Charade

Vic

I leaned back in the seat of my taxi, breathing in the faint scent of smoke left by Benjamin's last cigarette. He was across the street, speaking into the passenger's side window to an elderly couple who took pity on the young and homeless.

The con was a simple one that many have used. I called it the BDC scam, or Broken Down Car scam, and the title was pretty self-explanatory. A tourist, usually a foreigner, is driving across country when their car breaks down and they have no money to get back into the city. A few tugs on the heartstrings, a few quick excuses, and suddenly you've acquired fifty dollars. It didn't sound like much, and it was far less that I was accustomed to, but it was a good little scam to learn vital skills, such as control and manipulation. And, when you think about it, if you can stop twenty cars by the end of the day, you've got a cool grand to do what you see fit.

I saw the pity in the old man's eyes as he handed Benjamin a fifty and a ten. Benjamin thanked them dearly, the way I'd taught him to, and they drove off without a worry in the world. People like that were easy to target. Not old people, just people with big hearts. I almost felt bad for them, until I remembered I couldn't afford to.

Once the car had disappeared over the horizon, fading into asphalt and bushland, Benjamin held the money up and raised his eyebrows, as if to say 'not bad, huh?' I nodded in approval but didn't bother to smile. The kid was smart, efficient, intuitive, and his lying wasn't too bad, but he had one fatal flaw: impatience.

Benjamin wasn't the type of boy to sit down and make a plan; he simply dove into the deep end and hoped for the best. I suspected that was the way he went about most things in his life. But an attitude like that would not suffice in my world. You had to know your story, backwards and forwards, or there were holes. And where there were holes, there was doubt, which even in the tiniest amounts, could bring down entire operations.

My main concern, however, was not Benjamin's skill or potential; it was all the things I didn't know about him. After all, I could've been working with a serial killer or a future president, and I wouldn't have the slightest clue as to which one. Benjamin might have had leverage on me, but that didn't mean I was going to stop being cautious.

I waited for another car to pull up. Nobody could see me here, with my car parked behind a cluster of trees and saltbush, and so I could watch freely as Benjamin stood by the rental car and put on a sad face. He couldn't quite see me, though. I suppose he could if he looked hard enough, but he was busy with the customers, and so I saw the perfect opportunity.

I pulled out my small black phonebook and flip phone. I didn't favour new technology, although I understood how it worked, which is why I still owned such dated devices. I found his number within a minute or so and punched it in. The phone rang exactly four times before he picked up.

"Wilson speaking."

His voice was gruff, tired, throat laced in caffeine. I could almost see him sitting at his desk, rubbing his eyes, hunched over a mountain of casefiles til the wee hours of the dawn, the way the cops do in movies.

"Paul," I said. "It's Victor Langley. Do you remember me?"

In the moments that followed, there was a silence. I caught a flashback of the night I last saw Detective Paul Wilson, almost two years ago now, and could feel he was remembering too.

Anna and I had been officially divorced for all of six hours. She'd ran off with James while I ran off the first pub I could find. The pub was a rough one, not my typical hangout place, but the booze was cheap and excessive, which was just what I needed. I'd ordered bourbon, my father's drink of choice, and sat at the bar slowing killing my liver when he approached me.