The Tell-Tale Con (9 page)

Harrison pulled into the massive south parking lot of Albuquerque Metropolitan High School.  “It's interesting to me that you're so terrible at remembering people's names and yet so insanely good at remembering numbers.”

“Are you trying to psychoanalyze me?” 

That was the last thing I needed.  I could have given him a million answers.  Numbers were reliable.  They were constant and steadfast.  I didn't have to guess with numbers.  People weren't like that.  But I didn't want to give him anything.  I didn't want to be questioned. 

“No, I'm saying it's weird.  That's all.”  It was obvious he thought I was out of my mind, and maybe I was.  But I hated feeling like I was being picked at, that people were trying to figure me out.  I was no one's mark. 

The silence in the car was deafening and awkward.  I was definitely sorry that I hadn't reacted like a normal person and laughed the whole thing off.  Either way, it didn't matter.  It was over now.  The whole thing was.  Harrison wasn't being hunted by a demon, I didn't need to figure anything else out, my mom's debt was paid, and we could all go on our merry ways. 

If that was a depressing idea, I needed to spend more time going over the reason again that I didn't have, or need, good friends.  I flung open the car door and stepped out, wishing I'd thought to bring another set of clothes.  Harrison got out too, tossing his sunglasses and hat on the seat before he shut the door. 

“I'm sorry that you didn't find out anything, and I'm sorry about your cousin,” I said.  “Obviously, though, it's a good thing your original issue is resolved.”

He cocked his head, a smile twitching at the edges of his lips.  Hell if I knew what was funny though.  “Thank you, Talia.  You've been very helpful.  I can honestly say I don't know what I would have done without you.”

“Yeah, I'm great in a pinch.” 

I had no idea why his words pissed me off, but they did.  Maybe it was the whole money thing again.  I really hated feeling guilty.  I didn't wear it well.  We started across the parking lot side by side while I got increasingly more annoyed.  I didn't feel like I could tell him to go away, but I didn't want him there either. 

Every reason we had for being together was now over.  I needed to ditch him somehow.  I did not need a friend, and I certainly didn't need anything else either.

“Talia, listen…”

I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what he was going to say, but then it didn't matter anyway.  He shoved me hard out of nowhere, knocking me down.  I would have yelled at him, but, oddly, I was too busy screaming and getting all the air smashed out of me.  When I thought I could start breathing again, Harrison's heavy body landed on mine. 

Whatever air I had left pushed out in a hard whoosh and dirt and rocks peppered us as a small, red car kicked up debris from the parking lot as it roared by.  I heard the tires squeal as the vehicle sped away. 

“Did you see that coming?”  I wheezed out.

That was a question from the land of the obvious. 

Unless he just liked jumping on chicks randomly in parking lots, it was a pretty good guess he'd seen it coming.  I asked a more reasonable question.  “Are we going to assume this isn't a random accident?”

He shook his head, his eyebrows drawn harshly together.  “Talia…”  This close I noticed his pupils were streaked with a lighter brown in the middle, the caramel again. 

He met my eyes and whispered,   “I'm pretty sure my leg is broken.”

 

 

Rules of the Scam #15

Know which tools to use…

 

As it turned out Harrison's leg was not broken.  His shin bone was badly bruised, however.  I knew this because we were in the same emergency room separated only by a thin, rough looking blue curtain.  He would have to stay off the leg for three days to a week and keep it elevated, or he ran the risk of a stress fracture, which would require a cast. 

He clearly didn't want that information.  

Neither of us wanted to be at the hospital, but the ambulance hadn't offered us a choice since we were under eighteen.  And we'd had no choice about the ambulance coming, since someone else had called for it, or the police, who were also called by someone else. 

We definitely wouldn't have called them.

By tacit agreement Harrison and I didn't tell the police anything that some random witness wouldn't be able to tell them.  I had elected long before I was interviewed to say nothing.  If Harrison wanted the cops to hear our convoluted story he would tell them himself.  Which he didn't do. 

We both stuck to the basics.  A car had been speeding through the parking lot.  It had missed us only because Harrison had seen it coming and pushed me out of the way.  His own attempts to get out of the way weren't entirely successful because the car clipped his leg on the way down. 

I couldn't provide any description besides small and red, though I could have detailed the rush of dust and gravel as the car sped away.  Harrison described it to the police as a small, older model foreign car.  In a high school parking lot this was a pretty useless description.  Sort of akin to describing a suspect in an elementary school parking lot as driving a blue minivan. 

Besides having a bruised butt and a bruised ego, I was unhurt.  The cops grew bored of me pretty quickly when they figured out that I hadn't seen the car, and bored with Harrison not too long after that.  It was obvious that they thought this was a matter of some kid driving too fast on school property.  Maybe it was. 

But probably it wasn't. 

I had no intention of correcting their assumption.  I needed the cops gone.  Like yesterday.  They finally gave both of us a card, asked us to call if we remembered anything, and left us alone in the emergency room.  Once they were gone, Harrison yanked the curtain open.  “I think the driver was a girl.”

That was information he hadn't given the police.  “Really?  Did she look familiar?”

He shook his head.  “I don't know.  Maybe.  She was coming at me awfully fast.  I didn't get a lot of details, you know.”

He'd gotten enough to stop us from getting run over.  And that was worth a lot.  “Hey, Harrison, thanks.”

He seemed confused.  “For what?”

“Uh, for pushing me out of the way of a speeding death machine?”

His mouth pinched.  “I'm thinking that if not for me it wouldn't have happened at all.  So let's skip the gratitude.”

At that moment my ride showed up.  The hospital wanted to release us to our parents, but there was no way my mom would close up the shop.  She'd promised to send someone, and I wasn't surprised the someone was Mr. Wong.  It wasn't like we knew a lot of people.  But Mr. Wong had his own family and his own problems. 

Maybe he'd been afraid that no one would ever come for me. 

Right on his heels was a small, grandmotherly Asian woman in a dumpy pantsuit.  For a second I thought she was with Mr. Wong, but she didn't look familiar to me.  It was only when she pointed a bony finger at Harrison and demanded, “Why you always in trouble?” that I realized she must be My Sharona. 

Mr. Wong didn't seem to notice her at all.  He was honed in completely on me.  “Talia, this is the result of your mother's indifference.  Look at you here.  In this hospital bed.  You need to get a real future.  Get a nice job, like in a laundry.”

I pulled myself out of bed, while My Sharona began cussing Harrison out in Japanese.  Well, I didn't know what she was saying exactly, but it wasn't praises.  I slid on my shoes.  “I'm still in high school Mr. Wong.  I don't need a job yet.”

“If you had a job, you wouldn't have been cruising in the parking lot with bad influences.”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing.  “I was going to class, Mr. Wong.  It was the school parking lot.”

Next to me, My Sharona was on a tear, and she didn't seem to care that Harrison didn't understand her.  Or maybe he did.  It wouldn't be the most shocking thing in the world if Harrison knew Japanese or Russian, American Sign Language or the Morse Code. 

Mr. Wong muttered something in Chinese, which I definitely did not know, and reached for my coat.  My eyes met Harrison's, and from the quirk of his mouth and quick shrug, he didn't miss the absurdity of the situation, both of us in the emergency room getting yelled at by angry, aggressive, elderly Asian people who weren't actually related to us. 

What a life.

I struggled towards the door, and Harrison lifted his hand in the shape of a phone and mouthed, “I'll call you.”  At least that's what I thought he was mouthing.  Really it could have been  “I loathe you” or  “I'll kill you.”  But I was pretty sure he was promising to call. 

Mr. Wong stopped short of actually dragging me out of the hospital by my ear.  It seemed unlikely I could convince him to stop at Taco Grande so I could pick up a burrito, so I didn't bother asking.  But I'd missed breakfast and now lunch.  I was freaking starving, and I was sure there was nothing to eat at home.  So I was either going to have to suffer or go grocery shopping. 

I was still mentally going through the back of my cabinets scavenging for leftover crackers or old cereal by the time we got back to Mr. Wong's.  I left him in the laundry, the sound of him directing me about my future career paths echoing off the walls. 

Upstairs, Mom was in the main lobby waiting on a client.  She was playing solitaire because if she scooped up the cards quickly clients might think they were tarot cards.  She glanced up at me. 

“Oh, you're here.  Mr. Wong said you were fine.”

“Yep.  Here I am.  Fine.” 

She didn't look up at me again, just turned over the next card.  “We're out of food.”

“Yeah, I know.” 

I went into our living area and closed the door.  I didn't need a list right now of all the things that she needed me to do.  I was too tired.  And my butt hurt.  The shock of the jolt seemed like it might have jarred my back a little too.  My muscles and spine were starting to protest.  I dug around in the kitchen until I came up with a can of tuna and a piece of bread that looked a little suspect but would do.  After my questionable and pathetic lunch, I took some over the counter pain pills and climbed back into bed. 

True to his word, or his pantomime as it were, Harrison woke me up by calling around six.  The silly little walkie-talkie cell phone was still in my pants, and my butt vibrating like crazy turned out to be a bizarre way to wake up. 

I fumbled around for the button.  “Lo?”

“Talia?  Did I wake you up?”

“I guess.”  I wiped my eyes.  It was dark outside.  I'd gone to bed during the day so my room was dark.  And cold. 

“Sorry.  I was just wondering if you could drive me to school in the morning.”

“I don't have a car.” 

Where he thought I'd been keeping the car he hoped I would drive him in, I had no idea. 

“I don't want you to give me a ride, I want you to drive me.  Like in my car.  I'm not allowed to put any weight on my right leg, and if you don't drive me, My Sharona will.”

I smiled slightly, struggling to sit up under my mountain of blankets.  “She seemed pretty pissed at you earlier.”

“Apparently I'm a trouble maker.  I'm always the last to know.” 

“Well, she did say you're always in trouble.”

“Evidently.  Who was that man who picked you up?”

I wasn't sure I wanted to answer him.  Who knew what he could infer from Mr. Wong's position in my life, but it seemed like a giant blinking neon arrow pointing to my mother's disinterest and my father's absence.  But it would be doubly bizarre if I tried to dodge the question.  “That's Mr. Wong.  He owns—”

“Mr. Wong's?”  Harrison volunteered. 

“That's the one.  You're a regular psychic.”

“Haha.  Tell your mother to watch out.”  He was silent for a moment.  “How did your mom end up as a psychic anyway?”

Now there was a question I had no intention of answering honestly.  Mom becoming Mystic Madam Megdala was actually a direct result of my actions, not hers.  With Dad in prison it seemed expedient to find a job that was at least somewhat respectable.  Sadly, however, Mom had zero skills for anything but grifting.  She also had no skills for finding work.  So it became my job to find her a job.  There were a lot of things she could do that rode the fine line between conning and a touch of legality. 

She could sell things from home—makeup, cleaning products, clothing—in programs that were hardly short of pyramid schemes.  She could “help” people “work from home.”  We even tried Mr. Pete's for a bit, but we all knew how that had ended up.  In the end I gave up on craigslist and went with her strengths: telling people what they wanted to hear and pretending.  I was even the one who had picked out this space above Mr. Wong's.  She went along with my plans and signed on whatever dotted lines I showed her. 

That wasn't a story I was going to tell.  So instead I went with something the child of a Hollywood producer would understand. 

“My mom's best skill is acting.  She has a talent for being anything people want, but she couldn't find other work.”  Individually, every one of those statements was the truth, but together they created a lie.  It was another skill I had learned at the knees of grifters. 

As suspected, Harrison knew enough failed actors that he didn't falter.  Just made a noise of easy agreement and let me move on to another topic.  “Do you think the driver of that car was trying to hurt you?”  I asked.

“Well, I don't know.  But I don't believe in coincidences, and that was no kid.  She was old.  Like at least mom aged.  Maybe older.  Talia, I think I spoke too quickly earlier.  About giving up.  I think I want to make sure that it was Nate.”