Rogue Asset (Rogue Warrior Thrillers Book 11), page 3
Bob peeled off another twenty. The cobbler raised his chin slightly, looking down his nose at the two bills. He gestured with his hand for Bob to count off another.
Bob did so. “But I’m telling you now, if this isn’t good information, I’m going to be extremely upset.”
The cobbler snatched the three bills. “She comes in once every few weeks. Haven’t seen her since last week, but she does have two pairs of shoes in the store right now, so I’d expect that any day—”
“Doesn’t really help me,” Bob said. “Maybe you could send her an email, remind her that they’re done?”
The little man shrugged. “I probably could. But… it’s expensive living in the city.”
Bob rolled his eyes and peeled off another forty dollars.
The cobbler took it, then dutifully moved over to the PC and tapped out the message. “There. She’s usually pretty diligent.”
It took another hour, with Bob waiting patiently at the front of the store, before the door chimed again. Kandi Oakley walked in looking as unglamorous as possible in sweatpants and a gray hoodie sweatshirt, her hair pushed up and held by an elastic band.
She saw Bob. Then she saw the older cobbler looking guilty.
“Ms. Oakley?” Bob said. “I’m—”
Her eyes widened. Before he could finish the sentence, she turned and ran out the front door.
Bob gave chase, the door flying open and crashing into the side of the building as he burst out onto the street. She had sneakers on and was already a block away, her athleticism evident.
He took off after her, his feet flying down the sidewalk, steadily gaining ground, glad for a quiet neighborhood.
At the next corner, she looked back and saw him giving chase. “HELP!” she screamed. “HELP! RAPE! RAPE!”
A pair of young construction workers were sitting in the nearby bus shelter. Both stood up immediately and charged over, cutting Bob off. “That man’s trying to assault me!” she screamed.
Ah, hell.
Bob watched her flee across the street, even as the two men, backs to her, advanced on Bob. They were both shorter but wider than him, with arms like Thor. Do kids just routinely scarf creatine for breakfast now or something? Geez.
“Gents… not assaulting anyone, I promise,” he suggested, both palms up to placate them.
Neither man was listening. The taller of the two tried to grab Bob by the upper arm. “You need to talk to a cop, bud,” he said.
Bob sidestepped his clutch and bent his left knee just enough to provide leverage, then kicked out sideways, knocking the man’s lead foot out.
He fell over, his friend reaching to try to grab him, but the first man’s weight took both of them down.
“Stay!” Bob cautioned for the second time in twelve hours as he leaped over them.
He sprinted across the road as Kandi disappeared east down Elm Street, a hundred feet or more ahead. His view of her was cut off by tall buildings.
Shit, shit, shit. Got to move faster. He was pushing himself hard, and he still trained every morning, but Bob could feel the weight of his forty-five years, legs seeming heavier than they used to as his Stan Smith tennis shoes pounded the concrete sidewalk.
He turned the corner onto Elm.
But she was nowhere in sight.
On the north side of the street was another series of low-rise brick walkups, with courtyard parking. Could’ve darted in there, try to lose me between the buildings. He approached the driveway cautiously.
When he reached the next corner, right before the buildings’ shared central courtyard and parking, he could hear raised voices. Bob leaned around the corner, craning to hear the conversation over the distance.
“Well, how’d you figure they knew you?” Errol Green was behind the wheel of a rusting muscle car, an old gray-and-black Mustang GT from before Bob was born. He was older than his portrait studio photo, with short hair and a neatly cropped beard. Kandi stood beside the vehicle, leaning against the door and explaining her morning.
“I don’t know. He said my name, like official and stuff. ‘Ms. Oakley,’ he said.”
“Then what?”
“Well, I don’t know. Then I ran, that’s what. Now, just what did you expect me to do?”
Bob estimated the distance. They were about twenty feet away. He could get to the car before she could round it and climb in, he supposed.
And he’s not taking off without his partner.
Bob stepped out from the corner and approached them. He was about halfway before Kandi noticed him in her periphery.
“Oh, shit!” she said.
“Mr. Green?” Bob said. “I just need a minute to—”
Errol threw the Mustang into gear and stood on the gas, the sports coupe roaring towards the exit and straight at Bob.
4
The car bore down on him. Bob’s eyes flitted both ways, realizing there was no space between the car and the wall to duck out of the way.
Ah, hell. This is going to… He threw himself forward, no time to even finish the thought, his body coming down hard on the car’s hood, thin sheet metal crumpling slightly, his momentum carrying him up the windshield and onto the car’s roof. Bob grabbed frantically in mid-throw for the roof’s raised front edge, both sets of fingers clinging desperately as the Mustang fishtailed out onto the street.
Errol knew he was there, clearly. He swung the car left and right, standing on the pedal as it shot east on Elm Street, trying to use the car’s body roll to throw his unwanted passenger clear. But the road was running out, a cul-de-sac ahead fronting a playground and parking lot.
If he was worried about pedestrians, he didn’t show it, the Mustang barreling over the curb and into the parking lot, past a set of outdoor basketball courts. Kids in shorts and hundred-dollar sneakers scattered, diving left and right to avoid him.
The end of the parking lot was approaching, North Orleans Street just ahead.
A cyclist rolled out of the trees to their left, not seeing the speeding car, riding right out ahead of it. Errol slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel, the Mustang going into a wide slide. Bob felt his fingers give, his body tossed sideways by the centrifugal force, off the roof. He tucked into a ball out of instinct, his side slamming into the asphalt, a rib broken in the past cracked once more.
He lifted his head, trying to shake off the blow. The Mustang had tried to turn away from the cyclist and head for the street, instead plowing into the other group of trees by the exit, bark and splinters flying as the saplings broke apart, the car grinding to a halt.
It took twenty or more seconds for the door to open, Errol clambering out, dazed. Bob was on his haunches, his right hand feeling the tender rib. Cracked, but nothing pierced, I think.
Damn it.
He’d been able to go without painkillers for nearly two months. There had been so many Percocet tablets in the prior three years he’d worried he was becoming addicted.
Errol began running away, but he’d clearly hurt his leg and was limping badly. Bob made it to his feet and gave chase, equally slowly at first, two battered men limping down the street, one after the other.
“JUST… STOP, YOU DUMB FUCK!” Bob yelled.
Errol looked over his shoulder but kept up his half-jog.
“Ah… hell.” Bob bore down, pushing himself on, willing his legs to move more quickly, adrenaline overcoming the aching pain in his side until he was right behind the other man. He reached out and grabbed Errol’s collar, then let his weight go dead, dragging both of them down to the pavement. The impact was unyielding, Bob’s bones rattling.
Errol scrambled to get up. The boxer’s physique was clearly gone, replaced by the flab of regular beer and uncounted greasy burgers.
He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and popped it open.
Still mean, though, Bob thought.
He was quicker than he looked, the blade arcing towards Bob before he could get a word in. But the move was telegraphed, Bob stepping wide, ignoring the man’s torso, his eyes locked on the knife hand as it flew past, his palm shooting out in a flat strike to the back of Errol’s wrist, a small bone cracking.
“AIEEH!” Errol screamed. He spilled the weapon and grabbed for his wrist. He turned, eyes frantically searching the sidewalk ahead for help.
“I’m not trying to hurt you or arrest you, idiot!” Bob barked. “DAWN sent me!”
Errol stopped twitching, his gaze trying to assess the man ahead of him. “Eh?”
“Your sister. Dawn.”
“You him?”
“Eh?”
“Dawn’s friend. The one who come to visit. That you?”
“It is.”
He looked back at the wreck of the Mustang and scratched his beard. “Dang. I mean… Goddamn! I just got that car, too.” He glanced back at Bob. “You think maybe to call ahead?”
“We tried! You’re not exactly eager when it comes to answering.” Bob scanned the street. There were too many cars passing, too many people who’d seen the chase. “But we need to get moving. Police will be here soon.”
Errol looked both ways again, then gestured for Bob to follow. “There’s a coffee shop on the next block, nice and quiet. You’d better come say whatever you got to say.”
The woman behind the coffee shop counter was sympathetic to Bob’s “tripping on the sidewalk,” producing a handful of ice cubes in a towel. She brought it over to their table, along with a couple of ibuprofen tablets, as Errol sipped a coffee.
“Appreciated,” Bob said. “Caught the end of that bench pretty hard.” He looked around. There was only one other customer in the far corner booth.
“Uh-huh,” she offered before heading behind the counter once again.
The door chimed, and Kandi walked in. She looked wary, checking her shoulder and the door as soon as she saw them together, making sure someone wasn’t trying to trap her from behind.
She gestured towards Bob, then gave her fiancé a puzzled look. “You feel like maybe you want to explain this?”
“He okay,” Errol said.
She frowned and turned her attention to Bob. “You a cop? Coz you have to tell me if you’re a cop.”
“That’s actually a myth,” Bob said. “Police can legally lie to you if it doesn’t serve to obtain a false confession.”
That stopped her cold. “For real?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, sheee-it. You don’t say.”
“It is what it is.”
“Dawn sent him to parlay,” Errol said.
“No,” Bob said, “she didn’t. She’s not ‘bargaining’ with you, man. She doesn’t have the money you need despite what you might have convinced yourself.”
“Huh. Don’t believe that.”
“Why?” Bob tried to keep any frustration out of his tone, but the man was being dense.
“She got her own place.”
“She does not,” Bob said. “She rents.”
“Well, then she own that fancy clinic, or a piece of it. That’s for sure.”
You’re kidding, right? He shook his head slowly.
Errol frowned. “You telling me she works fifty, sixty hours a week in that clinic and she don’t own a piece?” he demanded as Kandi sat down across from him.
“It’s a free clinic for the poor and indigent. What do you think?” Bob muttered, the pain in his ribs throbbing.
“Well, I don’t know… I guess that means they’ve got to pay what you want, coz no one else will take them.”
He’s just the soul of charity, isn’t he? It was difficult to see someone like him coming from the same background as Dawn. “Well… you’d guess wrong,” Bob said.
A police cruiser zoomed by the coffee shop, its klaxon blaring. “That Mustang registered to you?” Bob asked.
“You think I’m stupid or something?” Errol shot back. “Hell no. I keep my shit real, dawg. So… say what it is you got to say.”
“I told her I’d offer my help. I’m okay at solving people’s problems, and she said you have a few.”
He shrugged gently at that. “Some of us don’t get the breaks in life you got, man, if you ain’t figured that out already.”
Dawn had told him all about her brother. He’d had plenty of chances to make something of himself and go straight. He just didn’t care enough to try.
But dressing him down wasn’t going to help move things forward. “Just tell me about the money,” Bob said.
“Huh. So she gave you the detail, did she? Ain’t much to add.”
“She doesn’t know more than what you’ve told her, and that’s not enough. What happened?”
He hung his head a little, but Bob couldn’t tell what was embarrassing him: being a career criminal or just the fact that it got him into hot water. “Well now… that’s a case of me being too damned good,” he said quietly.
“As in…”
“It’s complicated to explain, my business,” Errol said.
“You’re a con man and a thief, according to your sister. As much as she loves you, she didn’t sugarcoat it. So who’d you rip off?”
“It wasn’t like that, man, not at all.”
Kandi chimed in, “This weren’t no smash-and-grab from crackheads, this was clever business. Sophisticated.”
She rapped her cartoonishly extravagant purple-and-gold fake nails on the tabletop for emphasis. She said it like a scam could be a brand name, a label to be proud of, Bob thought. The new smell of success… Dishonesty, by Calvin Klein.
“Hopefully, my insufficient, smooth brain can follow it all,” Bob said. “Lay it out for me.”
5
The prospect of sharing his genius appealed to Errol. His eyes seemed to brighten at Bob’s request, a sudden levity to his expression, like a kid asked by adults to share a special day. He glanced around the café again quickly, wary of eavesdroppers. “That’s the best part, man. Best thing I ever did, other than boxing. I figured out—”
“You mean you read how someone else done it,” Kandi interrupted.
“Yeah, but different!” he protested. “Mine was different. He a buster! Used it on stock tips to take a bunch of losers at some dive bar. This was real. Sophisticated, like she said.”
“How so?” Bob wanted him to stop dancing around it. “And I’m not going to steal your idea. I don’t steal for a living no matter how clever it is.”
“Everybody steals something, Justin,” Kandi said bitterly.
“Justin?” Bob asked.
She looked him up and down, assessing him as repellant, as if he produced an odor that warranted immediate dismissal. “Yeah. That’s what I see when I see you, all neat in your golf shirt and sneakers. You a guy named Justin. You drive an electric car. You play golf.”
It wasn’t a compliment, Bob knew.
“I’m a guy named Bob,” he said. “And we’re sitting here because so far, you’ve both failed to run away or run me down. But I can just walk out the door if you don’t want my help. How does that sound?”
Errol looked pained, like a professor stuck on a puzzle that some simple has already solved. “What’d she say? She tell you I took the wrong mark for some money? Coz that’s what happened.”
“Explain the scam,” Bob said.
“Man… that’s professional secrets, you know…”
“Explain, or I walk.”
“Dawn wouldn’t send him if he couldn’t do you some good, stupid!” Kandi growled.
“Damn! Okay, baby, okay… just cool down.” He turned back to Bob. “Bought a sucker list. Twenty-five hundred names, mostly older folk who’ve been took before in gambling scams, a few younger. Their names and email addresses. Cost me a grand through a ‘G’ I knew inside, but guaranteed a good list.
“So I take the list and split it into two. I set up a website using free templates and offer picks on that weekend’s NFL matchups. I pick a ‘game of the week,’ and half the list gets the Bears to win, the other half gets them to lose.”
“Why such a large list?” Bob asked. “Wouldn’t that make it harder—”
“I’m getting there, man, just be cool,” Errol said. “So whichever side is correct, I keep those names in the pool and toss out those what got a wrong answer. Now there’s twelve hundred and fifty. I follow the same procedure for eight weeks until I’m down to thirty-seven names. A few others drop out for whatever, makes it an even thirty.”
Bob saw where it was going. “And those thirty people – all already problem gamblers, from their past activity – have just seen your ‘oddsmaking’ newsletter pick the right result eight weeks in a row. So I’m guessing up to this point, you haven’t even taken bets.”
Errol raised a knowing finger. “Ah! That’s where you’d be wrong, my man. The week prior, I include a note saying anyone who has been subscribed for more than six weeks of the season is eligible to begin betting with us, and they’ll get a matching dollar for each dollar they put down. I tell them that ‘doubles their odds,’ even though it don’t, coz most people are bad at math.”
“And you pay out. But it’s the first bet, so they’re cautious, and it doesn’t cost you much.”
“Only one big roller, dropped a grand. But that’s okay. We got enough credit cards on the run to cover that.”
The credit cards would be stolen via identity theft, Bob knew. “So you’ve paid him two thousand, maybe a few thousand more to the rest?”
“Try low hundreds. I know how they think, the gambling junkies. They see that matching dollar and they start getting nervous, thinking maybe it’s another scam, maybe they’re going to lose what little they got. So they bet a dollar or two, what they can afford to lose for a change. And instead, they all get paid out. And now they’re sitting there in their living rooms, looking at the two or three dollars that they just made. And they’re cursing themselves, feeling stupid and foolish for not betting more. They had their shot, they realize, that big score they was always looking for. And they blew it.”
He paused for dramatic impact, as if daring Bob to fill in.
