Sins of the Father (11 page)

“Good boy,” Peter said, patting the stuffed dog’s head.

Once that was done, he installed the second wireless camera in the ornate headboard to give him a reverse angle. That way he’d be sure to catch the mark’s face at some point, no matter which way he was positioned.

Then he headed up into the stuffy claustrophobic attic to work on the installation of the final camera and the audio feed. That was cramped, grubby, miserable work, and once it was done he had to take a long hot shower in the neighboring suite to get all the cobwebs and dust out of his hair. Clean and fresh, he synced the three cameras to his laptop, and set everything so it would be ready to roll as soon as the talent arrived.

He sent Micki a text to let her know all systems were go. She responded instantly, letting him know she and the mark would be there in thirty minutes, as planned.

Peter pocketed the phone and smiled. There was something about the giddy, electric feeling of a caper that was running smoothly, tasks clicking off like clockwork and everything going exactly the way it should. It was like a kind of drug to him. A high he’d been chasing for years, and so often failed to catch. But when he did, it was better than anything else he’d ever felt. He’d never actually been in love, but he imagined that it would feel much the same.

* * *

There were footsteps in the hall, and the sound of a door opening and clicking shut. Then Peter heard giggling through the wall, and Micki appeared in triplicate on his laptop screen. From the front, from behind, and from above. Twice in grainy black-and-white, and once in color.

She was dressed in a disturbingly childish fashion—a short pink skirt and glittery sneakers, and a T-shirt with a butterfly on it. The shirt was tight and short, showing off a slice of her pale, concave belly, and Peter was surprised to see that she’d covered her tattoo with some kind of concealer. She didn’t just look underage, she looked almost prepubescent.

He couldn’t help but feel a little queasy, considering the performance he was about to witness. But he reminded himself that it was all part of the act.

Her companion was a chinless older man, portly with a florid complexion and thick, bristly hair the color of steel wool. He was dressed in a conservative navy, double-breasted suit and striped tie. There was a wedding ring on his fat finger. He was clearly nervous, his paranoid gaze bouncing all over the room, and when it settled on the stuffed dog, Peter felt a hot flush of adrenaline. His fists clenched involuntarily as the man leaned toward the lens hidden in the dog’s eye.

“Isn’t he so cute?” Micki asked, scooping up the stuffed animal and causing the image to blur into a vertigo-inducing whirl. “
Ruff ruff
.” The camera settled as she held the dog steady, facing the mark. It was the perfect close-up of the man’s frowning face. “Oh, Stevie, you must buy him for me. Say you will.”

“Sure I will, pet,” the man said, his scowl melting into a foolish smile.

“You’re the best!” Micki said, kissing the man’s cheek, and then setting the stuffed dog down on a side table that actually gave Peter a much better view of the bed.

Atta girl, Micki.

* * *

Peter did his best to ignore the rest of the performance, briefly checking the screen every so often to make sure he still had the best angle on the action. The two wireless cameras were stationary, but the one in the light fixture could pan and zoom, so he made occasional slight adjustments when needed.

Micki was so good at her part of the job, he barely had to bother. She led that poor bastard around the room like a circus animal, making sure he was always positioned for maximum exposure, just the way she wanted.

When it was over, Peter uploaded the footage to her private server and backed it up on his own for safekeeping. Then he shut everything down and got the hell out of there.

Micki wanted to handle contacting the mark and laying out the terms on her own, so Peter had to sit tight for the rest of the night and the following morning, waiting for a text that would let him know it was a go.

The night was easily wasted in a large, flashy pub full of boisterous foreigners and ambitious local girls looking for a ticket abroad. While he’d had several passes thrown his way by females smitten with his “exotic” accent, he wasn’t really in the mood for company, so he just nursed his pint in a quiet corner and people-watched until he was tired enough to sleep.

The construction clamor woke him bright and early the next day, so he headed up the Royal Mile to lose himself in the slow-moving tourist hordes snapping photos of each other buying cheap, scratchy kilts and mealy shortbread. None of them gave Peter a second glance. He was leaning against a red phone box and contemplating whether or not he should check out the inside of the castle, when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

It was Micki.

The hook was in.

The mark had agreed to her terms without hesitation. They were on. She texted him the address of the bookie where she wanted to meet at eight o’clock that night, and told him to bring the cash.

He responded, letting her know he’d be there.

* * *

After killing the rest of the day wandering around Edinburgh castle and its grounds, he grabbed a quick steak-and-ale pie in a quiet pub, and then steeled himself to swing by Big Eddie’s and get the money. Once that was done, he’d head over to the bookie joint where he would be meeting Micki to place their bet.

When he arrived back at Big Eddie’s office, a hulking bruiser was there to greet him. He identified himself as Little Eddie, shook Peter’s hand like he was planning to take it home with him, and gave him a colorful, expletive-filled earful about how he’d better pay up on time.

“I see you’ve met my son,” Big Eddie said, appearing through a side door and clamping a heavy paw on Peter’s shoulder. “Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to be meeting him again.”

He was carrying a large manila envelope, which he handed to Peter. It was heavy for its size, and when he looked inside, he saw that it held a fat, banded brick of purple 500-euro notes. He knew he didn’t need to count it, but the solid, unquestionable realness of that money felt ominous in his hand. Not just the physical weight of it, but the invisible yet no-less-real weight of what it meant to be accepting it.

“See you in five days, Bishop,” Big Eddie said, flashing that wide sunny grin that made Peter’s blood go cold.

* * *

The bookie joint was in the back of a barbershop on Leith Walk. Big Eddie preferred to fly “under the radar,” so to speak.

It wasn’t a rough neighborhood or anything, but Peter still felt nervous about the lump of cash weighing down his messenger bag. The sooner he could get it out of his hands, and on its way to becoming a fresh crop of zeros at the end of his offshore bank balance, the better he would feel.

Inside the barbershop it looked like a movie set for a period film set in 1935. Black-and-green checkered floor, with a small heap of gray hair swept into one corner. Walls covered with old photos of boxers. A long, low counter strewn with various grooming products for which the packaging hadn’t changed in seventy-five years. Two pale-mint barber chairs, one with black cushions and the other white.

One occupied, and one empty.

No one in the room but Peter was under seventy. There were two customers. One was having the silver bristles shaved off his wattled neck with a straight razor wielded by a stooped and lanky barber with a full, lustrous head of white hair that had been slicked down and sharply parted on the left. The other sat off to the side, snoozing under a tented newspaper that flapped gently with the tide of his rumbling snores.

When the barber heard the bells above the door ring, he looked up at Peter then tipped his chin toward a curtained doorway in the back. Peter nodded, crossed the room, and pushed through the curtain—into the modern world.

The back room was lined with glowing screens, each flashing up-to-the-minute results of a variety of sporting events all around the world. There were several long steel tables covered in computer equipment and money-counting machines.

The humans in the narrow, crowded room were equally divided between brains and muscle. There were a couple of hard bastards in track pants and wife-beaters, one by each of the two doorways. The one nearest Peter was a ruddy-faced ginger pug with a missing front tooth and tattoos that looked as if they had been perpetrated by blind, malicious children. The one by the far door was tall, fat, and grim, with a shiny bald head and a wiry lumberjack’s beard.

Both were ostentatiously armed.

Seated at the center table was a nerdy pair who seemed utterly absorbed in the flow of information on the screens in front of them. The older of the two looked as if he could be Harry Potter’s dad, with messy salt-and-pepper hair and round glasses. The other was maybe Indian or Pakistani, with a ninety-eight-pound weakling physique and a nervous, bird-like demeanor.

The fifth person in the room, the one who didn’t fit so neatly into either of the two categories, was Micki.

She’d shed her fake cutesy girl drag and was back in her usual baggy sweats and trainers. She looked sleek and self-satisfied, like a cat that had proudly deposited an eviscerated mouse on your pillow.

“That was some prime camerawork, Bishop,” she said. “Way to go.” She glanced at his messenger bag. “You got the money?”

Peter nodded, patting the bag.

“Right,” she said. “Let’s do this, then.”

He handed the brick of cash over to the Indian kid, who unbanded it and ran it through a counter. Twenty-five grand exactly. The older guy with glasses started tapping away on a keyboard, while Micki handed over an identical stack of money for the younger guy to count. Same number popped up on the little screen. Twenty-five thousand.

“You sure about this?” the older guy asked.

She nodded, then winked at Peter. He couldn’t help but smile in return.

He gave his account information to the older guy, and Micki did the same. The guy handed them both printed receipts. Peter tucked his into his hip pocket, feeling giddy.

“Come on,” Micki said, taking his arm and leading him out through the back door. It let the two of them out into a skinny, crooked cobblestone alley. Peter wasn’t sure which way to go, but Micki just stood there for a minute, looking up at him with a kind of intensity he’d never seen before. He was trying to figure out what that look really meant when she put her arms around his waist and pressed her tense little body against him.

“You were perfect,” she said, rising up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

“Um… thanks,” he replied, feeling a hot blush creeping up from his collar. Was she coming on to him? She’d never displayed anything beyond cool professional interest before, but the way she was looking at him in that moment, he could have sworn she was about to tear his clothes off and have at him right there in the alley.

“Meet me at the Port O’Leith tomorrow night, to watch the fight,” she said with that little satisfied-cat smile. “Eight sharp.”

She let go of his waist and turned on her squeaky rubber heel, stalking away down the alley before he could come up with an intelligent reply.

* * *

When he arrived at the Port O’Leith, she wasn’t there. Surprising, since she was always on time, but he just ordered a pint and took a seat at the far end of the bar.

He sent her a text, then waited through several unremarkable undercard fights and several pints, but there was no sign of her. He was about to send her another text when the Munro fight came on. The pub patrons were galvanized around the television, crackling with excitement and friendly wagers. Everyone rooting for the hometown boy.

It took less than a minute for Peter to realize why Micki wasn’t there. Munro knocked his opponent out cold in the first round.

At first he wanted to believe that something had gone horribly wrong with the caper, that Micki had been hurt or even killed. But when he rushed back to the bookie joint to see if anyone had heard from her, he realized that the caper had actually gone horribly right.

He
was the mark.

The quaint old barbershop was gone, leaving nothing but an empty storefront. When he questioned the woman in the neighboring kebab shop, she explained that there had never been any barber there, that some kids from the university were just using the unrented space to shoot a student film.