The Tell-Tale Con (3 page)

He smiled slightly, but the smile lacked as much sincerity as my demands to myself to leave this mess alone.  “Sure.  Sorry about coming over to your place.  I didn't know.”

Now why did he have to apologize?  I felt even worse. 

“Don't worry about that.” 

I wanted to say something else, but I
needed
to not say something else.  So I left him on the sidewalk and dodged back over to Mr. Wong's without a backward glance. 

 

The collect call from Dad came at 7:00 on the dot, as usual.  Mom always acted like maybe this time she wouldn't take it, but she always did.  Dad and Mom were truly criminals, but they seemed to have a relationship that most people's parents never managed.  They loved each other, and were devoted to one another in their own strange way. 

I said hello because I felt like I had to.  It was all I could do for him.  Not that he didn't deserve to be in jail.  And it wasn't like doing two to five in a low security prison in the SoCal sun was the worst thing ever.  Regardless, he was still my dad. 

Once my mom was busy recounting some of her better lies of the past week, I escaped to my room.  I hurried across the hardwood floors, my bare feet objecting to the cold.  Evidently a lot of people weren't drying things tonight. 

The Wong building had been built somewhere around World War II, and, like most buildings that were seventy years old, it was drafty and creaky and filled with nice details interspersed with horrible crap people had added during the last renovation, circa 1972. 

We lived behind the work area of Mystic Madam Megdala's in a little apartment that was perhaps 600 square feet, if we were lucky.  I wasn't sure what the original intention of these rooms had been, if someone had lived here from the start or not, but I was pretty sure my bedroom had once been a janitor's closet.  However, the apartment had two bedrooms and an ugly, but functional kitchen. 

Which was better than our first place after Dad had gone to jail, where we'd been forced to share a single room and cook on a smuggled in hot plate. 

My room faced the same direction as the lobby did, my window also overlooking The Library.  Though I didn't have the same impressive bank of windows our lobby did, the view wasn't bad.

 My bed was positioned directly under the window, and I knelt on my knees and spent way too long staring at The Library wondering which window was Harrison's and what he would hear tonight while he was supposed to be asleep.  Then I spent another few minutes wondering why I cared. 

Then a few more being irrationally pissed at Harrison because I did.

Later, once homework was done for the weekend and I had given up on staring across the street, I slept, waking up frequently.  I dreamt I was being hunted by a demon who kept incessantly talking to me in the dark.  Spurred on by his insatiable need to tell me about his love of pop music and Hollywood starlets and his personal life.  Including the fact that, contrary to what one might anticipate in dealing with a demon, his name was Larry and he was a huge fan of squash.  The vegetable, not the British sport.  

It was the weirdest dream I'd ever had, and I woke up when it was still dark, surly and achy from sleeping in the wrong position.  I couldn't blame Harrison for my bad rest, though I wanted to.  I also couldn't sleep anymore, though I was still exhausted. 

So I dragged myself out of bed and into the kitchen. 

I was the sole cook in our family.  Dad came and went like an errant breeze, and Mom's idea of culinary mastery was a bologna sandwich with chips shoved inside.  Which, by the way, is pretty good.  I'm just saying.  But if it wasn't for me and our personal chef, Boyardee, we'd all have starved a long time ago.  I wasn't much of a cook either.  I knew just enough to get by, and it depended entirely on how high your standards of getting by were.

I poured myself a bowl of cereal and a diet soda on the avocado green Formica countertop and gave myself some time to shake the fugue of bad sleep and weird dreams.  I had an idea brewing.  And those are never good.  When the clock hit eight, I grabbed the phone and made a call. 

I didn't have friends, per se.  I was more of the acquaintance type.  Relationships were too high maintenance, and my family would likely move in a few months anyway, though Mom swore she was in love with the Land of Enchantment, and we were here for good, or at least until Dad was done with his incarceration. 

But I had people I hung around with.  I was pretty fond of some of them, though I wasn't willing to commit to a real friendship with any of them.  If I had to pick, however, I would have said my favorite person at Metropolitan High School was Samantha Spenser.  Sam didn't care what people thought, and neither did I.  Of course, our reasons weren't exactly the same.  Sam had a level of confidence that was almost frightening.  She was like the Fukishima of self-assurance, exploding all over with personal worth.

I didn't care what other people thought of me because I couldn't bring myself to care about them at all.  Sometimes a person came along and affected me enough to make me wonder how they viewed me.  But it happened so rarely that I could count the instances on my fingers. 

I cared about Sam's opinion, though.  If we stayed around long enough I was sure I'd have to give in and count her as a friend. 

While the phone rang I made a note on a piece of paper to pick up batteries for the incessantly beeping smoke detector.  While that kind of crap drove me nuts, my mom didn't care that it was making terrible noises.  And it wasn't as though this building had a maintenance man.  We had Mr. Wong and his family, but they made it clear that unless the house was falling down around us, our miniscule rent meant we were on our own. 

When Sam picked up, I said hello and asked, “Do you have Harrison's phone number?”

Sam had everyone's phone number.  She had a special skill for remembering the names, faces and interests of pretty much every person she'd ever met.  It took me a good dozen times meeting someone to even remember we'd met before and twice that to remember their name. 

“Who is Harrison?”  She sounded like she was eating. 

I rolled my eyes as she so easily made me a liar in my admiration of her ability to remember everyone.  I was sure she did know him.  “Harrison Poe.  My lab partner.”

We were in the same honors biology class so she had to have seen him.

“The chess guy?”  I could still hear her chewing.

I smiled slightly.  “Yeah, the chess guy.”

“Are you calling him?  Are you asking him out?”  Her voice rose on the end of the question, and I could feel her incredulity and mounting excitement through the line.  “Why him?” 

“I'm not asking him out.  I found out yesterday he lives across the street.  I just wanted to ask him something.”

Her voice sounded muffled.  “Really?” 

I pulled the phone away from my ear with a flinch.  Hers must have dropped, hitting the ground with a painful clatter.  There was scraping, another smaller clatter, and Sam came back on.  “Like where?”

“In those lofts of The Library.”

She drew in a hard breath.  “Have you been in those things?  Spence Wiggins used to live there before his dad went belly up.  They're, like, completely insane.  Everything is made out of marble and gold leaf and crap.”

  I had no clue who Spence Wiggins was, but I didn't tell her that.  For all I knew the guy sat at the same lunch table as us every freaking day.  “Right.  Spence.  I've only been in the lobby.  It's pretty fancy.” 

“You have no clue who Spence is, do you?”

Crap.  Clearly she already knew me too well, which felt dangerous.  “Not completely,” I hedged.

“He's that guy I dated at the beginning of the year.”

Whew.  I didn't feel too bad.  I'd barely known her then, and Metro High was massive.  Our class had a good seven hundred people in it.  “Oh right, him.”  For some reason I'd been certain that guy's name was Stewie.  Go figure.

“Anyway, whatever.  He lived there for like a year.  It's totally posh.  Ridiculous.  They won't let you in without, like, written permission.  Anyway, why do you want to call Harrison?”

“I told you, I need to ask him something.” 

“Out?”

It took me a second to figure out what she meant.  “No, not out.  Why is everything about dating to you?  I just need to ask him about something he told me yesterday.”

“Harrison is cute enough.  And his dad is Van Poe.  That's all you really need to know.”  What she meant was Harrison's dad was Van, and that made him cute enough.  “How'd you find out he lives across the street?”

Lying came so easily to me it was almost pathetic.  But I couldn't give away Harrison's secrets.  That would be totally uncool of me.  “I ran into him on the sidewalk.  We talked for a few minutes, and I found out he lives across the street.  It was pretty uneventful actually.  Do you have his number or not?”

Sam caught on to the fact that I was getting impatient, but that made her more suspicious of my motives.  “Okay, okay.  I'm dying to know what you're going to ask him, though.”

“I lost something,” I lied again.  “I was hoping maybe I left it behind on the sidewalk.”

“Oh.”  Disappointment rang clear in her voice.  “Well, tell him I said hi.”

“Sure.”  Because they were such good friends before this moment, on account of the fact she'd known exactly who I was referring to. 

Sam rattled off the number, and I said goodbye.  I didn't bother to write the number down.  As aforementioned, like Sam with most people's names, I always remember numbers. 

I spent an hour debating whether or not offering Harrison my help would be getting too involved.  I had standards of staying out of other people's business to maintain. 

And I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted from him or what I was willing to offer.  I just knew he needed help that I was in the position to give.  I also knew I needed money, something he was in the position to give.

I dialed, hung up, and then dialed again.  I wasn't nervous.  But I wasn't sure I'd made the right choice, either.  Before I could hang up again, someone picked up the line.  “Hello?” 

It was a woman.  No one I knew.  I hadn't realized Van Poe was married.  I'd simply assumed that, like everyone else in Hollywood, he was divorced.  “Can I…is Harrison there?”

I hated when I sounded stupid.  I wanted to launch into an explanation of why I was calling and that I wasn't trying to pick up on Harrison, but anything I said would only make it worse.  So I just clamped my jaw and waited. 

“Why you want him?”  Her accent was heavily Asian, maybe Japanese though I wasn't entirely sure, and her usage of the English language suggested she hadn't been here long.  “Who are you?”

“We're lab partners at school.  My name is Talia.  Jones.”

“You stay.  I get him.”  

Like I was going to hang up now.  I already felt curiously like I'd been grilled by the woman when she hadn't spoken but two lines to me.  It was her tone of voice, like I was some slutty girl after her son. 

“Hello?” 

“I've been thinking about what you told me yesterday.”

“Talia?” 

Okay, he hadn't been told who I was, despite the fact the woman had asked.  “Yeah.  I think…I think I can help you.”

 

 

Rules of the Scam #34

Don't forget your story.  Ever, ever, ever…

 

I met Harrison at a restaurant up the street.  It was one of those kitschy retro things, built inside an Airstream.  The only edible thing they sold was dessert.  I played it safe and ordered a malt.  Chocolate.  Harrison clearly didn't know the score here and ordered a burger.  It was
his
stomach lining. 

When the waitress was gone, Harrison turned to me.  “You don't have to help me, you know.  I'm…I feel bad about coming over.  If I'd have known that
Private Ike
was gone, I never would have.”

“Really, it doesn't matter.  I embarrassed myself on the phone with your mom too, it's all good.”

Confusion flashed before he smiled.  “That wasn't my mom.  It was…well, I guess it was my step-grandmother.  I think.  She's my step-mom, Kanako's, mother.  She's visiting from Japan.  I never met her before yesterday, and I can't say her name at all, no matter how many times she tells me.  It sounds like ‘My Sharona' to me so that's what I call her in my head.”

I smiled, too, surprised I was allowing myself to become so engaged in the conversation.  I had no idea what hold Harrison had over me in this situation, but I wasn't certain I liked it at all.  Yesterday I would have said that Harrison Poe was my lab partner and wouldn't have been able to give much more than that.  Now I was irritatingly compelled to solve his problems, merely because I knew I could.  Well, and for the two thousand dollars he would have paid anyway.  Money that would keep Mom out of jail or keep us from running again. 

I pulled the plastic card
Private Ike
had left behind in our offices and slapped it down on the table.  It was yellow and lumpy and peeling at the edges.

He glanced down at it.  “What is this?” 

I took a deep breath.  “It's
Private Ike's
rates.  He left it behind when he left.  Look, I wasn't kidding yesterday when I said your demon hunt is a scam.  And it sounds like a good one.  If there's one thing I know, it's liars.  I'm not a licensed detective, but frankly I'm guessing
Private Ike
probably wasn't either, considering.  And at least you know that I won't call the tabloids.”