The Free Way.

I needed a contact in the city for this shit, but I didn't really have one up my sleeve for anything like this.  Leastways not anyone who would know what to do besides refer me to somebody else.  Might have been a good idea in any other business, but the criminal world doesn't really smile on people who leave to hot a trail.  This was the main reason why I was driving along the freeway to a town a few miles over.

The other reason had to do with the tiger that may or may not still be after my ass using its spooky ghost powers to track me by ectoplasm or some shit.  I obviously have no idea what I'm dealing with here, so cut me some slack on the terminology, oh judgmental inner me.  The highway gave me some time to think though.  There are a few places that are my best bet for offloading something like this, and a few more to get me laid low enough to hopefully avoid getting my guts torn out, at least for the right price.  If I'm lucky, I'll be able to make a little cash from the piece of jewelry stuck to my hand.  It glows, seems like magic, and somebody out there is probably collecting shit like this.  Then I can live easy, go on the run, and maybe make a nice home somewhere in another city a few states from here.

Luck isn't really running my way though.  More likely the thing is cursed something fierce, I have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to get it removed, or even just chop my hand off, and then the tiger comes and eats me anyway after I've gotten rid of the thing.  Only upside to all of this is that there's really nobody to disappoint after I'm gone.  Part of the criminal lifestyle tends to give you loads of connections and no real connections if you dig my meaning.  People who you see in bars and on the street for business, but nobody you'd wave to or smile at in a chance meeting.  Not like you'd ignore them or anything, gotta know where people are and who they're talking to, mark their presence, but not be friendly.  That's my creed that I live.

Some guys don't stick by it, they get chummy, and the lucky ones might even make it years before it blows up on them.  Them and everyone around them even.  They make loose cannons, people who are disturbingly hard to work with despite the fact that they have such good people skills.  You can at least trust a duplicitous bastard to stab somebody in the back for you for the right price.

Anyway, I don't have any close contacts in this next city, nobody I'd seen in the past two years, but you hear stories thrown about by some of the more traveled people in the business.  There are three possible places I've heard of that would deal in weird shit.  I've got the general mafia bazaar that sets up in warehouses on the sides of town.  I'd have to sulk around and get the scoop of the where and when and the who exactly for that deal, but they would almost certainly have somebody who deals in strange heists.  That gets to be plan C.  I've done that deal before, so it's possible, but it's not my best option for a rush job, and it's not the most comfortable experience.  Plus they scalp you.

Option B is the magic hands man.  They say he can move all the illegal things he wants from place to place none the wiser by any authority because he struck a deal with the devil.  Anything in his "hands" so to speak is one of the safest places in could be.  I used to crack it up to running a tight ship, but who knows.  If he doesn't know anything, I'm likely not going to get a better buyer.  Trouble is, I may have ripped off a guy under his wing a while back.  He wouldn't hold a grudge, I'm sure, but it was a sloppy job on my part.  There's trust of a person to do you good will, and trust that a person won't screw things up for everybody.  He's a cautious block so that personal reputation plus the nature of my problem might push it over the unworkable stage for him.  That and once it gets out that I came to him and even he didn't want to move it, well, things get a bit hairy with the less organized bits of the city in respect to my prospects.  That's why that is plan B.

My plan A is not a great plan, especially since it's based on rumors and hearsay, that and it's not a totally criminal line of business in the first place.  It's a pawn shop.  Take anything you have type pawn shop.  A very specific pawn shop.  Some blokes back two months ago were talking about getting rid of a hot package that dropped in their lap and how they stumbled on this weird old shop in this city that they managed to get a pretty good deal to fence the stuff.  They said it didn't give a good price, and it seemed a bit sketchy, but it helped them move the stuff.  Really strange stuff too.  Real bone necklaces, human, and antique are pretty hard to get rid of.  Museums can hunt that stuff down fast.  Blokes didn't read the placards when they were burglarizing the place, so they ended up with a lot of loot that they couldn't keep and couldn't get rid of easy.  Said this pawn shop had taken it.  Since they didn't end up in jail for that bit of crime, I am inclined to believe that it's not total hogwash that the operation is legitimate and secret.

So that's where I stop first, a little pawn shop down a back alley halfway down the main street of the city.  A few hours more of driving, tiger free, and I'll be in the home stretch, hopefully.  Then I can be rid of this thing on my hand, which hopefully won't give me cancer, and go back to more petty crime, less spooky mystery novel.