make off this one.”
“Hey,” Tony said in an offended tone, pushing a hand through his styled hair. “This is fun stuff.”
“It’s only fun if you don’t get caught,” Annabelle pointed out.
“So have you ever been caught?” Tony asked again.
In response, Annabelle said to Tony, “Why don’t you read over your binder? That way you make no mistakes.”
“It’s just ATM stuff. I’ll be okay.”
“It wasn’t a request,” she said stiffly, and then walked out of the room.
“You heard her, kid,” Leo said, not trying very hard to hide his grin.
Tony muttered something under his breath and stalked out of the room.
“She keeps things close to the vest, doesn’t she?” Freddy remarked.
“Would you want to work with a con who didn’t?” Leo countered.
“Who is she?”
“Annabelle,” Leo answered.
“I know that, but what’s her last name? I’m surprised I haven’t crossed her path before. The high-stakes con world is pretty small.”
“If she’d wanted you to know, she would’ve told you herself.”
Freddy said, “Come on, Leo, you know all about us. And I’ve been around the block. It goes no further.”
Leo considered this and then in a low voice said, “Okay, you gotta swear to take it to your grave. And if you tell her I told, I’ll deny it and then I’ll kill you. I mean it.” He paused as Freddy promised.
“Her name’s Annabelle Conroy,” Leo said.
“Paddy Conroy?” Freddy said at once. “Now, him I’ve heard of. I assume they’re related.”
Leo nodded, keeping his voice low. “His daughter. But that was a well-kept secret. Most people never knew Paddy even had a kid. He passed Annabelle off as his wife sometimes. Pretty weird, but that was Paddy for you.”
“I never had the pleasure of working with the man,” Freddy added.
“Yeah, well, I had the pleasure of working with ol’ Paddy Conroy. He was one of the best cons of his generation. And also one of the biggest assholes.” Leo glanced in the direction that Annabelle and Tony had left the room, and his voice sank even lower. “You saw that scar under her right eye? Well, her old man did that. She got that for blowing a claim con when they were cheating the Vegas casinos at roulette. She was all of fifteen but looked twenty-one. Cost the old man three grand, and she got a hell of a beating for it. And it wasn’t the only time, I can tell you that.”
“Damn,” Freddy said. “His own daughter?”
Leo nodded. “Annabelle never talks about any of it. I heard from another source.”
“So you were working with them back then?”
“Oh, yeah, Paddy and his wife, Tammy. They had some good stuff going on back then. Paddy taught me the three-card monte routine. Only Annabelle’s a better con than her old man ever thought of being.”
“How come?” Freddy asked.
“Because she has the one quality Paddy never had. Fairness. She got it from her mother. Tammy Conroy was a straight-up piece of work, at least for a con.”
“Fairness? Strange quality for people like us,” Freddy remarked.
Leo said, “Paddy always led his teams with fear. His daughter does it with prep and competence. And she’ll never ever screw you. I can’t count the times Paddy blew town with the entire haul. That’s why he ended up working alone. Nobody would touch his action anymore. Hell, even Tammy finally ditched him, so I heard.”
Freddy remained silent for a bit, apparently letting all this sink in. “Any word on the long con?”
“The mailman,” Annabelle replied.
They made the six-hour drive to San Francisco in two cars, Leo and Annabelle in one, Tony and Freddy in the other. They cut a two-week lease on a corporate condo on the outskirts of the city with a partial view of the Golden Gate. For the next four days they took turns pulling surveillance on an office complex in a posh suburb of the city. They were watching the pickups from the outdoor mailboxes that were filled to overflowing on most days, with packs of mail stacked next to the stuffed container. On each of those four days the mail carrier arrived within a quarter-hour window, between five and five-fifteen.
On the fifth day, at precisely four-thirty, Leo, dressed as a mail carrier, drove up to the box in a postal truck that Annabelle had gotten from a contact of hers an hour’s drive south. This gent specialized in providing everything from armored cars to ambulances for less-than-honest purposes. From a car she was parked in across from the mailbox Annabelle watched Leo approach in the truck. Tony and Freddy were posted at the entrance to the complex. They’d alert Leo through his ear fob in case the real mailman showed up early. Leo would only be taking the mail stacked outside the box, since he didn’t have a key to unlock the box. He could’ve picked the lock quite easily, but Annabelle had vetoed that as unnecessary and potentially dangerous in case anyone saw him do it.
She’d said, “What’s lying on the ground or sticking out of the box will be plenty.”
As Leo stacked the mail inside his truck, Annabelle’s voice came through his earpiece.