Rotten Phish

Gawd, I hate asking for favors. Hate it. The dictionary will tell you that a favor is “an act of kindness beyond what is due or usual.” That’s not what a favor is. A favor is a stench. It’s an odor. I call it Favor Funk™. I’ve trademarked the phrase because there are days when I feel like I have a monopoly on favors and funk.

If you’ve never smelled Favor Funk™, I’ll tell you what it smells like: it has the reek of phish. Not fish. Phish. Google “phishing” if you’re still confused. Don’t worry, I’ll explain in a minute. In the meantime, let it suffice to say that every man who needs a favor carries the odor of Favor Funk™, and it’s usually friends and family who can smell it first. In fact, they can smell it from a mile away. So, when you show up looking for a favor, they have a knowing look in their eyes, telling you that they knew you were coming. And they already know why you came. Nevertheless, despite their prescience, these people, whom you lovingly and loyally refer to as a “friend” and the folks who share the same blood as you, will just stand there, cruelly watching you as you go through the tortured motions of asking for a favor.

“I need a big favor, big bro.”

Who else to go to for a big favor if not your big brother? When my brother asked, “How big?” it was with an incredulous tone that forced me to smell my own Favor Funk™, which is like catching a whiff of your own body odor after you’ve boarded the bus.

“I need twenty grand.” I know, I know. This was like asking for a bank loan to buy deodorant.

Bank loan denied. My brother’s exact words: “Outlook not so good.” If that sounds familiar, it’s because he actually used one of those Magic 8-Balls to make the decision. You read that right. My brother used a novelty toy to decide on whether or not to bail his little brother out of a $20,000 hole. He even did it with game show flare: he dimmed the lights, shook the 8-Ball, looked at the answer, looked at me, paused for too damn long and… “Outlook not so good.”

As a consolation prize he let me keep the ball.

Dejected, I took my Magic 8-Ball and my Favor Funk™ to a park bench, y’know, to air out. But here’s the thing about Favor Funk™: it attracts opportunists. Not opportunity; opportunists: the folks that prey upon other folks who are desperate for a favor. Because a favor is like a loan—once you take it, you have to pay it back… with heavy interest. It doesn’t take long for an opportunist to sniff out Favor Funk™. Took all of fifteen minutes for me. Before I knew it, she was sitting next to me on the park bench, trying to play it cool, like she wasn’t there to cash in on my desperation. She wasn’t an attractive woman, in case you’re wondering, but then again, I’m not an attractive man. So, there you go.

“How’s your day going?” I asked her.

She took the question seriously, pulled out her phone and opened a personal email from a “beloved friend.”

“Dear Beloved Friend, permit me of my desire to go into business relationship with you. We wish to inform you that your unclaimed payment of USD$10.5Million in Africa has been released and ready to be paid to you via PREPAID VISA CARD which you will use to withdraw the US$10.5Million from any ATM Machine in any part of the world. We have mandated United Bank Africa Ghana, to send you the ATM Card and PIN NUMBER which you will use to withdraw all your US$10.5Million in any ATM SERVICE MACHINE in any part of the world, but the maximum you can withdraw in a day is US$20,000 only…”

“That’s how my day is going,” she replied. Already we had something in common.

For the record, I did not just make that up. That is an actual email and, yes, the maximum amount that could be withdrawn in a day was $20,000. I’m being totally serious right now. The contact person for this windfall was a guy named, wait for it… “Rev. Goodluck Egobia.” Again, I wish I were making this up.

“You know these are scams, right?” I said, looking at the woman incredulously. “They’ll drain your money dry and you’ll have to fly twenty thousand miles to get it back.” This, of course, wasn’t breaking news to her. But she disagreed with the last part.

“Not twenty thousand miles. Just a few feet over that way.” She pointed to a nondescript house, just diagonally across from where we sat.

Wow. “Rev. Goodluck Egobia” was a long way from Ghana.

Turns out the opportunist who sat next to me wasn’t an opportunist but a bounty hunter of opportunists—a repo agent, if you will. Whatever her title, her job was to get back defrauded money, by whatever means necessary. As hard as it is to believe, there are people who fall for phish scams; not that I’m judging. Like I said, Favor Funk™ smells like phish to opportunists and there’s a reason that I need $20,000.

The bounty hunter had been on “Rev. Goodluck Egobia’s” trail for quite some time, but true to his name, he had the good fortune of evading capture. The best she could manage was to trace a few of his transactions to a single address—a two-story generic gable-roof house that, frankly, looked more like a decoy. She’d been monitoring the place for a week but with no luck. Pun intended.

“When you go phishing, you need the right bait,” I told her, stood up and ambled my way over to the decoy home. Took me all of two minutes to get there—fastest trip to Ghana in history.

I ascended the steps and looked through the windows. It was a Spartan set-up with just enough fixtures and furniture to convince me that someone was home. So maybe this place wasn’t a decoy after all. Certainly not the first time I was wrong; at least this time it didn’t cost me twenty Gs. Anyway, I rang the doorbell, took three lucky steps back and then let the Favor Funk™ take it from there. Favor Funk™ works like a dog whistle. If you’re an ordinary well-adjusted person, you won’t smell a thing. But if you’re an opportunist, well, watch and see…

The door opened. When I say the door opened, I don’t mean that it cautiously cracked open; nobody peeped through a small gap or even a peephole. No, the resident of this roadhouse yanked it wide open with all the drama of a confession. He simply couldn’t help himself. The Favor Funk™ seeped into the air and soaked into “Rev. Goodluck Egobia’s” dirty blonde chevron mustache. Right away I could tell that this man was a professional phisher, and the phish just jumped into his boat. He smiled a phisherman’s smile, full of faux friendliness and flossed teeth.

“Yes?”

I hate small talk. I hate beating around the bush. I abhor foreplay. Let’s just skip to the hustle, okay? I gave him my bank account number. “011401533.” And then I gave him the routing number: “091000019.” Yes, I actually gave him the keys to the kingdom, bankrupt as it may be. He couldn’t believe it either. His knees buckled and his bottom lip dropped and drooled. The poor guy salivated all over the porch. Clean up in aisle one.

This was exactly the diversion the bounty hunter needed, and by the time “Rev. Goodluck Egobia” figured out he was being hunted, it was already too late. The bounty hunter stood there, legs pillared apart and arms flexed, like some sort of a superwoman. And there I was, slouched and portly, with slender legs still holding up my fishbowl belly, but screw it, I still posed like a superman.

Despite my superhero stance, when “Rev. Goodluck Egobia” made a run for it, there was no way that I was going to chase him down lugging around this fishbowl. Nope, not happening. It was a no-go for the bounty hunter too. Not because she had a fishbowl belly like me. That wasn’t her problem, no. Her problem was those heels.

“If you’re a bounty hunter, then why are you wearing heels?” I asked while she joined me in peering down at the perplexity of her preferred footwear.

“What, you expect me to wear combat boots or something? Who hangs out on a suburban park bench wearing combat boots? The idea is to be inconspicuous, man.”

Hmm, good point.

“Okay, okay. But now he’s getting away,” I rejoined.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. By now he had pretty much gotten away. He was far enough up the street that chasing him down was out of the question. But it was garbage day, and the scattered arrangement of garbage and recycling bins succeeded in slowing him down and buying us more time. Unfortunately, we used that time to just stand there and watch him shove aside one meddlesome bin and kick away the other.

“What do we do?” the bounty hunter asked. I shrugged. But then I remembered the Magic 8-Ball in my hand.

I lumbered off the porch, squeezed one eye shut and hurled the last chance we had at catching the runaway phisherman. Early on, the missile proudly promised to find its target. It formed a menacing arch through the air. But somewhere in the middle of its mission, it was clear that my throw arm had made an empty promise. Like a fumbled touchdown pass or a fluke free-throw, my miserable Magic 8-Ball missile floundered right around the moment of its descent. It soared past the target’s head and crash-landed on the pavement. BUT—and this is a huge but—his feet made direct contact. “Rev. Goodluck Egobia” slipped on the smooth sphere, circled upward into the air and came down with a deafening thud.

Thanks, big bro. As always, you came through.

How the bounty hunter muscled money out of good ol’ Goodluck is none of my business. Or yours. All I can tell you is that I watched him disappear, hogtied and all, in the back of her white van. She walked to the front seat, let down the car visor, and a slender black notebook plopped into her hands. She popped it open, pulled out a pen and scratched off “Rev. Goodluck Egobia’s” name. Mission accomplished.

“Thank you,” she said, and I nodded.

“Any chance I can get in on some of that reward money, say… Twenty grand, maybe?” I asked and she smiled.

“It’s not reward money; it’s repossessed money. But I’m sure we can work something out. In the meantime, if you ever want a job as phish bait, give me a call.” She coupled her business card with a smile and a farewell nod. Then she drove off.

I looked at her card and then at my Magic 8-Ball. The screen was cracked. The ball was bleeding a little. But I decided to give it a go. Will I get that twenty grand? C’mon, baby, give me that twenty grand. I gave it a good shake. The ball’s reply:

Outlook good.