THE TURKEY ROLL
1052 Words
They drove through the center of Sofia, with Brenda honking, and pulling around trams and clusters of pedestrians. Steering with her knees, she pulled out a bag of tobacco and started rolling a cigarette. She slipped the perfectly rolled smoke between her lips and lit it.
She smiled when she saw her watching. “Had a lot of experience in the army. Want me to roll one for you?”
“No, thanks,” she said, grinning. This woman was a real character.
As they continued on through the city, she noticed that everyone stared at the vintage American automobile as it rolled by.
“Isn’t this car a little conspicuous for a Secret Service agent?” she said.
Brenda laughed. “There are no secrets in this place, Jade. Everybody knows everybody else. And Americans stick out here like sore thumbs." She turned a corner and waved at some man who was standing on a corner, smoking a cigar. “Any Bulgarian can spot a chuzhenetz - a foreigner - at a hundred yards. They can tell by the way you dress, walk, move, the shape of your face, and a hundred other cues. You have to be careful here, too. In Bulgaria, a foreigner spells only one thing - M-O-N-E-Y.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Five years. Five long years. Before that, Warsaw. Before that, Paris."
“You like being abroad, then?”
“I like being as far from headquarters and their goddam DOPS as possible."
She made a sharp left, into a square. She pulled into a parking space along the street.
“What exactly is this undercover assignment?” Jade said nervously.
Brenda finished her cigarette and tossed the butt out the window. “Ever heard of the Turkey Roll?”
“No."
“Sounds like a sandwich, doesn’t it? It’s a con they pull around here."
They got out of the car and walked across the street. There was a huge Byzantine-style church at the far end of the square, with glittering gold domes and curving, turquoise roofs.
“That’s the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral,” Brenda said. “Probably the biggest tourist attraction here."
Brenda suddenly took Jade’s hand. “For this to work, we need to look like a couple,” she said, in a low voice.
She wondered if she was just saying that as an excuse to hold her hand. Wishful thinking, Jade thought.
After they had walked only a few feet, a man appeared from nowhere and cut directly in front of Jade. He stooped to pick something up from the sidewalk, this all happened so abruptly that Jade almost stumbled into him. He picked up a thick roll of American one hundred dollar bills.
For an instant, Jade felt angry - if the man hadn’t cut in front of her, she would have found it herself.
He looked up at Jade, then at Brenda.
“Yours?” he said, holding up the money.
Now Jade realized maybe this was the con. The Turkey Roll.
Brenda glanced at her, then said to the man, “Yes, it’s my money." When she reached for it, the man quickly stepped away.
He said, “We split it fifty-fifty. Okay?”
Brenda looked at Jade again. “Well...”
“Let’s go over there,” the man whispered, pointing behind a building.
He led them around the corner.
Jade glanced nervously around, afraid of what might happen next. She didn’t like this situation, being in a strange country, mixed up with criminals, and unarmed.
The man pulled the rubber band off the money and quickly started counting it out. Edin, dvama, trima, chitirima...
There were thirty crisp one hundred dollar bills in the roll, or three thousand dollars.
He handed half of them to Brenda, then glanced past Jade, his eyes widening. He turned and scurried away, running along the side of the building.
Two men trotted up to them from the opposite direction. One was in a rumpled suit, the other in a dirty-looking jogging outfit. The latter pointed at Brenda, babbling in Bulgarian.
The well dressed one flashed a police badge at them. “This man - he say you stole his money."
Brenda glanced nervously at Jade. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t steal any money."
“Empty your pockets!”
Brenda hesitated.
“You want go to jail?”
Brenda reluctantly reached into her jacket pockets and turned them inside out. Then, from her jeans’ pockets, she pulled out her car keys, her wallet, and a cigarette lighter. “See?”
“There!” the other man said, pointing at the little watch pocket in Brenda’s jeans.
Brenda sighed and pulled out the roll of money. “Look, it was just laying on the sidewalk. I didn’t steal it from anyone."
“Da!” the other man said, snatching it from Brenda’s hand. He unrolled the bills, then frowned, looking back at Brenda. “To ne vsichko e tuk!”
“He say you take some of his money,” the cop said.
“I didn’t take any of it,” Brenda said. He motioned to the back of the building. “Some other guy picked up the roll and gave me half."
“Other guy?” the cop said, looking around. “What other guy? I see no other guy."
Brenda glanced at Jade.
“You want go to jail?” the cop said again. He squinted at Jade. “You want both go to jail? Bulgarian prison very bad. Not like in America."
Brenda glanced around, then opened her wallet. “Look, I’ll give you all the money I have...” She pulled out a few hundred dollar bills, and another few hundred Euro notes.
The cop looked at Jade.
“I don’t have any money,” she said, her throat dry. She sure hoped this was the con that Brenda had been talking about, and not something else.
The cop asked the other man a question. The man glared at Brenda. “Okay,” he finally said, and pocketed all the money. He turned and walked back around the corner, muttering to himself.
Pointing at Brenda, the cop said, “You should be careful. Bulgaria very dangerous for foreigners."
- Writer
