Tiger Shrimp Tango полностью

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—”