Serge tapped the sergeant’s shoulder. “You wanted to talk to us?”
“Not now!” Duffy swatted his hand away. “I strenuously object . . . Officers, take the prisoner.”
“Sergeant,” said Braun. “Don’t force me to arrest you.”
“Sergeant,” said Cargill. “I authorize you to take the prisoner to my headquarters.”
“Excuse me?” said Serge. “Are you guys with the FBI and CIA? You’re probably curious who we are.”
In unison: “Not now!”
People had Rogelio by both arms, swinging him back and forth. Another sedan pulled up. The seal on the door was Homeland Security. So was the badge. “Agent Maxwell. We’ll take it from here . . .”
“Now just a minute!” said Cargill.
“Let’s see some paperwork!” said Braun.
“We were here first!” said Duffy.
“My arms are starting to hurt,” said Rog.
“Excuse me?” said Serge.
Leaves and litter began to swirl in the air. Everyone covered their ears and looked up as a black helicopter landed in the street. Agents with night-vision goggles jumped out. “We’re asserting jurisdiction . . .”
Serge shrugged at Coleman. They strolled behind the house and hopped in their silver Corvette, then drove back around front to the street. A large argument was blocking them.
Beep, beep!
Everyone scooted to the side as they continued yelling in each other’s faces. The Corvette slipped by and approached the police line holding back the reporters.
Beep, beep!
The officers on the perimeter turned toward the car with the Windbreakers.
Beep, beep!
They lifted the rope to let them through.
Mart-Mart
A construction worker peered down into the glass case like he was looking at engagement rings. He finally came to a life decision at the checkout counter in the convenience store.
“I’ll take the Monopoly scratch-off, the Florida Treasure Hunt, Cash Inferno, Bring on the Benjamins, a Lotto quick-pick for this weekend’s drawing, a pack of Marlboro and the beer.”
If you drive around South Florida enough, there are those new, brightly lit convenience stores the size of small supermarkets, with wide aisles, walk-in beer coolers, waxed floors, fresh deli sandwiches and sixteen touch-screen gas pumps.
This was not one of them.
It had a gray exterior with an accumulation of trash along the front. An official notice said not to loiter or consume alcoholic beverages within five hundred feet, but its view was blocked by people doing both. Inside were half-empty shelves with dusty cans of Campbell’s soup and other food-like containers with Spanish names. Only one person could fit down each aisle, unless they were fat and had to turn sideways, which usually made no geometric difference. The checkout counter had a pair of revolving displays for Zippo lighters and onyx marijuana pipes. Clothespins held a row of calling cards to countries across the Lesser Antilles and most of the Greater. The sign out front said Mart-Mart, in case there was any doubt.
The line at the counter was fifteen deep. It would have been shorter, but the clerk was on his phone with friends. The next customer stepped up. “I’ll take a Gold Rush, Flamingo Fortune, Margaritaville, one quick-pick, a pack of Kools and the beer.”
The rest of the transactions were pretty much the same, except for the customers who asked to use the bathroom and were told that it was broken. The night wore into the wee hours. The clerk used the bathroom. More people pulled into the potholed parking lot. Pickups, sports cars, motorcycles and a glass replacement truck featuring giant replacement windows attached to the side with industrial suction cups. Farmworkers jumped down from flatbeds. Someone went in to return an opened pack of cigarettes. “These don’t have the tax stamp. Whenever they say ‘not for domestic sale,’ they always taste stale.” The clerk snatched them for a prompt, no-questions-asked refund. The next person also received cash: fifty bucks for a hundred in food stamps. The store made up for its appearance with extra service.
The parade of dysfunction grew on the side of U.S. 1 in Fort Lauderdale. The products that sold themselves continued to do so. Beer, smokes and tickets flowed out the door. A bearded man came in wearing jeans with a white circle on his back pocket where he carried his tin of Skoal. “I want to see if this won anything.”
The clerk ran the ticket under the scanner. “You did.” He handed a five to the customer, who handed it back. “Beer.”
The customer left and got inside an unmarked van parked up the street.
He joined the other state agents who were gathered around a computer screen. The Florida Lottery was an efficiently humming, firewalled, hack-proof operation in all respects. Except for one minor detail. You could have a ticket scanned to see if it won, then actually cash it in later at a different location. This tiny fissure had no foreseen consequence, until certain retail outlets decided to wedge it wide open.
All lottery activity was recorded by state computers. But with hundreds of games, thousands of outlets and millions of customers—and no suspicion or real idea what to look for—the data stayed stored.
Then a few things happened. The state of Florida always understood that lotteries inevitably create a gray economy. There were many ways not to become a millionaire, but still hit a few grand. And if that winner had tax issues, or alimony, or child support, or no green card—and, say, a ticket was scanned for a jackpot above the legal reporting trip wire—it became an inconvenient time to be in a convenience store.
As the lottery grew, so did the amount of data in its computer banks. Patterns emerged, numbers crunched, statistical deviations became improbable. State auditors began to notice that tickets were initially being scanned across a reasonable geographic distribution, but when it came time to cash them in, impossible spikes appeared again and again at specific locations across South Florida, under specific names. Here’s what they found: Some of the biggest repeat winners were the store owners themselves. Authorities correctly guessed that certain retailers were moonlighting as brokers, paying eighty cents or so on the dollar for the winning tickets of people who couldn’t exactly come forward. The customer would originally have the ticket scanned at a legitimate store, and upon finding they had won too much, asked for the ticket back and went over to one of the brokers who had put the word out on the street. It was an awfully hard thing for officials to prove, but more on point, they subconsciously didn’t want to prove it. Cracking down on the practice would scare away the people with issues, who were their best customers. That’s why they had issues.
That’s when another thing happened. More and more customers began to complain about something else. A few of these shady stores had gotten greedy. They began scanning scratch-off instant games and telling the customers that it was only worth five or ten bucks, paying them out of the register. Then, after the customer left, the store owners would cash in a several-hundred-dollar ticket for themselves. Now, this was a crackdown that would be popular among the betting public.
And now . . . The state agents became fidgety inside their mobile command unit parked three blocks up the street from Mart-Mart.
“Anything yet?”
“Just the initial ticket scan,” said the tech at the computer screen. “From when our undercover guy asked if he had a winner.”