"Think of the plumage, Neddy," Uncle Delroy drawled, blowing foul, cheap cigar smoke out the rust-rotted vent of his Cadillac de Ville. "The feather dusters alone sell to the Japanese for eighty bucks a pop. And the meat? Lean. Tastes just like filet mignon, except it kicks like an ox. It’s an untapped goldmine, and all we need is five grand to secure the breeding pairs down from Lubbock."
In the front passenger seat, Ned Gable’s eyes shone with the misty zeal of a man born to be swindled.
"Eighty dollars for a feather duster?" Ned whispered, clutching his knees in sheer reverence. "Bonnie, did you hear that? That could pay off the Sears card by Christmas."
From the middle of the back seat, pinned between two grease-stained car battery boxes, five-year-old Tammy Gable sat upright, her velcro sneakers barely dangling over the edge of the cracked vinyl cushion. She felt a familiar, sharp sting at the base of her skull—the old syndicate ache that came whenever an enforcer was about to sell out the docks to a rival family.
The man was an amateur. A loud, grease-collared vulture who smelled like stale Aqua Velva and menthol ashes. Yet her father looked at him like he was J.P. Morgan incarnate.
"Now, Ned," the con man said, checking his slicked hair in the rearview mirror and flashing yellow teeth. "I wouldn't offer this slice of heaven to just anybody. Blood is blood. I told the distributor in Dallas, I said, 'Hold those prime Texas roosters for my brother-in-law Ned. He’s a visionary.'"
Ned choked up. "You really said that, Del?"
Tammy reached quietly beneath her corduroy jumper. Inside the secret hem, past her safety scissors and two rolls of taped nickels, her knuckles grazed her brass knuckleduster—or rather, the chewed-up green polymer dinosaur she used for pressure-point negotiations in the sandbox. She needed a weapon. A clean pipe. A brick through the Cadillac's radiator.
Instead, the driver sneezed, a wet, rattling explosion, and reached blindly into the rear floorboard.
"Where's that box of Scotties?" he grumbled, his beefy hand fumbling across the footwell.
Tammy froze.
Her feet rested directly on her vinyl *Care Bears* lunchbox. Stuffed inside that pastel tin, tucked beneath two smushed PB&Js, was the entire reserve liquid fund for Gable's Street Confections: one hundred and forty-two dollars in greasy single bills, earned from illicit playground cinnamon extortion and pre-ordered spiced-waffle vouchers.
A thick hand shoved past an empty soda can, snagged the latch of the lunchbox, and pulled.
"The hell is this?" the swindler muttered, dragging the tin into his lap as he steered with his left elbow.
"Oh, that's just Tammy's snacks, Del!" Ned offered cheerfully. "She loves those Little Debbie cakes."
He popped the metal latch. Stubby thumbs dug inside, parted the paper napkins, and came away with a thick, rubber-banded brick of crumpled ones and fives.
Silence fell over the front seat, save for the Cadillac’s rattling exhaust manifold.
He stared at the cash. His beady eyes tracked every crinkled portrait of George Washington. Then he slowly turned his head to Ned, a slick, predatory leer spreading across his lips.
"Neddy..." the rogue murmured, his voice dropping into greasy intimacy. "You sly dog. You put away a mad-money stash in the kid's tin? You told me you were scraping pennies for the big bird deposit. You’ve been sitting on a secret nest egg, haven’t you?"
Ned blinked, bewildered. "What? No, that's... Del, I don't know where—"
"Don't play coy with family!" the leech bellowed with a booming laugh, slapping Ned’s thigh. "I knew you had it! If you've got this kind of walking-around cash hidden in a toy box, we don't just buy the roosters. We buy the incubator! We go for the full commercial ten-acre lease! Ten grand, Neddy! You sign the bank draft tonight, and by next spring, you're the Bird King of Bellridge!"
Ned shrank into the vinyl seat, his face flushing with weak, desperate pride. "Well, I mean... if you really think the incubator is the smart play..."
*He's going to remortgage the roof over our heads,* Tammy calculated. Her mind ran the numbers with cold, lethal precision. *Ned will sign a second lien. The parasite skips town next Tuesday. We spend the winter eating boiled cabbage in a repossessed trailer.*
Direct verbal opposition would fail; Ned always doubled down on his misguided charity whenever he felt judged. A boss didn't argue with fools. A boss manufactured an immediate, catastrophic emergency.
Tammy reached into the side mesh of her backpack and pulled out her Aladdin insulated thermos. Unscrewing the lid with a swift flick of her small wrists, she found what she needed: four ounces of concentrated, pitch-dark, unsweetened Black Cherry Kool-Aid, mixed with zero water so the dye stained like printer ink.
She took a massive, burning mouthful, held it behind her cheeks, and began to violently thrash.
"*Ghk—hrrk!*" she gagged, drumming her tiny knees against the back of Delroy’s seat with frantic fury.
Her uncle cursed, swerving across the center line. "What's the squirt doing back there?"
Ned whipped around. "Tammy? Baby?"
Tammy unleashed a horrifying, sputtering wheeze, bent double over the floorboard, and spewed a torrent of deep-crimson, gelatinous fluid across Delroy’s beige velour armrest. She clamped both hands to her throat, her face turning purple from holding her breath, and let thick red drops dribble onto the carpet.
Ned screamed. It was a high-pitched, tea-kettle shriek of pure parental terror.
"BLOOD!" Ned shrieked, clawing at his hair. "DELROY, SHE’S COUGHING UP HER ORGANS! PULL OVER! PULL OVER RIGHT NOW!"
"She’s ruining my velour!" he barked, though he stomped the brakes so hard the Cadillac fishtailed onto the gravel shoulder with a screech of burning rubber.
"MY BABY’S LUNGS ARE COMING OUT!" Ned sobbed, tumbling out of the passenger door before the car even came to a dead halt. He yanked the rear door open, scooping Tammy into his trembling arms, entirely oblivious to the thick scent of artificial cherry and Red Dye 40 radiating from her chin. "Hold on, Tammy! Daddy’s got you! Del, drive to the clinic! Forget the birds, forget the cash, drive to the hospital!"
"Hold your horses, Ned, she probably just swallowed a bug—"
"DRIVE, YOU CALLOUS BASTARD!" Ned roared, sobbing openly, clutching his daughter to his chest.
Startled by the sudden feral panic in the gentle man's voice, the con artist cursed and tossed the crumpled cash lunchbox onto the floorboards, hastily throwing the car back into drive. Tammy went limp in Ned’s grip, letting her eyes roll slightly back while secretly resting her cheek against her father’s polyester jacket.
*Target neutralized,* she thought with cold pride. *Big bird pitch completely derailed.*
Ten frantic minutes later, after Ned realized at the driveway that Tammy had stopped coughing, was breathing evenly, and had only stained her chin with what smelled distinctly like corner-store powder, the panic gave way to frantic, hovering relief.
"Must have been a severe throat spasm," Ned breathed, carrying her up the front walkway while his brother-in-law trailed behind, sour-faced, clutching a cigar.
"Total waste of twenty minutes," the grifter muttered, kicking a gravel pebble toward the porch. "Now, Ned, about that incubator draft—"
Tammy’s pocket began to buzz.
A sickeningly jaunty, 8-bit melody erupted from her jumper pocket.
[CONGRATULATIONS, LITTLE TYCOON!]
[FEIGNED ILLNESS EVASION TACTIC: S-RANK!]
[ASSET PRESERVATION ACHIEVED: $142.00 RESTORED!]
[REWARD UNLOCKED: LEVEL 2 PROMOTIONAL MARKETING SUITE!]
"No," Tammy whispered under her breath, her tiny body freezing in Ned's arms. "Don't do it, you cursed parasite. Not here."
A sharp *CRACK* tore through the quiet evening air, sounding like a minor thunderclap directly above the backyard fence.
Ned paused on the welcome mat. Delroy halted on the path.
Around the corner of the house, towering six feet over the wooden fence where Tammy had meticulously concealed her experimental wooden waffle cart under a blue plastic tarp, a massive, garish structure had materialized out of thin air.
It buzzed with ten thousand volts of neon current. Blinding tubes of glass flickered to life, bathing the entire suburban street in a garish, pulsing glow of hot pink and vivid turquoise.
The giant neon sign spelled out in jagged, flashing cursive:
**GABLE'S BLACK-MARKET CINNAMON EMPORIUM — WE CATER TO THE DISCRIMINATING TODDLER — CASH ONLY.**
Directly beneath the neon letters, an illuminated arrow the size of an ironing board blinked rhythmically downward, pointing straight at the wooden cart.
Delroy slowly pulled his cigar from his mouth. His gaze dilated as the turquoise glow painted his greedy, shark-like grin.
"Well, I’ll be damned," Delroy whispered, turning his gaze toward the backyard gate. "Neddy... what the hell have you been running back here?"