Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

Outside Springfield, MA

Todd listened to the phone ring, waited for a pickup. Two rings, three. You had to give these old folks time to get to the phone. Maybe they had to use a walker, or were in a wheelchair. Even if they had a cordless next to them, half the time it was tucked down into the BarcaLounger and when it started ringing they didn’t know where the hell it was.

“Hello?”

Good, okay. A woman, and she definitely sounded elderly. You had to be careful. Sometimes their grown kids would be visiting the home when Todd made his calls, and if they answered, the best thing to do was just hang up. They’d know something was up from the get-go.

Todd said, “Grandma?”

It was always a shot in the dark. Did she even have grandkids? And if she did, were any of them boys?

The old lady said, “Eddy?”

Bingo.

“Yes, yes, it’s Eddy,” Todd said. “Oh Grandma, I’m so glad I got hold of you.”

“How are you?” she said. “Hang on, hang on, let me turn down Jeopardy! I haven’t heard from you in so long. Your father, he was going to come by the other day and I waited and waited but—”

“Grandma, I’m in trouble.”

“What?”

“I’m in trouble and you’re the only one that can help me.”

“What is it?” she asked, her voice filled with grandmotherly alarm. “What’s happened?”

“I got arrested.”

The old lady gasped. “Oh no, Eddy, where are you?”

“At the police station,” he said. Which, of course, was not true. Todd was sitting at the kitchen table in his mobile home. In front of him, a laptop flanked by a can of Bud Light and a half-eaten slice of pizza.

“What did you do?” the old lady asked.

“It’s not my fault. The other person cut me off, and I swerved. I didn’t want to hit this lady, she was pushing a stroller? You know? With a baby in it?”

“Oh my, oh dear—”

“And I hit the tree, but the cops found some stuff in the car, that was definitely not mine, it was something one of my friends left in there, and it was only an ounce, you know? But because it was in my car... so they’re holding me unless I put up this bail thing. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Well, you have to call your father. He’ll—”

“No, I... I just can’t. He’s just going to kill me. I’ll need time to explain what happened, and you know what he’s like. He might even leave me in here, try to teach me a lesson, which isn’t fair, because, honest to God, it wasn’t my fault, and in the meantime, I have to pay this bail and—”

“How much is it?” she asked.

Todd smiled to himself. The hook was set. Now all he had to do was reel her in and get her in the boat.

“It’s twenty-five hundred,” he said. “I just don’t have that kind of money. I was wondering... I hate to ask...”

“If you don’t pay how long will they keep you in jail?” Her voice sounded increasingly concerned.

“I don’t know. A few days, I guess. They’ll throw me in with the general population, you know? Some of those guys in there, I just... some of them are big, and really mean, and probably... I just hope no one tries to... I mean, you know what can happen to a kid in jail.”

Was he laying it on too thick? You could overdo it. Todd believed that the first few times he ran this game, he went a little too far, made it sound as though he was about to be gangbanged by the Aryan Brotherhood. Best to let the mark use her imagination some.

The good thing was, most oldsters still used landlines. You got the address of a seniors’ residence through some online trolling, used a reverse directory to get the names of everyone who lived there, and you had a long list of potential marks. If they’d all owned cells, this would be a hell of a lot harder. Todd, of course, used cells. Always used disposable burners when he was doing this. Switched to a new one every week. Didn’t want these calls getting traced back because, eventually, Grandma would discreetly ask a family member if poor little Eddy or Timmy or Walter sorted out his troubles with the police, at which point someone would say, “Oh no, how much money did you send?”

Todd always asked for $2,500. A nice round, believable number, he figured. You didn’t want to go so high that the oldster was scared off, but not so low as to make it not worth your while.

He’d been thinking, maybe this would be his last one. He was making okay money at the computer store. Just part-time, but it looked like they were going to up him from three shifts a week to four. And ever since he’d met Chloe — talk about having your mind blown, connecting with a half sister you never knew you had — he’d been feeling kind of ashamed about how he’d been supplementing his income. So, yeah, maybe this was it. Last time.

Maybe.

It’d be nice to tell her when she came for her next visit, driving up from Providence in that ancient Pacer of hers, that he wasn’t going to do this anymore. Of course, that would mean confessing to it in the first place. It was funny how he felt a need to unburden himself to her. She’d had that effect on him. He believed she suspected he was up to something illegal. She spent a lot of time around old people — her grandfather was in some kind of home and she visited him often — and wouldn’t think much of him taking advantage of them.

“I... I could give you the money,” the old lady on the other end of the line said.

Todd’s mouth was getting dry. He had a sip of beer.

“Grandma, if you did that, you’d like, you’d be saving my life.”

“Do I bring it to the police station? I could get one of the staff here to take me. I could ask Sylvia. She’s really nice and—”

“No, no!” Todd said quickly. “No need to do that. The police said all you have to do is call Western Union. You can do it over the phone. Soon as they have the money, they give it to the police and they’ll let me out of here. Have you got a pen and paper? I can give you all the information.”

“Hang on.”

Todd heard her set down the receiver, some paper shuffling. Her voice, distant: “I think the pen slipped down between the cushions. Oh, wait, I think...”

God, they could be so pitiful. Todd comforted himself with the thought that these people didn’t have that much longer, anyway. They got swindled out of a few bucks, was it really going to make all that much difference? If they ran a bit short one month, they could always ask their own kids for—

Someone banged on the door of his trailer, so hard that it made him jump. Three times. BANG BANG BANG.

“Mr. Cox! Todd Cox!”

A man, shouting. What the hell was this? Especially at this hour. It was after nine at night. Todd didn’t get a lot of visitors here. His mobile home sat just off the road but was shielded by a line of trees. It was pretty quiet, except for the occasional blast of sirens from the fire station on the other side of the property line.

Todd glanced out the window, squinted. There were two people on the steps he’d fashioned from several cinder blocks, lit dimly by the outside light. A man and a woman, late thirties, early forties. What was that clipped to the belts of their jeans? Badges? Fucking badges?

“Todd Cox, are you in there?” the man shouted.

“Who is it?” he yelled back, like he didn’t already know.

“Police.”

Shit shit shit shit shit.

“I’ve got pen and paper!” Grandma said, her voice now clear as a bell.

Todd flipped shut the burner he’d bought online for twenty bucks. Next to the laptop were printouts of old folks homes across the country, as well as an overdue Visa bill and a recent Verizon statement for his personal iPhone. He grabbed the printouts and stuffed them into the utensil drawer as he headed for the door.