Nina, the Bandit Queen (7 page)

Her many failures to get rich by means of get-rich-quick schemes had given Krystal Beach some useful insights. One was that everybody who said they wanted to make her rich wanted to make themselves rich first, and if the way they did this was by bleeding her dry, it was fine with them. On the other hand, if she was typical of the people they went after, they had kitty litter for brains. But it wasn’t until she began to think about accumulating wealth for purposes other than her own comfort and happiness that she began to reconsider the approach she’d been taking. It hadn’t been nearly broad enough.

There had been signs of this for awhile. The most obvious was when a company with a website that promised her Riches for Eternity as soon as she completed two easy steps sent her a metal detector she hadn’t ordered. Things like this happened once your name got on enough get-rich-quick-scheme lists. They not only sent you stuff like cheapo metal detectors when you had never shown the slightest interest in getting rich by detecting metal, they sent them before you sent any money to pay for them, which Krystal had no intention of doing. When these Internet companies did this and then started going after you for payment, they used all kinds of tricks to scare you, but Krystal didn’t scare that easily, as the company would have known if it had seen how she’d kept on with her life after she maimed Rocky Beach in such an unfortunate manner. She’d tossed the metal detector into the back of the ConGlom Couriers van with the idea of maybe hocking it.

This, by the way, was the same van she was driving when she saw Rocky Beach’s dick lying on the floor. And, as a person who went off to work every day in that van and parked it in front of her place every night, she was the most notable exception to the rule that if somebody in SuEz got hold of a truck, they would sell it, because they couldn’t think of anything else to do with it.

Not long after she received it, the metal detector went berserk and could easily have startled her into causing a major traffic accident, since she had no idea what was making the shrill noise. Luckily she wasn’t driving at the time, she was loading up, and the metal detector’s alarm went off when she threw in one particular parcel. Unluckily, there was a mishap in the back of the van when she got a safe distance from the terminal. The particular parcel came open and what she found inside was a complete mystery to her, although parts of it looked oddly familiar. When she read what was written on the box, though, she couldn’t believe it. The device was a high-pressure dildo that hooked right into your household plumbing and electrical system the way a dishwasher would.

She couldn’t even imagine fencing an item like that, since she couldn’t imagine anybody being in the market for it … but wait a minute. One person was. And it was that person’s doorbell she rang with an apologetic look on her face, the item in one hand and the busted box in the other. When the gentleman answered, she said she was sorry, but there had been a problem in transit, and if he wanted she would return the merchandise. And he said, “Gee whiz, there must be some mistake.”

Actually, before that he seemed to be having a hard time getting his breath. The, uh, whatever it was — he hadn’t ordered
anything
. No,
nothing
. The address must be wrong. And the name. Some kind of computer mixup. And what a
ridiculous
looking gizmo it was anyway. What did she suppose it was? He examined it for some time, making clucking noises with his tongue, and finally he laughed. Wasn’t it just too bizarre for words? Wouldn’t it just make quite the conversation piece, though, when he had friends over? But wouldn’t Krystal get in trouble if he accepted delivery and whoever had really ordered it called and complained, wondering where it had got to?

No, she said. There was no problem.

What the heck then. He would take it off her hands. And he gave her a twenty-five dollar tip.

Twenty-five dollars falling on her out of the sky was the kind of thing that got Krystal’s mind working extra shifts. She thought how every time she tried to get rich quick, she couldn’t afford to do it. But this time she also thought that if she was the one who had the item or whatever the other party wanted, they would pay
her
for it. If that sounds obvious, it wasn’t. Growing up in SuEz, the only people she’d known who had anything other people wanted and were willing to pay for were whores and drug dealers.

Doing normal business was unheard of, if you didn’t count the Korean up the street who had a corner store and when anybody was in it kept saying to them over and over, “Please don’t steal from me. Please don’t steal from me.” That was all he ever said. Nina’s daughters thought maybe it was the only English he knew. When they bought something and he gave them change, he said, “Please don’t steal from me.” Guinevere hated him for saying it because it made her feel dirty and cheap, since she was the only one of the sisters who regularly stole very much. Merlina explained that was how Gwinny got all the magazines she had to read to find out if there was anything about her in them. When most people stole, though, they mostly stole so they could buy drugs. So they were still working within the system.

The astonishing concept Krystal stumbled on called for turning her approach inside out.

Now she needed her own scheme. One with low overhead. Better yet, with no overhead. Even better, with no product, either. And it could be she had never heard that the easiest marks are the people who think they’re too smart to get conned, but somehow or other that was precisely her target market.

Not being a natural writer, she turned to Jarmeel Tolbert, who had a way with words that was perfect for what she had in mind. When she looked at the scuba diver’s mask he’d spray-painted gold and wore perched on the top of his head, and told him she thought it was excellent, he was very pleased. He said he’d been forced to improvise like this because the only spaceship-style headgear available on the market came in little kids’ sizes and didn’t fit him.

While the letters were taking shape, Krystal was amazed how many names and addresses of potential clients she could find on the Internet, all of them top-level executives and government officials. It was also quite educational. Until then she had no idea that the capital of Nigeria was some place called Abuja.

They all started along the lines of this one:

Chief Oniwaju O. Gdabamdosi, Ph.D.,

Chairman,

Rogomaku Heavy Industrials Group plc,

(Formerly Princess Ziwawarka Esthetics Institute),

Acacia Park, Plot PC 2,

Opposite Kringeli Disposals,

Lagos

“My Very Dear Most Excellency Doctor,”

After that, they were all word for word the same:

I takin time out ob my busy skedule to write you about a little problem dat have come up wid de Administeration here in Washington, D.C. You be de one person in de worl who in a position to solve it and get my poor husband out ob de biggest jam he evah been in. Yes, dat’s right. I talkin about de top man. I be de Fust Lady and he be de President ob de United States. In dat role I be keepin de books and lookin after de accounts and swattin de flies and watchin de servants so dey don’t go widdlin in de Bram Flakes dat he be needin every morning for keepin de Presidential bowels in workin order. Den dere’s the prunes. You not watchin em every minute, dey slippin cat turds in among de prunes. It be a security nightmare.

But enough about me.

Let me fillin you in on a few ob de details.

Anybody who has ever been offered Nigerian opportunities to rake in millions and wished they had the resources to take advantage of them, or who has in fact raked in millions and is expecting the Lagos African Continental Bank draft to arrive any day now, because God knows, the money order their new Nigerian friend had asked them to send as an article of good faith and to cover shipping expenses was cashed months ago — anybody in a situation like those will understand how, looking at it from the other side of the Atlantic, it made perfect sense that the First Lady’s brother would get hired to do some urgent renovations to Fort Knox. Fort Knox is where the U.S. government keeps all its gold, and it wasn’t just run down, it was going to fall down unless something was done quickly. Putting that much gold in even a top-secret storage facility while the work was underway was obviously a huge problem. It was almost impossible to even keep track of how much there was. Just moving it to some other location would require seven or eight hundred railway cars.

Understandably, none of this could be done through regular channels. Security reasons alone made it impossible. Therefore outside, preferably offshore, assistance was necessary. So if Dr. Chief Gdabamdosi — in this particular case — could come forward temporarily with three hundred thousand dollars, the financial status of the U.S. would be protected. In return, a number of railway cars filled with gold ingots would be shunted off on a sidetrack of Dr. Chief Gdabamdosi’s choosing, which he could then collect at his convenience. How did six of them sound? Each car loaded with two billion dollars worth of gold. For a grand total of twelve billion dollars, give or take.

And they all ended:

I be attachin a name and address which, considerin de situation, ain’t my real name and address for fear ob gettin into de Wall Street Junnel and causin a run on de banks or similar panic. But if you makin out de certified cheque or equivalent fiduciary instrument to my non-official name as shown, it gonna work out just fine. You doesn’t have to worry about dat, dat’s for sure. De FBI have ways ob gettin it cashed for me.

And if you evah in de neighbourhood, you just come by de White House and say Hello. We givin you a nice meal and lettin you sit in de Kennedy rockerin chair wid a big glass ob gin while de President hisself be regalin you wid stories about life at de top.

Lookin forward to your soonest reply.

Krystal’s email went out to a nice, round one hundred recipients.

Chunk. Chunk. Chunk. Chunk, chunk. Chunk.

Nina opened her eyes.

Chunkchunkchunk. Chunk. Clang.

“
Clang?
”

Sometimes you wake up because you hear something, and it turns out that nothing is there. It was a noise in a dream. This wasn’t like that. Each chunk made the mattress shake. It rattled the window.

This was definitely there.

She scuffled into the hall and put her ear against the cellar door.

Chreech, chreech — some kind of scraping. Chunk, chunk. Clank.

Really,
really
there.

She crept back and shook D.S. He farted. The mattress shook. The window rattled.

“Somebody’s in the basement,” she whispered. It was a waste of time. When she looked back on it, that was a good thing. Rousing D.S. would have caused such a racket that whoever was in the basement would have rushed upstairs and murdered and raped them all.

When they looked back on it, at least three of the individuals who would have been murdered and raped couldn’t remember the chunking noise — that was Guinevere, Merlina, and Lady. They only heard about it from Nina after Frank and the loot from the robbery both disappeared. Until she started reminiscing about it long afterwards, they could barely recall some of the other things — the voices yelling in the cellar, the threats, the smashed windows, some guy bouncing Nina’s head off the wall, her chopping the welfare inspector’s arm off. The back door, of course, they could all remember it not being there. It went missing right after Frank did and stayed that way for the rest of the time they lived in the house. Everybody remembered this very clearly, except for Fabreece. Her excuse was that she was too young to remember, but Merlina and Lady didn’t buy that. They believed it was because she never paid attention.

The cellar door was bolted. Nina slid the bolt back, turned the knob, and pulled. Every hair on her body stood up.
The hinges! Jesus Christ Almighty!
The whole street would be jumping out of bed yelling “What the fuck —?”

Chunk. Chunk.

Chreech.

The same noises. Whoever it was didn’t hear.

She stuck her head through the opening. She couldn’t make out the stairs, the walls, anything. What would happen if she flipped on the light? Nothing. There was no bulb. Anybody going down the basement, even when some daylight seeped through the window, needed a flashlight. There was no flashlight. Those were two of the reasons nobody went down there.

She listened closely. From here it sounded like the noise was coming from the back end of the house. And now that she had her head stuck through the doorway, it didn’t sound like it was coming from inside, either.

More like near the back porch. Maybe under the back porch. Nina peeked through the window over the sink. The chunking came from right below it. She could yank the back door open, leap out on the porch, and yell, “Get away from here you fuckin’ sons of …” Or she could have, if there was still a back door. Instead there was a bunch of plastic drop cloths covering the opening where the door used to be, drop cloths somebody’d stuffed under the porch years ago, before Nina and her family moved in, that were caked with brittle paint and smelled like cat piss when they got wet. They had to have been there for years, because the only paint on anything inside the house was faded or peeling. Unless they’d been stolen and somebody ditched them there. Why would anybody steal gacked-up old drop cloths? Why would anybody steal the water out of the swimming pool? When the door disappeared, she had hauled them up and hung them in its place.

The door had disappeared the night before. Not even Nina had heard anything when that happened. D.S. was amazed, because whoever stole it not only had to pry off the boards that had been nailed around it on the outside to keep people from going out and falling through the porch and hurting themselves, but had to come right into the kitchen to take it off the hinges. Who knew what else these people had done while they were in the house? “It’s like in the Bible,” D.S. said, “where it says that if you don’t have nothing then you need not fear a thief, for no thief will steal nothing.”

He was telling everybody that those were words to live by when Nina said, “How on earth did we get so lucky?”

While D.S. crinkled his forehead trying to figure out what she meant by that, Nina went back to thinking how amazing it was that nobody had been murdered and raped by the door thief while they were all asleep and helpless. And now here was this whatever it was, this chunking. That must be how she came to hear it — she hadn’t been sleeping very soundly because of what happened the night before.

Through the kitchen window she saw flickering. Whoever was out there had some kind of light. And they were
tunneling!
It hit her like a runaway train.
They were tunneling through the basement wall!
Why wouldn’t they have just come in through the plastic sheets on the back door? They could have pushed inside in half a second. Unless they didn’t know the door wasn’t there. And if they didn’t, this meant
whoever was out there chunking at the foundation was somebody different than whoever had stolen the door!
The safety of her household was being threatened by two entirely different individuals. Or groups of individuals. “What the fuck —?”

Whatever it was, it was another example of how seriously things were starting to exasperate her. She’d been cut off welfare before, many times, but everybody had. Getting cut off welfare exasperated her all right, but it was the same way having a cold exasperated her. After it went away, she didn’t give it another thought until she caught the next one. And D.S. had been laid off for long stretches before. It was the nature of the business he was in and of the special quality he had for being a discount-store greeter. But in the present situation, certain things were seriously different. For some reason, satellite-guided, computer-driven, pinpoint ice-cream marketing had got her boiling. Instead of taking everything the way she took everything that had made her life difficult before, she’d attacked the ice cream company. And maybe having the welfare inspector sneak around ambushing her had some kind of effect that was different than when he spied on her through the bedroom window. Maybe it was getting everybody she knew involved in a huge, community fund-raising project when none of them had ever been involved in anything but their own lives before, the same as she had always been. Maybe having her house attacked by two different unidentified enemies made her feel more vulnerable than she ever could have thought possible. Maybe she didn’t know exactly what it was that was doing it, maybe she just wasn’t used to being really, seriously exasperated by anything, and maybe that’s what had turned her from an average, down-to-earth welfare queen into some kind of raging warrior welfare queen, and one who was very, very pissed off.

She didn’t give the slightest thought to what she was about to do. She wasn’t conscious of grabbing the first thing her hand touched. She didn’t realize it was the big old butcher knife that had a splotchy iron blade and a wooden handle that was loose. The knife was lying beside the sink where it always did, where it had been when they moved in. Hardly anyone noticed it was there any more. D.S. said it would have been easier to cut something with a toilet plunger than with that knife. Nevertheless, she hoisted it above her head and went flying out the front door and down the steps, yelling for whoever it was to stop doing whatever the fuck they were doing and leave her family alone. And she wasn’t even halfway down the side of the house when she crashed full tilt into somebody running the other way.

“
Joof!
” If she’d been a bulldozer, she couldn’t have knocked him flatter.

“You son of a bitch! You son of a bitch!” she yelled, stabbing like crazy with the butcher knife.

“Yeagh!” he screamed, and broke free.

“Yeagh!” Nina screamed, not because he’d broken free, but because even though he’d broken free and was running away, she still had a tight grip on him. On his arm. Jesus …
she did!
She was still
holding his arm!
It was one thing to charge out and defend your family from lethal danger. When you did that, you realized, at least subconsciously, that you might kill whoever was threatening your security, or fatally wound them at least. But who looked ahead carefully enough to consider that besides killing and fatally wounding, there was a third possibility: dismembering? Neither does anybody give any thought to the chance that what you might end up with in your hand is the dismembered portion. Nina staggered around to the back of the house where the intruder had been digging the tunnel and hurled the arm into it, her knees buckling with the sick horror of what she’d done.

“Ow!” cried a voice from the hole. “Watch what you’re doing, you fuckin’ asshole!”

Nina reeled backwards as the voice took wing. “Fuckin’ assholes falling on top of me. Fuckin’ assholes throwing shit at me.” She heard scrabbling. “I’ve had enough of this fuckin’ bullshit.” She ducked around the corner as he pulled himself out of the hole and stalked to the back of the yard and climbed the fence which, from the sound of things, collapsed, because the last thing she heard after a crash was a mournful groan followed by “Fuckin’ goddamn fuckin’ goddamn …”

For the rest of the night, waves of hysterical nausea broke her sleep. It didn’t matter that it had been pitch dark when she’d hacked off the arm, every time it got replayed in her mind it became more visible until it was as if the whole thing had happened in the glare of spotlights. No one was safe anymore. Terrible people who were prepared to do terrible things had her family surrounded and were driving her to do even more terrible things.

No. Wait. She was exaggerating. She had to be. It was because of the strain.

That was the most encouraging thought she could come up with. Unfortunately, it was wishful thinking.