You're paying $3,200 a month starting today or my people padlock the door, my twenty-seven-year-old son, Tyler, announced at six in the morning, stepping past me into my small rental apartment wi...
The scent of stale beer and desperation clung to the air in the back office of “Kingpin Lanes,” a dilapidated bowling alley on the city’s south side. Beatrice had brought me along, her expression grim. The man she was meeting was named Silas, a skeletal figure with milky eyes and a network of spiderweb tattoos on his neck. He was an elderly former associate of Damon Cross, long since retired but still holding residual respect in the syndicate’s shadowy corners.
Silas sat at a greasy table, slowly wiping down a bowling ball with a rag. The distant crash of pins punctuated the tense silence. “Beatrice. Long time, no see,” he rasped, his voice like gravel. He didn’t offer to shake hands.
“Silas. Business,” Beatrice replied, her voice firm, cutting to the chase. She slid a worn leather envelope across the table. “You know Tyler Garrett. And you know Damon Cross.”
Silas grunted, setting the bowling ball down. “Everyone knows Tyler. A pain in Damon’s ass, lately.”
“More than a pain,” Beatrice corrected, her eyes fixed on Silas. “Tyler isn’t just in debt to Cross. He’s been playing him. And it’s going to cost Cross a lot more than $180,000 if he doesn’t listen.”
Silas’s milky eyes narrowed slightly. He picked up the envelope, pulling out the contents: copies of old ledgers, bank statements, and printouts from the dark-web forums. Beatrice had highlighted key passages, showing transfers, dates, and Tyler’s boasts.
“Tyler’s debt to Cross is $180,000 for gambling losses,” Beatrice explained, her voice steady. “But that’s not the whole story. Tyler was running his own side game, skimming from Cross’s operations. He stole $90,000 directly from Cross’s secondary cash stash, the one kept in the Cicero warehouse.”
Silas stopped wiping the bowling ball. His hand froze. He glanced at the documents, then back at Beatrice, a flicker of something dark in his eyes.
“He covered his tracks by fabricating losses,” Beatrice continued, gesturing to the printouts. “He funneled the stolen $90,000 into a series of shell accounts. The remaining $90,000 of the original $180,000 debt? That was real. But he made it look like the entire $180,000 was from gambling losses, hiding the fact that half of it was his own theft from Cross directly.”
A slow, dangerous realization dawned on Silas’s face. “He robbed the boss?”
“He did,” I confirmed, my voice trembling slightly. This was the moment. “He thought he could blame it all on me, use me as a shield, and disappear with the cash he skimmed.”
Silas looked at the ledgers again, his eyes lingering on the specific dates and account numbers Beatrice had marked. The old numbers, the meticulous tracking that only someone from Beatrice’s era would have. He slowly nodded. “Damon keeps very precise records of his operational funds. He wouldn’t like this.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Beatrice agreed. “And remember the cross-indemnity clause on the duplex property? The one that makes Cross liable if anything goes wrong on that land? Tyler swore to Cross that he owned the land outright and could pledge it as collateral. But he lied. He doesn’t own it. He jeopardized Cross’s entire buffer zone against legal trouble.”
Silas slowly put the documents back in the envelope. His face was unreadable, but the tension in the room had shifted, becoming heavier, more dangerous.
“You’re saying this boy, Tyler, he’s not just in debt,” Silas finally said, his voice low. “He’s a snake. He’s robbing the hand that feeds him, and then trying to frame others for his treachery. And he put the boss’s operations at legal risk.”
“He’s a liability, Silas,” Beatrice reiterated. “A reckless fool who thinks he’s smarter than everyone. Including Damon Cross.”
Silas stood up, his eyes meeting Beatrice’s. “I’ll make sure Damon gets this message. And the documents.” He looked at me then, a flicker of something like pity, or perhaps recognition, in his gaze. “You mothers and your sons.”
He walked away, his gait slow and deliberate, the envelope of documents held tightly in his hand. We left the bowling alley in silence, the distant clatter of pins sounding like a death knell. Beatrice had planted the seed of doubt, and now it was up to Cross’s internal network to decide what to do with a rat in their midst.
More Stories
+ There are no comments
Add yours