The Love Scam

by MaryJanice Davidson, Camille Anthony, Melissa Schroeder

  “Enroll in what?”

  He waved away the Meadows School. “It’s a pricey private school in Vegas. Although it wouldn’t be my first choice, ’cause I wouldn’t want her to grow up into an entitled rich d— We’re getting off track.”

  “That’s a fair point about my word,” she admitted. “But you won’t have to take my word for it much longer—”

  “I’m not taking your word for it at all.”

  “—because we’ll have the DNA results in a couple of days.”

  What

  the

  fuck?

  When he was sure he wouldn’t scream, he said, “It sounded like you said you’re waiting on DNA results. But that can’t be right, since I haven’t submitted DNA for such a test.”

  “Now, don’t turn this around on me,” she began, and he groaned.

  “Literally every time someone says that, it’s because they want the focus off whatever horrible fucking thing they just did.”

  “Hey, it’s my job.”

  “It’s your job to hang out in Italy to procure DNA for a test you arranged without the subject’s permission?”

  She shrugged. “Kinda.”

  He pressed his fingers to his temples and rubbed. Squash … urge … to strangle … gorgeous nutjob … “Okay, first? That’s weird. You’re a weird girl, Delaney. Second, how the hell did you manage to get your hands on my precious, precious DNA, annnnnnd now I’m remembering that I barfed on you a couple of times. It’s my own fault,” he admitted. “I was practically giving it away!”

  Delaney made a strange noise, like she was trying to turn a laugh into a cough. “The point is—”

  “You have a weird job that requires you to do weird things.”

  “—you won’t have to take my word about Lillith when the results come in. So.”

  “So…”

  “So you’ll know she’s yours—or not—and you can arrange your life accordingly.”

  He could only stare. “Just like that.”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s just that easy.”

  “I don’t think it’ll be easy at all, but that’s how it is.”

  “And if I’m not her father?”

  “Then you’re not her father and I go to the next guy on the list. That’s why I’m here. I was hired to track down and test the candidates, and give the lucky winner custody of Lillith.”

  “Right, but … if I’m not the proud papa, what happens next?” Not that it was any of his business, but from where he was standing, this looked like a barely contained mess. So once he was out of the picture, where did that leave Lillith?

  Not that he cared.

  “Then it’s no longer your problem.”

  “And I’m one of the names on your list because…” He’d bet the money in his wallet in the canal that the safe held her list, and probably some other goodies, too.

  “Because her mother said so. And in nine years, Donna Alvah never lied to me.”

  “Ah-ha!” He felt like jumping up and down but was wary of crushing Peeps and chocolate Easter eggs. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Except we aren’t, because you’ve said that name before and weren’t forthcoming either time.” A pause while her words sank in, then: “You’ve known Lillith’s mom for almost a decade?”

  “We served together.”

  “Like, in the army? You look like you’re in your early twenties. Are you a veteran? And—”

  She cut him off with an impatient gesture. “We were friends and then we weren’t. She went for a different life and that was fine. But then she got into trouble and her default kicked in, which was to make a big mess and then disappear. And that’s when everything went tits-up,” Delaney finished with more than a hint of bitterness.

  Whoa. “You’re mad at her,” he realized aloud. At least that’s what it sounded like. Christ. Even when he was getting details, he wasn’t really getting details. “Wait, this Donna person, she went into hiding? Like a WITSEC thing?”

  “No, Lillith did.”

  “Why? And when?”

  “That’s where it gets murky—”

  “Oh, that’s where?”

  “—because the thing is—”

  “The thing is, Mama hid me and got run over, so it took a long time to find me,” Lillith said from the bathroom doorway, and then burst into tears.

  Thirteen

  Five minutes later, Rake was putting yet another freshly wrung-out washcloth onto Lillith’s forehead. “There. And when this one stops helping, I’ll get you another one. If you want it.”

  “Why do you keep doing that?” Delaney asked impatiently.

  “Because he doesn’t know what else to do,” the child answered. She patted the washcloth. “It’s okay. I’m better now.”

  “I’m so sorry about your mom. And that you got upset. Can I get you anything else?” Rake glanced around the suite for something to give her and cursed his lack of funds yet again. The Bible? No. The room service menus? No. The tiny shampoo? “Do—do you want a hundred Peeps? I could probably make it five hundred if you needed it. Just wait until I leave before you start gobbling them up. I couldn’t bear to watch.”

  Lillith sniffed. “You can’t leave. You’re my dad, maybe.”

  “It was—uh—I was only joking. About leaving.” Probably. “Do you—do you feel like talking?”

  “No. But I will anyway.” The child sighed and sat up, and Rake deftly caught the washcloth as it fell. She fussed with her shirt, smoothing it over her belly, and then speared him with that disconcerting direct gaze. When this kid isn’t going totally unnoticed, she can glare into your soul. It’s … kind of awesome, and now that I think about it, Mom does the same—

  He cut off that line of thought. Fast.

  “My mother,” she began, as if reciting a book report, “did bad things for good reasons. She took things from bad men. And sometimes she found out they did something bad, and they’d do nice things for her so no one else would find out they did something bad.”

  Jesus Christ in a handcar. “So she was a thief and a blackmailer. Ow!” Rake rubbed his now-throbbing foot and glared at Delaney. “Really? I’m the one who’s out of line in this story?”

  “And one day,” Lillith continued loudly, sounding like an aggrieved elementary school teacher, “she found out something really bad about someone who lived in Colorado, too. Something much, much worse than what she was looking for. And while Mama was making a plan for us to run, she … she died.”

  “Please don’t take this the wrong way, honey,” he begged, “but where do I fit into this story?”

  “Nowhere. That’s the problem.” This from Madame Spoilsport in the corner. Well, near the corner. “I didn’t know any of this until it was almost too late. It might still be too late. And nobody counted on your coming to Venice.”

  “Yeah, including me.”

  “But here you are. And that’s very curious. But, ultimately, it’s not as important as Lillith’s safety and well-being, which are the top priority.”

  There was an expectant (insulting!) pause, which Rake defensively broke. “What? I’m not gonna argue that. Why would I argue that? She’s a kid who lost her mom and people have to look out for her. A mom I didn’t know, by the way. Just to reiterate. Again.”

  “That’s because she changed her name after the Noodle Incident.”

  For a second, Rake thought he was going to have a stroke. Half his body seemed to go numb and the other half heated up, like he was some kind of weird Iceman/Human Torch Marvel hybrid. He opened his mouth and let out a tiny croak, all the noise he could muster, since his saliva had dried up.

  Finally: “The Noodle Incident we promised each other we’d never talk about. Which is why she changed her name to Nedra Naseef,” he said, and if he’d had any doubts, Lillith’s beam was answer enough.

  Fourteen

  Eight years ago

  “This is no way to live,” the woman who was going to change her name from whatever it w
as

  (Debra? Dana?)

  to Nedra Naseef commented. “I’m not reliving my childhood. The first time was bad enough.”

  “Guh,” Rake replied, because he was too exhausted to attempt words of more than one syllable. Armed with an out-of-date Fodor’s, he and the cute brunette he met at the Bridge of Sighs had decided to find the infamous Cruising Pavilion and christen it. And by “met,” he meant “was bowled over by.” In fact, he’d heard her

  (“It’s called the Bridge of Sighs because it was the last thing prisoners saw before they were locked up! For years! And sometimes tortured! Brutally! It is not romantic in the slightest, morons!”)

  before he saw her. One thing about American tourists, you can always spot them. Or hear them. Often without trying! His admiration only increased when he saw the petite brunette with the curves of a courtesan and the mouth

  (“Oh, I’m out of line? You’re the shithead who thinks it’s romantic to take a selfie where dead men were chained up! So go fuck yourself!”)

  of a Red Sox fan.

  “Bad enough I’m falling back into bad habits,” Nedra was saying, pulling her woefully grass-stained shirt back over her head, “but the Cruising Pavilion isn’t even a club. It’s an exhibition. A closed one,” she added in a mutter, as if an art exhibit should be open at 1:30 A.M. on a Tuesday.

  “Toldja.” Hey, two syllables! Maybe his heart rate was starting to come down. “But I like how this little park served as a handy substitute.”

  “Not to mention,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “it’s an exhibit about homosexual cruising.”

  “What?” He sat up from where he’d sprawled on the grass. “But that means we did it all wrong!”

  She gaped at him for a moment, then let out a string of giggles. “We’ll never be able to hold our heads up in high society again. Or low society.”

  “Oh, the humanity,” he agreed.

  “And don’t take this the wrong way, but we’re never to speak of this again.”

  “The screwing-up gay sex part, or the—”

  “All of it. Any of it. It’s gonna be the thing we know about but never talk about, like the Noodle Incident trope.”

  “Weird. But fine. But I think you’re overreacting. It’s not like we’ve done anything wr—”

  “Polizia! Sei in arresto per aver commesso un atto osceno in un luogo pubblico!”

  “Oh hell,” she groaned. “It’s my senior prom all over again.”

  “Osceno? Obscene?” Rake yelped at the cops coming forward. “It was beautiful, dammit!”

  Fifteen

  “… so then we paid the five-hundred-euro fine and went our separate ways and I never saw her again. And we were sort of … uh … banned.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “From the city of Venice.”

  “Oh.”

  “For life.”

  “Ah.”

  “Our kids, too. They were pretty mad—the cops, the mayor, the guy in charge of keeping the park sex-free…”

  “That’s not fair,” Lillith protested. She tossed the latest wet washcloth on the floor for emphasis. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t want to be banned. What if I want to go to the Accademia di Belle Arti?”

  All Rake could do was shrug an apology and wonder, yet again, when he was going to wake up.

  “So you did know Donna,” Delaney said, blatantly ignoring the beauty of the tale of tender lovemaking to hone in on one teeny insignificant detail.

  “Briefly.” He wasn’t sure how much of this was appropriate in front of Lillith. None of it would be his first guess. “Okay, so—I was wrong, I did know your mom.” And to Delaney, because it was time to face up to the inevitable: “You said the DNA results will be back in a couple of days?”

  “Yep. But that’s not your only problem.”

  “My missing money,” he said glumly.

  She waved away the looming problem of his vanished fortune. “Not that, either.”

  “There are bigger problems than a mystery kid—no offense, Lillith—and finding myself broke in a forbidden city with dried shit in my hair?”

  “Yes. Because we don’t know if Donna’s death was an accident. Myself, I’m not a fan of coincidences. But I don’t like conspiracy theories, either. Here it is: Donna found out something, either by accident or because she was falling into old habits. That I can tell you for sure. But I don’t know what it was. She sent me some paperwork the week she died.…”

  “What kind of paperwork?”

  “Some letters, and the fact that she thought you might be Lillith’s father. She also referenced a flash drive … but that’s it. I don’t know where the flash drive is or what was on it. And I couldn’t make that my first priority, because finding Lillith was my first priority. And now that she’s with me, there are still questions to be answered. And if Donna’s death was an accident, that still leaves the issue of Lillith’s minority.”

  “I can take care of myself.” The child sniffed.

  Delaney smiled. “I don’t doubt it, but that’s not what your mother would have wanted. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “All that sounds bad,” Rake observed.

  “Tell me. So we have to figure out what’s going on pretty damned quick, because we’re way behind. And we have to keep Lillith safe, because she could very well be in danger.” To Lillith: “Sorry to be so blunt.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. Mama always said it’s worse to keep quiet about trouble.…”

  Oh, is that what the thieving blackmailer taught you?

  “… and pollomerda to pretend it’s not there.”

  Rake blinked and wondered if society’s rules against children saying chickenshit in casual conversation applied if the child in question swore in another language.

  Best not to dwell.

  “And that’s where I come in,” he guessed.

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Hey!”

  “You’re plan D,” Delaney continued, “the backup plan to the backup plan’s backup plan.”

  “I’ll have you know I’ve never been plan D in my life,” he said hotly. “I’m always plan B!” Huh. This is a weird thing to brag about.

  “And we need you both for this.” She gestured to the room with candy on literally every surface. Even the windowsills!

  “You said it was cover.”

  “It is. But that doesn’t mean there’s not work to do. Don’t worry, the charities are real, and we really will deliver the Easter baskets.”

  “I can honestly say I wasn’t worried about either of those things.”

  “But we need the bad guys looking in the wrong direction.”

  “If there are bad guys.” He knew it was childish to cling to the hope that the people who might or might not have murdered Lillith’s mother didn’t exist and this was all some odd misunderstanding culminating in his reversal of fortune, but he couldn’t help hoping.

  “While my friends and I are investigating, you’ll be here doing this, which, while tedious, is safer than you and Lillith being out and about on your own. Now listen, Rake—this is important.”

  “As opposed to all the unimportant stuff you’ve already told me?”

  She ignored the sarcasm as well as Lillith’s giggle. “You have to look like you’re doing anything but protecting someone incredibly valuable. You have to make people believe you’re an oblivious American idiot who’s just in town to have fun and you aren’t worried about a thing except getting everything in your wallet replaced because you jumped into the canal—”

  “Fell!”

  “—like a typical American moron. And you lost your passport during your drunken shenanigans in Lake Como the night before. And you can’t go to the cops because you defiled—”

  “Hey!”

  “—a public park. So you’re earning your keep by filling and delivering Easter baskets and just killing time until your paperwork’s replaced.”

  “This sounds like
the plot of a terrible on-demand series.”

  “Tough nuts.” Delaney shrugged. “It’s what we’ve got.”

  “But that’ll take—” All the chocolate and pastels and Peeps

  (they’re STARING at me)

  were making it hard to think. “Hours.”

  “Longer.”

  “Maybe a couple of days, depending.”

  “Yep. And remember: Lillith is the priority, and you don’t exist.”

  “I totally agree.” Wait. “Of course I exist!”

  “Nope.”

  Were he and a woman he’d just met really debating his existence in a room full of eggs and baskets and fake Easter grass and Peeps while his possible illegitimate child looked on? And, speaking of that, wasn’t it past Lillith’s bedtime? What was her bedtime? And shouldn’t she be in school, instead of hiding in hotel rooms? Who was in charge of that stuff? Given how self-possessed and mature she seemed, Rake wouldn’t have been surprised if Lillith was in charge of that stuff. “Delaney. I absolutely exist.”

  She shook her head so hard, long dark waves of hair tumbled into her face, and with a flick of her head, she jerked them back. “Not without paper. Not without plastic, not these days. You’re officially a nonentity—at least as far as the Italian government is concerned.”

  “You leave them out of this. And what the hell is with that accent, anyway?” he demanded, aware that he was deflecting even as he deflected like crazy. “Where are you from?”

  “Minnesota.”

  “Oh.” That explained it. Not really a twang, and not quite Canadian. A drawl, but not really. A twang, but not quite. It was like the people there couldn’t make up their mind, and the only news that ever came out of Minnesota was weird news. Or updates on the Mall of America. “I really don’t get Fargo. The movie or the show.”

  “Yeah, I’m not surprised, but see, the thing about the movie— Wait. Really? This is what you want to talk about?”