The Collectors (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

G
REAT BELCHES OF BLACK
smoke—probably packed with enough carcinogens to vanquish an unsuspecting generation or two—were propelled from ancient brick factory stacks into a sky already dark with rain clouds. In an alleyway of this industrial town that was dying an irreversible death due to penny wages paid in far more polluted cities in China, a small crowd had gathered around one man. This was not a crime scene with a dead body, or a street Shakespeare honing his acting chops, or even a big-lunged preacher hawking Jesus and redemption for a modest contribution to the cause. This man was known in the trade as a “broad tosser,” and he was doing his best to relieve the crowd of its money in a game of chance called three-card monte.

The “shills” supporting the tosser were adequate as they won staged betting rounds at timed intervals to keep the marks hopeful for their own streak of luck. The “wall man,” or lookout, was a bit lethargic. At least the woman watching them from across the street deduced this from his body language and listless eyes. She didn’t know the “muscle” that was also part of this con team, yet he didn’t look overly tough, just doughy and slow. The two “ropers” were young and energetic and, as their title implied, it was their job to keep a steady supply of innocents coming to play a card game they would never win.

She moved closer, watching as the enthusiastic crowd alternately clapped and groaned as bets were won and lost. She’d started her career as a shill for one of the country’s best tossers. That particular con could run a table in virtually any city and walk away an hour later with at least two grand in his pocket, the marks having no idea they’d been the victim of anything more than poor luck. This tosser was excellent and for good reason: He’d been trained by the same man as she. To her informed eye he was using the double-card queen-up-front technique that would substitute the back card for the queen at the critical moment of delivery, for this was the entire key to the game.

The simple object of three-card monte, like the shell game it was based on, was to pick the queen from the trio on the table after the tosser had mixed them around with blurring speed. That was impossible to do if the lady wasn’t even on the table at the time the guess was made. Then a second before the queen’s “correct” position was revealed, the tosser would smoothly replace one of the cards with the queen and show the group where it had supposedly been all the time. This simple “short con” had lifted money from marquises and marines and everything in between for as long as playing cards had been around.

The woman slipped behind a Dumpster, made eye contact with someone in the crowd and put on a pair of large tinted sunglasses. A moment later the wall man’s attention was completely distracted by a cute miniskirted bettor. She’d bent straight over in front of him to pick up some dropped cash and gave the lookout a nice view of her firm butt and the red thong that made little attempt to cover it. The wall man no doubt thought he’d gotten incredibly lucky. However, just as with three-card monte, there was no luck involved. The woman had earlier paid the miniskirt to perform the “drop and bend” when she signaled her by putting on the shades. This simple distraction technique had worked on men ever since women had started wearing clothes.

Four quick strides and the lady was right in their midst, moving with a swagger and energy that parted the crowd immediately as the stunned lookout watched helplessly.

“Okay,” she barked, holding up her creds. “I want to see some ID from you,” she snapped, pointing a long finger at the tosser, a short, pudgy middle-aged man with a small black beard, bright green eyes and a pair of the nimblest hands in the country. He studied her from under his ball cap, even as he slowly reached in his coat and pulled out his wallet.

“All right, folks, party’s over,” she said, opening her jacket so they could see the silver badge attached to her belt. Many of the people gathered there began to back away. The intruder was in her mid-thirties, tall and broad-shouldered with a sleek pair of hips and long red hair, and dressed in black jeans, green turtleneck and a short leather jacket. A long muscle in her neck flexed when she spoke. A small, dull red scar the shape of a fishhook was perched under her right eye but remained hidden by the sunglasses. “I said party’s over. Pick up your cash and disappear,” she said in a voice notched an octave lower.

She’d already noted that the bets left on the table had vanished the moment she started speaking. And she knew exactly where they’d gone. The tosser
was
good, reacting to the situation instantly and taking control of the only thing that mattered: the money. The crowd fled without bothering to argue about their missing cash.

The muscle took a hesitant step toward the intruder but then froze as her gaze cut into him.

“Don’t even think about it, because they just love fat boys like you in the federal swamp.” She looked him up and down lasciviously. “They get a lot more meat for their dime.” The muscle’s lip began to tremble even as he fell back and tried to fade into the wall.

She marched up to him. “Uh-uh, big boy. When I said clear out, I meant you too.”

The muscle nervously glanced at the other man, who said, “Get out of it. I’ll look you up later.”

After the man had fled, she checked the tosser’s ID, smirking as she handed it back to him and then made him stand against the wall for a pat-down. She picked up a card from the table and turned it around so he could see the black queen. “Looks like I win.”

The tosser stared unfazed at the card. “Since when do the feds care about a harmless game of chance?”

She put the card back on the table. “Good thing your marks didn’t know how ‘chancy’ this game of chance really was. Maybe I should go and enlighten some of the bigger guys who might like to come back and beat the crap out of you.”

He looked down at the black queen. “Like you said, you won. Why don’t you name your payoff?” He took a roll of cash from his fanny pack.

In response she took out her creds, slipped the badge off her belt and dropped both on the table. He glanced down at them.

“Go ahead,” she said casually. “I have no secrets.”

He picked them up. The “creds” didn’t authenticate her as a law enforcement officer. Behind the plastic shield was a membership card for the Costco Warehouse Club. The badge was tin and engraved with a brand of German beer.

His eyes widened as she slipped off her sunglasses and recognition instantly came. “Annabelle?”

Annabelle Conroy said, “Leo, what the hell are you doing cooking monte with a bunch of losers in this crappy excuse for a town?”

Leo Richter shrugged but his grin was wide. “Times are tough. And the guys are okay, a little green, but learning. And monte’s never let any of us down, has it?” He waved the wad of bills before stuffing them back in his fanny pack. “Little dicey pretending to be a cop,” he scolded mildly.

“I never
said
I was a cop, people just assumed. That’s why we have a career, Leo, because, if you have enough balls, people assume. But while we’re talking about it, trying to
bribe
a cop?”

“In my humble experience it works more often than not,” Leo said, fishing a cigarette out of a pack in his shirt pocket and offering her one. She declined.

“How much you making on this gig?” she asked matter-of-factly.

Leo glanced at her suspiciously as he lit his Winston, took a drag and blew smoke out his nostrils, neatly matching at least in miniature the fetid clouds coming out of the smokestacks overhead. “The pie’s split up enough as it is. I’ve got employees to take care of.”

“Employees! Don’t tell me you’re issuing W-2s now?” Before he could answer, she added, “Monte’s not on my radar, Leo. So how much? I’m asking for a reason, a good one.” She folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the wall waiting.

He shrugged. “We usually work five locations on a rotation, about six hours a day. Clear three or four thou on a good one. Lotta union boys ’round here. Those guys are always itching to lose their cash. But we’ll be moving on soon. Another round of factory layoffs coming, and we don’t want people remembering our faces too well. It’s not like I have to tell you the drill. I get the sixty split of the net, but expenses are high these days. Saved up about thirty Gs. I’m looking to double that before winter. It’ll hold me for a while.”

“But
just
a while, knowing you.” Annabelle Conroy picked up her beer badge and Costco card. “Interested in some
real
money?”

“The last time you asked me that I got shot at.”

“
We
got shot at because
you
got greedy.”

Neither one was smiling now.

“What’s the deal?” Leo asked.

“I’ll tell you after we run a couple shorts. I need some seed for the long.”

“A long con! Who does that anymore?”

She cocked her head and stared down at him. In her high-heeled boots she was five-eleven. “I do. I never stopped, in fact.”

He noted her long red hair. “Weren’t you a brunet the last time I saw you?”

“I’m anything I need to be.”

A grin eased across his face. “Same old Annabelle.”

Her gaze hardened slightly. “No, not the same old. Better. You in?”

“What’s the risk level?”

“High, but so’s the reward.”

A car alarm erupted with eardrum-shattering decibels. Neither of them even flinched. Cons at their level that lost their cool under any circumstances became either guests of the penal system or dead.

Leo finally blinked. “Okay, I’m in. What now?”

“Now we line up a couple other people.”

“We rolling all-star on this?” His eyes glittered at the prospect.

“Long con deserves nothing but the best.” She picked up the black queen. “I’ll take my payment in dinner tonight for pulling the lady out of your ‘magic’ deck.”

“Afraid there aren’t many restaurants worth eating at around here.”

“Not here. We’re flying to L.A. in three hours.”

“L.A. in three hours! I’m not even packed. And I don’t have a ticket.”

“It’s in your left jacket pocket. I snaked it there when I was feeling you up.” She eyed his flabby midsection and raised an eyebrow. “You’ve put on weight, Leo.”

She turned and strode off as Leo checked his pocket and found the plane ticket. He grabbed his cards and raced after her, leaving the card table where it was.

Monte was on vacation for a while. The long con was calling.

CHAPTER 3

O
VER DINNER THAT NIGHT IN
L.A. Annabelle laid out parts of her plan to Leo, including the two players she was looking to bring on.

“Sounds good, but what about the long con? You haven’t told me about that.”

“One step at a time,” she answered, fingering a wineglass, her gaze wandering around the swanky dining room automatically searching for potential marks.

Take a breath, find a chump.
She flicked her dyed-red hair out of her face and made momentary eye contact with a guy three tables down. This jerk had been ogling and overtly signaling Annabelle in her little black dress for the last hour while his humiliated date sat silently fuming. Now he slowly licked his lips and winked at her.

Uh-uh, slick, you couldn’t even come close to handling it.

Leo interrupted this thought. “Look, Annabelle, I’m not going to screw you. Hell, I came all this way.”

“Right, you came all this way on
my
dime.”

“We’re partners, you can tell me. It goes no further.”

Her gaze drifted over him as she finished her cabernet. “Leo, don’t bother. Even you’re not that good of a liar.”

A waiter came by and handed her a card. “From the gentleman over there,” he said, pointing to the man who’d been ogling her.

Annabelle took the card. It said that the man was a talent agent. He’d also helpfully written on the back of the card a specific sex act he’d like to perform on her.

Okay, Mr. Talent Agent. You asked for it.

On the way out she stopped at a table with five stout guys in pinstripe suits. She said something and they all laughed. She gave one of them a pat on the head and another, a man of about forty with gray temples and thick shoulders, a peck on the cheek. They all laughed at something else Annabelle said. Then she sat down and talked with them for a few minutes. Leo looked at her curiously as Annabelle left the table and walked past him toward the exit.

As she passed the talent agent’s table, he said, “Hey, baby, call me. I mean it. You are so hot, I’m on fire!”

Annabelle swiped a glass of water off the tray of a passing waiter and said, “Well, then let’s cool you off, stud.” She dumped the water in the guy’s lap. He jumped up.

“Damn it! You’re gonna pay for that, you crazy bitch.”

His date covered her mouth to hide her laughter.

Before the man could reach out to grab her, Annabelle shot out a hand and clutched his wrist. “You see those boys over there?” She nodded at the five suits that sat staring at the man hostilely. One of them cracked his knuckles. Another slid his hand inside his suit jacket and kept it there.

Annabelle said smoothly, “I’m sure you saw me talking to them, since you’ve been staring at me all night. They’re the Moscarelli family. And the one on the end there is my ex, Joey Junior. Now, even though I’m no longer technically in the family, you never really leave the Moscarelli clan.”

“Moscarelli?” the man said defiantly. “Who the hell are they?”

“They were the number three organized crime family in Vegas before the FBI ran them and everybody else out. Now they’ve gone back to doing what they do best: controlling the garbage unions in the Big Apple and Newark.” She squeezed his arm. “So if you have a problem with your wet pants, I’m sure Joey will take care of it.”

“You think I’m buying that crap?” the guy shot back.

“Well, if you don’t believe me, go over there and talk to him about it.”

The man looked over at the table again. Joey Junior was holding a steak knife in his beefy hand while one of the other men was attempting to keep him in his seat.

Annabelle gripped the man’s arm tighter. “Or do you want me to have Joey come over here with some of his friends? Don’t worry; he’s out on parole right now, so he can’t bust you up really bad without ticking off the feds.”

“No. No!” the alarmed man said as he tore his gaze from murderous Joey Junior and his steak knife. He added quietly, “I mean, it’s no big deal. Just a little water.” He sat back down and dabbed at his soaked crotch with a napkin.

Annabelle turned to his date. The woman was trying and failing to hold back her giggles. “You think it’s funny, sweetie?” Annabelle said. “This is a case of where we’re all laughing
at
you, not with you. So why don’t you try finding some self-respect, or little shits like him are the only slime you’ll be waking up next to until you’re so old nobody will give a crap anymore. Including you.”

The lady stopped laughing.

On the way out of the restaurant Leo said, “Wow, and here I was wasting my time reading Dale Carnegie when all I needed to do was hang around you.”

“Give it a rest, Leo.”

“Okay, okay, but the Moscarelli family? Come on. Who were they really?”

“Five accountants from Cincinnati probably looking to get laid tonight.”

“You’re lucky they seemed pretty tough.”

“It wasn’t luck. I said I was practicing a scene from a movie with a friend of mine in public. I told them it happens all the time in L.A. I asked them to help out, that they were to look like the mob; you know, to give us the right atmosphere to deliver our lines. I told them if they did well enough, they might even get a part in the film. It’s probably the most excitement they’ve ever had.”

“Yeah, but how’d you know that jerk would collar you on the way out?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Leo, maybe it was that
tent pole
in his pants. Or did you think I just threw the water in his crotch for the hell of it?”

The next day Annabelle and Leo cruised down Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills in a rented dark blue Lincoln. Leo intently eyed the shops they were passing. “How’d you get a lead on him?”

“Usual sources. He’s young and doesn’t have much street experience, but his specialty is why I’m here.”

Annabelle pulled into a parking place and pointed to a storefront up ahead. “Okay, that’s where gadget boy screws the retail consumer.”

“What’s he like?”

“Very metrosexual.”

Leo looked at her quizzically. “
Metrosexual?
What the hell’s that? New kind of gay freak?”

“You really need to get out more, Leo,
and
work on your PC skills.”

A minute later Annabelle led Leo into a high-end clothing boutique. Inside the store, they were greeted by a lean, good-looking young man dressed all in chic black with slicked-back blond hair and a day’s worth of fashionable stubble on his face.

“You here all by yourself today?” she asked him, looking around at the other well-heeled customers in the store. They’d have to be wealthy, she knew, since the shoes here
started
at a thousand bucks a pair, entitling the lucky owner to stumble around on four-inch golf tees until her Achilles snapped.

He nodded. “But I enjoy working the store. I’m very service-oriented.”

“I’m sure you are,” Annabelle said under her breath.

After waiting until the other customers had left the shop, Annabelle put the Closed sign on the front door. Leo brought a woman’s blouse to the cash register while Annabelle wandered around behind the checkout area. Leo handed over his credit card, but it slipped out of the clerk’s hand and the man bent down to retrieve it. When he straightened up, he found Annabelle standing right behind him.

“That’s a really neat toy you have there,” she said, eyeing the tiny machine the clerk had just swiped Leo’s card through.

“Ma’am, you’re not allowed behind the counter,” he said, frowning.

Annabelle ignored this comment. “Did you build it yourself?”

The clerk said firmly, “It’s an antifraud machine. It confirms that the card is valid. It checks encryption codes embedded in the plastic. We’ve had a lot of stolen credit cards come in here, so the owner instructed us to start using it. I try to do it as unobtrusively as possible so no one gets embarrassed. I’m sure you can understand.”

“Oh, I completely understand.” Annabelle reached by the clerk and slid out the device. “What this does,
Tony,
is read the name and account number, and the embedded verification code on the magnetic stripe so you can forge the card.”

“Or more likely sell the numbers to a card ring that’ll do it,” Leo added. “That way you don’t have to get your
metrosexual
hands really dirty.”

Tony looked at both of them. “How do you know my name? You cops?”

“Oh, much better than that,” Annabelle said, putting her arm around his slender shoulders. “We’re people just like you.”

Two hours later Annabelle and Leo were walking down the pier in Santa Monica. It was a bright cloudless day, and the ocean breeze delivered waves of deliciously warm air. Leo wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, took off his jacket and carried it over his arm.

“Damn, I’d forgotten how nice it was out here.”

“Beautiful weather and the best marks in the world,” Annabelle said. “That’s why we’re here. Because where the best marks are . . .”

“Are where the best cons are,” Leo finished for her.

She nodded. “Okay, that’s him, Freddy Driscoll, crown prince of bad paper.”

Leo stared ahead, squinting against the sun, and read the small sign over the outdoor kiosk. “Designer Heaven?”

“That’s right. Do it like I said.”

“What other way is there to do it but like
you
said?” Leo grumbled.

They reached the merchandise display where jeans, designer bags, watches and other accessories were neatly arranged. The older man next to the kiosk greeted them politely. He was small and plump with a pleasant face; tufts of white hair stuck out from underneath the straw hat he wore.

“Wow, these are great prices,” Leo commented as he looked over the items.

The man beamed proudly. “I don’t have the overhead of the fancy stores, just the sun, sand and ocean.”

They looked through the merchandise, selected a few items, and Annabelle handed the man a hundred-dollar bill in payment.

He took it from her, put on a pair of thick glasses, held the bill up at a certain angle and then quickly handed it back. “Sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid that’s a forgery.”

“You’re right, it is,” she said casually. “But I thought it was fair to pay for fake goods with fake money.”

The man didn’t even blink; he just smiled at her benignly.

Annabelle examined the bill in the same way the man had. “The problem is that not even the best forger can really duplicate Franklin’s hologram when you hold the bill at this angle, because you’d need a two-hundred-million-dollar printing mill to get it right. There’s only one of them in the States, and no forger has access to it.”

Leo piped in, “So you take a grease pen and do a nifty sketch of old Benny. That gives anyone smart enough to check the paper a little flash and the illusion that he saw the h-gram when he really didn’t.”

“But
you
knew the difference,” Annabelle pointed out. “Because you used to make this paper about as well as anyone.” She held up a pair of jeans. “But from now on, I’d tell your supplier to take the time to stamp the brand name on the zipper like the real manufacturers do.” She put the jeans down and picked up a handbag. “And double-stitch the strap. That’s a dead giveaway too.”

Leo held up a watch that was for sale. “And real Rolexes sweep smoothly, they don’t tick.”

The man said, “I’m really shocked that I’ve been the victim of counterfeit merchandise. I saw a police officer just a few minutes ago farther down on the pier. I’ll go and get him. Please don’t leave; he’ll want your full statements.”

Annabelle gripped his arm with her long, supple fingers. “Don’t waste your cover story on us,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

“What about?” he asked warily.

“Two shorts and then a long,” Leo answered, making the old man’s eyes light up.