Tiger Shrimp Tango

Chapter Twelve

TROUBLES-VILLE

A rusty freighter sailed down the Miami River, destined for Jamaica and Hispaniola, where they delivered stolen electronics. Once empty, the freighter would buy stolen electronics and head back.

The small ship cruised under the Interstate 95 bridge. On one bank was a series of business endeavors that required barbed wire. Then a vacant lot with copulating dogs and a run-down two-store office building at 15 percent occupancy.

Five percent of that occupancy was sitting behind a second-floor window. A hat rack stood in the corner with a single rumpled fedora. On the desk was a black rotary phone, a bottle of rye and a dirty glass. The person behind the desk had his feet propped up, repeatedly shuffling a deck of cards without intention. His necktie had a pattern of dart boards. The playing cards had stag-party pictures of dames.

The phone rang.

And rang.

The feet eventually came off the desk. Cards scattered. He grabbed the receiver.

“Mahoney, mumble to me.”

Former state agent Mahoney, officially retired in the greater Miami-Dade community with a private office in the shadow of a drawbridge. The frosted glass on the original 1940s door had gold letters with his name and PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS.

The person on the other end of the phone was a recent client, the victim of a fly-by-night mortgage-loan scam. Mahoney could barely understand because the client was talking so fast, expressing profuse thanks. Once again, he’d gotten someone’s money back, and word was getting around.

“Ice it, Goldilocks,” said Mahoney. “Just hoofin’ my beat. Two-bit shylock bent job.”

More thanks in closing.

Mahoney nodded. “Shama-lama-ding-dong.”

He hung up and gathered the playing cards. Before he could resume shuffling, the phone rang again. Mahoney eyed it. He never answered on the first ring. Because once he did, mundaneness set in. But until then, the possibilities were endless: a coded message from a wharf in Bangkok until the line went dead after a gunshot; someone with an eye patch wanting to arrange a border crossing in East Berlin; a dizzy broad with a mysteriously dead sister, but that turned into a case of split personality when she pulled out the meat cleaver. Or even, dare he hope . . . Hollywood.

The phone reached the tenth ring. He snatched the receiver.

“Mahoney, your dime.”

It was the credit-card company.

Mahoney winced. But not because he was behind on payments. It was the inevitable march of technology. Serge had persuaded him that no matter how loathsome this intrusion of the modern world, he needed to start taking credit cards to stay in business:

“It seemed like just yesterday,” Mahoney said to himself. “I was listening to a maudlin strain of jazz that mocked my run of bad luck, performed in the same schadenfreude riff as a dope-fiend trombone player who moonlights for his habit doing studio-session work that involves overdubbing Warner Brothers cartoons with a toilet-plunger wah-wah-waaahhh after an animated coyote suffers another setback . . .” He glared over his shoulder at the corner of his office, where Serge stood with a trombone: Wah-wah-waaahhh. Serge removed the toilet plunger from the end of his instrument. “What?”

“Mahoney just stared down into his empty glass of rye like a calico cat that gets its kicks watching water circle a drain.”

“Maybe this will cheer you up!” Serge ran over to the desk with Christmas-morning zeal. “I just got a cool thing that plugs into the earphone jack of my new smartphone. Smartphones rock! I can check the rainfall in Tulsa, play roulette online, ask it to give me voice street directions and quiche recipes, identify constellations, track airline flights in real time, scan bar codes to see if duct tape is cheaper nearby, and watch YouTube videos of hilarious injuries involving archery equipment and trampolines. I’ve heard rumors it also makes phone calls but haven’t had time to verify that yet.”

“El gizmo?” said Mahoney.

“Oh, right.” Serge twisted a tiny piece of plastic into the top of his phone. “This thing swipes credit cards! Isn’t that fucked up?” He waved his free hand, magically wiggling fingers. “Then it flies through the air and ends up in your bank account.”

“Skeeze rap the skag twist.”

“Of course I need it,” said Serge, fiddling with the top of the phone. “I have to run people’s credit cards every day.”

Mahoney stared.

“It’s the weirdest thing,” said Serge. “I don’t even ask; they just offer. It started right after I got the smartphone and was so excited I couldn’t help running up to people: ‘Have you seen these? They’re the shit! You have to get one! I’m going to show you every single app I’ve downloaded. Only takes a couple hours. I’ve almost figured out how to use it to blow things up from a distance, and this little accessory on top even swipes credit cards.’ Then someone just hands me a Diners Club . . .”

It took a week. But finally, Mahoney fought every fiber in his being and decided to accept Serge’s advice in the name of keeping his noir dream alive. He placed the dreaded call. Since he had a rotary phone, he couldn’t navigate the automated menu options.

“Yo, chief!” said Mahoney.

“You did not enter a valid selection. Please try again . . .”

“Gaffer!”

“For business hours and mailing address . . .”

“Brass, honcho, jefe!”

“To return to the previous menu, press pound . . .”

Mahoney began banging the phone on the side of his desk. “No-good bottom-deck-dealing riverboat guttersnipe . . .”

“I still cannot understand your request. I will now put you through to a representative . . .”

Mahoney stopped with a curious look and silently placed the phone to his ear.

“This is Calista with National City Group Banc Corp. How may I help you today? . . .”

And that’s how Mahoney got approval to take credit cards. Almost. Only one last step.

Applying for a card is one thing, but accepting them is an entirely different level of background vetting. Anyone can now set up shop with a phone and start churning pilfered plastic. So the companies hire outside firms who contact the applicant with a series of challenge questions that, in theory, should stump anyone who had stolen an identity. Always multiple choice, like: Have you attended any of the following schools? Which, if any, of these cars have you owned? In what state were you issued your Social Security card?

Mahoney was passing his challenges with flying colors. Until the last question. It came to a screeching halt.

“Hello?” asked the questioner. “Are you still there?”

“Yaza.”

“Would you like me to repeat the question?”

No, Mahoney remembered it all right. “In which of the following towns is Blue Heron Boulevard located?” Jesus, Mahoney thought, I haven’t lived there in thirty years. Who the hell knows all this about me?

“Sir,” said the phone. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to answer the last question or—”

“Riviera Beach.”

“Excellent,” said the phone. “You are now officially approved by the National City Group Banc—”

Mahoney hung up. It got him to thinking. Who was collecting all this information? Since he was a private eye, he found out. He picked up the phone again.

Another phone rang at Big Dipper Data Management.

“This is Wesley Chapel.”

“Chapel-de-dapple, Mahoney here. Low-down sling on the dry-gulch dust-’n-rust.”

“What?”

Mahoney worded it a different way. “. . . with the rhino spondulix.”

“What?”

Still another way. “. . . on a Dutch flogger.”

“I’m not understanding a word you’re saying.”

Mahoney sighed and took a deep breath. “I’m a private investigator, and I’d like to hire you to gather information on some people I’m tracking.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” said Wesley. “We do that all the time. You got a credit card?”

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