Underwater Restorations

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  The cops are working their way up the building. As we descend we can hear cops talking to one another, giving orders. They still haven't searched the elevator. That'll probably change when the dogs get to the loft.

  We reach the basement and I check: no cops. We climb out, remove a sewer grate and drop down into the sewer, replacing the grate behind us. In a couple of blocks we'll get out and Puo will pick us up.

  We jog to the first turn, then slow to a brisk walk.

  "You can talk now," I say.

  "What happened?"

  "Pete rolled on us. He figured we wouldn't find out. It was a hedge, either he'd get paid reward money if they arrested us, or we'd be successful and we'd pay him. Either way, he gets paid. He never thought we'd be so stupid as to try what we did."

  "They think I'm a criminal. They wanted to arrest me."

  You are a criminal. What did you expect? But I don't say these thoughts out loud. I've lived this moment; I know those words won't be helpful. It's the moment when you realize that's it, there's no going back. Mine was when I was seven. I botched picking a tourist's pocket and had to run for my life.

  "I want out." His voice is small.

  There is no out. The only way out is to purchase it with more money than we've ever had, which means pulling more jobs. I don't have the heart to tell him, so I say, "Okay."

  He chews on his lip. "So, what now?"

  "First, we need to deal with Pete. He'll know soon, if not already, that we know he ratted. He'll move against us."

  Winn pales. "How'd Pete even know I was with you? All I ever told him was that I had another source of income."

  "I bartered for your debt. Pete didn't let you go easily. He had his very own personal doctor to patch up his thugs, your services were more valuable than the coin. The only way I could convince him was to add your debt to mine."

  "But I was still paying him. I used the money you paid me with. You took on double my debt?"

  "Yeah."

  He pauses, then says, "Thank you."

  I can't remember the last time someone has sincerely thanked me for anything. Ashley doesn't count, she has no idea what she agreed to. "Uh, you're welcome."

  "He would have never let me go, would he? Even after I worked it off?"

  "Not likely."

  "So how do we deal with Pete?"

  "We settle the score."

  ***

  Puo closes the tan ledger when Winn and I enter the cockpit of the Pelican. "Welcome back, Rookie." Puo smiles in greeting. The smile is genuine but distant. Not saying anything to the Feds for twenty-four hours does wonders for trust, but we're not completely there yet.

  Winn nods his greeting and sits down. I stand behind him.

  "Any progress?" I ask Puo. Time to put on a show for Winn. Hopefully, this will get us to a hundred percent trust.

  "Five as far as I can tell. Two we can easily hit—his restaurant The South Grill and a small local bank. That may be enough with a fire run."

  "Yeah," I say, "but with a fire run the mark is clued in."

  "But it works, or we get lucky and he tries to move it, bringing it out into the open." Puo hands me the ledger, which I slip into my bag.

  "Guys," Winn says, "what are you talking about?"

  Hook, line and sinker. Winn really would've made a good patsy.

  I answer, "Pete divides his wealth among multiple locations. It protects him against unforeseen loss, like theft. If he loses one stash, it's only a percentage of the total. We know of two locations but not the rest. A fire run is when you clue the mark in by going after the pieces you know about in a very set fashion, say every three days. In this case, the restaurant and the bank, after those are gone, the mark will assume we know the rest and will either check on them or have them moved. Either way, we're watching and will learn the location of the remaining pieces."

  "And that will get him off our backs?" Winn asks.

  "His men will turn on him," I say. "Half only work for him because they're indebted, the other half because he pays regularly. Take away his capital, his ability to pay, and we cut him off from his men." I sit down. "We'll hit the restaurant first."

  I hope this is the last time I have to lie to Winn.

  ***

  The following afternoon, I sit in Pete's office, waiting for the pompous ass to stop reading his Zen and the Art of Leadership book. I can't help but think of Winn, sitting in The South Grill restaurant at this very moment waiting for a cue that will never come.

  Pete thinks it's a power play to make people wait. I should have sent Puo and loaded him up with beans. I start laughing at the thought. That gets Pete's attention.

  "Something funny?"

  "Just something Puo does." Normally, I'd draw this out, savor the moment, but Winn's waiting. "We couldn't unload the sculpture. Someone tipped off the Feds."

  "That's not really my problem, now is it?"

  "It is, since you're the one that tipped them off."

  Pete leans back and subtly moves his hand along the chair's arm. To an untrained eye, it would look like he was getting comfortable. To the trained eye, he had just called for help. "That's quite an accusation. Can you prove it?"

  "Nope. Very hard to go to the Feds and ask who tipped them off. One might be able to trace the money, but you didn't get paid, did you, Petey?"

  The muscles twitch on one side of his face. Petey...I'll have to remember that.

  Two of his thugs come to stand behind the desk on either side of him. "So you come in here with accusations you can't prove and no money. Jerome, Boots—"

  "Hold on, I do have something of interest." I pull out the tan ledger and hand it to him.

  I've been schooled for over twenty years, in cons, games, swindles, flimflams, you name it. Composure is the single greatest factor that affects the outcome of any of them. But I can't help but smile at his shaking hands.

  He compares the ledger I handed him to the current one on his desk, then glances over at the safe. "How?" Pete starts, then collects himself. "I just checked hours ago. You haven't stolen anything."

  "Nope, not a thing. Why go through all that effort when the Boss offers a ten percent finder's fee on assets people hide from him?"

  It's the knockout punch. He blanches and drops the ledger. He skips over the first stage of grief and goes immediately to anger. "Jerome, Boots, kill her. Make her suffer. I don't care what you do."

  Jerome and Boots shift their stance to box Pete in.

  "Looks like Jerome and Boots have a new employer," I say. When the Boss learned of the situation, the first thing he did was forgive debts and offer three times what Pete paid to control his men. Much easier to have allies than a war.

  The elation of victory is short lived. Pete starts to tremble. Soon I start to see that same need in Pete's eyes that I saw in Winn's. There's a reason I went into thievery and not other criminal enterprises. The look on Pete's face is it. I can't stand it. It robs the triumph right out of the moment. I wouldn't have the heart to follow through. That's why I rob underwater graves—doesn't hurt anyone.

  I get up and pause halfway to the door. Pete's whimper of "please" will haunt me for years.

  ***

  "How'd it go with Pete?" Puo asks.

  "He crumbled much faster than I thought." I'm back on the Pelican, heading toward The South Grill.

  Silence settles over the cockpit. Puo has no stomach for that stuff either.

  After several minutes of fighting traffic on the Air 20, he says, "You know, with the ten percent finder's fee, we could actually pay for one of us to go legit. Pete was one rich son-of-a-bitch."

  "I know." We both know we're not talking about ourselves and there's nothing left to say. The rest of the ride is in a comfortable silence.

  The South Grill is a dive, a total hole—plain wooden booths, laminate table tops. There are even grease stains running all along the top of the walls. Winn is sitting in the only occupied booth, eating a stack of pancakes. I slide in next t
o him and Puo plops down on the other side of the table.

  He doesn't say anything at first, but sips his coffee. "There never were conch shells on the beach, were there?"

  Damn, the man learns quick. "No, there weren't."

  He nods. "What's the point of gathering them then?"

  Right to the heart of the matter. "Pete's been dealt with—definitively. You were the one to suggest going to the Feds. We needed to make sure you were clean."

  He starts to object, but I interrupt him, "There was a chance Pete was playing you, even without your knowledge. We had to make sure."

  "Are you sure now?"

  "Yeah," I say. And we are. The restaurant's been monitored since about eight hours after we learned of Pete's betrayal. There's been no out of the ordinary activity telling us Pete had been tipped off.

  The waitress comes over and I order a bowl of oatmeal with no intention of eating it and a glass of water. Puo loads up on an omelet.

  "How'd you deal with Pete?" Winn asks.

  "We stole his ledger," I say, "to find out where he hid his cash."

  "Ahem," Puo says.

  "Oh, all right. Puo, in an astounding display of skill, cracked the safe in amazingly, stupefying, mystifying speed—without which, we would have surely failed and been roasted alive. Satisfied?"

  Puo bows his head.

  "Anyway, turns out Pete's been lying to the Boss for years about what he made. It was easier to notify the Boss and let him do the dirty work. He'll give us a ten percent cut of what he recovers."

  "I didn't realize you knew the Boss."

  "He's her father," Puo says. He's calm about it, matter-of-fact about dropping one of my deepest secrets. I've sought for so long to distance myself from him. Puo remains silent and eyes me, inviting me to challenge him. I decline.

  Eventually Puo caves to the intervening silence and says, "C'mon Isa, if he's gonna be a fully vested member, he's gotta know."

  "Fully vested member?" Winn asks.

  "The rookie's graduatin'!" Puo grins and pretends to wipe away a tear. "I'm so proud."

  "You have two options," I say. "One, you stay on and help us rebuild. We could use the help."

  "Is that the only reason you want me to stay on?" Winn asks. His full, honest face regards me over his pancakes. I divert my eyes to stay focused.

  "Two, you go legit. Our take from the finder's fee is enough to cover the cost. You'll have to move overseas, but it's a chance at a normal life. So there it is, a way out. They don't come often." Never actually, this is the first time we've ever had the capital to try to do it.

  "What about you guys?"

  "What about us?" I ask. "We are what we are. It's a little hot here for us right now, so we're setting up shop in a new city." It's stressful, starting all over again.

  We fall into silence as the waitress brings our food. Puo dives right into his omelet, while I ignore the gray stuff in front of me that's supposed to pass for oatmeal. The clinking of Puo's fork is the only sound at the table for several minutes, punctuated occasionally as Winn pokes at his pancakes.

  Finally the silence is too much and I say, "Look, you don't have to decide now—"

  I never see Winn move. One second he's next to me pushing food around on his plate and the next we're locked in a full-on kiss.

  He breaks away and says, "I'm in. You're a real piece of work Isa Schimdt."

  "Wait till you meet Dad," Puo says.

  I'd tell Puo to shut up, but I can't. I'm not done with Winn. The maple syrup on his lips is delicious.

  The End

  The adventures continue for Isa, Puo, and Winn in their first full length novel, The Solid-State Shuffle debuting October 2016! You can click here to get it for the special limited-time preorder price of $0.99! Flip to the next section to read more.

  Available now!

  Isa, Puo, and Winn’s adventures continue in their first full length novel, The Solid-State Shuffle. Click here to learn more!

  After cracking an underwater vault in their first major job in the Seattle Isles, Isa and her crew think they’re on easy street again—that is, if they can figure out what it is exactly they stole. A question, they soon learn, where their very lives hang in the balance.

  Thrust into a high-stakes game of subterfuge and deception by the local mob Boss, Isa and her crew must scramble to unravel the mystery of what is they stole while unseen forces move against them.

  Harried. Threatened at every turn. Isa and her crew must stay one step ahead to stay alive.

  But it’s not theft if you put it back. Right?

  FIRST PUBLISHED IN

  Underwater Restorations first debuted in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show in January of 2014 (issue 37) and March 2014 (issue 38) edited by Edmund R. Schubert. Subscribe at www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com for bimonthly great fiction!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Word-of-mouth and reviews are vital for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed reading this story, please consider leaving a review wherever you purchased it. Taking a moment to leave a few lines sharing your thoughts would be helpful for other readers and very much appreciated. Thank you for reading!

  If you want to be the first to know when a new Sunken City Capers story becomes available (and receive a free exclusive story set in the Sunken City Capers universe available only to newsletter subscribers and occasional other goodies) you can sign up for his mailing list at: http://tinyurl.com/jaballard. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  ALSO BY JEFFREY A. BALLARD

  Sunken City Capers:

  The Solid-State Shuffle, Book 1

  The Elgin Deceptions, Book 2

  Leverage, Book 3

  Book 4 to be announced soon!

  The Skim Job: A Sunken City Capers Short Story

  (only available to newsletter recipients)

  The Oracle Algorithm (Short Novel)

  The Bear that Painted the Stars (Novella)

  The Watchers (Novella)

  The Highlight of a Life (Short Story)

  Vacationing Offworld (Collection)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jeffrey A. Ballard is a nomadic Yankee that currently lives in the Texas Hill Country. A long time fascination with the ocean lead him into academia, where he happily spends his days playing scientist and spends his nights and early mornings writing about the science he wished existed. His science fiction has appeared in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and Fiction River: Time Streams to date. You can learn about new releases, sign up for his newsletter and connect with Jeffrey at www.jaballard.com.

  Copyright Information

  Underwater Restorations

  Copyright © 2014 by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  Published 2015 by New Rochester Publishing, LLC

  First published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show

  Cover and Layout copyright © 2015 by New Rochester Publishing

  Cover design by New Rochester Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Robert Adrian Hillmans/Dreamstime

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.