Jeff,
finds himself in Atlanta Magic
Town
Chapter 13 of Magic Town ...
Saturday, 9:43 PM: Collaborator
Antonio has
figured out Jeff is an imposter and Nancy Nancy
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Author contact: Chris Lamela,
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Magic Town, Chapter 13
Jeff felt a sharp panic turning to Shonna who sat staring at his chin horrified.
Suddenly Antonio burst out laughing, laughing so hard tears welled in his eyes, he choked twice, steadying himself with hands on the arms of his chair. Jeff noticed Shonna reaching her right hand down toward her purse with a wary expression toward Antonio.
“Wonderful, wonderful!” Antonio continued laughing, but it was not contagious––neither Shonna or Jeff laughed along as they watched him, glancing confused at each other. “Nobody is who they say they are! Wonderful!” He sat up, took a deep breath, “Well, maybe I am, but some days even I am not so sure of that!” He reached across the table offering his hand to Jeff who took it baffled as Antonio shook his hand vigorously. “I mean, how did you do that?”
“Do what?” Jeff looked confused at this man’s behavior.
Antonio winked to Jeff, turning to Shonna. “And you!” She shrugged.
“You know,” Antonio announced, “it’s not often I get to watch a dead man giving a press conference. I mean I don’t know he’s dead, of course! But that’s what I hear. I heard that he wasn’t wearing a bullet-proof vest and that he took four shots in the chest straight on. I don’t know too many men, even a pompous congressman who can do that!” He frowned at Jeff. “I have no idea who you are, but I am pretty certain you are no dead congressman!” He laughed again taking a sip of his drink. “And you, my dear Shonna, I can only guess.” He laughed again, “Wait, wait! Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!” he laughed again. He took a sip of his drink to quell his throat from the laughing, “No, no, really, don’t tell me, let’s keep it a mystery, shall we?”
Shonna leaned forward, “Okay, so you figured this out, you know what’s going on. Now you’ve got to get serious and start staking your claim in this. We are getting ready to take this whole gang down, you’ve got to decide which side you’re on.” She looked at Jeff half-smiling as she licked her thumb leaning to her right to wipe the eyebrow pencil from his chin. He grinned sheepishly as she turned back to Antonio. “I’ve got the numbers and nothing but initials, you’ve got the names.” She leaned forward to Antonio intently. “Now talk!”
Antonio sat back, glancing back and forth between the faces in front of him holding his finger tips together spread out thoughtfully. “Immunity?”
“We can’t make the deal here, you know that,” Shonna said sternly, “but maybe I can make sure you get a deal.”
“Then why…” Antonio sat back looking at her intently. “Okay. Okay. But remember who your friend is. Shonna, or whoever you are.” He sipped his drink thoughtfully, “But my dear Shonna you know I am a good man. You know I don’t do bad things,” he chuckled, “well, not too many bad things at least.” He looked at her eye-to-eye as though he was extracting a deal from her by his sheer will, “But I will go along because these guys gotta get pulled the hell out of
He took a sip from a glass of amber liquid with the ice melted. “No we have to do better than that.” He took another sip, setting the glass down looking intently from face to face, “We need to take them out all at once!”
He smiled, almost relaxed, “So Shonna, Shonna, Shonna, you ain’t the dumb pretty face we thought you were.” He chuckled shaking his head putting up his hands, “No, remember now, I don’t wanna know,” though she never made a motion to offer an explanation.
The three of them spent the next two hours as Shonna pulled out copies of the papers Jeff found in the stinky jacket. They started discovering who belonged to the initials along with all the details that Antonio could offer up as the pages went around the table. When they had those filled in with names, Antonio turned pulling another large stack of papers from a drawer in the end table next to him, a trove of information about victims of the enterprise passing it to Shonna, she handed them to Jeff, “I’ve seen these,” she said to Jeff. He looked quizzical. “I made them!”
These records were similar in detail to Shonna’s financial records, computer printouts that showed the same good organization that was consistent with the entire operation. These pages had a date on top of each page and even a page number, the first page with “Page 1 of 42” neatly printed in the top right corner. The pages were in five columns with the titles “ID” with four digit numbers below it, “Name and Address” along with another column headed “Fee Type” with another “Amount” and the last column headed with “Status.” They were not encoded like Shonna’s other work so it was easy to see who these victims were.
Jeff was amazed at the scale of the gang’s activities. He scanned down the pages. The organization was alphabetized by the victims’ names. He saw Fred’s Hardware Store was paying a thousand dollars a month for fire, “burg” which he assumed was burglary, that Fred was “current” with his payment.
He scanned down seeing a notation “remind” next to a name. He bent over toward Antonio who explained, “Oh, they get a friendly collections visit.” He saw Jeff’s grimace, “But just to get payment.”
Antonio picked the page from Jeff’s hand, scanned it pointing to an entry with “late” next to it. “This one gets a visit from our friends you saw in the back of the bar last night. That’s not such a friendly visit.”
“See this one,” he pointed to an entry with the notation “enforce” next to it. “Those visits are usually followed by a visit from the fire department.”
Antonio shook his head, “Yes, this is a very bad business, very bad. Que muy malo!”
Jeff shook his head as he continued exploring the stack on his lap. “What happens when these guys pay for burglary insurance and somebody else breaks into their place?”
Antonio gave a big grin, “Well, that’s where the insurance part really does pay off!” He looked at Jeff’s puckered brow, “This is not such a big town that we can’t find out who did it, remember we have so many eyes on the street! So our friends pay him a little not-so-friendly visit to have a little talk about good manners and the expense of dental work these days. They are given the choice of being turned over to the police or paying a small regular restitution fee, maybe a hundred dollars a month.” He frowned as he thought about his words, “But mostly they are drug addicts so that doesn’t work out very well and is a lot of trouble for such a small amount of money so we generally just get them busted anyway, but sometimes we find new recruits to help us keep our business in order.”
“Ah,” he spat for emphasis, “what am I saying our business––this is not my business, this is their business and I don’t want any more of it!”
Drinks were brought in again along with some tapas. The three of them sat heads down the whole time going over every detail they could discover in the papers and whatever else Antonio could recall.
Antonio reached back into the drawer pulling out a smaller stack of pages setting them on the table. “These are the money laundering channels.” He went on to explain that some of the gang’s members had legitimate, “Or maybe not so legitimate,” businesses that their money went through, “to clean it up a little.” They looked through these, maybe eight pages as Antonio explained them. These pages weren’t as neatly organized in form as the other pages with lots of scribbled notes in different hands. Shonna explained to Jeff that these were as new to her as to him. This was definitely new information to her.
“It’s funny business, money laundering. It’s for those that feel they have a duty as an American citizen to pay taxes on the money they get from the misery of others, like it will ease their conscience. And then you have others like the mayor who can’t be bothered and want to take it all in cash!” He laughed with such extreme bitter tone that it scarcely sounded like laughter.
They had spent another hour since the last drinks were brought in. By the time they were done, backs of pages were covered with notes, the stack of paper much thicker.
Finally, they all looked around to each other ready to say they were done when there was a knock on the door, a new tray of drinks was brought in by one of Antonio’s men. They each took a drink giving a small gesture of a toast knowing this was all they could put together from what they had at hand.
Most important, they had a roster of the gang’s members. Jeff looked over at the handwritten pages laying on the table in Shonna’s neat writing, flabbergasted at the list of names, the extent of this whole illegal enterprise. It was almost a who’s-who of
“So how did I do, am I on the good guys’ team?” Antonio looked at Shonna anxiously. “Do I get immunity?”
“The game’s not done yet. This is good information but you know I already had most of these printouts.” She scanned through the pages on her lap one last time, looking at the notes she had scribbled from what Antonio had told her, “You really helped me fill in some details, though.” She stacked all the pages together, “Now we have names, that’s good stuff. And we have the money laundering data that will help us unwind the financial side for evidence.” She rifled through the stack to make sure the pages were in order. “Let’s just say that things are going the right way for you, but only if we pull this off.”
“Certainly, I understand.” He smiled, “The good news is that we all want the same thing, to take these bastards out. We can’t be having no big turf war starting up and that’s where this is headed. A lot of people will get hurt, and when it gets really nasty and most of us have families that get hurt right along with the rest. The mayor sure knows about that!” He took a sip of the glass next to him, ice cubes tinkling as he set the glass down.
Jeff did remember reading something about the mayor’s family, it had to be more than ten years ago like Antonio said. The mayor was a city councilman at the time. They called it something like a home invasion robbery, he had never heard the term, that’s what got his attention to read the article. Seems like gunmen burst into his son’s or daughter’s or somebody’s house and killed all sorts of people, kids even if he remembered right. He squinched his forehead trying to remember. Yeah, a robbery of some kind. Everyone was baffled because nothing was taken from the house. There were all sorts of investigations as he recalled, a stream of articles for a few days. It was just more murder and mayhem in
And here it was back again.
Antonio turned to Jeff smiling. “You know, I figured you out when you first came into the room.”
Jeff took a sip of his newly-opened beer. “Oh?”
“That congressman is one pompous ass, like I said, you’re just too nice. He’da taken control of everything. Never seen him do it, but I know the type. I am a good judge of character, I didn’t need no smeared mole to tell me that you weren’t him.” Antonio reached for his glass taking a sip, “And I suppose I don’t get to find out who you really are, do I?”
Jeff smiled glancing at Shonna who gave him the do-not-tell raised eyebrow, “Let’s just say that I’m not him and leave it at that.”
Antonio laughed out loud, “Okay, okay, but the resemblance is amazing! You practiced the voice, right? I can tell you practiced that and it’s pretty good from what I remember, but I only saw you––I mean him––once.” He glanced at Shonna laughing, “See, I know all about this and I still get them mixed up!” Shonna nodded as Antonio turned back to Jeff, “Okay, not bad.” Antonio smiled turning to Shonna, “But we’ve got to get this guy acting like him,” turning back to Jeff, “to hell with beer! We should be serving you glasses of nastiness!” he laughed at his own joke as the two stared in wonderment at how this meeting had turned out like it had.
Jeff glanced at Shonna as she gave a big nod, taking a sip of her Cuba Libre as the ice tinkled in her glass. “Yeah, acting like him,” she said as he looked back at her.
She gave Jeff a smirk.
“Details!”
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NOW READ THE NEXT CHAPTER IN
MAGIC TOWN !
http://chrislamela.blogspot.com/2012/06/magic-town-chapter-14.html
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