Read Online SS 18: Shark Skin Suite: A Novel by Tim Dorsey - Free Book Online Page B

you want?”
    “Ten thousand dollars wired immediately.”
    “Bullshit!” Mr. Madison whispered sharply to his wife, “Get my cell phone and call Caylee.”
    “Good thinking,” said the caller. “That’s what I’d do.”
    “How do I know it’s really my daughter?”
    “You don’t. It could be any yellow Beetle with a sunflower in that stupid dashboard holder and some other girl wearing a tie-dye Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt . . .”
    Mrs. Madison’s panic in the background: “Bruce, she’s not answering!”
    “Bruce,” said the caller. “I think I hear something. Sounds like a cell phone somewhere down on the floor of the car. Oh, and we’re way, way out in the country down this farm road. I wouldn’t be expecting any motorists to happen upon us anytime soon.”
    “Okay, listen,” said Mr. Madison. “I’ll get you the money.”
    “Thataboy, Bruce.”
    “But you have to call an ambulance in the meantime. I swear I’ll still wire the payment.”
    “No dice.”
    “We don’t have time!”
    “Couldn’t agree more, Bruce. So you probably want to stop wasting it on the phone. From the high school parking sticker on her car, I’m guessing there’s a wire place open at this hour no more than five minutes from most of the homes in that district. Here’s the address and the number you’ll be sending to. I’ll call your cell when it arrives. Got something to write with? . . .”
    Mr. Madison reached the wire office in less than three minutes.
    “Are you okay?” asked the clerk at the transfer desk.
    “Here,” said an ashen Bruce, slapping three credit cards on the counter and a piece of paper. “Try the Visa first and send ten thousand to this number.”
    The clerk stared at him.
    “Hurry! It’s important!”
    “Okay, okay, Jesus . . .” The clerk rushed through the procedure and pressed a final button to complete the electronic marvel. “There. It’s off. Would you like a receipt?”
    Bruce jumped as a cell phone went off in his pocket. He got it out as fast as possible, momentarily fumbling it in the air, then pressed it to his head. “The money just went through! Call the ambulance!”
    “What?” said a young female voice.
    “Caylee?” said her father. “Where are you! What are you doing?”
    “I just got out of the movie and turned my phone back on,” said the teen. “Then I immediately called you like you always tell me to.”
    A total of five such calls shattered the evening in nice homes across south Tampa. One of the dads was a lawyer and figured out the scam in time. Another was able to reach his daughter by phone because she ditched the movie to make out with a boy she wasn’t allowed to see. That left three payments totaling $30,000 that were picked up by an associate in Costa Rica. Not bad for a day’s dirty work.
    Bannon was already reclining on his own south Tampa sofa when he received the last confirmation from Central America. It came in on the same disposable cell phone that he had just used to give a bunch of parents heart attacks. “Thanks, Sanchez . . .” Bannon held a second, just-out-of-the-box disposable phone in his other hand. “Same time next Saturday. Take down this new number . . .”
    Then he sank smugly into his couch and resumed watching the Golf Channel. Someone in knickers extolled the virtues of keeping knees properly bent in a sand bunker as Bannon broke apart a cell phone with his hands.

 
    Chapter TEN
    DOWNTOWN MIAMI
    A run-down two-story office building stood in the shadow of a drawbridge on the bank of the Miami River. Junkyards and auto salvage and Jamaican trawlers moored to the shore. Unfed guard dogs barked. The drawbridge began to rise, and motorists cursed in six languages. The office building’s population had dwindled to a handful of tenants in the heat of the summer.
    The reason: no air-conditioning.
    The building was circa World War II, and the original interiors had been accidentally preserved due to landlord neglect