The Big Scam

by Paul Lindsay

  Straker stopped at a door and knocked quietly. An attractive dark-haired woman, no more than twenty, opened it and smiled at him. “Jenny, this is Howard.” She started to say hello, but he playfully pushed her back inside before she could finish. The door closed behind them, extinguishing her giggles.

  Snow leaned against a wall and tried to look inconspicuous in the deserted office. Suddenly, his radio came to life. Straker had switched his on and was evidently leaving the mike open.

  Since teaming up with him, Snow had studied all his mannerisms and expressions along with the other iconoclastic quirks that gave Straker his magic, a pursuit that had all the wonder and disappointment of a college class that had promised to change one’s approach to life. The first lesson he learned was that no man could copy another man’s life, especially when it came to the more desirable of Jack’s “talents,” like what was going on right now in the evidence room. He was not Jack Straker, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t become a better Howard Snow by hanging around him.

  Decoding Jack’s motives was a rambling puzzle he had come to enjoy trying to solve. He considered the open mike, hoping the exercise would shorten the wait. A few possibilities presented themselves. First, it was not an accident that the radio was broadcasting. Despite all the travails Straker had managed to stack in his personnel file like dry firewood, incompetence was never their cause. When something difficult or even dangerous needed to be done, he was the individual who stepped forward or was simply expected to handle it. Like the Dimino chase. Snow couldn’t imagine doing the driving. It was all he could do just to hold on. Straker had done it with a casual eagerness. And then, of course, there was the Shot.

  Of the millions of rounds that had been fired by agents in the history of the agency, whether in training or actual combat, only one was known as the Shot. Snow first heard about it years before he met Jack Straker and his celebrity had traveled the well-rutted road from legend to infamy to obscurity. Firearm instructors at Quantico invariably cited it as an example not only of exceptional marksmanship, but also of how an agent must be able to adapt to changing situations.

  Straker’s first year, he was assigned to the Los Angeles office. One day a lone gunman smuggled a small pistol through security at the Minneapolis airport and took over a plane. He demanded half a million dollars, ordered the pilot to fly to Los Angeles, and told them to have the money and a getaway car waiting. The LA office scrambled every available agent and directed them to a hangar at the airport until a course of action could be decided upon. Instead of driving straight to LAX, Straker, seized by some never-explained prescience, went back to the office first and took a sniper’s rifle from the gun vault. By the time he got to the airport, the plane was landing, so he worked his way as close to the runway as possible and waited.

  And waited. One of the most amazing facets of the Shot, according to the Quantico instructors, was how long Straker had maintained a sight picture through the scope. It was estimated that he kept his eye on the scope for more than twenty minutes. Snow knew from weapons training how quickly the eye becomes exhausted. That Straker maintained his bead that long was a remarkable feat of human willpower. Especially now that Snow knew how completely foreign self-control was to Straker.

  When the hijacker finally came down the stairs, he shielded himself with a stewardess. They were more than a hundred yards away from the tip of Straker’s muzzle and heading toward a car that was less than thirty. Fortunately it was not between Straker and the gunman. Ten yards from the car, the stewardess’s heel caught in the tarmac and she stumbled to one knee. The single shot caught the hijacker under the right armpit. As the stewardess got up, he fell to his knees and reached blindly toward her, but, as she commented later, death had already taken his eyes. He collapsed onto his face.

  With predictable bureaucratic high camp, the first-year agent was chewed out for the dozen or so violations of FBI procedure, not the least of which was bypassing the SAC’s ego. Then the director of the FBI called. First he congratulated the SAC on such a quick, decisive resolution to an extremely difficult situation. Next he asked to talk to the agent who had killed the hijacker. After Jack hung up, the SAC continued his assault. When Straker stood up to leave, the agent in charge asked where he thought he was going. “To Quantico,” he said. “I’ve just been made a firearms instructor.”

  But by that time, all new agent classes had women in them, and it wasn’t long before the man who had fired the Shot, according to one of his fellow firearms instructors, “became better known for his swordsmanship than his marksmanship.” Within a year, he was discreetly transferred to New York.

  So whatever Straker’s reason was for leaving his mike open, Snow knew it wasn’t accidental. Possibly it was to keep Snow alert at his post, but Snow could not sound a warning because a radio cannot receive when it’s transmitting. More likely its purpose was to engorge Snow’s fantasies, to keep him focused on the evening’s eventual prize. He listened more closely, but most of the words were indistinguishable, or maybe he just cared less about them than about the grunting and groaning that seeped into his earpiece. He smiled and shook his head.

  Then the most probable reason came to him. Jack Straker, as he had done almost since the moment the two had met, was including Snow in his life. Why, Snow could not imagine. He reached under his jacket and turned off the radio.

  Fifteen minutes later, the door to the evidence room opened and Straker squeezed out, carrying something weighty in an oversized brown paper bag. He leaned back inside and Snow could see Jenny’s face as Straker kissed her good-bye. Spotting Snow down the hall, she stuck her head out, and he could see that she was naked. She waved coyly and he waved back, not as embarrassed as he would have imagined. He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose to sharpen their focus.

  Neither man said anything until they were in the elevator. “See anything interesting?” Straker asked.

  “Do you mean before the door opened?”

  “She is a doll, huh?”

  “She is a doll.”

  “Hear anything interesting?”

  Snow said, “I don’t suppose she knew the mike was open.”

  “Hey, it was her idea. She thinks you’re cute.”

  An hour later, the two men walked into Liberty Loan in Queens. The pawnshop’s owner, Sam Kasdan, looked up from his newspaper to appraise his latest customers. The short one didn’t look particularly bright, and the taller one with an unkempt ponytail hanging out the back of his baseball cap was carrying a glass bowl that had the delicate silhouette and colors of a style that had not been made in almost a hundred years. Dried around the rim was what appeared to be paint, as though someone had used the bowl to clean brushes. Inside sat a couple of handfuls of silver dollars. That these guys were using the bowl to transport the abrasive coins indicated that they had no idea of its value. They had an air that Kasdan recognized—desperation mixed with the stink of low-income impulsiveness.

  Kasdan came to the counter. “Hi, how are you?”

  Straker pulled the baseball cap down a little farther. “You buy silver dollars, right? The sign says coins, they’re coins, right?” He set the bowl on the counter.

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Well, I need to sell these, I mean I’m thinking about selling them. You know, if the price is high enough.” He looked around the shop to avoid eye contact.

  The pawnbroker smiled professionally. “Fair enough.” Had he wanted to waste a little time, he could have gotten him down to a dollar apiece for the coins. He obviously needed money. People did not come to a pawnbroker expecting a fair deal. The trade-off was that the money was immediately available. The pawnbroker had to make a profit somehow, but it was the customer’s job to try to minimize it.

  Possibly these coins were stolen, and if so, the ponytail would have no other place to sell them unless he wanted to risk going to a bank—with its surveillance cameras.

  “Do you mind if I take a look at them?”


  “No, go ahead.” Straker lit a cigarette. “All right if I smoke?”

  “Sure.” Kasdan picked up one of the coins. It was in fair condition, with normal wear for a circulated silver dollar. “Mind if I ask you where you got them?”

  “Ah, my mother died a ways back. She was a waitress. She collected them for years.”

  Now the pawnbroker was fairly convinced that the coins were stolen. The two men didn’t look like junkies, but he couldn’t always tell. “That’s too bad, you have my condolences.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Straker’s fingers started tapping the counter. “So what are they worth?”

  “How many are here?” Kasdan started digging through the pile but was really examining the bowl, subtly scraping the substance on the rim. It turned to dust under his thumbnail. Water-color paint. Cleaning it would be only a minor nuisance.

  “Thirty-seven is what I counted.”

  Kasdan stacked them on the counter, verifying the count. “They are pretty worn.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the market is glutted with them.”

  “These are pure silver.”

  “Have you checked the commodities market today? Silver is selling at about the same price as peanut butter. Mint silver dollars from this era are worth maybe a buck and a quarter, but these aren’t mint.”

  “How much?” Straker said, his suspicion increasing.

  “Forty-five dollars for the lot. And if you think I’ve got someone waiting out back to make a big profit on this, I don’t. I’m going to have to sit on them for a while and hope silver goes up. Or you can take them and wait yourself.”

  “No, I can’t wait. How do I know you’re not jerking me around with the price?”

  “Go online and check. You’ll see there are tons of these things out there that people can’t sell. And for the same price I’m offering you.”

  “Can’t you do a little better? I really need the money. It’s sort of an emergency.”

  Kasdan gazed sincerely as if he were considering going against his business sense. “I’ll give you sixty bucks for the coins and the bowl. I think my wife might like it. She’s into kitsch.”

  “Kitsch, what’s that?”

  “It’s German for crap.”

  Straker rubbed his chin. “Can you make it seventy?”

  “Sixty-five.”

  “Wait a minute, Jack,” Snow finally spoke up. “How do you know that bowl’s not worth something more than twenty bucks?”

  Straker turned back to Kasdan. “What about that, is it worth more?”

  “Do you see any bowls in here? How am I supposed to know? I told you, it’s something my wife might like. Take it, save me twenty bucks. She’s not that great a wife.”

  Snow picked up the bowl and rubbed some of the paint off with a fingertip, as though he were as discerning as Kasdan. As he did the bottom became visible. The pawnbroker could make out “L.C.T.” inscribed in freehand in a counterclockwise arc along the outer edge as was the maker’s custom. Just as he had suspected. Louis Comfort Tiffany. It had to be worth thousands. It was red, the rarest of Tiffany’s colors. The majority of the outer surface was covered with gold leaf, dramatically shaped into a floral pattern.

  Snow said, “I say we take it somewhere else, Jack. Get a second opinion.” He started putting the silver dollars back into it.

  “Hold on a second, let me check something.” Kasdan walked into the back room slowly, as if he had no expectations whatsoever. He returned with a pair of glasses that had a magnifier hinged over one of the lenses. He examined the gold portion more closely. “Hmph! That’s real gold. Scrap gold is selling less than twenty dollars a gram, but maybe I could sell it to a broker I know.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Snow snorted, “you’re just figuring that out now.”

  “I don’t really care for what you’re implying,” Kasdan replied. “Why don’t you take the bowl and the coins and go someplace else.”

  “Hold it,” Straker said. “Howie, go out to the car. I’ll handle this.”

  “Jack, this guy is trying to screw you.”

  “Just go out to the car, man. I’ll take care of this.” Snow glared at the owner and left. “Okay, let’s quit fucking around. You’re obviously interested. How much?”

  “Two hundred.”

  “Three fifty.”

  “Three hundred.”

  “Three hundred for the bowl and forty-five for the silver dollars.”

  “I was only giving you that much because I was interested in the bowl. They’re not really worth that much. Three forty.”

  “Then I’m going back up to three fifty.”

  For the first time the pawnbroker saw resolve in Straker’s eyes. He was beginning to suspect the bowl was worth considerably more. He wasn’t going to lose it for five dollars. “Okay, three forty-five.”

  Straker waited until he had pulled away from the curb before taking off his baseball cap and ponytail. “You played him perfectly,” he said to Snow. “I thought his eyes were going to come out of their sockets when he saw the initials on the bottom.”

  “Great, nothing gives me wood like committing a good felony.”

  Half a block away Straker pulled over. He lit a cigarette and held it up in a philosophical pose. “You laugh, but this was a good felony. This guy has been fencing stolen property for twenty years, and the pawnshop detail has never been able to catch him at it. You heard him, he thought he was buying stolen property. And he sure as hell thought he was ripping us off on the bowl. I suppose honest people get cheated all the time, but it sure as hell is easier if they’re dishonest.”

  “If I could be granted one wish in this life, Jack, it would be to have your lack of regard for consequences.”

  Straker reached under the seat and pulled out a black radio with the initials NYPD stenciled in white on it. “Hey, Nick gave us that list of DeMiglia’s associates and told us to see what we could do. So we did.”

  “He said to target them, not rip them off.”

  Straker keyed the radio’s mike. “Mark, he’s got the item. He’s all yours.” Straker put the radio back under the seat. “Let me offer a few words in my defense: Howie, do you want to get laid tonight?”

  The two men watched as two unmarked NYPD cars quickly pulled up in front of the pawnshop and four detectives got out. One of them waved to the agents as they went in. Snow said, “Well, at least he’s being arrested. I guess that’s the important thing. And I’ve got to hand it to you, that was pretty ingenious dripping those paints over the bowl to make it look like some old discarded piece of crap. But where did you get the coins?”

  “My mom did leave them to me. And believe me, she would have gotten a laugh out of what we did with them. Hell, if she was still alive, I wouldn’t have needed you.”

  15

  “WE’LL CAMP,” PARISI OFFERED.

  “Camp!” Tatorrio said and, with a look of burlesqued panic, quickly pulled out his wallet. He extracted a photo ID, pretending to check it. “No, mine says Mafia.” He looked to the others who immediately fell in line, holding up a variety of cards and reporting that they too were certified members of organized crime. “Sorry, Mike, no Outward Bounders here.”

  Parisi’s crew was standing in the parking lot of Burbarger’s, one of the Catskills’ time-weathered hotels. A couple of elderly guests stared at the oddly dressed group of men. “No, it’ll be good,” Parisi assured them, “it’ll make us one with the land. You know, get a feel for where we are. Maybe that’s where the others failed.”

  Dellaporta laughed. “One with the land? No disrespect, Mike, but you’ve really got to learn what this life is about. When we get back to the city, I’m going to take you out so you can murder someone.”

  To demonstrate that he was not above being the target of their humor, Parisi laughed. He had yet to tell any of them about DeMiglia’s “plan” for the crew. Before, even though ordered not to, he would have needed them to know what a good boss he was, that h
e had shouldered the burden for them. But instead, he was starting to acquire the vague nobility that came with the loneliness of command. And while it gave him confidence as capo, he was still nagged by the feeling that he really didn’t belong among these men. Maybe it was their sense of humor, the ultimate marker of membership that comes only from years together in the trenches. But the ribbing was good-natured and, in its own way, a small, inconspicuous medallion of acceptance. That he couldn’t return it with an insider’s ease made him wonder if he ever would, as Dellaporta put it, “learn what this life is about.” The easiest thing would be to pack up and get out right now. Out of Phoenicia and out of the business. And he would have if he hadn’t pledged the don his support. But the minute he was back on his feet, free from the latest opportunity of treason, he vowed to find another way to make a living.

  And this treasure thing. Now that he was out here, it was hard to believe he had ever taken it seriously. Apparently from their complaining, displaying their usual flashbulb attention span, the others had begun to feel the same way. But something about all of it was calming his mind, arranging all the scattered pieces of a puzzle without his help. What that puzzle was, he had no idea, but its distant promise was demanding that the hunt for Arthur S. Flegenheimer’s metal box be seen through to its conclusion. “Everybody in the cars. We’re heading back to that outdoor store we passed on the way up here and get some camping equipment.” With uncharacteristic speed, Dellaporta hurried to his car and got in.

  “Where’re you going in such a hurry?” Parisi yelled to him.