Starbucks was on the corner of Biscayne Boulevard and Concourse Circle Drive. Inside a plaza dotted with palm trees and filled with BMWs, Hummers, Bentleys, and Benzes. This section of South Miami looked like a dealership for new and preowned luxury cars.
The competition of capitalism continued despite the economic downturn.
I circled the well-lit strip mall twice before I paused on that prime chunk of real estate.
It was a parking lot that covered all the blood that had soaked into the soil. More than a century ago, the Seminoles and the U.S. fought over this land, a bloody war that might have been the deadliest and costliest of the Indian wars, from the point of view of the U.S. of A.
The sound of gunfire and cannon booms had been replaced with the hum of cappuccino machines and the purr of extravagant automobiles. The scent of war was now the aroma of the perfect latte.
As soon as I headed inside, my cellular vibrated. It was a text message: FUNDS TRANSFERRED.
I deleted that message and moved on, looked out at a warm night that thieving man thought he would live to see. But someone with anger in their heart and money in their pockets had other plans.
Inside was like Antarctica, the AC blowing on high. The noise level was in the red, a dozen multilingual conversations being trapped by glass and walls. Cubans had conversations about one Castro in their homeland being replaced by another Castro, argued that the free health care and free education wasn’t enough to make them remain a
Fidelista
and things needed to change in a land where Cubans couldn’t own cell phones legally and computers were prohibited; the Cubans sipped five-dollar coffees and argued over the need to
defender el socialismo.
Next to them, groups of elderly Jewish men discussed a meeting for Holocaust survivors. There was a lot of noise: the nonstop whirr of the machines making lattes and cappuccinos, the din of jazz being piped in, and people yapping on cellular phones.
Hairs stood up on my neck. Like in London. It felt like I was being watched.
I went into the bathroom, had to. Outside I was cool. But anxiety clung to me, shook me like a winter’s chill. For a moment it felt like I was about to lose control. Another daymare. I’d had a few since Antigua. Images that attacked me while I was wide awake. I saw the dead. Faces I’d been paid to put in the ground. And I saw the faces of those who had tried to do the same to me. Standing behind them all, in the shadows, his face unclear but his silhouette unforgettable, was the man I had killed when I was seven. He was nothing more than a shadow.
The mercenary they called Midnight. The first man I had killed. My father.
My life was a haunted house filled with many ghosts.
Somebody tapped on the door and I pulled the nine millimeter out of my backpack. I called out that the bathroom was occupied. Paused. Whoever was out there walked away. The police wouldn’t leave. Neither would the FBI. Both would announce they had come for me.
I took out my iPhone. Dialed a number in Powder Springs.
I wanted to check up on Catherine and the boys, Steven and Robert. Catherine was the woman who had raised me. Robert’s mother had been killed because of my vocation. Steven was the boy Catherine called her son. But I knew that was a lie. Everything had been a lie.
No one answered, but the answering machine kicked on.
I didn’t leave a message. I blocked my number and never left messages, not there.
I splashed cold water on my face, wiped my skin down with a paper towel, and went outside.
The hunter had been hunted before, more than once.
I spied the room. Cubans sipping cappuccino. Jewish women doing the same. A teenaged guy wearing Dockers and black sandals was eye ing the olive complexion of a blond woman seated at the next table, her pink button-down shirt and ripped jeans not enough to mask a body that could lure most men straight to the gates of Hell.
I sat at a back table, my back to the wall. Darkness masked what had been blue skies and puffy white clouds. Nighttime humidity rose as I waited, my anxiety not betraying me.
A Maserati whipped up under the lights, pulled into the lot, and found an open space between my Streetfighter and a 7-series BMW. The GranTurismo was beautiful. Gray coupe, red leather seats. It was her. That was her mode. Had been her style since she was coming up as a grifter in North Hollywood, back when she was a neophyte in the con game. She’d come up from sleeping on the streets to sleeping in penthouses. Had moved from Hyundai to Maserati.
Every time I read about a major scam, it felt like it was her doing. Maybe I was just hoping it was her criminal mind in full swing. I kept telling myself that it didn’t matter, but no matter where I was in the world, no matter what job I was on, no matter whose bed I was in, no matter who was in my bed, when all was said and done, my mind always went back to her.
I needed her for her connections to the conniving world of high-tech cons and criminals.
Someone out there knew about me, some unseen foe existed, someone who had tracked my movements around the world, someone who had sold my information to a problem I’d had in Detroit, and that information was then passed on to other killers.
Those killers were dead, but the information was alive.
Arizona eased out of her Maserati GranTurismo and I couldn’t stop my schoolboy smile.
A part of me I couldn’t control would always want her.
Arizona’s back was to me at first, her right hand holding her cellular to her ear. Her hair was long and dyed light brown with highlights, hung over her shoulders. She glanced toward the boulevard and I saw she had on dark shades with wide lenses, shades that matched the dark brown blouse she wore, a blouse that probably had hints of her lacy bra showing hints of her soft breasts.
I spied out at the parking lot, made sure she wasn’t trailed. Force of habit. Then I checked the room again. The teenaged guy wearing Dockers had made contact with the pretty blond woman in the pink button-down shirt and ripped jeans. He had scooted his chair closer to her table, smiled at her as she blushed at him.
Arizona kept her eyes on the boulevard.
She had on four-inch heels made by a designer who put red soles on all of his shoes. One glance at the Maserati and Louboutins and you’d think she had matriculated from one of the best schools in the country, maybe the prestigious Miss Porter’s up in Connecticut.
Arizona glanced back toward the coffeehouse, a serious look on her Filipina flesh, a walking enigma who could break a man’s heart or empty every dime he had in his portfolio. She looked extraordinary, possessed an otherworldly beauty. No one would know she was the queen of scams. Just looked like a woman men would want to marry and put in a case with the rest of their trophies.
I licked my lips, could never forget the five senses of her. I’d stop the world from spinning if she asked me to. I’d betray God the way Judas Iscariot betrayed His son.
Arizona kept her cellular up to her face. A moment later, mine rang. Area code 809. Good old 809 had been disgraced, used in many Caribbean area code scams.
I answered, my voice heavy and serious. “I’m inside.”
Arizona closed her cellular.
It had been over a year since I’d seen her.
A lot had happened since then.
She reached inside the car and took out a black briefcase, added that to the purse she was carrying. She gripped the briefcase by its handle, turned around, and what I saw her carrying made me sit up straight.
My heart stopped beating. Then my heart restarted, began beating as fast as it could.
Between Arizona’s breasts and waist, there was roundness underneath her blouse.
A roundness that told me she was at least in her second trimester.
Chapter 2
honor among thieves
Arizona was pregnant.
She held the briefcase close to her. As if she were guarding it with her life. I thought she would walk in and come straight to me, but she stepped into the coolness and got in line.
I stared at her baby bump, thinking that it might go away.
It didn’t. She remained swollen, looked pregnant from all angles.
Queen Scamz had been ridden bareback.
A moment later, she had two cups of tea on a tray. I stood to help her, but the guy in the Dockers had left the beautiful girl he was chatting up and had beaten me to the task. Arizona didn’t part with her briefcase, but she let him carry the tray with the cups. He came to the table, moved ahead of her and handed the tray to me, then walked away, hurried back to the table with the beautiful girl. I was frozen. Arizona stopped and grabbed napkins and sugars, then came to the back, the last bistro table before the bathrooms. I stood when she came toward me, briefcase in one hand, her D&G purse now over her shoulder, the sugars and napkins in the same hand.
She said, “
Nauuhaw
?”
“Tagalog.”
“You haven’t learned Tagalog yet?”
“Some. The basics. Yeah, I’m thirsty.”
Arizona spoke at least four languages: Spanish, Japanese, pidgin, and Vietnamese. She had a least three dozen aliases, a dozen more aliases than the legendary con woman Doris Payne, and had done financial damage in Greece, France, England, and Switzerland. I was surprised to see her back in America. I had thought she had outgrown this crumbling market.
I didn’t know if she was going to hug me or shake hands.
She did neither. She put the briefcase on the floor, eased it close to the wall.
She sat down. “Green tea okay?”
“Thanks.” I sat back down. “Long time.”
“Seems like yesterday. But it’s been a while.”
“Last time I saw you was an ugly day in London and we were on the Millennium Bridge. I was fighting thugs from Brixton. You were throwing knives and cutting people left and right.”
“I was fighting for my life. Fighting for your life. I was protecting you.”
“You killed that day. Your first kill, as far as I know.”
“Three people. My first time killing. And I killed three. For you.”
I nodded. “Yeah. You did.”
She took one of the cups of tea. I kept the other and nodded as a thank-you.
She slid me two sugars. Remembered how I drank my tea. Arizona put one package of white sugar in her tea, stirred it, sipped, as relaxed as everyone else.
I said, “You’re carrying a little extra weight.”
“The elephant in the room.”
“Figured I’d get that out of the way.”
My throat became a desert while my palms became a river. Arizona reached inside her purse. It was opened wide enough for me to see a package of Djarums inside. She took out a device about the size of a Palm Pilot, placed it on the table, then closed her purse. While she did that, another elephant appeared. One that caught me off guard. One I ignored. On the device, the light flashed green. That meant no one was listening in on us, no high-tech surveillance devices were pointed our way.
She said, “Turn your cellular off. Anything electronic you have, turn it off.”
I took out my iPhone, did what the grifter known as Queen Scamz asked.
Arizona took out a second device about the same size as the first. She clicked it on.
I asked, “What does that slice of technology do?”
“This widget is sweet, lifts information on cell phones and Palm Pilots. Same for laptops. Any information stored on computers inside the cars in the parking lot, if that car is on, it’s snatched too. Starbucks computers. Anything Wi-Fi is being snatched.”
“Always on the grift.”
“Read the news. The world is nothing but one fucking grift.”
I hadn’t seen her in a year and she walked in pregnant. Didn’t know what I expected from her at this moment. Wanted to look in her face and see mixed emotions. She gave me eye contact and wasn’t nervous. Not the slightest hint that she wished that baby could be mine. I didn’t see any residual feelings for me. Nothing like I was feeling for her right now.
I sipped my tea. “Hopkins should be on CNN by now.”
Her nose flared. “Lost fifteen million on that double cross. And he tried to shut me out.”
“Guess sending him a red-trimmed late notice wasn’t good enough.”
“This is bigger than that. Bigger than the fifteen million I lost.”
“How much bigger?”
“I can get back what I lost. Plus some. I’ll get to that in a moment.”
She sipped her tea. I sipped mine.
I tried to imagine what it would be like to have fifteen million to lose.
She said, “You wanted to meet.”
I nodded. “I need your help.”
Didn’t want to ask her for help, but I didn’t have much of a choice. My handler hadn’t come up with an answer. Arizona used me to get what she needed. I had to do the same.
I told her someone had tracked me a while ago, for an enemy that I’d had in Detroit. Tracked me from parts of North America to the UK and then down to the West Indies.
She sipped her tea. “Detroit is no longer an issue.”
“That account is closed. But whoever did her work for her still has my information.”
“That’s not good. Not good at all.”
“So far as whoever tracked me, I’m not sure who
he
or
she
or
they
are. Don’t know what they would do with the information. I need you to find out what you can find out.”
Arizona said, “I’m in the middle of something else, but I’ll see what I can do. At cost.”
Again I looked to the front of the coffee shop. Doors opened and closed, customers came and went. The teenaged guy wearing Dockers sipped his brew, again at the same table with the attractive woman in the pink blouse and ripped jeans, his grin nonstop.
I checked my watch, asked, “We done here?”
The queen of cons shook her head. “I have a couple more items to cover.”