Clownfish Blues

Chapter 12

Later That Evening

Sniper rifles froze in triangulated aim at a ranch house in Sarasota County.

Rog gingerly slid his chair up to the coffee table and reached into one of the pizza boxes.

A string of hot mozzarella stretched from a slice to Serge’s mouth as he chewed. “One last lesson. After you grasp the concept of a psychopath, you have to wonder, what’s the opposite? An ‘empath’! They feel everything, the suffering of people they don’t even know in other countries, baby seals, the destruction of rain forests. Some of them are those former celebrities on late-night commercials with starving children who are forced to write you personal letters if you buy them rice and pencils during a drunken late-night moment of weakness, and now these letters of shame keep popping up each month like herpes. That’s why I hate the terms ‘bleeding heart’ and ‘tree hugger.’ Sure, they can get so annoying you want to ram knitting needles through both your ears. But deep inside, their intentions are wonderful. Jesus was an empath. Although today I’m tempted to tweak the Sermon on the Mount: ‘The meek shall inherit the earth, but only if their parents were greedy psychopaths’ . . .”

Tires screeched outside. A sedan with black-wall tires and tinted windows pulled up. A badge flashed. “FBI special agent Braun . . . You must be Sergeant Duffy . . .”

Another skidding of tires. Another sedan with lots of antennas. A different badge. “CIA special agent Cargill . . .”

. . . Serge leaned back on the couch and patted his stomach. “I’m stuffed.”

“So am I,” said Coleman.

Serge slowly stood and stretched his back. “I guess that means it’s time to surrender.”

Rog perked up. “You mean it?”

“Sure.”

“Uh, Serge,” said Coleman. “I think we might have a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ve gotten ourselves cornered,” said Coleman. “The whole place is surrounded by cops. I don’t see how we can get away.”

“There’s always hope.” Serge walked to the front of the house and grabbed the doorknob.

“Great!” said Coleman. “I knew you’d have a plan! What is it?”

“That is the plan,” said Serge.

“Hope? . . . No, seriously.”

“I am serious.” Serge cracked the door a slit and waved a pizza-stained napkin. “We’re coming out!”

“Everyone in position!” yelled Sergeant Duffy. “But hold your fire.”

Clacking sounds as the SWAT team crouched and readied their weapons. Other officers shielded themselves behind the open doors of their squad cars. Agents Duffy and Cargill pulled Glocks from shoulder holsters inside their suits. A half block away behind the police lines, the entire press corps stopped talking. Cameras zoomed in on the front of the house.

All sound stopped. Time slowed down. Perspiration trickled on cheeks. Fingers twitched on triggers. Duffy took one last, careful look around and raised a megaphone. “Okay, we’re ready!”

The door opened the rest of the way. Rog burst from the house—“Thank God! Those guys are out of their minds! They held me hostage!” One of the SWAT team tackled him in the middle of the yard, and soon there was a pile of ten. Somewhere at the bottom, handcuffs snapped closed.

Serge and Coleman strolled across the grass in Windbreakers. “Sergeant Duffy, I’m taking a wild stab that you’d like to have a word with us.”

“Yes! Definitely! Don’t go anywhere!”

The tactical human pile in the middle of the yard began to sort itself out. They helped Rogelio to his feet, and Duffy led him to the back of a blue-and-white police transport van.

A suit with a thin tie stepped in front of him. “Excellent work,” said Agent Braun. “We’ll take the prisoner now.”

“No disrespect,” said Duffy. “But I’d like to get him processed at the jail before anything else. This is my city.”

“National security takes precedence,” said Braun.

From behind: “Yes, it does,” said Agent Cargill. “And I’m taking custody of the prisoner.”

Serge tapped the sergeant’s shoulder. “You wanted to talk to us?”

“Not now!” Duffy swatted his hand away. “I strenuously object . . . Officers, take the prisoner.”

“Sergeant,” said Braun. “Don’t force me to arrest you.”

“Sergeant,” said Cargill. “I authorize you to take the prisoner to my headquarters.”

“Excuse me?” said Serge. “Are you guys with the FBI and CIA? You’re probably curious who we are.”

In unison: “Not now!”

People had Rogelio by both arms, swinging him back and forth. Another sedan pulled up. The seal on the door was Homeland Security. So was the badge. “Agent Maxwell. We’ll take it from here . . .”

“Now just a minute!” said Cargill.

“Let’s see some paperwork!” said Braun.

“We were here first!” said Duffy.

“My arms are starting to hurt,” said Rog.

“Excuse me?” said Serge.

Leaves and litter began to swirl in the air. Everyone covered their ears and looked up as a black helicopter landed in the street. Agents with night-vision goggles jumped out. “We’re asserting jurisdiction . . .”

Serge shrugged at Coleman. They strolled behind the house and hopped in their silver Corvette, then drove back around front to the street. A large argument was blocking them.

Beep, beep!

Everyone scooted to the side as they continued yelling in each other’s faces. The Corvette slipped by and approached the police line holding back the reporters.

Beep, beep!

The officers on the perimeter turned toward the car with the Windbreakers.

Beep, beep!

They lifted the rope to let them through.

Mart-Mart

A construction worker peered down into the glass case like he was looking at engagement rings. He finally came to a life decision at the checkout counter in the convenience store.

“I’ll take the Monopoly scratch-off, the Florida Treasure Hunt, Cash Inferno, Bring on the Benjamins, a Lotto quick-pick for this weekend’s drawing, a pack of Marlboro and the beer.”

If you drive around South Florida enough, there are those new, brightly lit convenience stores the size of small supermarkets, with wide aisles, walk-in beer coolers, waxed floors, fresh deli sandwiches and sixteen touch-screen gas pumps.

This was not one of them.

It had a gray exterior with an accumulation of trash along the front. An official notice said not to loiter or consume alcoholic beverages within five hundred feet, but its view was blocked by people doing both. Inside were half-empty shelves with dusty cans of Campbell’s soup and other food-like containers with Spanish names. Only one person could fit down each aisle, unless they were fat and had to turn sideways, which usually made no geometric difference. The checkout counter had a pair of revolving displays for Zippo lighters and onyx marijuana pipes. Clothespins held a row of calling cards to countries across the Lesser Antilles and most of the Greater. The sign out front said Mart-Mart, in case there was any doubt.

The line at the counter was fifteen deep. It would have been shorter, but the clerk was on his phone with friends. The next customer stepped up. “I’ll take a Gold Rush, Flamingo Fortune, Margaritaville, one quick-pick, a pack of Kools and the beer.”

The rest of the transactions were pretty much the same, except for the customers who asked to use the bathroom and were told that it was broken. The night wore into the wee hours. The clerk used the bathroom. More people pulled into the potholed parking lot. Pickups, sports cars, motorcycles and a glass replacement truck featuring giant replacement windows attached to the side with industrial suction cups. Farmworkers jumped down from flatbeds. Someone went in to return an opened pack of cigarettes. “These don’t have the tax stamp. Whenever they say ‘not for domestic sale,’ they always taste stale.” The clerk snatched them for a prompt, no-questions-asked refund. The next person also received cash: fifty bucks for a hundred in food stamps. The store made up for its appearance with extra service.

The parade of dysfunction grew on the side of U.S. 1 in Fort Lauderdale. The products that sold themselves continued to do so. Beer, smokes and tickets flowed out the door. A bearded man came in wearing jeans with a white circle on his back pocket where he carried his tin of Skoal. “I want to see if this won anything.”

The clerk ran the ticket under the scanner. “You did.” He handed a five to the customer, who handed it back. “Beer.”

The customer left and got inside an unmarked van parked up the street.

He joined the other state agents who were gathered around a computer screen. The Florida Lottery was an efficiently humming, firewalled, hack-proof operation in all respects. Except for one minor detail. You could have a ticket scanned to see if it won, then actually cash it in later at a different location. This tiny fissure had no foreseen consequence, until certain retail outlets decided to wedge it wide open.

All lottery activity was recorded by state computers. But with hundreds of games, thousands of outlets and millions of customers—and no suspicion or real idea what to look for—the data stayed stored.

Then a few things happened. The state of Florida always understood that lotteries inevitably create a gray economy. There were many ways not to become a millionaire, but still hit a few grand. And if that winner had tax issues, or alimony, or child support, or no green card—and, say, a ticket was scanned for a jackpot above the legal reporting trip wire—it became an inconvenient time to be in a convenience store.

As the lottery grew, so did the amount of data in its computer banks. Patterns emerged, numbers crunched, statistical deviations became improbable. State auditors began to notice that tickets were initially being scanned across a reasonable geographic distribution, but when it came time to cash them in, impossible spikes appeared again and again at specific locations across South Florida, under specific names. Here’s what they found: Some of the biggest repeat winners were the store owners themselves. Authorities correctly guessed that certain retailers were moonlighting as brokers, paying eighty cents or so on the dollar for the winning tickets of people who couldn’t exactly come forward. The customer would originally have the ticket scanned at a legitimate store, and upon finding they had won too much, asked for the ticket back and went over to one of the brokers who had put the word out on the street. It was an awfully hard thing for officials to prove, but more on point, they subconsciously didn’t want to prove it. Cracking down on the practice would scare away the people with issues, who were their best customers. That’s why they had issues.

That’s when another thing happened. More and more customers began to complain about something else. A few of these shady stores had gotten greedy. They began scanning scratch-off instant games and telling the customers that it was only worth five or ten bucks, paying them out of the register. Then, after the customer left, the store owners would cash in a several-hundred-dollar ticket for themselves. Now, this was a crackdown that would be popular among the betting public.

And now . . . The state agents became fidgety inside their mobile command unit parked three blocks up the street from Mart-Mart.

“Anything yet?”

“Just the initial ticket scan,” said the tech at the computer screen. “From when our undercover guy asked if he had a winner.”

“It’s been a half hour. What’s that clerk waiting for?”

“Probably has customers and is on the phone.”

Numbers changed on the screen. “Wait, he just claimed it. Six hundred and forty-two bucks. You want to move?”

The agent in charge shook his head. “Strictly surveillance for now. Believe it or not, that store is part of a chain of seventeen in the area. We want to see where all this is going . . .”

Back inside, a migrant worker stepped up to the counter. He glanced around before clandestinely showing the clerk a Lotto ticket that he refused to let go of, so the clerk had to pull the man’s arm toward the scanner. Not a complete winner, but close. Five of six numbers.

The clerk abruptly ended his personal phone call and dialed another number. “. . . Yes, I’m sure. I scanned it myself . . . all right I’ll tell him . . .” He hung up. “Wait outside at the corner.”

A white Audi eventually pulled up, and the back door opened. The farmhand climbed into a lifestyle he had never seen before. The car drove off. A laconic man in a tight bicycle shirt inspected the $7,931 ticket. He stuck it in his briefcase and handed the worker an envelope with five grand.

They dropped him off at a strip club.