The Cross: An Eddie Flynn Novella Read Online Free Page B

the life of a hustler, the short cons, the insurance fraud, even taking the odd shortcut in a poker game, I’d imagined that things would be a lot calmer and safer. I’d hardly ever used married guys in my crew. A loved one is powerful leverage when you’re sitting in a cell and the cops are pressuring you to snitch. Back then I didn’t allow myself to get attached to anyone. Besides, it wasn’t an entirely selfless act. Some of my favorite marks were drug dealers. If they figured out they’d been conned, I didn’t want anyone I cared about to get caught up in a reprisal. Dealers carried a lot of cash—and couldn’t use it until it was clean. Conning them was pretty easy. It was making sure they didn’t know they’d been conned that was the hard part. Eventually I came up with a con that covered me. It was all about a frog and a horse.
    Every couple of years I got a friendly, local, off-track bookie to give me fifty cents on the dollar on all bets placed on a particular horse running in the Kentucky Derby.
    It took a couple of months to set up, but the payoff was phenomenal. I bought weed once a week, regular, from a couple of gangbangers, and eventually we got to know each other and we got to hanging out a little bit. I didn’t smoke. I flushed the product. Over time I spent maybe a grand on middle-grade weed just to get to know these guys. Three days before the Triple Crown event, I’d pull up at their corner and buy double my usual. They’d ask me where I got the dough. I told them I got cash for making a special delivery, and on the passenger seat beside me, I had a cardboard box full of holes. The guys are curious and ask to see what’s inside. So I show them. Inside the box is a frog.
    I tell them it’s a Water Tree Frog from South America. It came off a ship this morning, and I need to drive it to Louisville for the Derby. They have no idea what I’m talking about, so I take them for lunch and lay it all out. If the frog is stimulated, it excretes a slime. That slime is a dermorphin—a drug that when injected makes horses both impervious to pain and hyperactive. The Racing Commission do random drug testing on horses. But they can only test for known illegal substances. The more exotic the stimulant, the greater the chance they won’t test for it. I tell the dealers how cobra venom was used for years for the same purpose but that nothing compares to this slime—in short, this frog produces untraceable guaranteed Derby winners.
    After a while I pay for lunch and leave.
    A few hours later I call the guys from a pay phone in the 86th Precinct. Spin them a line that PD pulled me over and got a hit on an outstanding warrant. And the cops got my dope. I’m going to be sitting in a police cell for a day. The frog is at my apartment and I can’t make the drive to Louisville in time for the race. Can they drive the frog to Louisville for a grand a piece? There’s five thousand bucks on the dresser in my apartment beside the frog, and I want them to go to Lucky’s and throw it all on our doped horse. I tell them that the bet has to be made in Lucky’s because they have the best price for the horse—seventy-five to one. The guys get to talking, telling their bosses and all their friends.
    Before five o’clock that day, Lucky has taken bets totaling three hundred grand on the worst horse in Kentucky.
    After a ten-hour drive, the guys get picked up on the outskirts of Louisville by the Highway Patrol. The cops don’t find any drugs or weapons, and this pisses them off. So the cops take the frog and let it go in the marshes. I’d never seen it myself, but I hear from thecops who do this for me that the sight of two drug dealers from the Bronx frantically searching for a frog in the bayou is one of the funniest things you’ll ever see.
    The frog doesn’t make it to the race, the horse comes last, and they lose money, I lose money, and it’s all down to the dealers themselves. One time, a guy from the