This was originally published over at Beat to a Pulp in the old Wild West days of online crime fiction, and nominated for a Derringer award in 2010.
THE HARD SELL
“YOU KNOW THE PROBLEM with modern wrestling?’
“No, go on.”
“It’s the endings.”
Most of them had heard this speech before. Jake had a version of it for everybody he met. He’d been a pro wrestler and gotten as far as the big two in America, where they said he was too small. So he’d tell people that he never quite made it, but he did get pinned by Hulk Hogan. Returning to England, Jake got put away for holding up a petrol station without a gun. The cops eventually found him with a mashed up banana in his pocket. He went in a failure but came back out a minor legend.
He was sat in the old church hall with everybody else who’d been involved in the con. Four guys, one woman, several beers and a pile of money. His speech was for the benefit of Tom Mcinnes, the only one in the group who hadn’t heard it.
“The ending?” said Tom, giving the inch.
“Yeah, the end of the match. Everybody knows how it’s going to happen, like.”
“I don’t get it, you mean that someone wins?”
“No, not that. I mean, when it comes to it, someone doesn’t always win. Sometimes they’ll pull a Dusty finish, or a no contest, to make the story run longer. What I mean is the big matches. The main events, hell, even the smaller matches if they got a big name in them, they’re boring.”
“Yeah, well, its all fake, innit?”
“Of course it is, but that’s like saying a movie is fake. You get someone good in that ring and it’s like a great film, or a great song, it’s telling you a story. It’s making you feel something, or that’s what it should do. It doesn’t, not anymore.”
“And it’s because of the endings?”
“Name me a wrestler other than Hulk Hogan.”
“Stone Cold.”
“Okay, now tell me his finishing move.”
“The, uh, the stunner.”
“And you don’t watch wrestling?”
“No man, its fake, innit.”
Some of them laughed, some didn’t. Some waited to see how Jake would react, or if Tom would panic. Jake just grinned, letting it go.
“See, that there is my point. You don’t know wrestling, you don’t watch it, but you know a guys finishing move. The finishing moves are all that anybody bothers with.”
“And you don’t like it.”
“No, well, what’s the point in watching it if you know exactly how its going to end? And, when I say exactly, I mean to the exact move. It doesn’t matter how many times one of the wrestlers tries to pin the other, it doesn’t matter how many near falls they get, none of them mean a thing. Because the audience is waiting for the finisher.”
“But isn’t that what they pay for?”
“You think so? I think they pay to be entertained. Its far more entertaining to think the match could end at any moment, that any of the moves could be the winning one.”
“But isn’t it all just about people getting their kicks from watching two oily men whack each other?”
“Sometimes it’s women.”
Everybody laughed, including Jake.
••
They’d been bought together by Ed Baker, the town’s only real long-con player. People said he never got involved in anything that had less than ten moves.
There were five of them in all;
Jake Nichol, failed wrestler, failed heavy, terrible gambler. He kept fit and had a quick mind. It was just his luck that held him back.
Tom Mcinnes. Young and green, he was making a name as a short con. Nobody liked him because he had the charm of a dead rat, but he was learning. He had some nervous disorder and was always moving or twitching.
Jamie Prescott. He talked a lot. He did it well. Put him in a suit, he was the smoothest lawyer you’d never seen. Put him in an overall, he could convince you he could turn your car into a spaceship.
The strangest member of the group, the one everyone’s eyes kept drifting to, was Claire Gaines. Young, rude and cute, she was the youngest daughter of Ransford Gaines. Everybody in the room was scared of Ransford Gaines. They all decided to be scared of his daughter, too.
They sat around a pool table in the back room of Ed’s favourite pub and made small talk until he arrived. Tom made several blatant attempts at chatting up Claire, while the others avoided the whole idea. When Ed turned up, he was wearing a suit and carried a laptop with him. He looked like he was about to do a presentation at a board meeting. He set the laptop on the pool table.
“Have you all heard of the safety deposit con?”
Two heads nodded, one shook.
Claire didn’t seem interested.
“Okay. It’s been around forever. Until a couple of years ago, I thought it was a myth.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I tried it.”
“Wow,” said Jake, impressed.
“So, you get two guys dressed as security guards. You take your two guys to a bank, on a busy street, and you cover up the deposit box with a metal sheet. Hold it in place with whatever cheap glue you can find, but it needs to look real.”
“You did it with a metal sheet?”
“No, actually, I did it with hazard tape. I covered over the deposit box with hazard tape, crossed over it like a big X. But I think metal looks better.”
“Okay.”
“So, you’ve got your two security guards, you’ve got the safety deposit box sealed, and you’ve got a sign put up saying the deposit box is out of order.”
“You never mentioned the sign,” said Claire.
“I’m mentioning it now. The trick is, you see, that you’ll get all sorts of people coming to deposit their money. It depends on the timing, but if you do it on a Friday, just before five o’clock, you’d get a lot of impatient shop workers. They want to drop their cash and be done with their day. If you do it at the right bank, you can do it on a weekend, and get people who are in a hurry to be done with their week.”
“And they just give it to you?”
“That’s the job, you have to make them believe you’re a security firm acting on behalf of the bank. They put their cash into whatever you’re using –a metal briefcase, maybe, or a security van- and you give them an official looking receipt. They go on their way, and so do you.”
“Its one of the first scams I ever heard of,” said Jamie, “No way does this work.”
“I swear, I thought the same thing. But I tried it.”
“And you made good?”
“Five grand.”
“I need another drink,” said Claire.
After another round of drinks, Ed tapped the laptop again.
“You want us all to work the security con?” said Jake.
Jamie didn’t like the idea, “Where’s the money in it? I mean, five grand is good, and would pay for that nice shiny laptop of yours and maybe a Chelsea season ticket, but it won’t pay for five of us to be involved.”
“You talk as if five grand is nothing,” said Jake. “You’re young.”
Ed raised his hand and nodded at both Jake and Jamie in turn.
“Okay. Jake, Jamie, you’re both right. But what if I told you I have an idea to make a hundred grand out of it?”
He had everyone’s attention at this point.
“Jamie is right, basically. It’s a short con, and there’s no fortune in it. I wanted to look longer, find a better angle. Do you know the trick to the long game? It’s finding the human interest. In this case, everyone always looks at the trick itself. I bet, even as I told you about it, you were thinking about the job. About which bank to hit, who to put in uniform, and how much money you’d get in your case when you walked away.”
Jake nodded,
Jamie shrugged.
Tom twitched.
Claire drank.
“You know what I thought of the first time I heard of it? I wanted to know what happened to all those people.”
“The people you stole from?” Claire said in between her drink and a raised eyebrow.
“Exactly. What happens to them? All these people putting their hard earned cash into my briefcase. It’s their money and I got to keep it. So what happened to them?”
“Banks cover it, don’t they?” said Jamie, “I mean, like if a bank vault is robbed, or if someone uses your identity to scam money, the bank’s insurance covers it, right?”
“They do. That’s why I did the job, to watch and see. And in every case they paid up. To the exact penny.”
“Good for them. I don’t see the profit in it though. I mean, we steal a bit of money, the bank pays back a bit of money, and everyone goes home happy. But we’re still only up by five grand.”
“But what if we were the ones being stolen from?” said Claire.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
“Exactly,” said Ed. “We combine the short and the long con. We go through with it as normal. We also provide some victims. Some expensive and trusted clients. Say, for instance, the daughter of Ransford Gaines. The bank will cover whatever amount she was to have written on her receipt.”
Everyone set their drinks down and didn’t pick them up again.
“Brilliant,” said Jake.
“Fucking brilliant,” said Jamie.
“I don’t get it,” said Tom.
“If that’s the end of your presentation,” said Claire, “What was the laptop for?”
Ed picked it up and dropped it; it made a hollow plastic thud.
“Case in point. Its all about making people believe in what you’re doing.”
Everyone nodded. Everyone drank several more drinks. The last two to leave, Ed and Claire, sat on the pool table talking through the plan.
“You’ll need to find out which bank your father has most of his money in and, if you haven’t already, open an account with them.”
Claire looked at Ed over her final drink.
“You’re scared of me aren’t you?”
“I think we all are.”
She had very dark eyes.
“You can kiss me, if you want to.”
••
On the first of April, Ed Baker walked into the bank and opened an account. He opened it with a deposit of three thousand pounds and over the following month he paid in another two. Five thousand pounds in a month was enough for the Bank Manager to earmark him as an important customer.
Claire Gaines already had an account. She’d been having large sums of money paid in on a regular basis from her father’s account, and similar sums going out.
Living is expensive.
On the first of May, at four in the afternoon, an unmarked van pulled into the alley beside the bank.
Josh and Tom, dressed as security guards, took a thin metal sheet from the back of the van. Using cow gum glue they fixed it into place over the deposit box. Ed had given them a sign with the bank’s insignia printed at the top, stating that the deposit box was out of service. Ed had even put the banks phone number on.
Jake didn’t like that last touch because it made him nervous.
“Everybody’s got a mobile,” he said, “It wont take them nothing to ring and check before depositing the cash.”
“Relax. Its just like the laptop, its all for show. They’ll see the number and they’ll assume everything’s okay. I promise you they won’t call.”
“And if they do?”
“Run like hell.”
“We get to carry guns?”
“Nah. You ever see a guard carry a gun? Not over here. Nobody will give you money if you carry a gun. Unless you’re pointing it at them.”
At quarter past four, they got their first drop. A local shop owner making his weekly drop. He put seven thousand pounds in the case.
Jake wrote him out a receipt on official bank slips.
At twenty past the hour, Ed Baker walked up. He was wearing his best suit and he made a point of walking past a couple of cameras near the bank. He stopped to chat with a traffic warden. Outside the bank, he let the security guards explain the situation to him, they pointed to the sign. Ed opened his briefcase and handed the bigger of the two guards, the one who was writing the receipts, four bundles of plain paper. The paper was cut to look like bank notes. The fake money was locked in the case and Ed walked away with his receipt.
Between twenty past and half past, they received two more drops totalling thirteen thousand.
Claire was late.
It had been arranged that she would turn up at half-past, and be the last customer. At thirty-one minutes past, maybe thirty-two, the guards were due to get into their unmarked van and drive away.
By thirty-four minutes past, Claire still hadn’t turned up. Ed had never heard of this job going longer than thirty-five minutes, which is why he’d planned it the way he did.
There was some scientific study he’d heard of once, where scientists proved that neutral observers will watch crimes like this for twenty minutes before calling the police. Violence or murder, or crimes committed against themselves, they’ll call straight away. But if they are watching something like this, they will wait twenty minutes before it annoys them enough to call the police.
At thirty-six minutes past the hour, with Claire still not turned up and Ed starting to sweat, a police car cruised past. It stopped at the traffic lights, ten feet away from the bank, and sat there while the light stayed at red.
Tom’s nervous tick kicked in and Josh began deep breathing.
When he’d wrestled in front of crowds, he’d learned that the only way he could get by was to block out the crowd. Think a few moves in advance, and you’re not thinking of what’s going on outside the ring.
He blocked the police car out.
He thought about Claire turning up, they’d talk for a minute. She’d deposit her fake money. Tom would put the case in the back of the van, Jake would pull down the metal plate, and they’d drive away.
That’s what he thought about.
The lights took forever to change. The police looked right at the bank, one of them made eye contact with Jake. He nodded a strangers greeting, uniform to uniform.
The lights changed and the car drove on.
Ed was no longer keeping track of the time when Claire turned up a few minutes later. Even from the safety of a coffee shop across the road, he was preparing to run. Claire strolled up, carrying half a dozen shopping bags.
“There was a sale on.”
She deposited her fake money, and collected her genuine receipt.
She was barely ten feet away when Jake and Tom pulled away in the van.
••
Police were called. By the time they got there, all they could do was canvass for witnesses and speak to the bank management. The banks security cameras picked up the whole thing, but it was impossible to make out the features of the security guards. They did pick out the faces of the people depositing their money, and the cash as it was handed over.
Everyone held their breath and waited.
They didn’t have to wait long. Three working days later, the first of the shopkeepers noticed that the money hadn’t appeared in their account, and they came in to complain. Not long after that, another victim came in; bringing a copy of the local newspaper that ran the story of the crime.
It was a full week after the crime that Ed Baker came in with a receipt for ten thousand pounds and demanded the bank cover his loss. The bank was still reeling from that blow when, the following week, Claire Gaines visited the manager. She bought with her a young ambitious lawyer by the name of Jamie Prescott. She produced a receipt showing that she had, in fact, paid two hundred thousand pounds into the bank that day.
Her lawyer not only pointed out the banks liability, but also how much he would enjoy making his name out of suing them if they refused to cover the loss.
••
“And they paid?”
“They paid.”
Claire, Jamie and Jake were sharing a drink in one of Ransford Gaines’ restaurants. It was after hours, they could talk about whatever they wanted.
“It took some major bluffing.” Said Jamie, “For awhile I thought they were going to call us on it.”
“I just had to mention my daddy’s name a few times, the manager shit himself.”
“Hey, don’t talk down my contribution. That was my best suit that I wore, and my best legal bullshit.”
Jake laughed, “I ever tell you the problem with modern wrestling?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Claire fetched drinks for all of them.
‘Is it true you got pinned by Hulk Hogan?”
“Yeah. It was a dark match, which means it wasn’t taped for TV. He’d just had a hip replacement, and wanted to see if he could still sell a match.”
“When was this?”
“I dunno. Four, five years ago?”
“So he was, like, what, 80?”
“He’s in his fifties.”
Claire and Jamie both laughed.
Giggling between themselves.
“So, you got beat by a 50 year old?”
“Well, it was a hard sell, but it was Hulk Hogan. It’s what you do.”
“So what happens next?”
“We wait until we hear from Ed. He wants us to keep away from each other for awhile, just in case the police, or anyone, suspects anything.”
“He wants us to a not see each other for awhile?”
“Yeah”
“Oops.”
Jamie called for a taxi and left, leaving Claire and Jake to drink.
“Were you a good wrestler?”
“Yeah, I was. I could go.”
“What was your finisher?”
“A moonsault. It’s a jump off the top of the corner, flipping over in the air.”
“Sounds good. Do you miss it? Wrestling, I mean.”
“Yes. It was all I wanted to do. I mean, I know it’s not a very cool ambition, certainly not this side of the Atlantic. But it was all I ever wanted to do. And it makes you feel so good, the live crowd, the entertainment.”
Claire smiled at him, at his words.
“How about you? What do you do?”
“Oh nothing really. My daddy makes it hard to work.”
“He stops you?”
“Oh no. He’s always offering me work. But, you know, it’s impossible to make your own name when your dad is one of the most feared men in town. I can’t get a normal job, and I don’t want to work for him. I mean, he’d let me run any of his places, like my sister does, but I’d hate it, and the staff would hate me.”
“Must be tough.”
“It is. I keep trying to find something that’s all my own, you know? Even this, the whole thing revolves around cashing in on my daddy’s name.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re scared of me, aren’t you?”
“A little bit.”
“You can kiss me, if you want to.”
••
So there they were, in the old church hall.
Four guys, one woman, several beers and a pile of money
Tom and Jake had been first, bringing in the twenty thousand pounds they’d collected on the day. They emptied the money out on the table, piling the bundles as high as they could for the best effect. Ed was next, bringing a crate of beer and a briefcase holding twenty five thousand pounds.
They sat and drank for an hour, talking about football and films. They tried not to show how worried they were that Claire was, again, late.
It was just over an hour late when Claire and Jamie walked in. They were carrying a suitcase each. Two hundred thousand pounds, they set it on the table.
Everyone who wasn’t already drunk caught up.
Jake drank the most but didn’t really show it.
He explained to people, “Just used to it, really. On the road, you drank. You’d worked off so much during the match, and the travelling, that you could drink whatever you want.”
“You didn’t get hangovers?”
“We all took too many painkillers to get hangovers.”
“Seriously?”
“Of course, look at what we did for a living. You get more drugs in pro wrestling than you do in rock music.”
“Wow. Sounds ace.”
Everyone turned to look at Tom.
Jake smiled and put his arm around Toms shoulder.
“Forget the drugs. You know the problem with modern wrestling?’
“No, go on”
“It’s the ending”
Most of them had heard this speech before.
They couldn’t recite it word for word, but they could give you a version of it. Each of their versions would have been pretty close to the speech he gave Tom.
“But isn’t it all just about people getting their kicks from watching two oily men whack each other? ”
Everybody laughed, including Jake.
“No. It's drama. It's story telling. The little guy, the monster, people giving in or people going the distance. It’s about guys who have no right to win, but do. Its-”
“Its about selling tickets. Its about money.”
Everyone turned to see who the new voice belonged to. It was Ransford Gaines, flanked by an armed escort.
“Dad,” said Claire. “What kept you?”
Everyone now turned to stare at Claire. Everyone except Jake, who kept his eyes fixed on Gaines.
“I was busy,” said Gaines. “I had a few other things to do. Is this all the cash?”
“Yes.”
“Come on kids, get it together.”
Claire and Tom stood and shovelled the cash into the bags while nobody else moved.
“Think of it as a lesson,” Gaines said. “Next time you decide to use a man’s name, make sure you’ve asked first. And you really want to take a man’s money? Point a gun at him.”
His escort smiled and waggled his gun.
Gaines reached into one of the bags and tossed a bundle of notes onto the table.
“Get drunk and learn your lesson,” he said to all of them. He turned to Jake, who was still staring at him, “What you staring at?”
Jake just shrugged and leaned back in his chair.
Gaines smiled, “You’re the guy who held up a store with a banana, right? Give me a call, you’ve got balls.”
He nodded and left, followed by his escort and, holding hands as they carried the cash, Claire and Tom.
The room stayed silent for a long moment.
Jake reached for a fresh beer and took a long swig.
“Now that there? Exactly the kind of ending I’m talking about.”