Free FEARLESS FINN'S MURDEROUS ADVENTURE by Mike Coony

was simple enough for Uncle Sui to slip one of his men into the shows, as a waiter or something, with a hidden camera. The audience are sitting ducks for blackmail, especially the ones with daughters at private schools in Europe, Australia or America. But with a quick flash of the incriminating photographs, our pillars of the community are reaching for their wallets. Occasionally we have to show the subjects their photographs, but make no demands for money. I guess Uncle Sui has other plans for these gentlemen voyeurs.
    Anyway, Nico likes working his security job at the Lisbon. And I work on developing more hustles on the side…that I hope Uncle Sui doesn’t know about.
    The Russian cruise liners began visiting Macau just a few months ago. They bring customers looking for fake passports, and I can get those from a source in Sicily. The Russians pay with perfectly forged US dollars they pick up on their stopover in Iran. These counterfeit bills are printed on presses that the US Treasury donated to the deposed shah.
    I usually charge forty-five thousand US in genuine currency for an American, British, Italian, New Zealand or Irish passport and driver’s license. This earns me an extra five thousand dollars on every deal – a little extra I keep for myself. But the Russians give me two hundred thousand forged dollars, and I sell them on at twenty-five per cent of face value, so I make a little more when I take forged dollars.
    ———
    I recently met Earl while I was eating breakfast up here on the veranda of the Pousada de São Tiago. He was sitting at the end of the stone balcony with a bad view of the sea and no sunshine. I saw him ordering his breakfast, and when his waitress went to the kitchen he started waving at me to get my attention.
    “You mind if I sit at your table? You got a better view over there, and there ain’t no sun here,” he yelled across at me.
    “Yeah, sure,” I yelled back. I don’t usually encourage company, but there was something OK about this oversized guy, with his loud plaid golf pants, Ping polo shirt and big Cartier Tank watch. Maybe his accent tipped the scales in his favour.
    He came over to my table and slid into the seat across from me. “You want something to eat or drink?” he asked in his Brooklyn accent.
    “I’ll take coffee,” I said. I thought maybe I should know him, but what the hell, Brooklyn’s a big place.
    When Earl’s breakfast arrived I saw that he’d ordered every damn thing on the menu except the sardines. Fighting to control her giggles, the waitress pulled another table over to fit all the food. Then she piled on bowls of chowder, chow fan, noodles, prawns, fish-head soup, lobster claws, plates of toast and buns, and pots of tea and coffee.
    “I didn’t know what to choose. What did you have buddy?”
    “Nothing you have there. Me, I just go for one dish, but you enjoy…it all looks good.”
    I’d never seen a Cartier Tank watch as big as the one on this guy’s wrist. “Shit man, that lump of gold must’ve set you back a big wad.”
    “It wasn’t cheap, but what can I tell you? It was a reward, a reward I gave myself. Me and this Latino guy, we got some serious dough outa those Texan Savings and Loans citizens…on the strength of a lotta hot air. So I thought, what the hell! I shouldn’t be talking so much. We’ve just met, but fuck it. We’re in Macau, right! What do I gotta lose? I take it you’re not a fed though. You don’t look like any fed I ever met, and I’ve met plenty…Treasury, FBI, even the Secret Service one time. Fuck them. I like making money. And I like talking about making money. And I ain’t done yet, making or talking money! That OK with you my friend?”
    “Yeah, that’s OK with me….I should introduce myself. I’m Gerry, Gerry Gant.”
    “Earl, Earl Connolly. Good to meet you Gerry.”
    Earl didn’t waste any time in getting down to his favourite subject. I got so engrossed in his ideas for making money that