The Tell-Tale Con (19 page)

When I got inside I threw my backpack on the couch and headed straight for the kitchen to grab a drink.  Unfortunately, Mom was in there.  Not because I hated seeing her, but because I was exhausted and not in the mood for socializing.  But she was feeling inexplicably chatty.  “I got a phone call, a recording, from your school today saying that you were absent.”

“Huh.”  Go figure.  I never missed school, so I'd simply had no idea that such a service existed.  To notify the parents in case I was, say, flying in a private plane to Vegas with no warning.  For a moment I considered telling my mother where I'd been as off hand as Harrison had told his father.  But she wouldn't believe me, wouldn't care, or would want to know exactly how much that kind of plane was worth on the open market.

She didn't actually care whether or not I was at school.  In fact, my relentless pursuit of an education was annoying to her and my father both.  They thought an education was for people who hadn't been blessed with a natural talent for bilking.  Or laundry, if you asked Mr. Wong. 

“You also got another phone call.” 

It was the way she said it, the sly inflection, which told me this was not a message I wanted to be hearing.  I refused to play her game.  She wanted to bait me, and it always drove her crazy that I was indifferent to mind games. 

I shrugged.

“Don't you want to know who called?”

“If you want to tell me.”

She scowled, creating lines that made her look older than she was.  “You take the fun out of everything, Tallulah.”

“Yeah, that's me.  Fun sucker.”

“Well, it was Gray.  Gray called you.”

The words were exactly the punch in the gut that Mom hoped they would be.  But I was done letting Peter Gray ruin my life.  I gave her the barest hint of a shrug, one shoulder lifted slightly higher. 

My lack of visible reaction was clearing bugging Mom. 

“Don't you want to know what he wanted?”

“No.”

“He wants to talk to you,” she said.

“Well, I don't want to talk to him.”  Was that ever an understatement.  I'd personally like to pretend I'd never met him at all.

“I don't know what your problem is.  Gray is a good guy.”

“No, he's not.  He's a liar, and a cheater, and a con man.”  And he'd broken my heart.  Back when I believed that I had one. 

Mom shrugged philosophically.  “Well, fine.  He's a good con man.  That's just as good.”

To her it was.  She was incensed that I'd been born with innate conning ability that I refused to use.  As if she could read my mind she started again on her favorite rant.  “He was good enough for you before you decided to grow a conscience, Tallulah.” 

“Most people are born with one,” I pointed out blandly.

“Those are the people who are not born with your skills.  Do you know how many people I've seen work and study for years trying to achieve what comes effortlessly to you?”

“Mom, conning people is not a life skill, no matter how much you admire it.”

“It
is
a life skill.  It's a business.”

I sighed.  We'd been through this before half a million times.  “Mowing people's lawns is a business.  Bankers giving loans?  That's a business.  Stealing people's money is not a business.”

She sighed, too, like she was as bored of this conversation as I was.  “Look, Tallulah, the people I take money from are stupid.  Really, really stupid.  They fall for scams that no one who was intelligent would ever step into.  If I didn't take their money they'd make other unwise choices, like large personal loans for vacation and subprime mortgages that would end up being foreclosed on in five years.  I'm doing the rest of the world a favor.”

“So you're not robbing people.  You're single-handedly saving the economy.”

She beamed at me.  “Exactly.” 

I nodded.  “Wow, that's the single most amazing justification for robbing people I've ever heard in my life.  Bravo.” 

She saluted me with her glass.  “I live to serve.  Anyway, so Gray is a criminal.  That doesn't mean you can't date him.”

“Actually,” I replied, “That's exactly what it means.  But in this case I broke up with Gray because, in addition to being a criminal, he's also an asshat.” 

I'd been willing to put up with his criminal behavior even when I'd declared myself done with the whole deal because I'd always been stupid about Gray.  But that was before he'd cheated on me.  Four times. 

“You talked to him last time he called.  This is because of that kid across the street, isn't it?”

It took me a minute to realize she meant Harrison.  It bugged me that she knew about Harrison at all.  Aside from the whole demon thing, anyway.  “I talked to him the last time he called because he caught me off guard.  Believe me, I'll never make that mistake again.  It has nothing to do with Harrison.”

“When I saw how much time you've been spending together I checked your friend Harrison online.  I have to tell you, Tallulah, he's a good investment.  Lots of money through both him and his parents.  You've done well this time.”

For a moment, red clouded the edge of my vision, and I had to talk myself down a little.  Calmly, I said, “You stay away from him.”  Possibly I wasn't giving him enough credit, but he seemed so naïve to me.  Like he was just waiting to be taken advantage of. 

“Well, of course I will.  He's
your
mark, Tallulah.”

My rage grew exponentially in a sudden jab that overwhelmed me.  I pulled in a hard breath.  “He's not a mark.  He's a person.  You can't talk about him like that.  He deserves better.” 

Mom's eyebrows lifted slightly, and I flushed hot like she'd caught me doing something terrible.  “So that's how it is, huh?”

I was not an easy person to embarrass, as I'd been born without shame.  But I was definitely embarrassed now.  “Harrison is my friend.”  Why I had to justify that, I didn't know, but now that I said it I realized it was true.  “You, yourself, taught me that you don't steal from your friends.  It's rule twenty-three.”

“Yes, because it's much too easy for them to identify you to the police.”

I pointed at her.  “You are a morality black hole.”

She smiled placidly.  “Save the compliments for your marks, Tals.  I'm confident enough already.”

I filled a cup with soda and took a long drink because thoughts were moving too fast for me to organize what I wanted to say.  “Someday you're going to have to accept that I'm not into the idea of the family business.”

“Let a mother have hope.” 

I shrugged and gave up.  “I guess if it makes you happy.” 

This was a conversation we'd already had hundreds of times.  Maybe thousands.  I wasn't in the mood to have it right now, just one more time.  I also wasn't in the mood to talk about my future plans, and I
certainly
wasn't in the mood to talk about Gray. 

I probably never would be.

 

 

 

 

Rules of the Scam #30

No matter where you are, own it.  You always belong…

 

Friday afternoon, I met Harrison outside the school so he could drive us to the funeral.  That morning when I'd shown up to drive him, Harrison was outside without a crutch or an air cast.  Though he still had a noticeable limp, he was pretending to be perfectly fine.  It was interesting to see how he responded to having an injury, first with annoyance and then by pretending it didn't exist.  Either way, he said he was well enough to drive, and I became obsolete.  I wasn't sure whether I was now supposed to take the bus or walk or if I was supposed to ride with him. 

But he opened the car door for me and seemed to assume I was going to ride in it.  So I did.  Not that I wanted to go, anyway.  Because I still didn't. 

But Harrison was right.  This was information that we needed to have.  Watching how other people looked and acted at a funeral seemed to be the most likely way to find suspects.  So I'd worn a bit of black to school and slid on some dark sunglasses as a final touch.  People would think I was in mourning when really I was spying.  Harrison had changed into white slacks and a white button up shirt.  It seemed like a strange choice, but I supposed it wasn't my business what he elected to wear to his cousin's funeral.

The church that Harrison drove us too was large and new.  I'd never been there because it was nestled at the foot of the Sandias in the kinds of neighborhoods where I'd feel like an imposter if I so much as pulled over to make a phone call in their parking lot.  It didn't matter though.  I'd learned at my mother's knee that no matter how awkward you felt, or how much you didn't belong, you acted like you did. 

Though the building and parking lot were large, it was clear that Nate's funeral had drawn an enormous crowd.  I looked over the cars, nearly every spot filled, and people were starting to park out on the street. 

“Who are all these people?”

“I don't know.  Some of them are members of the family and Nate's friends, I'm sure.”

We had to fight our way into the church, and it was standing room only.  Nate wasn't like some pillar of the community, so I was pretty certain we were talking about curiosity seekers here.  Unless he'd been a lot more popular than I'd taken him for judging from Harrison's descriptions.  We took up a spot against the wall.  I scanned the crowd looking for familiar faces.  I did see Van and some of his flunkies, including Ana and a very, very bored looking Yoko Ono.  I didn't bother asking Harrison why they hadn't come together.  It wasn't something I wanted to know anyway.  I had to say, though, that I was kind of impressed they'd shown up at all, since Nate wasn't in any way related to them. 

The casket was closed, thank goodness, though there was no apparent reason since I'd seen him freshly dead, and he'd looked all right.  Above the shoulders anyway.  But whatever the reasons, the dark wood casket was sitting up there all shiny and closed, and the preacher stood in front of it. 

The preacher was doing the vague “I don't actually know the victim, but listen to the nice things I'm saying” thing.  I scanned the crowd.  There was a large contingency of staid middle-aged people that I pegged as friends of Nate's parents.  Then there was the thuggish, younger crowd who looked like they'd learned how to dress for a funeral from a rap video.  Finally there was a massive group of people dressed in East Indian traditional clothing, almost all of it white.  There was so much white, in fact, that I felt a little awkward in black. 

“Are all those people related to you?” I whispered. 

He glanced that way and shrugged.  Leaning in he whispered, “Some of them are.  That group right there, especially.  The woman with the gray bag is actually my mother.  I didn't know she was coming.  But most of them are my uncle's family.  They're here to take Nate's ashes back to India so they can be sprinkled in the Ganges River.  Normally there would be an open casket, and then the family would take the body out to be burned.  Everything is different this time because Nate was murdered.” 

He pointed to the casket.  “That's empty.  The ashes are already ready to be shipped.  Nate's parents are Hindu, sort of, but mostly they're actually Christian.  A strange combination of both, I guess.  They would have buried him.  They could since he's unmarried, but my uncle's family wouldn't allow it.  The Ganges has special properties to help people in their path to reincarnation, and they're worried because Nate led a less than stellar life.  When they're done here, they'll throw all his things away, and the clothes they're wearing will be thrown out too.”

Someone in front of us glanced back furiously, and Harrison and I looked at each other and fell silent.  I had more questions to ask, but at the moment I was keeping them to myself.  I went back to surveying the crowd.  I spotted a few familiar faces, including the cops who'd interviewed us at Nate's house.  They looked exactly the same.  I thought they might be wearing the same clothes.  Maybe they only had one set, like people on cartoons. 

The preacher droned on, and it was almost impossible to listen to what he had to say.  Especially when the crowd was so thick and twitchy.  Someone was constantly coughing, moving in their chair or scratching something.  I saw three or four women in the crowd who looked familiar to me, though I could have sworn I didn't know them, and that made me assume they were more of Van's famous friends.  I'd seen them in a show or something and simply couldn't remember. 

Finally, the ceremony was over, and we moved outside immediately.  Not out of some desperate need for fresh air, but because I feared getting trampled by the crowd.  We moved aside, and I used the opportunity to watch the comings and goings, though I had no idea what Harrison was going to do. 

He asked if I would be okay for a minute and went off into the crowd of people he'd identified as relatives.  I tried to peek on what he was doing, but he was immediately swallowed up by a sea of white, and I was left alone.  But it didn't last very long.  I was joined by the two cops from the crime scene.  Immediately I bristled, though I maintained my casual demeanor.  “Do you remember us?” the woman with the huge hair asked.

I nodded that I did, and if they were bothered by my silence, they didn't show it.  They didn't bother to tell me their names again, maybe because I said I remembered them, or maybe because they didn't care if I knew their names.

She moved in close to me while the male cop stood off to the side, taking in the crowd like he was her bodyguard.  Or her lookout, and she was the schoolyard bully.  I felt a little bullied, considering how much she was violating my personal space.  I forced myself to continue to stand where I was and not to back away.