The Infamous Frankie Lorde 1, page 9
“What?” I asked, confused.
“I was just thinking, maybe we should give our target a code name. You know, so no one will know who we’re talking about when we’re talking about you-know-who,” Ollie explained.
“And you chose White Tiger?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Because nobody will be curious about that.”
“Well, then you choose,” Ollie said. Then, a little sullenly, he added, “He does have a tiger, though. And it’s a pretty cool code name.”
“He owns a tiger?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah,” Ollie said. “At least, that’s the rumor.”
“Geez,” I said as we joined the line of kids waiting to buy their lunches.
“We’re not going to steal his tiger, are we?” Ollie asked me suddenly.
I gave him an are-you-kidding look. “We’re not going to take his tiger,” I confirmed. But even as I said it, I was thinking about how cool my dad would’ve thought the idea was. It was exactly the kind of job he would’ve loved.
But Dad wasn’t here, and I was working with a novice as a partner, so stealing a freaking tiger wasn’t going to happen.
“Oh, thank God.” Ollie let out a nervous breath. “So what, then?”
I thought about this a minute, then shook my head. “Don’t know yet,” I answered honestly. “Gotta figure out what’s most valuable. To him and to them.”
“Them?” Ollie asked.
He was confused by this, and I realized it was a fair question. Ollie had no clue why I’d chosen Christian Miles as my target in the first place. I mean, yeah, the guy was loaded, and that was definitely part of it. But the real reason went deeper than that.
And if Ollie was going to put himself on the line for the job, he deserved to know why we were doing it.
“Do you know who my uncle is?” I asked Ollie.
“Sure,” he answered. “He’s a cop, right?”
I was impressed. Ollie had said he knew everyone in this town, and I was beginning to believe him.
“He’s a detective, actually,” I said. I’m not sure why I corrected Ollie. He was close enough. “Anyway, he was working a case yesterday that didn’t exactly go his way.”
Ollie gave me a questioning look.
“Christian Miles manages these apartments over on the south side of town and he’s been messing with the tenants who live there,” I explained.
Ollie raised an eyebrow at me.
“Messing with them how?” he asked.
“Like, he’s making them live in a dirt hole with rats and cockroaches and stuff, and refuses to make repairs. It’s super disgusting and super shady.”
“So he’s a slumlord millionaire!” Ollie said, laughing at his own joke.
“Yeah,” I said, holding back my laughter, even though deep down I sort of thought it was clever. “Anyway, when the people in the apartments fought back, he kicked them out or threatened to have them deported.”
“What a creep,” Ollie said.
“Exactly,” I said.
“So I’m guessing Miles got away with it?” Ollie whispered.
“He’s about to,” I answered, pausing to order a cheeseburger and fries. “And it’s not fair to all those people living there. They don’t deserve to be treated that way. Especially since Miles has more than enough money to be a decent human being and is choosing not to. I mean, this is some evil dictatorship we’re talking about. So if the system’s not going to make it right…”
“Then we will,” Ollie finished, placing his hands on his hips like Superman.
“Not superheroes,” I reminded him.
“Okay, okay,” he said, letting his arms drop to his sides.
After we’d grabbed our food, we began to look around for a place to sit. But before I could pinpoint the perfect eating spot, Ollie was nudging my arm, nearly making my drink slosh all over my lunch.
I gave him an annoyed look as I attempted to regain control over my tray.
“This way, partner,” he said to me with a smile. “I think there’s someone you should meet.”
We weaved in and out of tables as Ollie led me over to one in the far corner. Just as we were about to pass the middle of the room, I saw a leg shoot into the walkway and managed to sidestep it just in time. I turned to look at the culprit, who was busy pulling her bootied foot back under the table she was sitting at.
“Sorry, Frankie, didn’t see you walking there,” Annabelle said sweetly to me.
The gaggle of friends surrounding Annabelle giggled as they watched the exchange.
“Right,” I said slowly. And then, unable to help myself, I added, “I’d say we should get you some glasses, but I’m not sure you could pull them off.”
Annabelle’s friends let out a collective gasp as I turned around and continued on my way.
I didn’t get why I’d become Annabelle’s target in such a short time, but one thing was sure: I wasn’t going to be an easy one. And as much as I’d prefer not to be noticed at all, no way was I going to be anyone’s punching bag.
Dad didn’t raise me that way.
By the time I caught up with Ollie, he had already arrived at a table that had four other kids sitting at it. There were three boys and one girl at different stages of eating, but they all stopped what they were doing as we approached.
“Hey, Ollie,” one of the boys said, throwing out his fist and bumping it into Ollie’s.
“Ryan!” Ollie answered, not waiting for an invitation to sit down.
“Man, James and I were just talking about when we’re gonna have the next gathering of Fortnite! I can’t wait to kick your butts again,” Ryan said excitedly. “You’re going down hard, son!”
I gave Ollie a sideways smirk as I sat down beside him.
“Uh, yeah,” Ollie said, glancing at me, slightly embarrassed to be outed as a gaming nerd. “Definitely soon, bro. Hey, this is Frankie. Frankie, this is Ryan. He’s a—”
“Fellow gamer?” I cut in, shoving a few fries into my mouth.
“You play too?” Ryan asked, looking at me like I was a magical unicorn he’d only ever read about in books. I guess girls around here aren’t into gaming?
“A little,” I answered. There’d actually been a six-month period when all my free time had been spent schooling online games. Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, Fortnite—I played them all, only moving on to the next challenge once I’d mastered the previous one.
In the end, I realized nothing beats gaming people in real life.
“Really?” Ollie asked, surprised. He looked like he wanted to ask me more but then seemed to change his mind. “Frankie, Ryan lives on the south side.”
“Oh!” I said, finally understanding why we were there.
“Why? You live there too?” Ryan asked skeptically as he took in my appearance.
“No,” I said. “But I know someone who does.”
“Ah” was all Ryan said to that.
“Maybe you know her? Her name’s Estella Martinez?” I said nonchalantly.
Ryan chewed his food as he thought about the name for a bit. Finally his face lit up and he dropped the sandwich he’d been holding.
“Mrs. Martinez? Little old lady in Building 302?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, though I had no idea where she’d lived. “That’s her. Do you know her well?”
Ryan shook his head. “Just in passing,” he answered. “But I haven’t seen her around lately. I think she moved out or something.”
“She’s gone, but she didn’t move out,” I said. “She was kicked out by the landlord.”
“That jerk?” Ryan said, a shadow crossing over his face.
“So you know him,” I said.
“Seen him a few times, but never talked to him myself,” Ryan said. “I just know he’s given a few families trouble.”
“But not you guys?” I asked, pushing the conversation a bit further.
“Nah. My dad’s a handyman. We learned early on that anything that needs fixing, we have to do it ourselves. But we’re lucky. Most of the other people who live there don’t have that. They just have to deal with it. Either that, or”—Ryan put his fists up in the air and opened his hands like they were exploding—“poof. They’re gone.”
I nodded, knowing by now what he meant.
“So that’s what happened to her,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “You know, I always wondered. Then again, people come and go around there, so you never can tell.”
“You know anyone else who’s had problems with Christian Miles?” I asked him as I took a huge bite of my burger. Ollie gave me a funny glance as I felt a big glob of ketchup slide down the side of my mouth. Looking horrified, he handed me one of his napkins. I took it and wiped my face while simultaneously rolling my eyes.
The guy couldn’t handle a real girl eating, how was he going to handle conning a billionaire?
“The better question is: Who hasn’t had some sort of run-in with him?” Ryan said. “Like I said, he’s a grade-A jerk. Always threatening someone about something. The only reason he leaves us alone is because we leave him alone. If we didn’t, he’d try to get us deported in a second.”
His eyes suddenly grew wide as he realized what he’d just said, and he glanced at me nervously. He’d obviously just remembered that I was a relative stranger to him and who knew if I was trustworthy.
“Not that we’re illegal or anything,” he said, backtracking, as he looked over at Ollie with concern.
“I didn’t think you were,” I said, not making a big deal of the comment. “Honestly, I couldn’t care less if you were. None of my business.”
Ryan looked relieved at this and visibly relaxed before diving back into his food.
“Why do you want to know about all that anyway?” he asked, cocking his head to the side as he studied me.
“Well, I know Mrs. Martinez and I just think it’s really unfair what happened to her. I guess I wish there was something I could do to help,” I explained, careful not to give too much away.
Ryan nodded. “That’s cool of you,” he said. “But I think short of giving everyone over there free room and board and fixing up all the things wrong with the dump, there’s not a lot you can do.”
“Right,” I said, shrugging. “Figured I’d ask around anyway.”
Ryan chewed for a few moments in silence, then pointed his sandwich at me as an afterthought.
“But if you ever decide to do something to get back at Christian Miles, I’m totally in for egging his house or something like that,” he said, like this would somehow get back at the guy for everything he’d done.
“I’ll let you know if I think of anything you can help with,” I said, hoping this was enough to get Ryan to forget most of what I’d said before.
Because the plan that was beginning to form in my head involved way more than a trip to the dairy section at the grocery store.
Entry Twenty-One
“Why are we hanging out here?” Ollie asked, wrinkling his nose up in disgust. “It smells funny, and it’s doing nothing for my complexion.”
I paused in the middle of typing to take a deep breath. I’d found myself doing that a lot lately. It kept me from getting too annoyed and saying something I’d regret later. Because the truth was: Ollie was my only real ally at the moment. And although I hated to admit it—I think I actually needed him.
Besides, it wasn’t like he was all that bad. I was simply used to having a partner I didn’t have to explain every little thing to.
I bit my lip and wondered if Dad had ever felt this way about me. If he had, he’d never shown it. Which gave me even more motivation to try to be patient with Ollie.
“That’s the smell of books and information,” I said, pointing to the rows and rows of periodicals lining the walls of the room we were in. “It’s a library. You’re gonna have to get used to it if you stay in this business.”
“But why?” Ollie whined. “Isn’t that what the Internet is for? Looking up information in the comfort of your own home so you don’t have to be around all these musty books and…dust? I can literally feel it clogging my pores as we sit here.”
Breathe.
“Your pores are fine,” I assured him. “And we’re here because it’s a public place with public access to the Internet.”
“And…you don’t have a computer at home?” Ollie said, fishing.
“Of course I do,” I said. “I’m not a total weirdo.”
Ollie made a sweeping motion with his hand at our current whereabouts as if he was questioning whether that was true.
“We’re going to be searching for stuff we don’t want people to know about,” I explained. “More specifically, stuff we don’t want the government to be able to trace back to us. Like, they would for sure be able to pinpoint that the research we’re about to do came from this library. They could even tell which computer terminal we’re using. But without photographic evidence or some sort of user info to prove we were the ones here, it’d be a dead end for detectives.”
I paused here as I noticed the look of relief on Ollie’s face. Seeing it, I realized I didn’t want him to feel too comfortable about what we were about to do. That’s how mistakes get made.
“Unless, of course, we were to do something while we’re here that would draw unwanted attention to us, causing a witness to be able to describe us later, thus leading the trail back to us anyway. So I guess what I’m saying is, don’t make a scene? Try to blend in, sink into the shadows. Be less…you. Anyway, the point is to do your research in public while being private about it. This is Thieving 101. Learn it, love it, live it.”
“Ahhhh,” Ollie said, the logic kicking in finally. “Big Brother. I got you.”
He paused then and surveyed the room, in what I could tell was his way of being stealthy.
“Couldn’t they be watching us right now, though?” he whispered, pulling the collar up on his red checkered jacket like it would suddenly make him invisible.
“They could be,” I admitted. “But I scanned for cameras when we came in. They don’t have surveillance set up anywhere. I guess stolen books isn’t high on the list of this library’s concerns.”
“What about our phones? Can’t they trace us through those?” he asked, sounding more and more paranoid by the minute.
“Why do you think I told you to turn yours off when we got off the bus?” I asked him, though I was more than a little impressed that he’d even thought to ask the question. Not many civilians think about all the ways the government can track its citizens. Even fewer take precautions to prevent it. Well, unless they have a need to.
Maybe Ollie wasn’t completely hopeless at this stuff after all.
“Okay, so what’s on the research docket today?” he asked after I’d been typing for a few minutes.
We were sitting at a cubicle in the corner, far away from most of the other patrons. This both ensured privacy so we could talk freely and guaranteed that fewer people would remember us being there.
Out of sight, out of mind.
“Right now, we need to get a comprehensive list of Christian Miles’s assets,” I said. “Any money he has in his possession, personal items that are valuable, anything that might be worth taking.”
“Right,” Ollie said. “Well, there’s the tiger—”
“We’re not stealing the tiger,” I cut in forcefully.
“I know that,” he said. “But you wanted a list of his assets and I was just starting out with the most obvious one.”
He pulled a notebook out of his bag and opened it to a blank page. Poising the pen above the paper like an old-school secretary, he wrote what I assumed was Tiger at the top.
“What else?” he asked, ready to take down my notes.
“One article says he has more than a million dollars in a vault hidden on his property,” I said. I paused as Ollie took his time sliding the pen across the page with a flowery flourish, then gave me a smile to indicate he was done.
“He owns more than twenty cars,” I said next, reading an online feature published by Architectural Digest. “Most of them are one of a kind and retail at more than a hundred K each.”
“Yowza!” Ollie exclaimed. “I’d give up my signed copy of A Star Is Born, by Babs herself, to drive one of those.”
“None of his art is listed by name, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have something valuable hidden away somewhere,” I muttered. “He recently had a cell phone case commissioned of his own face from a famous jeweler, but I haven’t been able to find its worth anywhere.”
“I’d say that’s stupid, but…,” Ollie said shyly, then held up his own cell phone, which was covered with what looked like a professional photo of him decked out in a purple paisley suit while posing against a glittery background.
I had no words to that, so I turned back to the computer screen.
“He also collects watches,” I said, scrolling through an online photo album of Christian Miles’s personal collection.
I didn’t realize Ollie was peering over my shoulder until I felt his breath on my neck.
“Holy guacamole!” he said suddenly. “Who spends seventy thousand dollars on a watch? For that much, it better be able to freaking stop time!”
“Nope,” I said. “Just tells it. But all fancy-like.”
“What a stupid thing to spend your money on,” Ollie said, shaking his head.
“And having twenty cars that just sit there is practical?” I challenged.
“At least they can take you places,” he said.
“What you have to know is that rich people spend their money on a lot of stupid things,” I said. “I’ve seen it so often that it doesn’t even surprise me anymore.”
“What’s the stupidest thing you’ve seen someone buy?” Ollie asked, suddenly intrigued.
