Otto

Otto and I worked together during that time.

We drove around in a white ex-rental van, the old company logo spraypainted over, scoping out opportunities in the housing estates and industrial areas near the airport. At various times we sold high-end sound systems (fakes), computer software and electronic goods such as phones (reasonable quality knock-offs). Sometimes we sold iced down seafood in large styrofoam boxes (always stressful because you were on the clock to move these perishable items as quickly as possible). We'd pull up next to a potential customer and then I’d jump out and get to work. I slide open the side door and hey presto, you were in the middle of my pitch. No cash? No problems. We'd take you to an ATM.
I liked existing anonymously in that bland suburban grid, remaining lost for weeks on end among the strip malls and cookie-cutter tract housing. In another part of the world, I had ongoing legal difficulties and an ex-father-in-law who, through some insane misunderstanding was out for my blood. I had learnt something very important from these prior mistakes: self-confidence is essential to get ahead in this life but too much can cloud your judgement. It becomes like a drug. Anyway, in order to remain at liberty, I had temporarily borrowed someone else's identity until these matters resolved themselves.

All this trouble stemmed from my fondness (and skill) at getting caught up in life's multitude of possibilities. Or 'The unknown flow of opportunity' as I liked to refer to it. The miraculous process of unveiling a mark's greedy little heart's desire. I had always been good at improvisation and at pinpointing what people needed or wanted. Part of the skill of my profession was, in fact, being able to make 'want' and 'need' interchangeable.

How did Otto fit into all this? While I took care of sales, Otto functioned as my driver and muscle, for those rare occasions when things went off script. The split was 80/20 in my favour. I considered this to be more than fair. After all, I was doing all the brain work and if we're being honest here, Otto needed someone to keep him in line. Not to mention the fact that I covered all of his expenses: microwaveable burritos, beer, cigarettes, accommodation, gas...etc, etc. Without me, Otto would have been lost, an innocent child wandering through the world without any real plan or purpose.
I found it very easy to work with Otto even though (or perhaps because) he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the draw. With Otto, there seemed to be a circuit breaker, a delay switch, that affected his thinking. It was as if he momentarily powered down when it came to processing new and challenging information. And I knew his judgement was at times....questionable. If I had to put a number to it, I’d say his ability to assess and decide on the best option in a critical situation was about 40 percent effective.

I had nicknamed him ‘Auto’ because, in terms of common (or uncommon) sense, there was nothing automatic about Otto. No sir. In terms of knives, tools, sandwiches, decks of cards and the like...he was neither the sharpest or what you might call complete. Otto's most valuable attribute was his body. Physically he was a fucking monster. A machine. The man could deadlift 430 lbs, no problems. And that is a valuable resource to have in my line of work. The point is....we had each other's backs. Symbiosis. Two creatures helping each other out in the big, bad jungle. So as far as I was concerned it was an equal trade-off. You see I could still operate my business without him but the same could not be said in regards to his money-making opportunities. He'd be relocated back to the car wash, where I found him. Hense the 80/20 split.

I was good at talking and Otto was good at breaking bones. Not that I encouraged that kind of thing. It was always best to operate without stepping on people's toes. Although I was technically classified as a criminal, I wished no malice towards any man, woman or child other than lightning their financial load a little bit. However, if things did get nasty, Otto would be on hand to work his magic. A believe me, once he got going, he was fucking David Copperfield. Once I saw him demolish four men in an alleyway without breaking a sweat. It was...masterful. Effortless.

Funnily enough, the only book I every liked in school was Of Mice and Men and all these years later I find myself with my very own lumbering Lennie. Minus the rabbits.

We lived in discount hotels and in cheap Airbnb's. We dealt with people face-to-face (I don’t trust computers. Never have. For me it's all about the eyes, the face). On rare occasions, we would sleep in the van but that was always the last resort (Otto is a snorer. Jesus but you should hear him after a few beers. I'd taken to wearing noise-cancelling headphones when I slept. Top of the line).
Generally speaking, my days were rather straightforward. Sales. Appointments. Follow up appointments. Receiving new merchandise. I met and talked to people. In shopping centre car parks, in restaurants and in bars.

Last summer I met a woman in a theme bar. She was a piece of work. (Meaning she was feisty. Meaning life had not panned out the way it probably should have for someone of her intelligence and personality. Meaning she had some Mickey Mouse marketing job with a software company. Meaning she was stuck all day in a beige cubical with a computer and a grubby phone to keep her company. Meaning she was looking for something to happen, something beyond numbing out on happy hour margaritas and flirting with corporate doughboys. Meaning she was receptive to me). No doubt about it, she was treading water. Professionally and in her private life. And her marriage was slowly unravelling. Or so she said. She and her husband had a ‘no questions asked’ policy when it came to other sexual partners. That strange suburban depravity lurking just beneath the shiny surface of things. They had scheduled specific days when they were free to do what they liked.

After that initial drunken assessment back at her place, she pencilled me in for regular Tuesday afternoon sessions. I would turn up around 3 in the afternoon, have a drink and then we'd fuck. The husband won't have cared even if he did find out. She told me he liked boys. Her own sexual proclivities were very conventional. Light S&M. She was just happy that she no longer had to peg her hubby with a strap-on. Now that he'd drummed up the confidence to pick up men on his own. She told me that she had been his proxy for gay sex for years and she was tired of dominating him in that way. Judging from the photographs in the living room, the husband looked like a square to me. Mixed up sexual orientation aside, just another Anthony Robbins clone going down a fairly predictable track of self-actualisation chaffing against his actual abilities. For the first couple of weeks, I thought that was it, end of story. But then I learned about the husband's diamond business. This interesting little fact came to light when I found an uncut diamond in the doorway of the wife's walk-in closet, lying there on the carpet. I asked her about it. Got the story while she was in the shower. Or at least part of the story.

And as time went by, I started to gently dig deeper (invoices on the husband's desk, printouts of emails, receipts). Every time the wife was in the shower (how could I have been so stupid?) I’d sneak down to the study and have a look around. She.....(I should give her a name, shouldn't I? Gina. There go. Gina. Blonde. 35 years old. 5'11. Along with margaritas, Gina liked Zumba, kite-surfing and as I said, a good hard spanking to placate her daddy issues).....Gina couldn't see what her husband was up to but I could. She thought that he simply sold low-quality synthetic diamonds online to shopaholics, almost as a hobby. In point of fact, her husband was getting almost 600 percent mark up on some of these inferior diamonds. He was exaggerating their colour and clarity through radiation treatment and laser drilling. He had set up a jeweller in a strip mall for the purposes of authenticity. A convincing looking character who would produce counterfeit certificates to persuade nervous customers. In some cases, the husband was going so far as replacing real diamonds with fakes when his customers brought their jewellery in for a cleaning. Quite risky but then again, most of his older clientele would have kept their major pieces locked away for years on end. It's not like you head off to the supermarket wearing your valuable diamond necklace every weekend. (I had a feeling about this all along. A gut feeling that I ignored. Why? When I was younger I'd have acted on that kind of internal alarm. A younger me would have walked right out the door, moved on to the next thing).

I got Otto to start tracking the husband’s movements. I needed to figure out two things: what he was doing with the money he was making from these sales. (It certainly wasn’t going into a bank account, I knew that much from his statements) and I needed to figure out where the angle was for me in all of this. The crack I could exploit. Men like this, small-time operators, just like me, keep their money somewhere safe, outside of the system. They have a place. A storage facility, an attic, their antie Maybell's garage.... like good little squirrels socking away nuts for winter, they all have a place. I should know. I have one.

So Otto followed the husband around for about month while I kept the wife occupied in the bedroom. Twice sometimes three times a week now. This was perfect. It meant we were able to keep track of the husband both in his domestic and public life. We had him covered. And when the husbands routine became predictable to the point of waisting Otto's time, Otto began to follow the jeweller. Otto got to know both their routines inside and out. He had everything written down in his little blue notebook. Written in his tight little cursive script which was odd for such a big man. With this information, I was able to figure it where the money was ending up.

In his legitimate life, the husband owned a small restaurant. I say 'restaurant' but really it was a franchise doling out heart attack food to the obese. Plastic chairs and Formica tabletops, a business staffed by nervous high school kids. The husband would drop in a couple of times a month. Otherwise, the place practically ran itself. The elephantine families and the old age pensioners would come in, paid their money and gobbled down their food. When the husband did drop by, sometimes he would bring a duffle bag. And when he left, that duffle bag always seemed a fair bit lighter if not completely depleted of its original content.

One day I went into the restaurant, sat near the back and ordered the lunch special. Halfway through my meal, I got up and walked out back to the storeroom/office as if I were simply a customer who’d lost their way to the bathroom. I had to pick the door lock. It was only a cheap little domestic model, the kind you'd see on a bathroom door. In the storeroom/office, I found an oversized strong box half buried among the stacked up furniture and supplies. It was heavy. Too heavy for one man to carry any real distance. An old army footlocker secured with two large Masters padlocks, chained to a shelving rack. So it was a situation of hiding in plain sight.

I slipped out, went back to my meal. I paid and left a small tip. Nothing to outrageous so as to be noticed. A week later Otto and I returned. Same thing. Halfway through our meals, we got up separately as if to use the bathroom but we both ended up in the storeroom. The box was heavy but like I say, Otto can deadlift 420 lbs. We just walk out with it. Sometimes the best plan is to simply pick up the desired object and walk directly out the front door as if you own the place. The assistant manager was a young girl with braces. I called the restaurant on my cell phone so that she was distracted as we walked past the register. She was confused that she could hear my voice simultaneously on the phone but also echoed against the clatter and mummer of the dining area. I gently badgered her about the sixteen person reservation moments away from turning up which she had no record of. It kept her eyes down, pinned to the reservation book as we headed out the door.
We had a hand truck waiting near the elevator. From there all we need to do was go down four floors and wheel the box out through the parking structure. We loaded it into the van and we were gone. Too easy.

Otto used a miniature sledgehammer to break the locks. There was a good deal of money in that box. Along with a handgun and a small sack of uncut diamonds. Presumably, these were the real deal, the diamonds he'd swapped out for his fakes. I would still need to confirm this but why else would he keep these rocks locked away? As far as hauls go, it wasn't enough for me to retire on but it would certainly help.

I went to sleep that night feeling elated. It's always a good buzz when you fatten your own pockets on some other small time operator's ill-gotten gains. Almost feels right. Like justice. I put on my headphones and went out like a light. I was gonna miss Gina but you have to know when to move on. This is crucial.

When I woke up the following morning it took me a while to realise everything was gone. I mean everything important. The van. The haul. My ID. My entire fucking wardrobe. My cell phone. Dressed in a sheet, I went to the reception. The guy behind the counter gave me the once-over without much of a reaction. I suppose he'd seen it all before. People come, people go, he shrugged. A philosophical mother. Standing in front of the postcard rack, I suddenly realised I had a new, more pressing set of problems to address before I even contemplated the missing loot. I needed clothes, spending money and transport. More importantly, I needed to put distance between myself and this place before the husband realised what was going on.

Outside in the carpark, everything was weighed down by carefully balanced raindrops. Clouds hung low in the sky. Rainy day, I thought. Now, why did that seem so significant? Then it occurred to me.
I made my way to my own rainy-day-cash-stash hidden in Calum Sear's garage. It was double wrapped in black plastic and stuffed deep in a wall cavity, way back in the dust and wiring and the rat turds. I'd hidden it there awhile ago, while I was helping out with some renovation work. It took me all morning to get to Calum's place, public transport moving like molasses while I fumbled for change. I wasn't really in a rush. I pretty much knew what to expect.

Calum was shaken up after being pinned to the wall by his throat and slapped around a bit. His cellphone had been stamped flat, a swift and effective warning that there would be more physical repercussions if he didn't follow instruction. Otto. The sly bastard. Not only had he taken our diamond money score, he'd also had the conviction to pilfered my personal stash, my Margaretta fund. Otto! I'd missed something alright. I'd completely underestimated him. That old overload of confidence once again catapulting me forward without proper consideration of all the details. The thing that set me apart from the herd was the same thing that had undone me.

I saw Otto years later in a different city. He was reading a newspaper in a cafe, a little espresso cup on a little saucer at his elbow. I had nothing to lose. I just wandered up to him. Why did you do it? I asked. He looked about the same, maybe a bit more zest in his comportment. Money will do that for you.

I wasn't happy with 20 percent, he said, slowly folding his newspaper.
Well, why didn’t you say something? I asked.
I did. You never listened. Besides....I outgrew you. we both know that....
We could have worked something out.
I did.
You should have come to me man. I would have listened. A solid team is better than going it alone.
I have my own people now.
You hobbled me good. After all, I did for you....
You would have done the same. Besides, I figured you owed me that in back pay.
Yeah well.....

Otto sat there for a time, hands folded on his lap, eye locked into mine with a kind of impersonal menace as if to say, now what? But I didn't have anything else up my sleeve. Maybe I just wanted to show him I was capable of catching up with him even though it had been a complete fluke. A bit of dumb luck that I couldn't even use to my advantage.

Nothing left to say, Otto got to his feet and left just as the kid behind the counter called out my name for the triple shot soy latte I'd ordered.

And that was about it.