He sat, ordered a cup of coffee, and used a paper napkin when he lifted the cup to his lips, so as not to leave fingerprints when he was working a job. As for DNA on the cup, there was nothing he could do about it short of carrying a spray bottle and washing it. He dismissed his action as a silly example of his growing anxiety with the work overload being forced upon him, and he dropped the paper napkin.
Suzie brushed past him, touching his back when she took an order to the kitchen, and when she returned, she paused behind his stool, removed the skimmer from under her apron, and handed it to him. Jakob Kessler took the skimmer, which was the size of a cigarette pack, and put it under his suit coat in a small bag hanging from his shoulder. As Suzie was walking away, she had her hands behind her and held up four fingers on one hand and five on the other, meaning that she’d skimmed nine credit cards.
Jakob Kessler put money on the counter for his coffee and counted out two $50 bills for Suzie. He felt he was being overly generous, but she was new and he wanted to keep her in the game. They passed close to each other when he headed for the door and she freed her right hand from a tray of dessert and grabbed the money, slipping it into her apron pocket. He didn’t have a replacement skimmer with him and made a mental note to have his wife go on the Internet and buy several new ones. After all, they were only $50 each and worth their weight in diamonds.
For his next stop he had to drive over the hill to a mall in Sherman Oaks. Once again he considered the way he was doing business, wearing out tires and shoe leather when there were competitors doing it the easy way. He knew several Hollywood Armenians who were putting their skimmers inside service station gasoline pumps. He’d been told that it was ridiculously easy to do, since one key opened all pumps. The Armenians would simply wait until the service station was closed, then install the skimmer. After a few days they’d return to the pump and remove it as easily as they’d installed it.
The Romanians were more ingenious, and experts in Bluetooth technology. They’d simply aim their device, which would seek, find, and connect, relaying the information from the skimmer. They didn’t even have to take the risk of dealing with a device that might get discovered by a service station owner who’d then alert police. The city was full of cyber thieves trolling the airwaves.
He drove to a Hollywood shopping center and entered a hardware store, one of the chains that employed at least a hundred employees in each store. He picked out a roll of duct tape that he did not need and headed for the checkout line manned by a longtime store employee named Harold Swanson, a man who spent far too much on the horses at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita.
This was another case that caused Jakob Kessler vexation after his suggestion to install a skimmer in the POS machine was summarily dismissed by his wife as “stupid and risky.” He knew that none of the Eastern European teams would have hesitated to bribe Harold Swanson to install a skimmer there at the point of sale, to be removed at a propitious moment, thereby eliminating all these daily trips over the hill into the San Fernando Valley.
When Harold Swanson saw Jakob Kessler in line at his counter, he worked a little faster to finish with another customer and said to Kessler, “Evening, sir, is that all you’re purchasing this evening?”
“Just the duct tape,” Jakob Kessler said in his German accent.
“Yes, sir,” the clerk said. “Sometimes we have sales on duct tape where you can buy six rolls at half price. Six.”
Jakob Kessler said, “Six. I shall remember that.” Then he put down a $10 bill for the tape along with six $50 bills from his wallet.
Harold Swanson put the duct tape and the skimmer in a plastic bag, pocketed the six President Grants, and handed the bag to Jakob Kessler, saying, “Have a nice evening, sir.”
Tristan Hawkins and Jerzy Szarpowicz were waiting at the duplex/office with two of the three Latino runners that Kessler had hired for their skill in passing bogus checks at the many stores catering to illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. Tristan and Jerzy were speaking to each other by then, as much as they ever did, Jerzy sitting in one of the secondhand overstuffed chairs, when all at once he slapped at a flea and leaped to his feet.
“Goddamn it!” he yelled and did a dance, his wattles bouncing as he slapped at his belly and reached around to his back, brushing away more imaginary fleas.
“Why do you think I never sit on nothin’ here unless it’s made of wood or plastic?” Tristan said. “How ’bout you, Diego?”
One of the two young Mexicans sitting at the table in the kitchenette looked up and grinned, a gold tooth gleaming, and said, “Las pulgas. They don’ be hurting you, man. If they ain’t scorpions, I don’ say nothing.”
He was doing freelance work, “washing” a stolen check with acetone. The larger Mexican next to him, a placid mestizo teenager, was doing the same to another check, but he was washing it with nail polish remover. Both men worked with great patience and care.
Tristan said to them, “Don’t let Mr. Kessler see you doin’ that. Nobody with any class bleaches checks these days. It’s too easy to make your own.”
The smaller Mexican shrugged and said, “This how we do it back in Cuernavaca. I still make some money like this.”
Jerzy walked to the kitchen, opened the little refrigerator, found nothing but two strawberry sodas inside, and took one without asking and popped it open. He eased his bulk onto the floor, leaned against the plasterboard wall, and drank.
Tristan said to the Mexican, “Can I have one too, Diego?”
“Okay,” said the Mexican, not looking up from his work.
Tristan put two dollars on the kitchen table and took the last soda. When he sat down beside his partner, he said, “So how do you like the job, wood?”
“It’s okay,” Jerzy said. “Till somethin’ better comes along.” He gulped down the drink, crushed the can in his big beefy mitts, and said, “How long you been workin’ here, anyways?”
“Almost two months,” Tristan said. “Old Jerzy was somebody I used to see at Pablo’s Tacos when I’d go there to score a couple rocks. He told me about Jakob Kessler. Now Old Jerzy’s gone.”
“This job don’t look like a place where you form long-term relationships,” Jerzy said.
“How’d you meet the man?” Tristan asked.
“This basehead named Stella told me about him. She used to live in the room next to me at Cochran’s Hotel. Said I could make some serious coin, but I ain’t seen nothin’ serious yet.”
“I don’t know a Stella workin’ for him,” Tristan said.
“She’s brain-fried, man. Here one day, spun out and gone the next.”
“Jakob Kessler is one weird dude,” Tristan said, realizing that this was the first time in four days working together that he and Jerzy had spoken more than a dozen words at a time.
Jerzy just grunted and scratched his balls, looking as though he’d like to throw one of the Mexicans out of a kitchen chair so he could get off the floor.
“Way he got me,” Tristan said, “he saw me lookin’ at some shiny spinners on a pimpmobile at Pablo’s. He says to me in that Hitler accent of his, ‘You don’t have to steal spinners. If you want them, you can walk in a store and buy them with a credit card.’ Then he bought me a taco plate and we talked.”
“He never bought me nothin’,” Jerzy said.
“The man can talk,” Tristan said. “Do those weird eyes of his ever get on your nerves?”
“I don’t pay no attention to nobody’s eyes,” Jerzy said. “Unless I think the guy’s an undercover cop and he’s lookin’ at me too close.”