Con Academy (9 page)

And that's when we all suddenly disappear, along with the mark's money.

For a guy like Brandt, I'm thinking two million isn't too much to expect.

Dad listens to everything I'm saying without adding a word. Finally he goes to the closet, takes a shirt off a hanger, sniffs the pits, and slips it on. “That scam got us clipped down in Trenton, in case you forgot. What makes you think it'll work any better here?”

“We didn't go wide enough with it in Trenton,” I tell him.

Dad sighs. “Kid, you tax me. You really do.” He rubs one freshly shaved cheek. “Who's the mark?”

And I tell him about Brandt Rush.

“Two
million?
Seriously?”

That's how I know he's interested, because he's already sitting at the wobbly, cigarette-marred table in the corner of the cheap hotel room, his coffee forgotten, while he works out the figures in his small, careful handwriting. “If he's that rich already, what makes you think he'll go for it?”

I hold up two fingers. “One, he's greedy, and two, he holds a grudge. This is a guy who's still creased that Moira McDonald turned him down for Homecoming last year, and he got twice as creased when I told him that her father sent me in to cheat him in his own casino. He's ripe for the plucking.”

Dad thinks about that for a long time, looking down at the numbers he's been adding up and then back at me.

“If we do it—and I'm saying
if
—we'd need a base of operations, computers, office furniture, and at least six guys who look like they know what they're doing . . .” His gaze drifts slightly off to the right as he considers the necessary components of a swindle this size. “They'll have to work on percentage. I don't know if I can swing that.”

“I was thinking I could talk to Uncle Roy,” I say.

Dad grimaces but doesn't argue, tipping me off that he'd already been thinking the same thing. For him, going to Mom's side of the family for money is kind of like walking into a Boston sports bar wearing a Yankees cap. But if we need operating cash, Uncle Roy might be our only option.

“How soon does it need to be set up?” he asks.

“That's the wrinkle.” I sit down across from him. “I need to pull the whole caper off before Thanksgiving.”

“Four weeks?” Dad scowls. “That's nowhere near enough time to set the hook and make our play.”

“It's going to have to be.”

“What's your hurry?”

I don't say anything.

“You might as well tell me, kid. I'm gonna find out anyway.”

“It's nothing,” I say. “I just don't want this dragging on too long, that's all. It's too much exposure.”

Dad just squints at me. He's about to say something when there's a knock. We both stand up immediately, our old instincts instantly activated, and I duck into the bathroom as he crosses the room to the door, careful to keep away from the window. “Hello? Who's there?”

“Who do you think, silly?” a woman's voice asks from outside.

I hear the lock disengage and the rattle of a chain.

“Hey, baby,” Dad says casually, in a voice that curdles the acid in my stomach. I've left the bathroom door open a crack, and I can see a woman step inside the room. She's dyed blond, probably in her late thirties but with that finely wrinkled tiredness around the eyes that comes from hours spent at the end of a bar with a cigarette in her hand, getting guys like my dad to buy her drinks.

“I forgot my scarf here,” she says. “I thought I'd come back and see if you were still around.”

“My loss,” Dad says. “I was just heading out for the morning.”

“You want company?”

“Wish I could. It's kind of a business breakfast.”

“On
Sunday?
”

“The Lord's business won't wait.” Dad gives her a smile, his voice oozing charm. “I need to be alone this morning. How about I call you this afternoon?”

“You didn't seem to mind me so much last night,” the woman says, pouting.

“That's because he was drunk,” I say, stepping out of the bathroom to make my presence here known. The woman kind of gapes at me, and I just look back at her. It makes me think of the line from that old Rod Stewart song:
The morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age.

Dad doesn't miss a beat. “Rhonda, this is my son, Billy, the one I told you was a student at Connaughton. Billy, meet Rhonda.”

I stay where I am while she glances at my father, then back at me. For a second the only sound is a TV playing in another room. Canned laughter.

“You found your scarf,” I say. “Was there anything else you needed?”

Rhonda opens her mouth and then quickly snaps it closed, hard enough that I can almost hear her lipstick flaking off. My father slips an arm over her shoulder and ushers her out the door, murmuring something reassuring about calling her later. He shuts the door behind her, then spins back to me, his arm shooting out to grab me by the collar, yanking me toward him.

“What was that?” he says sharply.

“Funny,” I say. “I was going to ask you the same question.”

Dad leans in until I can count the veins on his nose. “Listen, you snot-nose little punk. You might think you're some big noise up here in the middle of nowhere, setting up a scam for this Rush kid. But if you start getting delusions of grandeur, you're gonna end up face-down in the dirt before you even know what's hit you.” He shakes me hard enough to rattle my teeth. “Are we clear?”

“Let me go,” I say, jerking myself free, and somewhere underneath my pounding heart, I can feel that old familiar thickening in my throat, the hot, salty heaviness of unspoken anger rising up in my eyes. It's weakness, and I hate myself for feeling it, but I can't make it stop. “Why do you always have to do that?”

He glares at me with disgust. “I didn't even grab you that hard.”

“That's not what I'm talking about.” I glance at the door and try to ignore the stench of cheap perfume, but it's so strong now that it makes me want to puke. “Mom wasn't like that.”

“No,” he says. “She wasn't.”

“Then why do you always do this?”

Dad sits down on the side of the bed and rubs his face with his hands. He doesn't seem to know what to say, and for once it's actually comforting. Finally he looks up, stretching out his cheeks as he glances at me, and draws in a deep breath. “Billy . . .”

“Forget it,” I say, and head for the door. “I'm leaving.”

“Just hang on, kid, okay?”

“I've got homework,” I say, not looking back. “I'll call you after I talk to Uncle Roy.”

And I step out into the cold air, where my lungs start to loosen and I'm finally able to breathe again.

O
N THE BUS BACK TO
C
ONNAUGHTON, I TRY TO PUT MY
thoughts together again. I don't want to think about any of what just happened, but I know if I don't, it'll all keep festering in the back of my mind—Dad, the empty bottles in the motel wastebasket, and the women like Rhonda who appear to be drawn to him no matter where he goes. Dad has a penchant for the women who seem least like the woman I remember as my mother. I wish I could hate him for it, but instead it just makes me feel sick and sad. Involving him in all of this was a necessary evil, so in the end I start thinking only of the specifics of the con, to try to keep my thoughts off the uglier aspects of it.

As I get off the bus, the cold wind slaps me in the face and cuts right through my jacket. The whole campus feels empty and desolate, and without knowing where I'm headed, I find myself stepping inside the library.

The stacks are even quieter than usual, almost empty, and I see Gatsby behind the circulation desk, again surrounded by towers of books to be checked in.

“Hey,” I say.

She glances up at me from between two piles. “Oh, hey, Will.” Then she frowns. “What happened to your face?”

“I'm fine. I just fell down some stairs.”

“And landed on your
face?
”

“Crazy, I know. Do you have any books about gravity?”

She gives me a sympathetic smile. “You didn't read that one I gave you on self-defense, did you?”

“No, but I'm seriously thinking of reading Immanuel Kant,” I say, and seeing her knowing expression, I realize that what happened with the security guard could not have been mere coincidence. “How did you know about George?”

“Who's George?”

“The security guard who let me in. He was reading that same book by Kant.”

“Well, you know, everybody reads Kant.” She gives me an innocent look. “He's like the J. K. Rowling of western philosophy, right?”

“Uh-huh,” I say, and wait for the truth. Finally she sighs.

“Okay,” she says. “I grew up in a used bookstore. Wherever I go, I can't help noticing what people are reading. I know George is Brandt's personal doorman on Friday nights, and when I saw he was reading Kant, I figured it wouldn't hurt for you to have something to make small talk about.” She looks at me curiously. “Did it work?”

“Not exactly.”

“How did the gambling go?”

“As expected.”

“So that's good?”

“More or less.” I glance at the desk, where Gatsby's own notebooks and course materials are mixed in with the library books that she's cataloging. “How's work?”

“Slow,” she says. “But that's fine with me. I'm just trying to finish that Hawthorne paper for Bodkins's class. How's yours coming along?”

“Bodkins?” I say, and think:
Oh no.

“Will, are you
serious?
” Gatsby gives me an incredulous look. “You forgot about it, didn't you?”

“It's okay. I do my best work under pressure.”

“I bet you do.” She looks at me for a long moment and seems to decide something. “You want to see something?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” She flips a little library sign around so that it reads back in five minutes and grabs a set of keys from beneath the desk. “Follow me.”

I trail her across the reading room and through a door in the back, then up two rickety flights of wooden stairs. It's drafty back here, almost as cold as it is outside. The landing at the top takes us to a long, narrow corridor that seems to stretch on forever, past darkened rooms full of dimly lit shelves.

“Where are we now?”

“This place is huge,” she says. “Apparently there are whole levels of this building that nobody ever goes to anymore. I've heard that hidden somewhere there's actually a secret library within the library.”

“What's in there?”

“Contraband books. Arcane compendiums of forbidden lore.”

“Like vegan cooking?”

“Like the basement of the Vatican.” At the far end of the hallway is another door, and Gatsby unlocks it and pushes it open. “Watch your step.”

We make our way inside, into darkness. It smells different in here—not dusty, but still very old. As she switches on the lights, I realize that we're standing in an open rotunda looking down into a huge circular room. It's climate-controlled with special receded track lighting, shining down on different glass cases as in a private museum—a Batcave for bibliophiles.

“Whoa,” I say. “What is this?”

“The rare books collection.” As we enter the main room, I look into one of the cases and see that it's full of life-size paintings of birds, a riot of bright colors. “That's Audubon's
Birds of America,
” Gatsby says. “An original edition from the 1820s. They printed them on the biggest paper they could find at the time, what they called double elephant folios.”

“What're they worth?”

“This particular volume?” She thinks for a moment. “I'm not exactly sure. It's not complete, but then again, almost none of Audubons are, since the original plates were sold individually to subscribers. Still, Connaughton's got the most comprehensive collection this side of the New York Public Library.”

“How do you know so much about books? You really grew up in a used bookstore?”

“Yeah. It was my parents', so I worked there growing up. We lived on Martha's Vineyard. The store went out of business a few years back, but I spent my childhood in an old barn, sorting through boxes of old hardcovers. Occasionally I'd find a treasure.”

“The Vineyard, huh?”

She nods. “So I guess that means we both grew up on islands.”

“I'm pretty sure the president never vacationed on mine.” I'm walking toward the largest case, in the very center of the room. “Is this what I think it is?”

“That's it.”

She's joined me. We're both standing at the case with our heads almost touching, looking down through the glass at the oversize illuminated pages of what can only be an original Gutenberg Bible.

Gatsby glances up and whispers: “Do you want to touch it?”

I stare at her. “Are you serious?”

“Here.” She pulls a pair of latex gloves from a box beneath the case and hands them to me. “Put these on.” Then she crosses the room to a console on the far wall and taps in a quick series of digits.

“What are you doing?”

“Overriding the alarm.”

I stare at her, aware of a rising swarm-of-bees sensation in my stomach, which is expanding to fill my chest. “You've done this before, haven't you?”

“Once or twice.” After walking back over to where I'm standing, she slides a key into the bottom of the case and I hear a single, muted click followed by the faintest sigh of released air. Raising the lid, she reaches down and lifts the Gutenberg from its display pedestal. “Sometimes when I'm feeling depressed, I come down here and hold it.”

“Is it heavy?”