might as well get some food while I’m here. Gimme two double cheeseburgers, two fries and—” She took her hand away and spoke into the phone. “What? Fine.”
She rolled her eyes so far up into her head she might have seen behind her. “Make that one fry and one onion ring. And two chocolate shakes.”
She practically screamed into the phone. “Are you serious?”
With a huff of hot air she corrected the order again. “One chocolate and one vanilla shake.”
On the other end of the line, Sam laughed at her, but he knew she wouldn’t break character.
When in the deep south, as they were here outside of Starkville, Mississippi, you can affect any number of southern-style accents and get away with it. There were the newscasters who kept only enough drawl to seem authentic, the school teachers who polished their Delta roots with a smooth layer of East Coast grammar and flat vowels, and then there was the trailer trash—which Rachel had taken the guise of—who spoke with a broad Hee-Haw accent you almost couldn’t go too far with. Oh, sure, an anthropologist could tell the difference between accents at every mile marker off Highway 61, but if anyone looked at her and said, “You’re not from around here, are you?” All she had to do was make up some place like, “Nah, I’m from Hog’s Head, Tennessee,” and they’d nod and move on with it.
The pimply-faced girl, June, came out of the back holding a creased and worn cardboard box with L&F written in Sharpie on the side. Up close, she looked like a wet rag. Her hair hung like overcooked spaghetti and aside from the red welts of the blemishes, her skin looked as gray and lifeless as a corpse.
Rachel, an expert at controlling a situation and the people involved, kept up the nonstop chatter and dove her hands into the box. Chances were there was no wallet in there. Ninety-nine out of a hundred times there wasn’t. But it was the sport of it. She could have come in, ordered take out and left five minutes later without another word spoken to these minimum wage desperadoes, but what’s the fun in that?
She saw a vinyl-sided wallet in the midst of three trucker hats, a hooded sweatshirt, a black comb, a container for a kid’s retainer and a crumpled pack of Marlboros.
Into the phone she screeched, “It’s here you dim-witted dipshit. I swear on a stack of Bibles if your own ass wasn’t attached to you, you’d leave it behind on the toilet seat.”
She flipped it open and thumbed out the driver’s license.
“Of course it’s yours, you bucket-head. Says your name right here, Cliff.”
The slack-jawed kid held up a finger like he wanted to intervene but she was a bulldozer bearing down on him. Best get out of the way. The total for her food order, fifteen eighty-three, glowed blue on the register screen.
“What?” She held out the phone to him. “He wants to talk to you.”
The kid drew back his attention-getting finger and let his mouth open and close a few times in mute protest. Rachel shoved the phone forward. He took it, set his greasy skin against the screen as he pressed it to his ear.
“Hello?”
Sam channeled Johnny Cash with his accent. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it without laughing.
“Is that really my wallet you got there? Did you find it in the toilet?”
“Um, I don’t know where—”
“What’s the name? Is it Cliff?”
The kid read the name off the license, unknowingly giving them the answer to proving it was theirs. “Um, Cliff Hickman.”
“Well, shit, son. That’s me. Hot damn. Now listen, I want you to tell her this happens all the time. She thinks I’m some kind of dipshit, but I want you to let her know this happens every day, got it?”
The delay gave Rachel time to open the money section and check the contents. Three twenties, a ten and three ones. About all you could expect from a wallet lost at a mom and pop burger joint. She slid out the ten and handed it to the kid.
“Thank you so much. Praise Jesus we found it.”
She reached for the phone. “What’s he saying to you?”
The kid released the phone and she shoved the ten into his open hand. His jaw slacked open a little further. Share the wealth. A good grifter’s trick. Make them a part of the windfall. Complicit. Ten bucks in this town could buy him a beer or two, maybe a toke of a meth pipe if that’s his thing. Maybe a hand job from his stepsister if she’s willing. Who knows?
“I’ma get you one of them chain wallets,” she said into the phone.
A bag with a grease stain already spreading at the bottom landed on the counter next to her, dropped by the fat guy from the back. Rachel held the phone to her ear, but moved the mouthpiece away and spoke to the kid again. He had yet to pocket his ten bucks.
“That’s yours, slick. A reward.” She winked at him, but with no come-on attached to it. “Run and get that other girl, will you? I wanna thank her too.”
The greasy kid didn’t move. Obviously someone had told him on his first day to never leave his post at the front. Rachel knew how to make people do what she wanted, though.
“Go on. Go get her so I can say thank you. This means so much to me. You don’t know how long I prayed and here it is, an answered prayer. Maybe a miracle? I dunno. Tell you what though, it’s a miracle I stay with such a dumbass dipshit of a man who’s also a lazy tub of lard most days. Now run on and get her so I can bless her day.”
The kid moved just to get away from the machine gun attack of Rachel’s words. With the counter abandoned and the blue numbers of her order total glowing in the grease cloud, Rachel snatched the bag from the counter and walked out the door. Free dinner and sixty-three bucks to the good.
Better than straight stealing, but only slightly. And way better than paying for it.
CHAPTER 2
When Rachel got back to their modest hotel room, Sam sat on the bed watching a preacher on TV. The man in the all-white suit let sweat run freely down his face, his eyes clenched shut as he practically swallowed the microphone for his soul-saving rant to the flock.
Rachel set down the bag of food. The grease stain had spread to cover the entire bottom of the bag now.
“Dinner’s served.”
“I tell you,” Sam said, not taking his eyes off the TV set. “If we could figure out a way into this world, this is the original long con, and the most successful in history.”
Rachel shrugged off her jacket and tried to watch a little of the preacher man, but turned away in disgust.
“Taking money from these people is like those hunters who go to some ranch in Texas and shoot a lion who’s been chained to a tree. There’s no sport in it.”
“Yeah, but the money that’s been taken from these marks for two thousand years would buy and sell every billionaire on the planet ten times over. There’s more than enough slices of the pie for us to take a bite.”
