The Conman Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree
The Department for the Quantification and Utilisation of Luck.
Cooper was happy to be back in his room, where Jackson Smith, Oxford and the head of the most secretive of secret American government agencies, Madeleine Mary Yates, couldn’t get at him. It didn’t seem like a cage anymore; the door was closed, which they hadn’t allowed before, there were no guards outside and he could come and go as he pleased.
He was leaning forward in his armchair, his left knee tightly bound with an elasticated bandage, his foot resting on a footstool. On the floor in front of him were several newspaper pages spread out, covered in wood chips. He was using an army-issue knife, that he’d persuaded Cassie to requisition for him, to carve strange shapes into the tree branch he’d been using as a crutch since shortly after he’d left his penthouse flat by the window.
“It’s not locked,” he shouted in response to a knock on the door. Cassie entered wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt with ‘Less a Myth more an ology’ in orange lettering on the front. She stopped short in the doorway when she saw the mess on the floor. Her eyes widened when she noticed the markings he was carving into the tree branch.
“Are those … runes?” She said, “I mean, I expected, well, thought…,” her voice trailed off.
“I don’t know what they are, it’s just something I feel I have to do. What was it you ‘expected, well, thought’?” he said.
“Never mind,” she said walking all the way into the room, “reception said you were looking for me.”
“I only asked where you were, I would’ve come to find you once I finished this,” he said cutting away at the branch, “I need you to requisition a car for me, I’m going out for a couple of hours,”
“Oh? You are coming back… aren’t you?” she said apprehensively.
“I’ve just got a few loose ends to tie up, that’s all. Anyway, how far do you think I can get like this?” He said, pointing to his injured knee.
“Can you drive, like that?”
“I’ll manage.”
It was just over five minutes before she returned, “I got you an automatic, it should make driving easier with that leg, it’s a silver Ford Fiesta hatchback parked out front,” she said, handing over a car key on a red, plastic fob with the registration number handwritten on it.
He thanked her as he finished the last of the carvings and sheathed the knife on his belt before standing up and leaning on the branch to fold pages covered in wood chips into a neat parcel and drop it in the waste paper bin beside his chair, “That’s the first time newspapers have been useful since they stopped wrapping chips in them,” he said, heading for the door.
“Shouldn’t you leave the knife here?” she said, but he was already gone.
Once at the car he made a big production of struggling to get in, in case anyone was watching, although fitting a long stick into a short hatchback was the real trick.
He drove for a few minutes, before pulling over once he was sure he wasn’t being followed, then he undid the elasticated bandage, put it in the glove compartment and flexed his leg. He didn’t understand how it had healed so quickly, although he wasn’t complaining, but what did worry him was the strange tingling all over his body that had started that morning when he climbed out of bed, he just hoped that it wasn’t some sort of circulatory problem. Not that there was ever a good time to have a heart attack, but this would be particularly bad timing.
It took him over thirty minutes of driving and waving his authorisation at checkpoints to get to the street he’d zip-lined over the day before; he stopped at the entrance to the cul-de-sac where he’d have the option to leave quickly before studying his surroundings. All the parked cars belonged to residents (every month he was there he would take time to memorise the makes, models and number plates) with no cars in the visitor spaces and no pedestrians or service vehicles in sight. When he was happy it was clear, he parked in his numbered spot, reluctantly leaving his staff in the car, and walked up to the building monitoring his periphery; he wasn’t going to let Oxford, or anyone else, for that matter, ambush him, not again.
A sheet of plywood covered the gap in the door where he’d shot out the glass pane, as he entered the concierge’s head shot up, he was a tall, friendly young man with a love for the kind of classic, American muscle cars that Cooper drove, bought by making a lot of money running cons on people who could have been smarter than Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking combined and still had more money than sense.
“Mr Cooper, the police and forensic investigators were all over your apartment yesterday, I think the tape is still up.
“Oh, hi, Daniel, I never told you this before, but part of my work is as a police consultant,” Cooper said flashing and impressive looking government laminate, too fast to be read, which was just his ministry pass.
“I heard that someone kicked your door in,” Daniel said.
“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, I’m sure you understand,” he said just before starting up the stairs. He didn’t like lifts as there was no way to know what was on the other side of the opening doors until it was too late and ducking opportunities in such a confined space were hard to come by. The only exception he made was when he was going to the roof, which was a more controlled situation.
When he got to the sixth floor, where his penthouse flat was, he opened the stairwell door a crack, recording a video on his phone to study the lobby for any unusual activity. After checking it he stepped out of hiding and ran an RF detector over the walls, checking for surveillance devices. When he found nothing he turned his attention to the door to his flat; the building management had replaced the kicked-in one with a cheap, plywood version whilst the fancier kind was on order.
He used his knife to cut the blue and white crime scene tape across the door, then wedged the blade under the corners of the plywood, loosening it enough to pull it away with his fingers before pushing the crossbars and panel on the other side in, and stepping through.
Inside he checked that there was nothing new plugged into the wall sockets before making sure that it wasn’t bugged by running the RF detector over the whole flat quadrant by quadrant. His backpack was missing from where he’d left it beside the armchair, which was hardly surprising, given the company he kept.
He took two identical bags from the wardrobe and filled them each with half of the money from the safe, putting a selection of credit cards, passports and IDs in one bag before holstering a Glock 32 on his belt and a Glock 43 in and ankle holster, the soldier having confiscated his other weapons, when he’d set off the metal detector at the entrance of the department, on his return with Cassie.
Twenty minutes later he pulled up in front of a modest, two-bedroom bungalow, although this was a part of the city where the cost of “modest” ran into the millions. He’d left his makeshift walking stick in the car. He desperately wanted to take it (although he didn’t know why) but it would have raised too many questions as he was back to walking normally.
The house looked like the archetypal sweet old couple’s home, complete with climbing ivy and hanging baskets. The doorbell played What a Friend We Have in Jesus when he pressed it, holding one of the backpacks in his other hand. "Oh, please” he muttered under his breath when he heard it.
“Just a minute, dearie, I have a bad hip,” a weak and tremulous voice came from the other side of the door which made Cooper roll his eyes and check the time on his phone impatiently.
The woman who answered a second ring was bent over with age, leaning on her walker with one hand, the other in the pocket of her floral apron, her snow-white hair in a bun. “Oh, it’s just you, what do you want, you little shit?” she said, her voice suddenly strong and rasping, as she straightened up.
“You can quit the wishful thinking and leave the Ruger 9 mil in your apron pocket, mum,” Cooper said, lifting the bottom his polo shirt to show his holstered gun.
Without speaking she about turned and walked into the living room, he shut the door and followed her taking the walker with him.
She was sitting on the settee smoking, a glass of vodka beside her, watching a TV show that had a banner along the bottom that read ‘Is an Alien my Baby’s Daddy?’
“Where’s dad?” He said.
“Running a variation of the Spanish Prisoner at the golf club. Can you believe this?” She said pointing at the screen, “Get me in the same room with those idiots and I’ll take every penny they’ve got, not that it would amount to much.”
He dumped the backpack on the table.
“What’s that?” She said, leaning forward to blow smoke in his face. He waved it away, coughing as he stepped back. She opened it and wads of pounds, euros and dollars spilt out onto the table. She looked from him to the money and back again, “Before you try anything, remember that I taught you all you know about the con game, not all that I know.”
“You’re right,” he said, “we never did cover passive-aggressive sociopathy, just take it and head for Australia and stay there.”
“Oh, I get it now,” she said triumphantly, “you get rid of us for…,” she paused to look at the contents of the bag, “half a mill? And inherit a house worth nearly ten times that much. Got the transfer of ownership papers forged already, have we?”
“If I wanted this place, I’d wait a couple of years, given how much you and dad smoke and drink, then I’d have somewhere to hold the party after the funeral, and there’d be no shortage of guests happy to celebrate with me,” he said sitting in the armchair opposite her.
“Like you’re in my will,” she snorted, “what are you up to, then?”
“You must have seen what’s happening less than ten miles away,” he said pointing to the television, “and it’s going to get a lot nearer, and much, much worse. So get away fast, the farther the better.”
“So you’re the one running that con,” she said excitedly, jumping to her feet, “It must be worth a billion or more! What about cutting off a slice for your dear old mum?”.
“There is no cake to cut a slice off of,” Cooper said through gritted teeth as he stood up to face her. Although, at five foot tall, she was a foot shorter than he was, the memories of the brutal beatings he gotten every time he’d made a mistake that ruined a con still filled him with what was now an irrational fear.
By the time he was fifteen he’d been out half the night drinking and chasing girls and his parents hadn’t cared, they didn’t even object to the voracious way he consumed knowledge from library books between cons, they only had one rule: don’t cost the family money.
“You can’t fool me,” she said pointing an accusatory finger, “there must be a big payday coming otherwise why would you still be here?”
“Because I’m beginning to believe that I can save lives––if I stay,” he said glaring at her.
“Listen to you, ‘save lives’,” she snorted, “where’s the profit in that?” she sat back down and emptied the glass of vodka like it was water, “you could’ve been one of the best,” she said, suddenly maudlin, “but what did I hear every time we ran a charity collection scam? ‘I don’t want to cheat nice people, Mummy,’ pathetic!”
“Yeah, well, nobody can say you didn’t try hard enough to beat that out of me. Get your lawyers to draw up a contract safeguarding your assets and I’ll happily sign it, as long as you promise to leave the country once that’s done”
“Were not going anywhere. In a few weeks time the golf club con will be finished and your Uncle Jimmy’s coming up from London to seal the deal by playing the released prisoner at a ‘charity’ gala to pay off his legal expenses. I’m not leaving that much cash on the table.”
“The banks are limiting large withdrawals, so take it anyway; use it to emigrate, the farther you go the safer you’ll be.”
“What’s in it for you?” she said, studying him suspiciously.
“I’d tell you I want a clear conscience, but then I’d have to explain what a conscience is first, and that would take far too long,” he said, checking the time on his phone.
Back in the car, he sat gripping the steering wheel, trembling with rage as suppressed childhood trauma came flooding back. He had to wait until he calmed down before he felt safe to drive again.
His next destination was near the city limits but he hadn’t realise how bad things had gotten and ran into a huge traffic jam as he approached one of the checkpoints that the army had set-up shortly after implementing martial law.
“Only essential traffic is permitted to enter and leave the city,” a bank of speakers blared the recorded message in a woman’s voice over and over, the sound reaching the cars that were inching forward hundreds of yards away, “and therefore those of you without permits are here illegally under the conditions of the Emergency Powers Act of 1964, and must disperse in an orderly fashion.”
Not that the panic-stricken civilians crowding around were paying any attention to that, they tried to swarm over the hurriedly assembled barricades of bulldozers, combine harvesters and any other piece of heavy equipment the army could confiscate, only to be pushed back.
It was a losing battle for the military, with the troops being placed in a very difficult position, they were reluctant to fire plastic bullets into the crowd for fear of hitting pregnant women or children and the stiff breeze would have dissipated any tear gas.
Anyway, they knew in their hearts that nothing they were doing would make the least bit difference, with resources stretched to break-in point it would only be a matter of hours, a day at the most, before they would have to abandon the checkpoints when they were needed more urgently elsewhere, and everybody in the crowd knew that as well.
After stop-start driving for the best part of an hour, he took a series of side streets that would lead to the large building he was looking for: according to the big grass-green sign on the front, it was called “Exogenic Supplies” and since garden centres with, or without pretentious titles, weren’t on the list of essential services it was closed for the duration.
He parked at the main entrance and used a lock pick to open the nearby office door, the alarm starting its strident complaint, but with everything else that was going on protecting shrubbery and garden furniture wasn’t going to be high on anybody’s list.
He cut the alarm wires, silencing the annoying bells, then made his way to the back door. Outside was a large, circular pond filled with coy carp surround by racks full of potted plants, as well as garden sheds and greenhouses. Using a pallet truck to move a tall shelving unit full of pots of flowers a few feet clear, he levered up a couple of paving slabs with a pickaxe and used a garden spade to dig a deep hole. Pushing the backpack well down, he filled it in again and replaced the slabs, he grabbed a yard brush and spread the leftover dirt out, before pushing the shelving back into place and putting the pallet truck back where he got it.
Once that was done he memorised the exact location, if the worst came to the worse he had no intention of being anybody’s dead hero, as he’d told Cassie. If the city burned, it would burn without him, and this would be a big part of his exit strategy.
As he walked back to the car, he heard a buzzing that sounded like a giant bee approaching from behind. He turned to see what he thought was a fairy but was actually a pixie (identifiable by the pointy ears). She was only six inches tall with a pretty face and brown hair in pigtails. She wore a short, shoulder-less red dress with a white hem. As she flew in towards his face, lips puckered for a kiss, he couldn’t help but smile... until she punched him so hard that he flew backwards, blood exploding from his burst bottom lip. Annoyingly, she seemed to have been absent from pixie school the day they’d explained the law of equal and opposite reactions, because she stayed exactly where she was, hovering in mid-air.
He jumped to his feet, pulling his Glock out, but she somersaulted, kicking it out of his hand. When she spoke her voice was high and squeaky, “Morrigan wishes thou for her mage,” she said.
“Friend of hers, are you?” He said, throwing a punch that she avoided easily.
“I despiseth her with all mine might, but as longeth as she maketh mortals believeth in magick I shalt exist,” the pixie said, disappearing in an explosive burst of colour to reappear behind his back, where she grabbed his belt and rose effortlessly into the air.
He couldn’t breathe as the belt cut into him. The ground was getting farther and farther away as the pixie carrying his bent-double form with ease. White spots swam in front of his eyes as the lack of oxygen took its toll.
With what he thought was a final act of futile desperation, he pulled the knife from his belt and stabbed it into her leg. He had no idea what cold iron did to fairies, so it was a total surprise when she screamed and let go as she spiralled away, exploding in a kaleidoscopic shower of sparks. The knife, suddenly free, dropped, the hilt hitting him in the chest, bouncing and falling past him as he spread his arms and legs to slow his descent, his clothes flapping violently in the wind.
Although it was only fifteen feet to the concrete that, at best, would have resulted in a long stay in hospital. Luckily, he landed in the pond, there was a huge splash and several carp went up as he came down.
He fished his knife out of the water, climbed out and threw the floundering fish back in. Picking up the Glock and holstering it, he headed back to the car, took the key out of his pocket but the remote didn’t work anymore so he used it the old-fashioned way. Before getting in, he wrung out his dripping-wet jacket and threw the damp mess into the back.
He shoved the holstered Glock pistols and spare ammo down the back seat, in case they checked the car on his return, but, after he’d driven into the underground car park unchallenged he was safe to retrieve them and take the lift to the ground floor. Inside he used his staff the prop the access panel in the ceiling open and stashed his guns, where he’d retrieve them at night, when reception was unmanned.
An anxious Cassie was waiting for him when he walked out of the lift. He was nursing a swollen lip, a bruised jaw and swinging the branch as he walked past her, heading back to the Experimental Studies Suite.
“Wait!” she shouted, spinning around as he passed by, too many questions crowded into her head all at once, “Why are you wet? Why aren’t you limping? Why is your lip bleeding?”
“Never mind that, just get me a fucking tennis racquet… please!” He lisped over his shoulder as he disappeared down the corridor, towards the stairs that led to the privacy of his room.