Tiger Shrimp Tango

Chapter Ten

MIAMI BEACH

All quiet on the nineteenth floor of a luxury resort hotel on Collins Avenue.

Three A.M.

People spoke in whispers and hushed tones inside suite number 1901. All eight of them. It was the gang’s first team effort. Up until now, they had always worked solo, receiving assignments from their leader. Totally firewalled. Nobody knew anyone else’s action, to minimize damage in the event someone was captured and flipped for the prosecution.

Sitting on the edge of one bed were Gustave and Sasha, the dating bandits, and some others we haven’t met yet. Leroy and Short Leroy, who took out fraudulent mortgages; Tommy Perfecto, head of the burglary crew that struck while others kept their targets busy, Puddin’-Head Farina, the king of the obituary scam; and Pockets Malone, who sold hole-in-one insurance.

Standing before them was the brains of the operation, South Philly Sal, who was from Miami. He did financial backgrounds and surveillance on all the marks before making the final decision and dispatching his henchmen to ply their trades. He looked around.

“Where’s Uncle Cid?”

“Don’t know,” said Tommy Perfecto.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I was waiting in the pickup truck behind the pancake house like we always do, but he never came back from the test drive.”

“Dammit, we need all hands,” said Sal. “That idiot’s going to shave the size of the score.”

The score.

Sal wouldn’t have otherwise risked penetrating the firewalls, but this one was too tasty. He got the idea from the Internet, literally tripped over it while lurking in a chat room. He stood and faced the rest of the gang. “You’ve read the transcripts?”

They nodded, holding packets of stapled pages from the Merry Pranksters’ last online meeting.

“Good, so you know how they work.” He pointed at the room’s TV, where a laptop had been wired into the auxiliary port and now displayed a webcam view that included their hotel’s entrance.

“What now?” asked Short Leroy.

“We wait and watch,” said Sal. “That’s the beauty of this. The television gives us all the intel we need as everything unfolds, from our targets’ location to police response.”

Gustave raised a hand. “Are we working with the Pranksters on this?”

Sal grinned. “They don’t have a clue. Which is the cherry on this sundae. Not only are they cracking the safe open for us, but once the authorities figure out what happened, they’ll get the blame. Nobody will be on our trail . . .”

If only I could pick up their trail,” said Serge.

“Whose trail?” asked Coleman.

“The Corvette guy wasn’t working alone. Mahoney’s client said an accomplice helped steal the car, and I’m guessing the tentacles reach much farther. Possibly a large organized gang preying on the most vulnerable. That really pissed me off.”

“What else pissed you off?” asked Coleman.

“When I open a website and music I didn’t ask for suddenly starts playing. And now the burden is on me to remember how to mute the computer.”

“Yeah, what the fuck is that about?” said Coleman.

“Someone forcing their musical taste on me, like I don’t get enough of that in Florida traffic.”

“It’s just too much to take,” said Coleman. “And then they expect you to get a job.”

Serge turned. “Coleman, what does any of this have to do with not getting a job?”

“It has everything to do with it.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Serge. “You always try to work into our conversations why whatever we’re talking about is a reason to stay unemployed.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

The black Firebird left the city behind and rolled down an unlighted country road.

“. . . And another item from the growing file of people who voluntarily wear dunce caps,” said Serge. “You’ll be talking cordially to someone and make an offhand reference, ‘I recently read where—’ and they’ll cut you off and say, ‘Oh, I don’t read’ . . . This is a tragedy on so many different levels. First, because they don’t read, they don’t know enough to keep it to themselves. Next, and this is the most amazing part, they use a demeaning tone like I’m the stupid one for wasting time with books.”

“How can you respond to that kind of person?”

“I usually say something like, ‘But you can read, right? Or is that name tag on your fast-food uniform just a bunch of gibberish?’ And then they go in the back, and I bend down and squint at counter level and see them spit on my hamburger. I don’t care much for that either.”

“Want to hear what really pisses me off?” said Coleman.

“Get it of your chest, man!”

“You know what the worst customer service in the world is? I’ll tell you. It’s the weed guys. You just cannot depend on these people. They’ll give you a time, right? And you’re looking forward to it all week and get off work on Friday at five. Of course I personally wouldn’t know, but I’ve heard of people with jobs. And the weed guy never shows up, and he doesn’t answer his phone, and you drive by his house and his car’s gone, and then you’re totally un-stoned at midnight and accidentally bump into the guy at a party and go, ‘Dude, what’s the deal? We had a time,’ and he says, ‘I was doin’ stuff,’ and I say, ‘Like what?’ and he says, ‘Listenin’ to music’ . . .”

“Coleman—”

“Wait, wait, wait! So then I say, ‘How would you like if I wasn’t there at the time?’ And he says, ‘But we had a time.’ ‘Exactly.’ ‘It’s not the same thing.’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘No.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘No.’ ‘Yes’ . . .”

“Coleman—”

“Hold on! And every weed guy is the same. A disgrace to the drug community. And I’m arguing back and forth with this guy, and it’s like talking to a mirror.”

“You mean ‘brick wall,’ ” said Serge. “Correction: You do mean a mirror.”

“And I say, ‘You pull this same bullshit every time.’ He says, ‘Bullshit on you.’ ‘Well, fuck you.’ ‘Fuck you, too.’ ‘I hate your guts.’ ‘Don’t talk to me for the rest of your life.’ ‘You’re dead to me.’ ‘I screwed your mother last night.’ ‘I boned your sister up the ass.’ And people separate you before the punches fly, and you walk into the next room of the party and walk back five minutes later: ‘You still got that weed?’ ‘Yeah, man, you got the money?’ ‘Here it is.’ ‘Here’s your dope.’ ‘Cool.’ ‘Thanks.’ ‘Same time next week?’ ‘We’re on’ . . .”

Serge stared speechless at Coleman.

“What?”

A banging sound from the trunk of the car. Coleman twisted rolling papers in his lap. “I think the hostage came to again.”

“And just in time,” said Serge. “I hate carrying them unconscious into a remote field.”

Coleman licked a gummed edge. “Walking them at gunpoint is better.”

They parked next to just such a remote field and walked the hostage out with a .45 barrel in his back. Serge forced him to the ground and bound his ankles with plastic fasteners meant for electric cables in underground conduits. He handed Coleman the gun. “Just keep your finger off the trigger.”

“How am I supposed to shoot?” asked Coleman.

“You’re not,” said Serge. “He isn’t going anywhere with those fasteners, but you never know. The threat of that gun alone should be enough.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to the car for the hurricane corkscrews and shovels.”

Coleman scratched his hip with the end of the gun. “Don’t tell me I have to dig again.”

“We’re not digging a hole. We’re filling one.”

Coleman stretched his neck in a straining attempt to see in the dark. “What’s that big thing over there?”

“Another recent purchase that I dropped off earlier.”

Serge reached the Firebird and was on his way back. Suddenly a distant flash. Followed by the delayed sound.

Bang.

Coleman slowly toppled over. Serge dropped the shovels and went running. “Coleman! . . . Coleman! . . . Please, God! No!”

He arrived and fell to his knees next to a face-in-the-dirt, motionless buddy. Tears welled in his eyes. “Coleman . . .”

Coleman turned his head. “Serge, get down. Somebody’s shooting. I hit the ground when I heard the first shot.”

“Coleman, what’s that next to your hand?”

“Cool, a gun.” He grabbed it. “We can shoot back.”

“Coleman, I saw the flash from back there. You fired the shot.”

“No, I didn’t. I was just scratching my . . . Ohhhh, that’s what happened.” He stood and looked down at his right side. “The shot went through my pocket.” He stuck the gun barrel through the hole. “And I liked these shorts.”

Bang.

Serge swiped the gun away. “No more bullets for you.”

“Good. Less to stay on top of.”

“Now grab the shovels and my duffel with the hardware.”

“Crap.”

“Hey, I have to drag this guy by the ankles.”

Coleman perched the spades on his left shoulder and grabbed a canvas strap. “Where are we going?”

“Over there.”

“You mean toward that thing I saw earlier.”

“Just don’t fall behind like the other times.” Serge tucked the ankles under his armpit and hiked forward, dragging the scam artist across the rocky terrain like he was hauling out a bag of trash, which he was.

“Hey, Serge, now I recognize what that is. I remember when you bought it earlier.”

Serge stopped and released the captive’s legs. He dialed his cell phone. “Hello, I’d like to get some work done in the morning . . . Yes, I have a credit card . . .”

MIAMI BEACH

Five A.M.

Paramedics wrapped blankets around naked foamy people while police took statements.

“He said he was from the front desk . . .”

“Sounded so official . . .”

“What convinced me was the part about not taking the elevator . . .”

Other detectives confirmed the coordinated wave of incoming “front-desk” calls and traced them all to a proxy Internet server that disguised their true origin. Uniformed officers swept the nineteenth floor. They chalked up the smashed surveillance camera at the end of the hall to more mayhem from the Pranksters.

The authorities gave the okay for the guests to return to their rooms. The police left.

Thirty minutes later, they were back.

Another burst of 9-1-1 calls. They met the irate guests in the hallway of the nineteenth floor. Seems every one of the twenty-two evacuated rooms had been hit hard. Jewelry, laptops, cameras, expensive video stuff—all the things you’d expect from tourists in high-end resorts.

The police maintained poker faces, but they had to give the crooks grudging respect. They’d done their homework: It was one of those fancy hotels where the doors to the rooms don’t automatically close all the way, which meant no need for forced entry. And details of the hoax, especially the fire extinguisher and nudity parts, guaranteed guests would be leaving in a hurry without wallets and purses.

The police issued an APB and canvassed all exterior security cameras for vehicles leaving the premises between four and five A.M.

What they didn’t know was the most savvy touch of all. Since the gang knew the police would check surveillance tapes for departing cars, they made sure not to appear on them. Instead, they went to the very last place the police might think to look, where they would remain until checkout time when the coast was clear: in their own room on the twentieth floor, enjoying the contents of the minibar.

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