andcuriouser
Active Member
The Scam; or DJ AWOL
Elf was running away from the navy. He’d gotten into his car and drove all the way to Ottawa, stopping only once to sleep in a hotel in a dirty city and pay for drugs. The next day he arrived on my doorstep, smiling apologetically at my dad and asking if I was home. He slept on the floor, though sleeping might not be the correct word for it. It was more of a situation where he would do a lot of speed and sit up at my computer composing music with the headphones on. Invariably, he would have a twenty-minute track of very fast and very beepy sounds. In the morning we would drive to a fifties restaurant, and he would pick at a plate of potatoes and shudder, cupping a mug of hot coffee in his hands, and complain about the lack of under-the-table employment, as well as the quality of mainstream DJs.
The scam goes like this: one person goes into an electronics store and buys whatever item they have enough to pay for (fiber optic cables work especially well for this, as they are $45 and not kept under lock and key). Simultaneously, an accomplice steals the same item while the clerk is busy vending the one to the setup man. Fifteen minutes after purchasing the item, the setup man comes back and returns the item. “I forgot my receipt,” he says. Days later the other person returns the stolen item to another store in the chain, with receipt, and monies are made.
On one occasion, however, waiting with engine running, something was wrong. Five minutes after he went in, Elf came out, walking calmly in front of the big windows at the front of the store. He dropped into a dead run towards the getaway vehicle as soon as he got out of the clerk’s view. “I don’t want to panic you, but we need to get out of here rather quickly.”
A speedy, but not too speedy getaway ensued, and we got back to the base safe and without pursuit. The electronics store employees had become wise to the scam (as they often do with the classics) and called the other store across town to confirm that this item was stolen. This is when DJ AWOL (as I had taken to calling him) had taken off, forgetting the money and the cable. That night he outlined his plan to sell fake ecstasy at a frat party.
Thankfully, that was also the night he decided to return to the navy.
