Dave Zeltserman - Blood Crimes Book One

He staggered to his feet. Jesus, he had never been so damn hungry. He looked around, blinking, his remaining eye acclimating to the semi-darkness, and realized he was in a windowless basement. He made his way up a staircase, opened the door, and screamed like a baby when the sunlight hit him. Dropping to his knees, he crawled back down the staircase and away from the light. Fuck, it was like someone had tossed acid in his face. After a minute or so the pain went away. He understood then he’d have to wait until it was dark before he’d be able to satisfy his hunger. But smacking his lips he knew he’d eat well then. For the hell of it he decided to test out whether he had the same freakish strength that that other dude had. He punched the concrete wall and his fist cracked through it. He smiled at that. Yeah, fuck, he was going to eat well later. After the sun went down.

As it was he was hungry enough to eat a cow, or given his present condition, drain the blood out of a nice-looking broad. Make that a busload of them. Or a club full of strippers. Yeah, he was going to eat well later. No doubt.

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The story continues in Blood Crimes: Book Two.

Bonus Section

Bonus section includes: ‘More Than a Scam’ from 21 Tales, first chapter from Fast Lane, first chapter from Bad Thoughts, first section from the Shamus-award winning novella ‘Julius Katz’, first chapter from The Walk by Lee Goldberg and the prologue and first chapter from Dead and Gone by Harry Shannon..

More Than a Scam (from 21 Tales)

The inspiration for this story were the ubiquitous Nigerian email scam letters I was receiving daily. At first I was planning to do the same as my story’s hero, namely record a correspondence with one of these scam artists, but instead I decided to go in another direction. More Than a Scam received honorable in the 2003 edition of Best American Mystery Stories.

It really all started with the email I received. The message was marked “Urgent/Confidential” and was from one Celestine Okiti, who claimed to be a senior accountant with the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Finance. The gist of the email was that ten and a half million dollars was sitting in a Nigerian bank account and she was looking for a partner to pose as the next of kin of some dead foreign contractor so she could get the money out – and that my cut would be four and a half million dollars, minus expenses.

Of course it was a scam. It was too silly to be anything else, and besides I had read about this years ago. The “pigeon” who went for his four and a half million cut would be asked to put up some money to show good faith and to cover the expenses. It was a pretty simple and childish scam, one that makes you wonder how anyone in the world could fall for it, but still, I was fascinated by that email. It got my mind spinning on different crime story scenarios.

I guess I should tell you a little about myself so that this makes some sense. My name’s Dan Wilson. I’m thirty-eight, live in a suburb near Boston, been married ten years, and have a pretty boring job processing insurance claims. In order to keep my sanity I write crime stories in my spare time. Usually I write hard-boiled PI stories, sometimes crime caper stories. I’ve had limited success. I’ve sold a couple of stories to print magazines and have given away a fair number of them to online Internet magazines.

I sat for a good two hours staring at Celestine Okiti’s message, playing out different story ideas in my mind. The one idea I kept coming back to was responding to her email message, pretending to be a pigeon, and then writing up the exchange of emails as a story. I didn’t do anything, though, at least not then. By the time I gave up it was one in the morning. I didn’t want to wake Cheryl so I slept in the guest room.

The next morning as I sat drinking coffee my mind raced with different possible Nigerian bank scam stories. I didn’t notice Cheryl had come into the room until she sat across from me with her yogurt and newspaper. She seemed too absorbed with the newspaper – and I guess I was too deep into plotting my story – for us to say much to each other. After I finished my coffee I headed off to work.

After three days of working out different scenarios in my mind, I decided on a plan of action. Instead of replying back to the email as a “pigeon”, I would instead create my own scam. I have written stories with a roguish conman named Pete Mitchel. For the hell of it I decided to use his identity. I created an email account for Pete and wrote an email back to Celestine Okiti, telling her how fortuitous it was that she had contacted me, that I worked in the office of a large construction company, and that a Nigerian national died on the job several months ago and seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars in death benefits were sitting there waiting for a next of kin. I told her that I was planning a trip to Nigeria to find someone who could pose as the dead man’s next of kin, but Celestine could save me the trouble. I further explained that I wasn’t greedy, that ten percent, or seventy-two thousand dollars, would be all I wanted.

I sat in front of my computer for several hours with my email message typed out, trying to decide whether to send it. Of course, the scam letter they sent to me had been sent to thousands of other addresses, probably from a purchased email list. They’d have no idea whether or not an email was originally sent to a Pete Mitchel, nor would they check. As I was trying to decide what to do with the email, Cheryl walked into the room and interrupted me. She told me it was late, that she had to get up early the next day, and asked if I’d be quiet when I went to bed. She looked tired, a little worn out. I told her not to worry, that I’d sleep in the guest room again. After she left, I stared at the email message for another thirty minutes, and then sent it.

I didn’t get a response for several days. I must’ve checked my email a few hundred times before I found a reply from Celestine Okiti. She thanked me for the opportunity that I presented, but insisted that her opportunity was urgent and was far more lucrative. She wanted me to contact her right away so that I could reap my four and a half million dollars, minus expenses of course.

I had already worked out in my mind what my next step would be if I heard back from Ms. Okiti. First, I used a travel web-site to book a flight to Nigeria for my fictitious Pete Mitchel. I then sent her back a reply stating that I knew her proposal to me was a scam, but that I considered it good fortune that she had contacted me when she did, possibly saving me from a trip to Nigeria that I wasn’t anxious to take. I told her, though, that time was running out for me to collect the insurance money and that I had booked a flight for the following week to Nigeria so that I could find a local who could pose as the dead man’s next of kin. I passed along all the flight information, and told her if she changed her mind she could let me know, but that time was running out.

I didn’t expect a reply to my email. I guess I must have been feeling a bit queasy about the whole thing and at a subconscious level had decided to put a stop to it. I was more than a little surprised when I got a terse reply back from Ms. Okiti to fax her a copy of the dead man’s death certificate and the insurance policy.

The insurance policy was easy. I was able to get a fairly realistic policy printed up in no time. The trick was filling in all of the contact information and then blacking it out with a pen. As far as the death certificate, I found samples on the Internet, and then used a graphics package on my computer to create a fairly realistic looking one. It took some time, but I was happy with the results. I faxed both of them to the number I was given.