THE DEAL

23 Full immunity

Author: Hey guys, don't be confused, I changed the name of Lisa's dad's colleague from Ellen to Alice because it fits better. Since Alice used to be Lisa's manager irl ;)

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"He was working in a bank... and got tired of counting money for other people?"

"No."

"He... drove an ice cream truck but didn't really sell ice cream?" Jennie kept guessing away just to make Lisa laugh.

"Interesting theory, but nope."

"He was... running a key repair shop but that was just the front for a distillery that forged irish whiskey?"

"Okay now you're just making shit up!" Lisa laughed. Jennie noticed that it was Lisa's real laugh. Her carefree laugh that Jennie didn't get to hear nearly enough. She really liked Lisa's laugh. She looked so cute when she was laughing. Urgh. Jennie almost rolled her eyes at herself for not keeping those stupid thoughts in check.

"Okay I'm really bad at this. Please just tell me." She decided to give up.

"Alright. So when I turned eighteen, I ran away. I bought a train ticket to Bangkok. I didn't quite know what I was looking for but I wanted to go back to where it all went south. Maybe I wanted to find out what my dad had been doing. If he had really been a dirty cop or not. Alice continuously told me that my dad was a good person. Even after everything. So that got me thinking."

"Did you find out?" Jennie interjected in a soft voice and Lisa fought the urge to take Jennie's hand again. She had felt a lot braver while telling her story when she had held Jennie's hand. She missed it now.

"I never did. Because this is where Bam comes in. He was the first person I met in Bangkok."

"Oh he is Thai too? I didn't realize..."

"Thai on his dad's side, Korean on his mom's. He taught me the language. He used to be a taxi driver, scaming tourists out of their money. He was harmless though. Only charging them too much and pretending he didn't speak any english."

"A taxi driver! Alright. I should have guessed that! I can totally see it." Jennie grinned, thinking about Lisa's quirky friend.

"He also did little side hustles, scamming people in quick street games. He tried to scam me but I saw through him and scammed him back. When he realized what I had done, he came after me. But not out of revenge or anything. He wanted to strike a business deal with me, since apparently I had been the first one to beat him at his own game."

"You impressed his small criminal heart."

Lisa laughed again. "I guess I did. We became partners of sorts. Letting go of the street hustles and aiming for bigger marks. But then the police started looking for me, since Alice and my Mom told them I was missing and I told Bam I needed to leave the country."

"You guys came to Korea?"

Lisa nodded. "Yep. We had enough in our rainy day account to get us some new passports and plane tickets. I had planned to go alone but Bam wouldn't let me. He said he was done with Thailand anyway and since he spoke the language here and everything, Korea was the next best choice."

"And that's where you guys really started doing some damage?"

"Kind of. I've always liked art and painting and I discovered that I was good at replicating art and one thing led to another. We started hitting museums and exchanging my works with the actual artwork. We made a lot of money fast. We didn't live in crappy sublet apartments anymore. We lived in the best hotel suites under fake names. I posed as an art consultant, selling paintings to wealthy women who were bored of all their money."