“Not all that great, considering the bloodshed involved.”
“Long as I make a buck, who gives a fuck?”
“Yeah, that’s real cute. But that truck driver lady died.”
“Kill some bitches, make some riches,” Doc said, grinning.
“That ain’t funny.”
“Nothing’s funny ‘bout making money, but if you wanna get ahead, gotta shoot some lead.”
“Yeah, okay funny guy. We’ve moved away from that stuff. We’re into the white collar stuff these days.”
“White collar crime? You and your mother? This I gotta see!”
Chapter 25
It was just after 11am when the Ford wagon parked on the side of an apartment block. Howard, a portly guy in his forties, got out and began depositing junk into the mailboxes, looking every bit the junk-mail deliveryman. When he was satisfied that nobody was watching, he began swiping the mail that protruded from some of the boxes, stuffing it into the front compartment of his sack. Then he took out a metal tool, shaped like a curved bird’s beak. He poked it inside a mailbox and pulled a lever, then pulled the instrument back out. Some mail was trapped in the beak. He took it and stuffed it into the front compartment with the rest.
When he’d gone through all the letterboxes he moved on to the block of apartments next door and repeated the procedure.
Later, having done the entire street, he returned to his car, dumped the sack in the back and drove away.
Chapter 26
It was almost 6pm when Doc and Cakes pulled into Canella’s Smash Repairs. They went inside a demountable office that had been set up on a patch of turf at the side of the premises. Inside two young men and a middle-aged woman were sitting at a large table, busy on cell phones and laptops. There was a large pile of mail in the middle of the table.
Howard walked in with a sack of mail, emptied it onto the pile and left. Pasquale, a university student in his early twenties, hung up the phone and took an envelope. Doc watched him closely as he tore it open and ripped out a letter.
Pasquale looked over the Bank of America statement belonging to a Mr. Arthur Tan. Pasquale added Tan’s credit card details to an Excel spreadsheet on the laptop. He read over the bank statement, noticing most of the transactions were for groceries, bills, and some retail purchases. There was one transaction that stood out: a $240 payment to Pink Tiger Gentlemen’s Club. Pasquale circled it, searched online, and soon found a link for an Arthur Tan that matched the address on the statement, and also had a cell phone number. He called the number.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Tan?”
“Yes?”
“This is Kevin from the Bank of America, just calling in regards to an unusual transaction on your Master Card. Do you have a minute? I just need for you to confirm if it’s valid.”
“Okay, what’s it for?”
“It’s for a $240 purchase at Pink Tiger Gentlemen’s Club on the fourth of this month. Can you confirm that you made that purchase?”
“Ah... er, yes. That’s...yes, I can.”
“Okay, thank you Mr. Tan. For security purposes, can you please tell me your eight digit telephone account number and your telephone pin?”
And just like that, Tan told Pasquale the numbers, which he entered onto the spreadsheet.
“Thanks, Mr. Tan. Can you also verify you four digit CCV number?”
Tan gave him the information without hesitation.
“And finally the limit on your Master Card?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“Mr. Tan, thank you for choosing the Bank of America, have a nice day.”
“Thanks,” Tan said.
Pasquale hung up, tossed the bank statement into the trash, and took another envelope.
“You stole my idea?” Doc said.
Cakes shrugged and nodded.
“Unbelievable. Why didn’t you set this up with me?” Doc said.
“Yeah right. She didn’t show it, but mom’s hurting pretty bad over you. Stealing your idea was the perfect remedy.”
“Well, I’m pleased I could help,” Doc said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “I got to get out of here. I’ll see you.”
Cakes slapped Doc on the shoulder and walked him out.
Cakes walked to the workshop as Doc walked towards his car, silently stewing and trying to calculate how much money Carmen’s business was bringing in. One single call had potentially netted her twenty grand, if she was smart. If she averaged one credit card per hour the potential was enormous. And then there were drivers’ licenses, infringements, fines, bills, club memberships, subscriptions and more. All could be used for identity theft or credit card fraud.
Doc had dreamed up the scheme years before but never acted on it. He had heard of two crime syndicates, one in the States, the other in Europe, who would pay $5,000 per identity, and $10,000 for a “carte blanche card”, a completely unprotected credit card like the one Pasquale had breached, which came complete with passwords and therefore a credit limit that could be increased. Doc had heard that those syndicates sold identities and carte blanche cards to foreign governments and intelligence organizations which, he reasoned, probably meant less chance of being investigated.
Doc wondered why the hell he was breaking his balls with barely profitable, small-time heroin importation and other little enterprises, which not only attracted heavy police attention, but also required him to commit capital crimes to hide his tracks. He shook his head as he got behind the wheel of his car, waved to Cakes and took off.
Chapter 27
Through her tinted office windows, Canella watched Doc drive away. She noticed a strange, hovering shadow on the driveway. She looked skywards and saw it: a drone hovering about twenty feet above the drive.
“Cakes,” she called. “Cakes!”
“Yeah,” Cakes said, entering the office from inside the warehouse.
“Get over here. You see that?”
Cakes looked out the window as the drone flew over the roof, out of view.
“What is that? A drone?”
“Think so. I’ve seen them on the news. They usually carry cameras.”
“What are you thinking?”
“It’s got to be the cops, doesn’t it? And now they know that Doc is associated with us, they want to see what we’re up to.”
“Fuckers. They got no right.”
“Yeah, go tell them that,” Canella said.
“You see a surveillance van on the street?”
“They don’t usually advertise.”
“You know what I mean, any van that might resemble...”
“Do you know how many vans are parked on this street at any given hour of any given day?” Canella said.
“Okay, so let’s assume it’s a surveillance drone. What now? You want me to take it out?”
“Why? To show them we’ve got something to hide? Whatever they’ve seen has already been recorded. And all they’ve seen is my delivery guy and office staff come to work. What we have to do is act normal, like we got nothing to hide.”
“Okay, Ma, that makes sense.”
“Fuck. The phones. Get them off the phones. Now! “
“Right,” Cakes said, hurrying towards the front door.
“Don’t run.”
***
Cakes stormed inside the demountable office as Pasquale was trying to extract information from a potential victim. Cakes grabbed the cell phones from the other two phone workers and tossed them into a steel tin.
“I need your pin number to verify that I have called the correct person,” Pasquale said, “…no, you... I don’t have a supervisor, I am a supervisor. We can’t give out our full names, sir.”
Cakes grabbed Pasquale’s cell phone, ended the call, switched it off and dumped it in the tin. “No more work today. We’ve got a little glitch, so you guys will have to take a break for a while.”
“How long?” asked Pasquale.
“I don’t know yet. As soon as we’ve fixed
it we’ll let you know.”
“If it’s a computer glitch or something technical, I can help.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind. Now beat it,” he said, handing out wads of cash as they shuffled out.
Walking back to Canella’s office, he noticed the shadow of the drone on the driveway, but resisted the temptation to look up.
***
A van with “Charlie’s Panel and Paint” on the doors was parked further down the street. Inside, Betts sat with Officers Vance and Miles watching footage on a TV screen. The images were being relayed from the drone, which Vance operated via remote control. They saw Pasquale and the other two phone workers leaving the premises.
“Braun’s going to go bat-shit when he finds out we lost Doc. We’re not authorized to monitor Canella’s premises.
“Canella’s his partner,” Betts said. “She’s probably storing the stolen drugs and an orgy of other evidence in there. Just hold on and see if we can get a look inside the place.”
***
Cakes walked down the stairs and into the den, where he found his mother sitting in front of a computer and TV mounted on a cabinet, a glass of whiskey in hand. The TV showed images from her surveillance cameras of the drone hovering outside the building. Doc handed her the printed pages.
“We got fourteen carte blanche credit cards today, all with limits upwards of ten grand. That’s what I call a bumper crop!” Cakes said.
“Shame we can’t sell them,” said Doc.
“What? Why not?”
“Coz if they’re monitoring us, they’ve tapped our phones and our emails, which means I can’t reach the buyer.”
“Come on, they can’t read your emails.”
“You don’t know that. For all you know they could have tapped those cell phones.”
“Okay, so we’ll fax them,” Cakes said.
“That’s no better.”
“You know, that thing might not even be the cops. It might be a kid with a toy for all we know,” Cakes said.
“It’s no toy,” said Canella.
“Fourteen credit cards! That’s a minimum of a hundred and forty grand. We can’t let it go to waste!”
“I have no intention of wasting it. We’ll just hold off for a while. I’ll contact the buyers and let them know we’ve hit a temporary snag.”
“If you contact the buyers, and the cops are onto us, won’t they know who the buyers are?”
“I won’t give anything away, it’ll be a generic email, ‘dear valued customer, our services will not be available for two weeks due to renovation,’ that kind of thing.”
“I’ll go to an internet cafe,” said Cakes, “send them the crop from a USB, and tell them we’ll be out of touch for a while.”
“If you get followed, the cops will be all over that internet cafe. They’ll find the email, then we’ll be in the shit.”
“So I’ll be careful.”
She shook her head.
“Come on, have a little faith in me,” he said.
“Why should I? You’ve put us in the shit here.”
“I had to help dad, he was looking at hard time. He’d do the same for us, for you. Now he owes us one. In fact, why don’t you send him on a trip to Indo and have him email the crop to the buyers from there? They can’t trace him from Indo.”
“Apart from the fact that he’s got cops crawling up his ass and they’d search him at the airport and find a list of bank accounts and pins, I don’t want him having anything to do with our buyers, that’s why! Next thing you know, he’ll be sharking our business.”
“Hey, just floating the idea.”
Canella used a joystick to pan the camera, following the drone as it moved from one side of the property to the other.
“I’m pretty sure they’re not allowed to be over my property, those sons of bitches,” she said, her face souring with rage. “To hell with this.”
Canella went to large metal cabinet and unlocked it, revealing an assortment of firearms from shotguns to automatic assault rifles. She picked out a Dragunov, a Russian sniper rifle with a silencer and telescopic lens. She carefully took it out and slung it over her shoulder.
“Come on,” she said. She and Cakes walked up the dark stairwell, Cakes soon becoming short of breath. Canella stopped and turned to Cakes, who was bent over, hands on his knees.
“You go wait by the front door. When that thing hits the ground, you smash it into a billion pieces. You got it?”
Cakes nodded, unable to reply. He sucked in some air and walked out through an exit.
Canella walked all the way to the top of the stairs into an attic. Beams of light filtered through shuttered windows and she sat by a table where she assembled the Dragunov on a tripod. She looked through the telescopic site and could see out over the street and neighboring warehouses and workshops. She pulled the focus right back and soon found the drone, a few yards higher than the attic, hovering over the drive.
Chapter 28
In the surveillance vehicle, Vance was becoming anxious. “I really think we ought to go find the Doc,” he said.
“The door’s opening,” Betts said, and on the screen one of the large, steel roller doors of Canella’s Smash Repairs cranked open.
“Pull back a little so we can get a look inside,” Vance said.
Miles pulled gently on the joystick and the camera pulled back, still focused on the warehouse as the drone reversed towards the street. The huge roller door was completely open now and a semi-trailer drove out to the edge of the warehouse, then stopped. Vance controlled the camera, zooming in to the truck to see Cakes at the wheel.
“That’s Cakes Canella,” Vance said.
“He’s probably hungry,” chuckled Miles, “going out for a truckload of food.”
“Once he leaves, zoom in to the back of the workshop,” Betts said.
“Got it,” Miles said.
“You recording this?” Betts said.
“Yeah.”
***
Inside the attic, Canella aimed the rifle through the louvers, the drone in her sights. She gently squeezed the trigger. The .303 caliber bullet exploded from the weapon and made almost immediate contact with the drone, passing through the machine like it was cardboard. Without deviating from its path, it soared over the suburban blocks.
***
Inside the van, the cops watched and Vance’s mouth fell open as the drone dropped into a spin, hurtling towards the bitumen driveway and bouncing on impact.
“No!” Vance said.
“How is that possible?” Miles said.
“Oh, fuck!” Vance said as the truck slowly headed out of the workshop and straight for the camera. “Hand it over!” He took the remote, trying all the controls but getting no response from the drone. The front wheel of the truck rolled closer, its size exaggerated by the low angle of the drone lens. All they could do was watch the wheel closed in then began to began to crush the lens. The signal died.
***
The bullet flew a dozen blocks before coming down over a shopping center car park. Kym Dover, a voluptuous woman in her prime, was loading her shopping into her station wagon, wondering how many kilojoules she was burning, when the bullet struck her without warning. On a downward arc, it penetrated nine inches of fat in her buttock and came to rest in her upper thigh. She collapsed on the ground in such pain and shock that she could barely whimper. As blood colored her white jeans, she finally sucked in enough air to scream. Before long she was surrounded by a small crowd. She was unconscious when the ambulance arrived.
Chapter 29
Vance and Miles knocked on the office door of Canella’s Smash Repairs. It opened and Canella stood in the doorway, Cakes standing behind her.
“Yes?” she said.
“Hello. I’m Officer Vance, this is Officer Miles, LAPD.”
“Yes, what can I do for you?”
“We had a surveillance drone come down in your property. Have you seen it?”
“A what
?”
“A remote control aircraft. We believe it crashed onto your driveway.”
“Oh, that? I thought it was a toy!” Cakes laughed, “I accidently ran over it. It is in the dumpster.”
A little later Cakes was smiling, watching Vance climb inside the filthy dumpster. Vance picked up pieces of the drone scattered among garbage. Cakes had been thorough in his destruction of the machine so there would be no evidence that it had been shot down. The sour look on Vance’s face indicated to Cakes that he had been thoroughly successful.
“There’s a piece!” Cakes said, pointing to a remnant sticking out of a pile of sludge. “Make sure you wash your hands after.”
Vance dug the piece out.
Chapter 30
Betts, Braun, Vance, Miles and Forrest stood around the crime board as Braun pinned up some new photographs from forensics. There was a picture of Kym Dover lying in a hospital bed, a pained look on her face. Next to it was a close up of the bullet wound in her buttock, a deep, wide gash that looked like someone had taken to her with a carving knife. There was also a satellite photo showing the trajectory of the bullet that had a starting point over a site marked “Canella’s Smash Repairs.” Finally there was a photo of the .303mm bullet that had been removed from her buttock.
“How is she?” Betts asked.
“She’ll be alright. The bullet didn’t hit any major blood vessels. She might as well have been wearing armor, with all that ass,” Braun said. “Ballistics will get back to us with more info on the bullet. As you can see, its trajectory leads on a path directly to Canella’s Smash Repairs.”
“And you think the slug is the same one that brought down the drone?” Forrest asked.
“Most likely. They both occurred at roughly the same time,” Braun said.