Only Child

“Ugh!”

“You know what’s worse, girl? There was no reason for the mother to lie. Who’d want to make up a story like that? That freak’s her bio-father, all right.”

“How could a TV producer not see she’s a...?”

“Knowing isn’t caring, honey. Talk shows are going through what skin mags did years ago.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Playboy set the standard, right? Upscale, classy, lots of features...and all the posed pussy anyone could want. Anything successful gets imitated, but instead of trying to outclass the leader, most of the others went downmarket. The more Playboy carved out the niche at the top, the deeper in the sewer they went, see? That’s where the competition is now, who can go the lowest. Same with TV. The target’s not the penthouse; it’s the basement. Did you hear her voice when she said ‘national TV,’ girl? Same way some people say ‘Our Lord Jesus.’ There’s no traveling freak shows anymore—cable brings them right into your home.”

“Burke,” she said, leaning toward me, “you’re not going to take her money, are you?”

“She hasn’t got any,” I told her, placating both our gods.

I never asked the Prof or the Mole what the stuff they’d set up for me cost, any more than I would ask Max if I owed him rent. I’d left everything behind when I disappeared. I didn’t know what they’d sold, what they’d destroyed, and what was still around. But I knew how to find out.

“Where do I stand?” I asked Mama.

“With who, stand?”

“With money, Mama.”

“Oh. Plenty money here for you.”

“Mama, a straight answer, okay? You’re the bank, not the Welfare Department. I’m not coming around and asking for money that’s not mine. Just tell me what’s left, in cash, after everything.”

“Why so important?”

“I have to know when I need to go back to work.”

She regarded me balefully for a solid minute. Then she said, “Soon,” her face as smooth and hard as glazed ceramic.

It took another couple of hours to pry the balance sheet out of her. I was down to about sixty grand. I took ten to walk around with, asked Mama to dispose of the Subaru for whatever she could get for it, and went looking for work.

You can’t do the kind of work I do without a lot of preparation. There’s all kinds of people who steal, from the stupid slugs who think 7-Elevens turn into ATMs after midnight to the slicksters who can buy themselves a presidential pardon when things get dicey. Me, I’ve got my own ways. And my own flock to fleece.

I never target citizens. They’re easy, but they squawk. Before the damn Internet, I had a lovely business built up, regularly selling everything from nonexistent kiddie porn to mercenary “credentials.” The horde of humans who bought from me couldn’t go to the Better Business Bureau when their merchandise never arrived in the mail.

I also dealt in hard goods, middle-manning low-level arms deals, usually suctioning a little from both sides in the process. But with the breakup of the Soviet Union, there was too much ordnance floating around. By the time I left, even the congenital defectives who commanded five-moron militias were demanding surface-to-air missiles.

I gave it a lot of thought, remembering the formula I memorized during my first bit Inside—the less time you spend on planning, the more time you should plan on doing.

When I first went down, a common scam was for a prisoner to get hold of one of the lonely-hearts magazines and write to a whole list of dopes. Admitting “she’d” been a bad girl, but now all she wanted was a good man. Between the losers with handjob habits who asked for letters about lesbian sex behind bars, and the deep-dish dimwits who sent money for the “correspondence courses” their little darlings needed to take to please the parole board, you could make a nice living.

It got so bad that suckers were showing up at the gates, demanding a visit with their soon-to-be-released sweethearts. That’s when they would discover that the “D. Jones #C-77-448109” they’d been sending money orders to was in there all right...but the first name was Demetrius, not Darlene.

Eventually, the authorities got wise. Now they stamp outgoing envelopes with bold notices that the letters inside are from a “Correctional Institution for Men.”

Every move has a counter, and it’s never been real difficult to defeat the great minds who cage humans for a living. The letters started going out to the marks from an outside PO box. Little Darlene’s in solitary, and she can’t get mail “direct” anymore. But, don’t worry, Darlene’s sister (who’s also real cute, but only sixteen, so she shouldn’t be getting too involved with a grown man and all) can handle the forwarding. Fortunately, her name’s Desiree, so “D. Jones” would work just as well on the money orders.

And then there’s the poor tormented transsexual, who describes her absolute horror at being locked up in a men’s prison. She has to stay in close confinement twenty-four/seven, or she’d be set upon instantly by rabid packs of rapists. All she has to sustain herself are the chump’s love letters, the money he sends for things like shampoo—so expensive in a men’s prison, you know—and the knowledge that, the minute she’s paroled, she could finish the sex-change surgery she’d already started before she’d been arrested (which is why she already had such nice big breasts). And they’d live happily ever after.

But that scam plays different today. Now it’s a beautiful teenager prowling the chat rooms, crying out in her desperate need to get away from her horrible home life...until a “connection” is made and her shined-on knight sends her the money for a bus ticket. And some decent clothes, maybe some luggage...you know.

It’ll be a long wait at that depot.

But I don’t like working in public. And, anyway, that ground’s already been strip-mined down to the bare rock.

As long as there’s contraband, there’s money to be made. Sometimes, you traffic in things—like no-tax Southern cigarettes or no-questions-asked shipments of computer chips. Sometimes, the product’s a lot less tangible. Like jail-phone relay systems. No matter what the level of security a prisoner’s held in, he’ll have the right to call somebody, even if it’s only his lawyer, and only collect. With three-way calling, it’s no trick to put a gangster in direct touch with the people waiting for his orders. The guards can open mail, but there’s way too much volume for them to monitor all the outgoing calls. More gangland hits get ordered from jail now than from outside. All you need is a live person to play switchman, and decent timing.

A nice hustle...but not for me. Too close to home.

Drugs have ruined the game for a lot of us good thieves. Dope fiends are the illegal immigrants of crime—a cheap, undocumented labor force that will take any job, even the dangerous ones, for garbage money. Years ago, we’d hijacked a load of H and tried to sell it back to the mob. But when I mentioned that caper to the Prof this time, he sneered it away.

“Not much chance of finding a decent-sized shipment you could take off with anything less than an army, not today. And when it gets down to the street dealers we could jack, it’s not worth it. You can’t deal with these punks. The drug boys, all they know is rock and Glock, honeyboy. You steal from a professional, he knows he’s got to buy his stuff back—cost of doing business. These boys out there now, they’re all mad violent. They’d load up their nines and come looking to hose you down, give you a kiss for the diss, see?”

I did. And started making new lists.

What I found out was...I’d been away too long. I sniffed around the edges where I used to do work. Sent word through third parties to people who dealt in stuff I used to move, checked the usual drops....

But no matter where I looked, the arteries were all clogged with amateurs.