The Tell-Tale Con (6 page)

“I don't think we have a screwdriver.”  He sounded offended.  By me.  Because
he
didn't have a screwdriver. 

“Whatever.” 

I hunkered down and worked the board until it popped off with a tremendous groan.  Harrison pulled in a breath, but the rest of the house remained silent.  As suspected, underneath the board was an empty cavity rather than a sub floor.  It was about six inches wide and a couple of feet long.  It was too dark in the room to see how deep it went.  And heaven only knew what was down that hole.  Could have been spiders, mice, centipedes.  Anything but a demon. 

Harrison had better appreciate me for this
.  I took a deep breath of my own and slammed my hand down into the darkness.  Regrettably, the hole was no where near as deep as I might have anticipated.  I struggled to keep my cursing down to a whisper while I worked on trying to bend my fingers again.  When most of the function in my hand had returned, I reached down again and felt carefully, still cringing at what else might be down there.

My fingers closed around something about the size of a business card but much thicker.  I pulled it out and held it under the light while Harrison looked on, expressionless.  It was some kind of recorder, nothing I'd ever seen before.  A small LCD screen let me know that it was cued up to play at around two in the morning.  I handed it to him.  “Here's your demon.”

Harrison took it and stared at it for a long time without saying anything.  I folded my arms over my chest, wishing again that I had shoes and a coat.  It was too cold for this crap.  The recorder was proof positive that I'd been right all along.  I wished I felt better about it.

“I think it's time to pay a visit to good old Cousin Neil,” I said.

"You mean Nate?"

"Whatever."

 

 

Rules of the Scam #12

Don't get yourself into other people's trouble…

 

I managed to get out of Harrison's place without anyone seeing me.  Well, except Captain Lascivious at the counter who waggled his eyebrows at me though I'd been at Harrison's for all of maybe five minutes before leaving again.  When I got back across the street, Mr. Wong was standing in the doorway waiting for me.  He looked pointedly at his watch. 

“It's seven minutes, Talia.”  His old, thin, mouth tightened until he actually seemed to have no lips at all.  How did he do that?

“I know, Mr. Wong.  I'm sorry.  I had to do something.  It was an emergency.”  I put on my most imploring face.  It was a good one.  I was a born con artist, part of the reason my parents were so annoyed when I'd refused to play anymore. 

Mr. Wong's expression softened, but only slightly.  “You stay here.  I need noodles.”

I knew the drill. 

Once he disappeared behind the frayed yellow curtain to his back area, I hopped onto a dryer and grabbed a magazine someone had left behind.  People were always leaving things behind inside the faded orange walls of the laundry.  This one was a design mag about indoor pools. 
As if
, but it was better than nothing.  No one was going to come into Mr. Wong's at almost 2:30 a.m.  I flipped through the glossy pictures of opulence, but my mind was on something else. 

The most likely suspect for Harrison's demon was his Cousin Nestor.  But why?  Why try to con your own cousin into thinking he was either crazy or being hunted by a demon?  It didn't even make sense.  But maybe it would once I knew Ned better.  Harrison had agreed that a visit to the East Mountains was in order to visit his cousin and get some answers. 

I scrolled through possible scenarios for Ned's perfidy: money, revenge, love, but none of them made sense in the context of all that Harrison had told me.  He either didn't know what was going on, or he wasn't telling me the real story.  At any rate, answers would be coming early, and my eyes were getting gritty.  

Mr. Wong finally came back, and I got the distinct impression he'd been taking his sweet time in an attempt to get a little payback for those two extra minutes.  I was tempted to say something, but really, I like the smell of freshly laundered sweaters hanging in my closet way too much.  The alternative to sucking up to Mr. Wong is trying to get Mom to stop spending for long enough to budget our laundry money.  Mr. Wong is easier. 

I ducked away from the Laundromat and bounded up the stairs.  Skirting the living room wall, so as to avoid rousing Mom who had fallen asleep to the heavenly glow of Adult Swim and was passed out on the couch.  I got to my room in record time. 

When I crawled back into bed, sleep came easily. 

 

Then morning came early.

I was seriously not happy, when the yellow walkie-talkie came crackling to life again, slightly before seven.  “Talia, are you awake?”

I rolled over in bed and pulled the pillows over my head.  It didn't make the annoyance or the sound go away.  “Talia!”

I reached out blindly and grabbed the phone off the bedside table.  “What?”  I snapped. 

“Are you awake?”

“No, I'm talking in my sleep.”

He either didn't find my sarcasm deterring, or he didn't understand me with my face pressed into my bed.  Either way he said, “Nate will have some kind of study group today.  He always does on Sunday.  Not that it seems to help him, if his grades are any indication.  We have to catch him before he leaves the house.” 

Well, we didn't
have
to.  But now I was already awake.  And, irritated or not, this did need to be taken care of, and the man had paid me.  Even if our arrangement hadn't specifically included early morning wake up calls.  “Okay, I can be ready in half an hour.” 

“Great.  I'll see you in front of my place in thirty minutes.  I'm in a green Prius.”

“Of course you are,” I muttered, turning off the phone. 

It took me a few minutes to wake up, five to shower and the rest to get dressed.  What did one wear to meet someone pretending to be a demon for reasons yet unknown?  I decided that one wore jeans and a T-shirt.  Or at least this one did.  I threw on a hoodie and grabbed an orange on the way out.  Mom was still passed out on the couch.  Exhaustion or beer?  Didn't matter either way.  She wouldn't wonder where I was.

As promised, there was a stupid, little mint green Prius parallel parked in front of The Library with the vanity plate, CHKMATE.  Harrison stuck his arm out and motioned me over as though I might not be able to identify which vehicle was his.  I waited for a bus to lumber past, but otherwise the Sunday morning traffic was light.  Inside the car, Harrison was listening to rap, turned up too loud, and wearing an oatmeal-colored sweater over a tan polo shirt.  I would have pictured him as the kind of person who listened to weird indie bands with names that had no meaning.

I had learned to categorize people at my parents' knee, since knowing the mark was pivotal to a good con.  Harrison made my head spin.  When I thought I might be one step closer to understanding what he was, he showed up dressed like Edward Cullen, driving a douchey hybrid car and listening to Young Jeezy.  What on earth was he?  And why did I care?

I slumped back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest, deciding to let him drive in silence.  Well, our silence anyway.  The radio was loud.  We made our way onto I-25 and headed towards his cousin's house in Cedar Crest.  A song came on that he didn't like, and he pressed another programmed button, turning it to freaking Vivaldi.  Seriously? 

Was
he
the con artist?  Because I was starting to get the impression he wanted to keep me confused and off balance.  If that was true, what was his game? 

I turned the knob all the way down.  Harrison glanced at me with raised eyebrows, but said nothing.  “Tell me about Nicholas.”

“Who is Nicholas?”  He seemed perplexed. 

“Your cousin?”

His lips twitched, but he didn't quite manage a smile.  “Boy, you suck at names, don't you?”

“Okay, so his name isn't Nick.  Sue me.  I have a very good memory for numbers.”  It was a lame defense, tacked on the end so he'd know I wasn't a complete idiot.

“Seriously, how long did it take you to learn my name?” he pressed.

As far as I could remember I'd learned it the first day of class.  “I don't know.  Not very long.  But you do sit next to me.”

The very corners of his lips quirked, almost a smile now, but he kept his eyes on the road.  “What's the name of the person who sits on the other side of you?”

Really?  I had no idea.  “What is this, Jeopardy?”

“You don't have a clue, do you?”

“None whatsoever.” 

His tiny smile turned into a grin, but he was wise enough not to say anything.  He turned the radio back up, country this time, and accelerated so that we were passing most of the lazy weekend traffic. 

“
Nate
is my mother's brother's son.  He has an older sister, Melissa, who goes to Princeton.  Nate had a great scholarship to NYU, but he couldn't keep his grades up, so he came back here.  He doesn't do much; takes a couple of classes at the community college to keep his parent happy.  Though, my uncle and aunt are pretty fed up, to tell you the truth.”

I could imagine.  Harrison came from a family of over-achievers.  To have an adult child who refused to start his life must have been very frustrating.  Almost as frustrating as having a mother who was the same, I'd be willing to wager. 

“Where does your mom live?”  It was not the question I'd expected to hear myself ask. 

“Well, she's from here, but she met my dad in LA.  Right now she's in Florida working.”  He didn't sound bothered by her absence. 

“What does she do?”

He glanced at me before directing his eyes back to the road, like he was somehow suspicious of the question.  Or maybe embarrassed by the answer.  “She's, uh, well, she's an aerospace engineer.”

And to think I'd been expecting him to say nudie dancer, the way he was acting.  “An aerospace engineer.  Your mother is a rocket scientist?”

Of course she was.  What else for a member of Harrison's extra special bloodline?

“I guess so.  She's working for NASA right now, but usually she works for Sandia National Laboratory.” 

We were quiet for a few moments.  I didn't say anything because I was annoyed at Harrison for coming from a family of decent human beings.  I wasn't sure why Harrison wasn't talking.

“What about your parents?  What do they do?  I mean, you know, aside from the psychic thing.”

Now he seemed embarrassed again, as though saying my mother was a psychic was somehow awkward.  Then again, he'd acted the same about his mother's job.  I considered, briefly, telling him what my parents actually did.  That my father was in jail, and my mother was, at the moment, little better than a crook, sometimes not any better than a crook.  I didn't.  For his sake or mine, I wasn't sure.

“My mom does the Mystic Meg thing.  My dad's…in California.  Because of his job.”  So true, and yet such a lie.  It was most certainly because of his job that he was spending his time playing cards in minimum security in Bakersfield. 

“Are your parents divorced?”

I shook my head.  “No, they've been married for almost twenty years.  Go figure.”

“My parents got divorced when I was two.  My dad's very good at his job, but…well, he's kind of a loser at everything else.”

Boy, did I know that story.  I wondered again what the hell I was doing here.  Clearly this was a family matter.  I didn't get involved in other people's business.  Rule of the Con number twelve: 
Don't get into trouble.  Especially other people's trouble
.  But then I remembered Mr. Pete and the two grand.  This was my trouble.

We crossed into the mountains, and the temperature started dropping.  I zipped up my sweater and got brave enough to turn the channel on the radio.  The next button was NPR.  Sure, why wouldn't it be?  I hit the next button, and it was the typical top forty hype, but it was better than talk radio.  I wondered what Harrison's response would be to my actions, but he didn't take his eyes off the road.  Most guys I knew held their radios to be sacred.  Clearly, Harrison wasn't that type. 

“Why do you think that N…your cousin is doing this?”  I asked, as we pulled off the Cedar Crest exit. 

I'd driven by Cedar Crest before, but it was the kind of place that I couldn't afford to even look at the houses for fear I'd somehow break something.  The places weren't close together, but instead were buried in the trees, cedar and glass poking out in unexpected places.  Cedar Crest proper wasn't much, only a few businesses, mostly coffee shops, gift shops and yoga places.

Harrison pulled off on to a side road and headed up the mountain before he answered me. 

“I'm not sure.  Nate and I aren't close.  We've never been.  I mean, he thinks I have a stick up my butt, and I kind of think he's a giant walking penis, but I don't know why he'd try something so pointless.  I mean, what could he hope to gain?”

That was an excellent question, and something I hadn't yet figured out.  I was hoping to get a feel for Nate and his game once I met him in person.  The road that Harrison drove on was heavily wooded, not particularly well-paved and, so far, barren of human life, though I did see a skunk and two coyotes.  Finally, when we'd driven up the hill for at least four miles, the peak came into view, and a house sat on the top like a “cabin” cupcake topper. 

A bizarre mix of backwoods meets intense contemporary, the house that Harrison's cousin lived in looked like two different architects had designed it.  Large cedar beams covered everything that wasn't windows on the three-story house.  The majority of the place was windows.  And not one of them had curtains.  I could see right into the downstairs bath when we pulled into the drive.  What did they do when they wanted to be naked?