Black Cat Weekly #17

SHANKS GETS MUGGED, by Robert Lopresti-2

Shanks gestured toward the magazines. “You’d be amazed at what people will buy if they think it’s art. So, do you have the sneakers?”

“A friend of ours does,” said Brook.

“Ah. Well, tell him to come in with them, and if he can tell me where he was on April third and it matches what my client told me, he gets five hundred dollars.”

“What about us?” asked Paul.

Shanks dropped his bushy eyebrows. “Hmm. A finder’s fee would definitely be in order. Ten percent would be typical. So you get fifty dollars when I approve the purchase of the sneakers.”

Paul wanted to dicker for more, but Shanks suggested he should take it up with the owner of the sneakers. Why shouldn’t the lucky man share with his friends?

* * * *

The friends brought the lucky man with them later that day. He looked confused and belligerent. His name was Carl Nesmith, and Shanks thought he might have been the mugger.

Then he spoke and Shanks knew. It wasn’t easy to keep his poker face on. Nesmith was shorter than Shanks remembered—a knife in your hand adds several inches to your height, apparently—but it was him.

Shanks repeated the cover story he had told Nesmith’s friends.

Nesmith seemed less curious than the others had been. Certainly he didn’t show any interest in Shanks. “Here’s the shoes,” he said. “Where’s the money?”

Shanks looked at the sneakers and repressed a shudder. He remembered lying in the gutter and staring at those big ugly shoes, expecting them to start kicking him.

“Where were you on April third?” he asked. He tried to keep his voice neutral, but he thought it sounded like the stereotype of a police interrogation: Where were you at midnight on the night of so and so?

Nesmith listed a few places, a liquor store, a park, a*****e. It seemed so mundane; shouldn’t muggers spend their day in opium dens or gang headquarters or something?

“Ah, Verona Park. That’s where my client saw the sneakers. So we’re definitely on the right track.” He beamed at Nesmith and his friends. “I’ll write out the checks. Just fill out these forms.”

“What forms?” asked Paul. “You didn’t mention any forms.”

“Just a receipt and a standard release. You realize, this all becomes part of the provenance of the art work. It needs to be properly documented.”

“Why isn’t the artist doing all this work?” asked Paul.

Excellent question, Shanks thought, silently cursing him for it.

“You know how it is with the creative types.” He raised a bushy eyebrow. “They come up with an idea and then someone else has to do the hard part. But rest assured, he’ll be there to take all the credit.”

All three of them nodded, apparently familiar with that type of person.

“You really need my Social Security number?” asked Nesmith.

“All part of the procedure,” Shanks assured him as he scribbled a signature on the checks. It could have read Longshanks, or Lipton, or Norman Rockwell.

* * * *

It wasn’t until the next day, as he closed up his office for good, that Shanks realized how much trouble he had made for himself. He now knew the name, address, and even the Social Security number of a man he was morally sure was a criminal. What was he supposed to do with the information?

He hadn’t thought that through.

Should he wait in a dark alley and hit Nesmith with a lead pipe? Hardly his style. Besides, a man of his age— Now he was saying it!

Of course, he could take it to the Madison cops. He didn’t know enough law to be sure they would be willing to act on his information. And even if they could, they might consider it too much trouble, but at least that would be their fault, not his.

Besides, he suddenly realized, if they did act he might end up in the news as a comic character, a mystery-writer-turned-vigilante. He liked publicity as much as the next novelist, but for his novels, damn it, not for something that would look like a cheap publicity stunt. “The Miss Marple of Madison.” No, thank you.

Could he remain silent? If he did that, then every time he read about a mugging in Morris County he would have to wonder if someone had been robbed—or worse—by the man he could have sent to jail.

The fact was, he didn’t feel any great commitment to sending Nesmith to jail. The legal system did not have a fine report card on the subject of reform. But he had to do something to decrease the chances that the clown would pull a knife on some other unsuspecting wanderer.

And by the time he had his computer unpacked at home, he knew what to do. He drove over to Truth Town.

* * * *

Truth Town was a*****e that specialized in stuff that made the average citizen frown and say “Is that legal?” The answer was usually yes, with reservations.

If you wanted to spy on a neighbor, surreptitiously record a phone call, or do a background check on your daughter’s fiancé, Truth Town could sell you the gadgets and guidebooks. With each purchase of one of the more dodgy items, Sam Siriano, the owner, always provided a photocopy of the relevant laws so that his customers didn’t accidentally stray over the line while pursuing their no-doubt blameless purposes.

Oddly enough, most of his customers were people with legitimate uses for the equipment. There were private detectives, and lawyers, and even police officers. And occasionally, there was a mystery writer.

“So, what can I do for you, Shanks?” Sam asked. He was a hefty man with curly black hair and a nose as big and pointy as a hatchet blade.

“Last year you showed me a machine that changes your voice. You still have that?”

“Nah. We’ve got much better models now. The new technology just leaps along, doesn’t it? Take a look at this little angel.” He patted a machine that looked smaller and fancier than the one Shanks remembered. “This new baby lets you sound like a dozen different people, male or female. You want any cameras? I’ve got ones you stick in your necktie, your shoe…”

“Not today, thanks. But I could use your latest book on finding personal data over the internet.”

“I’ve got some beauties on that. You researching a new book?”

Shanks raised an eyebrow. “What else could I want these things for?”

“Natch.”

“So, how much could an unscrupulous man find out about an individual over the web?”

“Depends how much your character already knew.”

“Let’s pretend he knew the target’s name, address, phone number, and Social Security number.”

Sam let out a low chuckle. It sounded like something wild sighting its prey.

* * * *

A week later Carl Nesmith was awakened by a phone call from his credit card company. The caller’s voice was typical clerical: bored, almost mechanical. “Mr. Nesmith, we’ve had to close your account. If we don’t receive some payment this week…”

Nesmith sat up, rubbing his eyes. “What are you talking about, man? I only owe like, what, five hundred dollars on that card.”

“Our records say otherwise, Mr. Nesmith. Frankly, we should have never let your last two transactions through. You’re well past your credit limit—”

“Just wait a minute!” He stood up and stared around his cluttered apartment. “I haven’t used the card in, what, a week.”

“That can’t be right, sir. You purchased a dinner for two at the Chateau Gris in Livingston last night—”

Nesmith was outraged. “No way! I’ve never been to that Chateau place. Someone must have stolen my card.” He found his wallet on the bathroom counter. The card was right next to his driver’s license. Damn. “Look, you’ve made some kind of mistake. What card number do you have?”

The clerk read it off.

Damn.

“Okay, someone’s screwing with my account. That’s my number, but it wasn’t me.”

The clerk sighed, like he’d heard all this before. “Do you have your latest bill, sir?”

Nesmith shuffled hopefully through the a few piles of papers and found nothing. He really had to get organized. “I’ll get back to you.”

He hung up the phone and dug through a stack of junk mail on the coffee table. No luck.

The phone rang again. This time it was another credit card company. “I don’t even have an account with you!”

“I beg to differ, Mr. Nesmith,” said the clerk, this time a really snotty woman. “I have your signature, right here, opening the account last month. And now the money is due.”

“This is fraud,” he shouted. “You have to get the money back from those people.”

She laughed. “Don’t count on that, Mr. Nesmith. Most of these transactions are donations to charities. Have you ever tried to get money back from one of those? You’re better off just paying the bills.”

“With what?”

When that witch was off the phone, Nesmith gave up looking for bills and started looking for beer. At least that was where it was supposed to be. Just as he popped the top the phone rang again.

It was the finance company, telling him his check had bounced and someone would be coming to repossess his car if he didn’t get to their office by five o’clock. After that, he stopped answering the phone, but that didn’t stop them from calling, the bastards.

And then his cell phone rang. Almost no one had that number. He hit the button and heard yet another stranger, this one a man.

“Mr. Nesmith? Please don’t hang up. I have some good news for you.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

“The phone calls you have received today were not from the people they claimed to be.”

Nesmith almost dropped his beer. “Are you serious? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Just giving you a little demonstration of what your future could be like. Probably will be like in the near future. Oh, I should begin by asking if you believe that we could do in real life what we just pretended to do? You must know by now that we have your Social Security number, your credit card information—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re some kind of computer hackers. Either that or you work for the Feds, right? So, what the hell do you want from me?”

“Very simple, really, Mr. Nesmith. We want you to stop breaking the law.”

His eyes widened. “Law? What law?”

“Most of them. Oh, we don’t care much about whether you double-park or even if you pay your taxes. Stay away from violence and we’ll be satisfied.”

Nesmith finished his beer. He had a headache. “Who the hell are you?”

“I represent an organization interested in rehabilitation. We have compiled a very comprehensive list of your activities, Mr. Nesmith. I guarantee the police would find it interesting reading.”

He bet they would. He was sweating now. “What is this? Blackmail?”

“You can call it that, if you wish. We prefer to say we are showing you the consequences of your choices. If you choose to break the law again…well, the next time you are arrested, the police get our complete file on you. And you start getting the kind of phone calls you received this morning, except that they will be real. You may escape from the police but not from your creditors.”

“What’s my other choice?”

The mysterious voice left him hanging for a moment. “There’s a technical college right in the town where you live. Our foundation has opened an account for you. It should pay for one semester in just about any course you want to take. It is not refundable, by the way, so don’t imagine you can get the money.”

Nesmith’s head was aching. “Are you saying those are my choices? Go to school or go to jail?”

“That’s it, Mr. Nesmith. If you get good grades we’ll pay part of your future tuition as well. So, what’s it going to be?”

He wanted another drink desperately. He wanted to hang up on these idiots and pretend this morning had never happened. Paul was supposed to pick him up in an hour. They were going over to the apartment of a friend who had gotten his hands on some stolen cell phones and—

Nesmith winced. He imagined he could hear the creditors calling again. And the cops.

“That technical college,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Do they have a course in auto mechanics?”

* * * *

Shanks hung up the phone and turned off the voice synthesizer. He didn’t think it likely that Nesmith would change his life and go straight, but he figured this trick was at least as likely to make it happen as sending him to court. In any case, he had made more effort than the cops had.

Shanks frowned at the voice synthesizer, now taking up a chunk of his desk. It was probably too late to return it to Truth Town and try to get his money back.

Money. How much had this little exercise cost him? The synthesizer, the rented office, the ad, reward, and finder’s fee, the modest price of some technical classes for his mugger. It made the actual amount Nesmith stole from him look inconsequential.

Then there was a month of his time wasted on the project, time he should have spent writing. But that didn’t seem like such a major loss these days, not after three novels in a row had dropped dead halfway through the first draft.

Shanks began to wonder if this whole elaborate vengeance scheme he had dreamed up had been nothing more than an elaborate way to avoid starting on another novel. A crazy way to dodge writer’s block.

He shrugged. Whatever it had been, it was over now. Thank heavens he didn’t have to think about it anymore.

Cora walked in, frowning at a folded piece of paper. “Shanks, we just got the credit card bill. What in the world did you buy at Truth Town?”

“Uh.” Any sort of evasion seemed like a bad idea, especially with the evidence sitting on the desk next to him. “A voice synthesizer, dear. See?”

She saw. She was unimpressed. “Another gadget? This is going to be a tight month, Shanks. Do you think you could play with the toys you already have for a while?”

“Absolutely.” He was thanking his lucky stars that he had paid the technical school out of his private account—what Cora called his “mad money” because he usually spent it on gifts for her when she got mad.

“Hmm,” she folded the bill and looked at the voice synthesizer. “Well, I hope it works out for you, Shanks.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

She pointed at the machine with the hand that held the bill. “Obviously you bought that gadget because it figures in some new book you’re plotting. I know you’ve been going through a rough patch this year, darling. So I hope this idea turns out to be one of your best.”

Shanks stared at her. A series of images flashed through his mind, like pages turning. A man gets mugged. He joins a victim-support group and persuades the other members to join him in an elaborate plot of revenge and reformation…

His heart pounded. For the first time in months his fingers itched with eagerness to get on a computer keyboard. “You know what, Cora? I think this just might be one of my best.”

The reviewers and readers agreed. A Man of Your Age was his most successful book in years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Lopresti is a retired librarian and the author of more than eighty short stories. His books include Greenfellas, a comic caper in which the Mafia tries to save the environment, and Shanks on Crime. He has won the Derringer Award three times, as well as the Black Orchid Novella Award, and been nominated for the Anthony Award. He has been reprinted in the Best American Mystery Stories and the Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. Learn more at roblopresti.com.