The Hunted

Manny and the third, unnamed man exchanged puzzled looks. Totally clueless. Miguel thought he might've heard of it, a hazy recollection at best. But in an effort not to appear dumb, he produced a knowing nod. "Sure. What about it?" he asked, as if he could write a textbook on the subject.

"It's the new thing, an Internet company that's making money hand over foot. The stock could easily quadruple in the next few years, maybe more."

Miguel turned to his colleagues. "Advice from a hustler who ripped off millions back in Russia. Does this guy think we're stupid, or what?"

"You're forgetting something. I also made hundreds of millions."

This got a slight nod. He'd read that on the Internet.

"Point is," Alex plowed ahead, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around his waist, "you're losing out. The stock market's on a tear. You're trying to squeeze a few dollars from losers on the inside. The easy money's outside, the big money. It's perfectly legal and above board."

"Cons in the joint ain't allowed to buy stock," Manny chimed in angrily, as if that ended the discussion. From everything Miguel had told him about this Russian, he had been expecting the once-in-a-lifetime payday all convicts live for. Manny had lain awake on his bunk the night before, sweating in the intense heat, dreaming of the money and what he could do with it.

Like the rest of the Mariel Boys, Manny had an appeal for release grinding its way through the courts. They had collectively pooled their resources to hire a lawyer, a distant third cousin of one of the gang. The cousin offered an impressive discount, bragged about his many legal victories, and made lots of rowdy promises. He turned out to be a total loser. Between booze and gambling, Mr. Loser lost track of their paperwork with disturbing regularity; the only thing he turned out to be good at was consistently missing the deadlines for filings.

Mr. Loser had to go.

Miguel had asked around until he found the perfect mouthpiece. Mr. Perfect was a cutthroat from Miami who billed four hundred an hour and produced miracles. He was owned by the Colombians, a gaudy loudmouth who had earned quite the reputation for keeping their killers, mules, and pushers out of jail. Legal mastery was part of it; knowing which judges and prosecutors to help with their home mortgages and kids' college bills, the larger part. In his spare time, he was allowed to freelance as much as he wanted.

It was an outside shot, at best. Mr. Perfect was quite expensive. The billable hours would pile up. The case could drag on for years. And for such a large group, a band of thugs who definitely had not distinguished themselves as model prisoners, the bribes would be mountainous.

Mr. Perfect, though, was their only hope. The Cubans talked endlessly of walking out the gate and retiring in a small, lazy southern Florida town. Life would be so good. They would muscle their way into a few strip clubs and pawnshops, drink cerveza from dusk to dawn, cavort with the strippers, and put the ugly old days behind them.

Alex kept a close eye on Manny, who looked angry and frustrated that their mark turned out to have shallow pockets. He grabbed another towel and began briskly rubbing his hair. "You mean you can't invest under your own name," he corrected Manny in an even tone. "Have a lawyer handle your money. They represent you, they can't blow the whistle. It's in their oath."

Miguel shot Manny a look that said: This sounds interesting, so cool it, for now. "And how would this work?" he asked.

"It's simple. Surely you already have money and maybe you already have a lawyer in mind."

"Maybe we do," Miguel replied, exchanging looks with his pals.

"I have a friend on the outside who will set up a trading account. I'm assuming you have a way to communicate with the outside. It needs to be instantaneous. We'll be buying and selling every day. Throw in whatever cash you have. I can name ten stocks right now that are set to explode, and the spreads in commodities have never been better."

"How do we know you won't lose our money?"

"You know what a stop-loss order is?"

Miguel was through pretending he knew things he had never heard of. A slow shake of the head.

"With each purchase, you designate a trigger price that he programs into his computer. If the stock falls to that level, the broker is required to sell." Alex jabbed the air with a finger. "One push of a button and he dumps everything."

"That's all we have to do?"

"I told you it's easy, Miguel," Alex assured him, leaving Miguel to ponder the interesting question of how Alex knew his name. They had not been introduced. Nobody had mentioned his name. How much did Konevitch know about the Mariel Boys? The suspicion struck him that the Russian had been expecting this shakedown, maybe even prepared for it.

No, nobody was that cunning.