Setup on Front Street (6 page)

I
needed ID.

Even though I had no plans to leave the
island, it was just something I thought I should have. Sort of a knee-jerk
reflex kind of thing. I'd always had fake ID for my grifts, for one thing or
another, so I kind of felt naked without it.

Yale Lando was the guy in Key West to see
for that. Driver's licenses, green cards, birth certificates, college degrees —
no job was out of reach for him. He even licensed a few Cuban doctors up in
Miami who didn't want the minor inconvenience of having to attend American
medical schools.

To top it off, his work was flawless, never
questioned. I'd gotten some Nevada ID from him before leaving for Vegas, and
I'd referred some others to him over the years.

He worked out of his house on Havana Lane,
a little street tucked away off Truman. The house sat behind a high wooden
fence, nearly concealed by a canopy of very big, very old, orange bougainvillea
and other heavy vegetation. His equipment was in a mother-in-law apartment in
the rear of the house, but I never got to see it.

You always dealt with Yale in his living
room, sitting on cheap furniture.

The Price Is Right
was
on his TV. The host was about to offer a squealing contestant a shot at a new
car.

Yale leaned back in his ancient armchair,
sipping on a glass of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice as he ran down my want
list and gave me a price. He had to raise his voice a little to be heard over
the excitement on the TV.

"Forty-five hundred," he said in
his rich Conch accent. "Two grand for the passport, five hundred for the
driver's license, and a dime apiece for the two credit cards."

I nodded.

He ran a hand through curly brown hair,
then down through a matching beard. I knew we were the same age, but you
couldn't tell by looking at his face, so much of it was covered up. His eyes,
however, showed the truth, and the backs of his hands had the first faint
traces of the gnarl that time would eventually put there.

"Remember, the license and passport
will be in the same name, while the credit cards will be in two different names
altogether."

"So the passport is backup to the
license? In case I'm asked for two forms of ID."

"Check. But the passport will be
totally valid for travel out of the country. And the license will be valid
also, complete with a backup file in Tallahassee."

I always marveled at Yale's deep
connections, how he managed all of this. He moved me over to a makeshift area
in his Florida room where he set up a camera on a tripod. I sat down on a small
stool as he snapped my photo.

"Light blue," he said, pointing
to the backdrop behind me. "That's the color they use on authentic Florida
licenses. Any other color and they peg it as a phony. We'll use a white
backdrop for the passport."

"Do I pick everything up at the same
time?"

"No. On the first deliv — hey,
wait a minute!"

His eyes shot back to the TV. The woman
contestant said something as he hissed, "No, you stupid bitch! The motor
oil is more expensive than the fabric softener!"

He kicked off his sandals and headed back
toward the couch, shaking his fist at her.

"The motor oil! The motor oil!"

Finally, the woman changed her mind at the
last second, selecting the motor oil. It was the right move, so she advanced
one step closer to the car.

Relieved, Yale went on. "Anyway, on
the first delivery I give you the passport, the license, and one of the two
credit cards. You can start using the card right away. It'll have a ten
thousand dollar line of credit, and like I said, it'll be in a different name.
A totally legit name of a real guy somewhere who actually has his real credit
card safely buried in his wallet. This is an exact duplicate, number and all,
so the charges will breeze through when you go to make a purchase. The real guy
won't ever suspect a thing till he gets his bill."

"So, for all practical purposes, it's
a real credit card? Not stolen?"

"Check. Now, you can only use it for a
month, of course. Visa sends out their bills on the twenty-third of each month.
So you can use this card until about the twenty-fifth of April. That's when the
real guy'll get his bill, around that time, and naturally the shit will hit the
fan when he sees what's happened. Then, on that date, you just cut up that card
and come back here. I'll give you another card in another name. Also good for
ten dimes. That'll see you through till May twenty-fifth. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Now, you can buy stuff around town
with these cards, but just a little, not too much, all right? You don't want a
lot of charges showing up from here. It's too small a town and too easy for the
feds to cover. Remember, this's a federal offense."

He looked me straight in the eye, letting
that one sink in. His eyes were the color of a summer sky, so bright I almost
wanted to smile. But I pushed back the urge.

Then he said, "So if you really want
to go to town, make some big buys, run up to Miami and do it. They'll never be
able to track you up there. Except don't buy anything that's traceable in
itself, like a car."

I agreed that was the way to go, so that
seemed to close out our business. He got up to refill his grapefruit juice.

When he came back from the kitchen he
turned his attention back to his TV. The woman was guessing prices or
something, I don't know, while the host was becoming more breathless the closer
she got to winning the car. The audience was getting more and more worked up as
well. Yale seemed to be really into it.

"You know," he said, "this
is truly the greatest show ever to be on TV."

He turned thoughtful here, kind of like a
bearded philosopher, who was used to having his every word absorbed by anxious
students sitting at his feet.

"They've managed to boil down the
entire human experience to a few minutes of greed. Ordinary people, people like
you and I know, like we grew up with, behaving like mad dogs for the chance to
win a 'fortune in
fabulous prizes
!'" He said it just like those
overheated TV announcers. "When those jerks get up on stage with Bob
Barker, they have only one purpose in their miserable lives. To grab as much
swag as they can, as quick as they can. And to do it in front of the whole
country while drooling all over themselves."

I
remembered this show. It had been on forever. Like an old friend who came to
dinner and never left.

"They
go crazy when they win this shit, right?"

"Check. It's like it validates their
entire existence. You know, like their lives have meant something after all.
They've been to the mountaintop with Bob Barker."

As soon as he said that, the woman won the
car and went apeshit.

"Look," Yale said. "What'd I
tell you? And if she'd lost, you can bet she'd go the rest of her life feeling
like a complete failure. Forty years from now, she'd be telling her friends at
the nursing home, 'You know, if only I'd guessed a higher price for that motor
oil, I'd've won the damn car'." He chuckled out loud. "I guarantee
you, bubba, every one of these people would buy one of those credit cards from
me if they had the chance. Every fucking one of them."

"You think so?"

"I know so. They all want the new car,
the free lunch, and they don't mind tippy-toeing a little on the other side of
the line to get it. Especially if you can make them believe they'll never get
caught."

"When can I get the goods?"

I didn't really want to get Yale off the
subject. I could tell he was getting fairly intense here, making a pretty
provocative point, but I had to get going.

"Try me...in about two weeks,
okay?"

"Okay, but today's the twenty-ninth.
Two weeks, that'll be around April twelfth. That's only going to give me just a
little less than two weeks on the first credit card."

He looked away from the TV. They'd gone to
a commercial. But he didn't look at me.

"Don Roy, you know when I give you a
figure, that's it. You don't jew me down."

He paused for just a moment. I didn't say
anything. I figured he was still working the count. Then he eyed me.

"But because we were altar boys
together, and because we sat next to each other in English class two years in a
row, I'm gonna drop three hundred from my original quote. Besides, you're
right. It wouldn't be fair, because you're only getting two weeks play on the
card." He thought for a second, then he said, "But I'll need half
now, the other half on delivery."

I gave him twenty-one hundred dollars as we
shook hands.

I was about to leave when he said,
"Hey man, don't go now. You gotta stick around. The Showcase Showdown's
coming up. It's the best part."

I thanked him again and left.

I
woke up next to Norma for the first time in nearly seven years. I had a hard
time believing my good fortune.

Here I was, home only three days, but
already I had a few grand in my pocket, another two hundred large on its way, a
deal working for permanent ID, and the woman of my dreams peacefully sleeping
next to me. Well, okay, maybe she wasn't exactly the woman of my dreams
,
you know, like Raquel Welch or somebody, but she was plenty good enough for me.

A lot more than I ever thought I could get.

You see, I was never what you'd call a real
attractive guy to begin with, being so big and bullnecked, you know what I
mean? I just looked like a big old galoot with big arms, big hands, and an
intimidating appearance.

Not the kind of guy that the foxy girls are
drawn to.

Never the slim, honey-voiced guy with the
right clothes or the slick red car, bringing his model-gorgeous girl to a
trendy nightclub.

Rather, I was always the anonymous,
faceless bouncer type, working the door, pulling back the velvet rope for them
to pass through, saying "Welcome."

The thing is, I'm probably a lot smarter
than most of those red convertible-type guys. I'm really good with numbers
— I've always been able to do quick calculations and figure odds.

And I can spot character flaws in people
immediately.

Weeding out the bullshit artists from the
heavy hitters is no problem for me. I can practically do it blind.

But no girl ever gave me a chance in high
school.

Afterward, though, I got a few chances, but
I usually blew them sky-high. I would never know the right things to say to a
girl, you know, like in conversation when you're just getting to know them. It
never came easy for me. Other guys always seemed to have the words I wished I
could say.

I know I must've seemed like some pathetic
baboon way out of his element. Not only that, my brainpower, along with the
rest of the real me, had a hard time showing itself.

 
Money was never a problem, though. I always
had plenty of it to spend, so spend it I did. That's where a lot of the dough I
made from my early scores went, on these girls I kept trying to impress.

That's how it went, year in and year out,
just one piece of bad news after another.

Until Norma.

I found her serving drinks one night at
this little locals' spot over in one of the neighborhoods. Her second husband
had just dumped her, so she was definitely rebounding.

She wasn't what you'd call a knockout.
Hell, I guess you could say she wasn't even that good-looking, but once I got
to know her a little, I could see her insides. You know, they glowed like a
warm summer sunset, while her smile was just the biggest and brightest thing
I'd ever seen. Whenever she turned it toward me, it damn sure made everything
right again.

She evidently found something in me that
she thought was worthwhile, because once we linked up — I guess it was back
around eighty-two or three — we were solid, I mean tighter than three
coats of paint.

Even now, I can hear her whispering,
"Don Roy, I'll make you so proud of me."

You have no idea what that meant to me,
hearing her say something like that. No one, but no one, had ever felt that way
toward me before. Or since.

So I hope you can see how I was so quick to
forgive her for what she did while I was gone. Hell, there's times when we've
all got to do things we don't want to do — God knows I've done a few
pretty disgusting things that I thought were necessary at the time.

Norma was always a real confused girl. I
guess she figured she was only trying to get by when she left me for that
fucking weasel BK just before I split for Vegas. He was right when he said I
couldn't afford to take her with me. That's when he apparently made his move on
her, so she took the bait.

You've got to understand something. See, to
a girl like Norma, having someone like BK come sniffing around you is a big
deal, because that kind of guy is usually way, way out of reach. The fact that
he was married wasn't important.

He's from one of the oldest families on the
island, with plenty of dough, and his life damn well set up. But there he was,
making like he cared for her. That was the play. She had nothing better going
for her. I was leaving soon for Vegas.

What was the point of refusing?

***

Norma had just dropped me off at Mambo's later in the day when I
saw the car out of the side of my eye.

A big silver Mercedes, out of place in this
neighborhood, sat on the corner. As soon as Norma pulled away, it hummed to
life, then rolled up alongside me. The front seat passenger door opened as a
guy about my size stepped out. He had long blonde hair, down around his
shoulders. I didn't know him.

"Get in the car," he said, in an
accent that wasn't from around here.

He opened the back door, pointing my way
inside. He obviously didn't know me, either, or else he wouldn't have ordered
me around that way.

"Ask me nice and I'll just walk away
without telling you to go fuck yourself."

"Mr Whitney would like to see
you."

His tone was still flat, without feeling.
His broad shoulders and thick biceps bulged under a tight black T-shirt. He was
no stranger to the gym. Confidence spread all over his youngish face.

"Whitney? Which one? BK or the old
man?"

"Former mayor Wilson Whitney
Senior," he said, now with a little zing in his voice.

Punks like him are always trying to impress
you with who they know.

"Is this how he makes his appointments?
Snatching people off the street?"

His buddy got out of the driver's side. He
was also about my size and he had long hair, too, only it was dark brown. He
didn't move, though, he just stood there glaring at me.

I guess he thought I'd jump right in after
seeing the two of them.

"What's he want with me? I don't even
know him."

I knew I would go, even if it was just out
of curiosity, but I wasn't going to make it easy for them.

"Just get in the car, Doyle," the
driver said.

Everything about him told me he was the
ringleader of this little duo, so I looked over the roof of the car at him.

"Not till I know what this's all
about. Otherwise, you can kiss my ass."

Tight T-shirt developed a little tic under
his left eye. His sidekick's jaw tightened beneath a reddening face.

I knew the rough stuff was only moments
away.

"Get in the fucking car,
asshole!" said the T-shirt.

He grabbed my arm, jostling me toward the
gaping rear door.

"Milton,
no!
" cried the
driver.

Too late. I'd wheeled around behind Milton,
pulling his arm into a hammerlock, while grabbing a handful of his long blonde
hair. I slammed his head into the frame of the big car, where the roof meets
the front door. He fell to the sidewalk, bleeding from the gash on his
forehead.

The driver rushed around to his fallen
comrade, putting a handkerchief over the wound.

While he knelt over Milton, I said before sliding
into the back seat, "Now let's go see your boss, and you can explain how
Milton's blood spilled all over these nice leather seats."