Shadow in Serenity - By Terri Blackstock Page 0,14
all his jeans, tennis shoes, and T-shirts. They were always to dress and carry themselves with class, and they slept in the finest accommodations and ate the richest food. “People will believe you are whatever you appear to be, my boy. Your life is a blank slate, and you must imagine your past and future to be as grand as you wish it,” Montague said.
Armed with those rules, Logan concocted his first original scam at age sixteen. Posing as a twenty-one-year-old, which was believable since he now stood over six feet tall, he went into a tax-filing office carrying a fake W - 2 form and a stolen Social Security number and had his tax return done. When it was finished and his sizable refund was calculated, he requested “fast cash,” an immediate refund offered by the company at a nominal interest rate, much like a loan. Logan walked out with two thousand dollars in his pocket. When Montague tried the same scam, he netted even more.
The heady feeling Logan got from charming his way through his own scam was addictive, and soon he had more ideas. For each, he spent hours at the library, researching the ins and outs of the businesses he intended to sting, making phone calls and talking to people, and analyzing the ways that he could pull off the most lucrative con.
Montague was clearly pleased with Logan’s progress, and as Logan grew closer to adulthood, Montague became the closest thing Logan had ever had to a father. As the years passed, Logan realized that he hadn’t been that much help to Montague in the early days; rather, the man had wanted him along to combat loneliness. Their friendship served both of them well.
The older Logan got, the higher he lived, and the more money he and Montague needed to maintain their lifestyle. Logan put his mind to work on bigger schemes, looking for ways to sweep a town of all its spare cash and move on without looking back.
The idea came to him when he was lounging in a hot tub one Sunday afternoon, watching television. He saw a documercial for a real-estate venture. “That’s it,” he said aloud.
Montague, who seemed to be sleeping in the bubbling tub, opened his eyes. “Did I miss something?”
“Seminars,” Logan said. “We need to give some seminars. You know. On real estate, or investments. Let’s say we come into a town, hold a seminar laying out some get-rich-quick schemes that would have the greediest people salivating. We tell them they have to invest that night, or it’ll be too late. Then we tell them that we have to go to the site — you know, Brazil or somewhere — and that we’ll be back with their deeds. Give them time to have their checks clear before they get suspicious.”
“Seminars,” Montague repeated, thinking it over. “My boy, I believe you may have something there.”
They did their first real-estate scam in Picayune, Mississippi, a small town near the Gulf Coast, where the residents showed up at their seminar, checkbooks in hand, ready to make the investment of their lifetime. They sold property in Brazil that would allegedly be developed into one of the most sought-after resorts in the southern hemisphere. They walked away that night with fifty thousand dollars.
It was the first of many. Montague lent a touch of integrity and regality to the act, and Logan offered unabashed enthusiasm, along with a zealous passion for his product, whatever it might be. Together, they couldn’t lose.
“This is the caper that could help us retire from this nefarious life we lead,” Montague said with a grin one night as he stacked his money into bundles and packed them into a suitcase.
Logan laughed. “You, retire? What would you do?”
“Buy a ranch in the Southwest,” Montague said without hesitation. “Find myself a nice little bride. Raise horses.”
“I can’t see you on a ranch, Montague,” Logan said. “I’ve always imagined you usurping a prince and taking over his castle.”
“Much too high profile for me,” Montague said. “When I retire, it will be quietly. I’ll put it all behind me and hope the hounds never catch up.”
But the hounds — better known as the FBI — were always on their trail, inching ever closer, gathering more ammunition for the day they caught them. The pair had returned to their hotel more than once to find police waiting at their door, and once, as agents banged on the front door, they’d escaped out the back. It kept