The Program

Chapter thirteen

The dashboard of the Acura rattled when Tim hit eighty dropping into Simi Valley, heading for the Moorpark Station. An eighteen-wheeler dominated the parking lot. A white trailer with no markings, the mobile range drove from station to station, permitting sheriff's deputies to log required shooting time and complete their trimester qualifications.

Dray sat on the hood of her patrol car, a cluster of colleagues gathered around her. The sole woman at her station, Dray was the object of several unspoken crushes, the strongest of which was nursed by Mac, her sometime partner. As Tim approached, Fowler and Gutierez, with whom Tim had an uneven history, firmed up their postures – arms crossing, stances widening. For all the bluster, they returned Tim's nod.

"Hey, Rack." Mac flashed his handsome smile and extended a hand, which Tim shook. "Your gal here just qualified sharpshooter."

"Congrats." Tim raised a fist to Dray and she matched it, pressing her knuckles against his. "What'd you shoot?"

"Two-seventy."

"Best of the day," Mac added.

Gutierez smirked. "Mac squeaked by qual with a two-ten."

Mac's looks were not matched by his skills.

One of the trainees piped up. "I heard you're a helluva shot."

Tim said, "I can blow up a guy's head with a remote control, too."

Nervous laughter.

Gutierez showed off his target, poking his fingers through. "Why don't you give it a go now?"

"Okay. Whose head?"

"Come on, Rack," Fowler said. "We've heard so much grapevine about you, but we've never seen shit." His tone was joking but his smile tight.

Mac gestured grandly at the trailer. "We brought the range to you."

Dray pulled out her shooting card and pointed it at Tim. "You haven't broken in the new gun. Why don't you go shut these boys up?"

Tim generally avoided pissing contests, but the memory of watching from the sidelines while the ART squad dirt-dived their skills still stung enough for him to want to display prowess. There were likely more advanced ways for him to affirm his manhood than by flaunting his proficiencies on a mobile range in Moorpark, but none so user-friendly.

He snapped up Dray's card and headed for the trailer, the deputies crowding behind him, whooping and clapping.

The back door banged against the range operator's minuscule desk. The burly deputy nodded at Tim and punched out thirty rounds of ammo on Dray's card.

"Thirty-eight special," Tim said.

The operator tapped the rounds down on the desk like a brick of casino chips. The three narrow lanes, standard point-and-shoots, didn't quite stretch twenty-five yards, so deputies worked off smaller targets. Foam padding eliminated the ricochet factor but added to the suffocating feel of firing in a tight space. The bullets had to be range-issue, straight from the factory; given the tight quarters, no one wanted to risk some yahoo's toting in unreliable reloads.

Ignoring the chatter behind him, Tim rolled the foam earplugs between his palms, slid them in as they started to expand, and pulled on eye protection. He winked at his wife, who stood propped against the door with crossed arms and an amused smile. The target downrange, now turned sideways so it presented like a paper sliver, featured the archetypal floating silhouette, Johnny Critical Mass. Ever since 9/11, the establishment had sought to better acquaint its shooters with lethality – targets had become increasingly animated, sprouting faces and expressions, the bull's-eye going the way of the billy club.

The overhead fan worked hard to clear the smell of cordite.

Since Tim used a revolver, he prepped four speedloaders. Eschewing the convenient countertop at the mouth of the booth, he dropped the speedloaders into the leather pouch at his belt, where he'd need to find them in a real shoot-out.

The rules required he'd have to get off at least three rounds every six seconds. Most shooters fired autos, since the magazines held fifteen rounds – they needed only one reload per test. Tim would require four.

He held the. 357 waist high and pointed to the right, both hands positioned on the stock, awaiting the swivel of the target. The interior dimmed until everything was dark but the floating silhouette, which remained semi-illuminated – low-light conditions to simulate night, when most shootings take place.

The target spun to face him. He'd sighted on the fist-size ring at the heart before it even finished its pivot, squeezing off six rounds. Thumbing forward the left-side lever, he released the well-lubed wheel, the spent casings sliding out as his fingers found a full speedloader in the pouch. Now he was in a tunnel – nothing existed except the weight of steel in his hands and the beckoning ten-ring. The gun barked six more times, and he tipped and reloaded, tipped and reloaded, casings raining at his feet, cordite spooling up from his booth in tendrils.

After firing off his thirtieth shot, he emerged as if from a daze, the overheads coming on, the target whistling uprange. A quarter-size hole penetrated the middle of the ten-ring, a few tattered chads dangling from the near-perfect O. A hushed murmur came up from the row of deputies at the wall.

Tim pulled off his glasses, thanked the range operator, and headed out with Dray into the blinding light of the afternoon.

They reached his car, Dray still squinting. "Show-off." She lowered the volume on her portable radio. "I have to get back out. What's the latest?"

She listened impassively to his account of the morning, then said, "And you lost your wedding ring?"

"Right." He retrieved it from his back pocket and slid it on.

She gave him a humorous scowl. "I'd better not find out you spent the morning cruising gay bars."

"The ones I go to, the wedding ring's a real draw."

"Cute." She held up an index finger to Mac, now awaiting her at the squad car. The trainee waved to Tim on his way back into the station. "Prowling a college campus for kids leaving therapy." Dray ran her hand through her hair, pinching a hank at the top so it arced forward in two wedges, brushing her cheeks. "They've got their system down, don't they?"

"It's a long con, really. They bilk kids out of their minds, then out of their money." Tim shook his head. "First rule of swindling -use people against themselves."

"Hitting a bit close to home?"

Tim pulled on his sunglasses and braced himself. "I'm thinking I might talk with him."

Dray released her hair, letting her arm slap to her side.

Tim waited. She added nothing to the disheartened gesture. "What?"

"I didn't say anything."

"He's got a pro's perspective on it all. Frauds, cons, scams, rackets, schemes."

"That's for sure." She stared at him through his sunglasses. "He's quicksand, Timothy. Make sure you keep one foot on solid ground."

Mac's piercing whistle snapped her head around, and she turned to start back to her patrol car.

The old beige Cadillac Seville parked in the gravel lot told Tim he'd found his mark.

The shack had every order of car stereos and speakers embedded in its carpeted walls, a-thrum with the bass vibrations of the latest emissary for window-tinted low riders and Sunset club junkies. Spray-paint depictions of stereos dotted the plywood exterior, suspended in white clouds like the loot-filled imaginings of an acoustically minded cartoon burglar. A slight scan of the binocs brought the subject himself into focus, visible near the back door, his clean-pressed slacks and calm, pacifying gestures distinguishing him instantly from the animated, grease-stained mechanic and the flustered consumer.

He placed a hand on the customer's arm and steered him down into his vehicle, all the while his lips moving slow and steady. He waved as the car pulled out, the driver looking slightly confused but appeased.

Tim crossed Lincoln Boulevard in a jog and stole up on the shack. He tracked a man in a Nike jumpsuit to the door, then waited outside, hidden from view. The oppressive sound systems had been turned down, so Tim was able to hear the voices within.

"- six-and-a-half MB Quart component speakers," said the familiar voice. "You want to install it yourself, it'll void warranty, but I could let it go cheaper."

"How much cheaper?"

"Ricardo! How much are those new MB Quart separates we just got in?"

The mechanic's shout from the back was partially drowned out by the whir of his drill. "Five hundred."

"Four hundred dollars. You heard the gentleman. I can't do any better than that."

Tim leaned his head back against the cheap plywood, smiling. The man hurriedly paid and scampered out, the steal of the century boxed in cardboard and clasped beneath an arm.

Tim stepped through the doorway, and the man looked up. "Timmy."

"Dad."

"Nice deaf routine."

His father smiled and tilted his head gracefully. "I like to see people happy. And it does move product." He folded his hands, bringing them to rest at his waistline. "How'd you find me? Let me guess – you talked to my nanny."

Tim nodded.

"I'm sure my lowly parole officer couldn't dish the dirt fast enough for the great Tim Rackley. You came to gloat? Celebrate your old man's fifth release from the Crossbars Hotel?"

"I didn't know you were out. You been on paper a month?"

"Give or take. I got dinged on a 470 in November, trying to pass forged deeds of trust for these lots up Las Flores. I flipped on a schmuck up the ladder for a reduced sentence – six months custody, half time knocked it to three. I served it concurrent with the three-month parole – board – violation sentence. All in all, not a bad deal, except for my parole clock. It reset like an egg timer. Another three years."

Tim glanced down. His father was wearing the sleek gray pants he'd had tailored so the right cuff flared; it concealed an electronic monitoring bracelet.

"You were so close this time."

"Yes, but these were beautiful forges."

His father was, as always, dressed and groomed impeccably – not a wrinkle in his slacks, not a stray hair. He outclassed the cheap surroundings as he generally did, a ghetto-bound prince. He'd been born an unplanned child to displeased older parents – his mother forty-eight, his father sixty-one. His mother had died giving birth to him, his father six dour years later. He'd been raised by an abusive older brother who, as far as Tim knew, was still alive – a successful banker somewhere in the Midwest. Tim's father referred to him as "the VIP" so consistently that Tim didn't know his uncle's given name.

Of his own mother, Tim recalled only that she had soft hands and a melodic voice; she'd figured out before Tim was four that she'd be better off without either of the men in her life and was just gone one afternoon when he'd come in from the backyard. She had not been mourned or mentioned thereafter – neither was permitted – though Tim did remember standing in her abandoned work space, running his hands over her drafting table as if part of her still resided there. He'd been brought up by a man who regarded him as a curiosity – a resolute boy bent on lawfulness even as he was being deployed as a prop in one elaborate con after another.

"How are you doing?" Tim asked.

"Well, thank you. A bit tired. Picking up trash beside the freeway at six A.M. wears one out, but at least I get to wear a stylish orange vest. Now and then when the stars align, the Petty Ones bestow graffiti-removal duties upon me. It's great fun." He smiled a pastor's patient smile. "Is there something I can help you with? I'm quite busy. As you can imagine, car stereos do a brisk business in these environs."

"Yes. I need…I'd like your help. With a case."

"Back behind a badge, are we?" He turned to the abbreviated counter and tapped on a primitive computer. "I don't much care to contribute to the greater glory of law enforcement."

"I want to know how you picked marks. For cons."

He paused, his interest piqued. He gave a quick glance over his shoulder, but Ricardo was banging away on a dashboard in the back. "Depends on the con."

"How can you tell if someone has money?"

"A rich mark? I'm not sure. At this stage of the game, I just sense it."

"Well, think for a moment. If you had to break it down."

He nodded, a thoughtful frown wrinkling his face. As Tim had hoped, he couldn't resist showing off. "Well, you don't look at name brands. Not on clothes at least. Shoes sometimes, more with men – a woman will take out a second mortgage on her trailer to buy a pair of Jimmy Choos. Bulky-wallet guys are broke, generally. Money clips aren't. Mesh baseball caps – no money. White caps with curved bills – money. Check a shirt – has it been dry-cleaned? Are the lines crisp? Nice pens. Rich people have nice pens. Look for the snowy cap of a Montblanc, the cursive swoop of a Waterman. And watches, but not middle quality. Anyone can be gifted a Movado or a Tag for a birthday, a graduation. You want to look for Baume amp; Mercier, Breitling, high-end Omega, Cartier if they're nuevo."

"What else with new money?"

"They dress just wrong. A little too hip, like a divorcee in a singles bar. They reek of desperation. They've gotten ahead of themselves and see the long drop down."

"Other ways to tell rich marks in general?"

"Ask what their fathers do. I know – one of your childhood sore spots. Kids like you will cower from questioning. But those whose daddies are doctors and judges will perk their ears and bark. Richness begets richness, and affluent spawn may feign contrived humility, but if pushed right, they aren't afraid to own up fast and proud." He closed his eyes for a moment, lost in pleasant remembrances. "There's something in the movement, in the posture, that can't be taught – a smug self-assurance that's one of the many side effects of an entitled childhood." His eyes opened, held their gaze. "You move like a rich man, Timmy."

"Must have been my privileged childhood."

"Must have been." His father pressed his lips together, making them disappear. "The main trick to conning, I'd say, is circumventing people's thinking. You want them to respond instinctively, to salivate at the bell."

"Give me an example."

"Okay. A mark comes in here, he wants a stereo and speakers. What do I sell him first?"

"The stereo."

"The stereo. Why?"

"Because in contrast to it, the speakers will seem cheaper."

He smiled, pleased. "That's right. We sell him a two-thousand-dollar head unit first. After that, what's eight hundred for speakers? Besides, you can't enjoy the two-thousand-dollar stereo without them. Then you load him up with even cheaper accessories he doesn't need. It's all chump change now, Constant Buyer, in comparison. Just you try running a mark up the ladder. If you start with a thirty-buck CD-cleaner kit, the sheep are already thinking, 'My goodness. That's a whole dinner at Claim Jumper.' You don't want to climb that ladder. No, sir." He ran a hand across his clean-shaven face. "Of course, this sales scheme's old hat now – Christ, they teach it on Rodeo – but I knew it back when. I knew it like I know how to smell people. Like I know how to get into their brains."

"Or their wallets."

"There's a difference?" He paused, his posture flawless, his hands clasped behind his back. "Where do you think you got it? Your school-teachers adored you. Your commander in the army took you under his wing. The marshal himself hung the Medal of Valor around your neck – you'd think you won the biathlon at Lillehammer. Do you think you got by on natural smarts and talent?" A smile warmed his features; even approaching sixty, he was still more handsome than Tim. "You know the angles. The well-timed favor. The chuck on the shoulder. Dropping heat-seeking flattery. You know how to read the river, just like me." When Tim didn't rise to the bait, he arched a silver eyebrow. "Why all this interest? Considering a career switch?"

"Background information."

"Mugsy and I used to run a lucrative ruse out in La Canada that might be of interest. The mark can be anyone, really, but we had an easier go with elderly folk living alone. Widows are always good. I'd throw on a three-piece suit, and Mugsy would dress as a bank guard. I'd hit the mark around four o'clock, tell her I'm a professional bank examiner and her account has shown a few concerning irregularities. I have a culprit in mind, a crafty teller who's been doctoring transactions in certain accounts. I furnish him with a Jewish name. To be safe, would she mind going to the bank and withdrawing her savings so our team of highly qualified individuals can monitor the transaction as it crosses the culprit's desk?"

His tone, even now, exuded authority and reasonableness. "She pulls out her life savings and brings it home in a cab we furnish. I wait with her maybe a half hour, share some small talk over coffee. That's when Mugsy arrives. He tells her the culprit showed his hand and was arrested. Her account was straightened out, fortunately, and now it's safe from any future tampering. Our anxious widow is relieved beyond words. Since by now the bank is closed, I instruct Mugsy to return her money to the vault. We're back at the house splitting green before angina strikes." He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. "What's that face? Do I disgust you?"

Tim looked away, unsettled as always when confronted with his father's talent.

"Well, before you get too swept away in moral indignation, let me remind you of this: Those schemes fed you every meal of your childhood." His tone, as always, remained conversational, as calm as a flatline. "They dressed you, paid for your school supplies, afforded you the bed in which you slept every night. There's a little piece of me in you – in everyone, actually, but especially in you. It's in my DNA, packed into every one of your angry little cells."

Revulsion rose in the back of Tim's throat. A familiar flavor -the same he'd grown up with.

"Beware pride, Timmy. It's the most dangerous trait. We are low creatures. If we're foolish, we hold self-illusions. If we're smart, we use others' self-illusions against them."

"Fortune-cookie insert?"

"Need I remind you pride landed you in your own little quagmire last year?"

"My daughter being murdered might have had something to do with it, too."

"True. Quite true. How is Andrea?"

"Fine."

"Send her my regards."

"I will. We finally cleaned out Ginny's room…" Tim paused, stupidly anticipating some response but drawing only a slightly bored gaze. His capacity for expecting change in his father staggered him in its imperviousness to data. No matter how much he'd toughened into adulthood, some hardwired hope still flickered, the glow of a pilot light. He remembered, too late, Dray's warning.

His father's face sharpened, as if Tim's words had just sunk in. "You know what might go well in there? Your mother's old drafting table."

"You still have it?"

"Yes, but it's up in the rafters. A hassle to get down."

"I could take care of that."

"It's worth some money."

Tim took a moment to respond, his face burning. "I could pay you for it."

A pristine Lexus screeching into the lot drew his father's attention – more pressing matters at hand. The plate frames broadcast a Beverly Hills dealership. A tanned man in a crisp suit popped out and headed for them, a mascara-heavy girlfriend trailing in his wake.

To Tim's surprise, his father turned away from the approaching customer, absorbed in some paperwork. He slid a pair of eyeglasses from a drawer, an odd move given his 20/15 vision.

"Excuse me. Excuse me."

Tim's father glanced up over the rims of the lenses. "Yes?"

The man stood with his legs slightly spread, suit fabric pulling tight at the biceps. The girlfriend arrived, a bit winded, and took up what appeared to be her customary post behind his shoulder.

"I'm looking for an Alpine ALD 900. The guy my dealer outsources to can't get his hands on one. Can you?"

Tim's father's eyes returned to the folder before him. "Pardon me for saying so, sir, but that's an extremely exclusive line. Perhaps I could recommend something a bit more…reasonably priced?"

Head bowed, Tim took his leave, heading out into the morning blaze. Behind him he heard the customer's raised voice. "Why don't you get it for me and let me worry about what I can afford?"

And his father, setting the hook with newly realized chagrin -"Right away, sir."