Conman

by Richard Asplin

  “What can she want?”

  “Lord knows,” Andrew said. “You under?”

  Chest tight, chin burning on the carpet, head jammed in the dusty darkness beneath the wooden frame, my Adam’s apple somewhere behind my eyes, I gulped in the affirmative and watched Andrew’s twitching ankles and shoes move to the door in widescreen letterbox format.

  A click of the latch and the bottom of the door opened, Laura’s shoes and slim ankles waiting politely. Her feet moved in, Andrew’s stepping back to let them past but past didn’t seem to be their agenda. In fact, they all met in something of a four-shoe pile-up, brogues and heels head on, then on-top of each other, then side to side in a clash of leather, Laura’s handbag dropping to the floor.

  High above me, out of sight, Andrew’s voice was that of a well-spoken man with his mouth full. Full, I could only presume of Laura. Meanwhile, at my level, the four feet stumbled clumsily in urgent circles over towards the wall, into the dark-wood mini-bar with a loud musical crash. Then like some kind of foot-fetish’s pinball machine, they rebounded back, spinning, stumbling over towards me and then abruptly all four disappeared.

  No. Oh God no.

  The mattress slammed down hard, thudding my head into the rough carpet, banging my chin and giving me a jawful of fluff. I shut my eyes as the world squeaked and crushed around me and I got a sudden understanding of what the life of an accordion must be like. With a crackly hiss, one of Laura’s heels tumbled to the floor, followed quickly by another, landing inches from my face. In the darkness I could make out the faded label inside. A size five, manufactured by the nice people at Office. Andrew, it turned out two thuds later, favoured Church’s size elevens.

  And then as hastily as it had started, suddenly it was all over. There was the mumbled sound of apologies, a bouncy-bouncy-squeak as bodies edged quickly from the bed and then Laura’s feet returned. They seemed smaller, shier suddenly, toes curling in little steps.

  “I-I … I’m sorry,” she said, far above me. “I … I can’t do this. I … shit.”

  Squeaky-squeaky and then Andrew’s black socks landed flat by my face.

  “Is everything all right? What’s … I don’t understand?”

  Laura’s feet moved away, the handbag lifting out of sight, Andrew continuing to ask woozy, confusey, mid-coital questions. There was the snap of a lighter and the warm smell of cigarette smoke as Laura stumbled away across the carpet to the bathroom.

  “Linda?” Andrew called out. The door slammed shut.

  I breathed out, shifting uncomfortably in my spring and wool sandwich.

  “Benno?” I hissed. “Psssst. Benno? What’s going on?”

  “Buggered if I know,” his voice whispered back. His socks paced about the room anxiously. “One minute she’s all over me then suddenly she breaks away saying she can’t do it. Something about it not being … Wait.”

  The bathroom door opened and Laura’s stockinged feet emerged. Baby steps, frightened, sticking close to the wall.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry, I never should have … Forget I came. I can’t …” Her voice was edgy. Tearful.

  “Are you okay?” Andrew asked gently. His feet moved over to her, soft on the carpet.

  “I’m fine,” Laura sniffed. “I’m fine. I mean I’m screwed, obviously. But apart from that … Just peachy. Christ …”

  “Linda, this … all this. Is it me? I –”

  “My name’s not Linda. Okay? You can stop calling me that. None of this is what you … My name’s not Linda.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not Linda. He isn’t Fitzgerald. To tell you the truth none of us know who he is. There’s no valuation company, no offices and we don’t know shit about antiques, get it? It’s … Look, you’re a nice guy, okay? But you’ve just fallen in with the wrong people. It’s nothing personal. Christ. What am I doing?”

  I could hear her puffing angrily on her cigarette. What the hell was going on?

  “Hold on a jiffy. You’re saying what? Your website … ?”

  “There’s no website,” Laura said. “There’s nothing. Just a scam.”

  “Scam?”

  Laura sighed.

  “How do I … ? Look, the man you met today? His name is Christopher. Or that’s the name he goes by anyway. His team. Me, Henry, Julio, the others. We just go where he tells us to go, wear what he tells us to wear,” and she kicked out at her shoes, sending them tumbling across the carpet. “Fuck who he tells us to fuck. It’s a scam. A con game. A grift. It’s what we do. We get guys off the net. Bait a hook and reel you in. Christopher spins a line, I stick my toes in your crotch, take you to bed, make all the right noises. It’s all just prep to keep you on a short leash.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s nothing personal.”

  “And the chap in the restaurant? The Aussie with the cash? Are you telling me he’s part of this too?”

  “Henry David,” Laura sighed. The tears sounded drier now. Replaced with a firmer edge. An anger. “Although that’s probably not his real name either. These fucking people.”

  “That’s what the envelope at the table was about? The job well done?”

  “I need another cigarette.” Laura moved softly across the room towards the bed where she must have dumped her bag.

  There was a rattle and a click of a lighter. She moved over to an armchair and I watched one foot disappear as she sat down and crossed her legs.

  “The envelope’s just the lure. To get you asking the right questions.”

  “What questions? Wait, exactly what have I walked into here?”

  “It works like this,” Laura sighed. “Christopher and I pose as antiques experts. We find someone on the net with a valuable vase, a book, a painting, a comic.”

  “I can’t believe it … I can’t …”

  “Whatever it is. We invite you out, tell you it’s worth some outlandish sum. Makes us all best friends. And just as it’s sinking in, Henry drops by the table with a nudge and a wink and a fat envelope full of reddies. Naturally, you want to know who this Henry is and how he makes his money. You and I subsequently become lovers and I tell Christopher we can trust you to share our secret.”

  “Which is?”

  “That we have a way of making clients like Henry, clients like you, a little extra on the side, no questions asked.”

  There was a long pause as Laura drew on her cigarette, toes curling in the thick carpet. Andrew’s feet remained at the mini-bar. Beneath the bed, crushed and wheezing, my heart slammed in my ears as I tried to take it all in, brain lagging behind breathlessly.

  “It’s called the Pigeon Drop. Nobody knows how old it is. It’s been out of circulation for a while, but you can’t keep a good grift down.”

  “Go on,” Andrew said firmly.

  “It’s very simple. We borrow your comic book. We put it in a briefcase and dump it somewhere out of the way – an alley, a car-park, under a bench. Doesn’t matter. Christopher then locates a victim. Some greedy son of a bitch. He steers the mark towards the briefcase, all casual like, my, what have we here ? But just as they find it and are thinking all their Christmasses have come at once, I step up and say I saw it first. So we have a problem.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Andrew said with convincing disbelief. “So nothing you said today was – ? The valuation? The website? I …”

  “Get over it. Listen, we figure the comic book must be stolen. We can’t stand around discussing what to do with it so we retire to a nearby pub for a discussion. Now, we can’t split the comic book three … are you following this? You said you wanted to know what we were going to –”

  “Yes, yes sorry. It’s just all a lot to take in …”

  “We can’t divide your comic book up because it’s a one-off piece, right? So. Big conundrum. Who gets to keep it? First, I offer to hold onto the case for a while – a few weeks say – just so we know it doesn’t appear on Crimewatch UK, agreeing
that if enough time goes by and nobody asks questions, we meet up to arrange an equal split.”

  “And why would they trust you to do that?”

  “Well they don’t trust me, that’s the point. Christopher starts saying how shifty I seem and before you know it, our greedy mark is the one offering to play babysitter with your comic book.”

  “And why do you trust him?”

  “Because he can afford to put up a bond. Like a … a good faith kind of thing. A few thousand pounds each to Christopher and myself. That way, should he renege on the deal and run off with the comic, nobody’s out of pocket.”

  “Unbelievable. This … this is unbelievable.”

  “So the mark pays out to us, sticks the case under his arm and we all walk out of the pub.”

  “I’m guessing it’s not that simple?”

  “Nothing in life is simple. Because who should then appear but the comic-book thief himself? One of our team again of course. He wants his case back. There’s a big struggle, a gun goes off – I go down screaming in a pool of blood. The thief grabs the bags and he’s off in a cloud of smoke. Leaving Christopher shouting and screaming for the cops, covered in splattered blood, me lying ‘dead’, and our mark with no choice but to leg it before the cops show up and start asking questions about stolen goods. And that’s that.”

  The room went quiet as Andrew mulled this over.

  “And so I fit into this how?” he said eventually. “You were going to ask me for my comic book to use as bait for one of these drops, right? To catch some mark?”

  “Ask you? No need. A tumble in the sack with me plus a sneaky peek into Henry’s envelope and I wouldn’t have had to ask. You’d have been begging to be allowed in.”

  “And you keep the mark’s money? The bond, I mean. It works?” There was a pause. The mood in the room, even at floor level, seemed to shift.

  “Works?” Laura laughed. “Ha. You could say that.”

  “I don’t follow,” Andrew said.

  But under the bed, teeth gritted, angry fists tight, I followed.

  I followed only too well.

  twenty-one

  “So … I’m not with you,” Andrew said a few thoughtful minutes later. “If this is all true. If this is what you do, shouldn’t we be cavorting on the old bedstead? Isn’t that your plan? Shouldn’t you be … I don’t know. Leaving envelopes full of cash next to my bedside hoping I’ll stumble over them on my hunt for a Gideon?”

  Laura gave a long sad sigh.

  And I would have tried one myself if my ribcage hadn’t seized up with cramp and the pins & needles in my face numbed me from the nose down. Still beneath the bed, hands buzzing and dead, I tried to edge over an inch silently, get the blood up and running again but there was no room to even shift an opinion. I don’t know how long I’d been cramped-out but I wasn’t going to last much longer. Mouth full of fluff and dust, I tried to content myself with slow, shallow breathing, head-thudding concentration and keeping a lid on a simmering rage.

  I could only see her feet as she talked, but I hated her feet. I hated her little feet curling in the carpet and I hated her slim ankles. I loathed her long legs, her hips and waist and curves and shoulders and her greedy-grabbing hands and that mouth that kissed and lied and lied and lied. I tensed all over, trying to hold in the bursting fury. I wanted to yell. I wanted to scramble out like a commando under assault-course netting, leap up and grab her by the throat. Scream. Roar with hot spit and hatred. Because of what she had done. What she had taken from me.

  But instead, I listened.

  “I should be, yes,” Laura said. “And as far as Christopher’s concerned, I am.”

  “But?”

  “But I’m not. Not today. In fact not any day. Not any more.” Laura’s legs uncrossed with a crackle of stocking and she wandered over to the mini-bar and opened it. “I’m done.”

  “You’re done.”

  “You have any idea what it’s like, this life? What we do? I mean hell, people say that our marks end up ruined, but at least the sad bastards get the luxury of mourning. They can at least face themselves in the mirror, look themselves in the eye, take a deep breath and try to get on with their lives. Me? Where can I look? How do I ‘put it behind me’?” She bent and I caught her slim hand sliding out a half-bottle of white wine. “When it’s there, in front of me, stretching on for years. A lifetime more of lies, deceit and betrayal. Watching poor gullible soul after poor gullible soul have their dreams plucked from their hands and taken to the cashiers. I can’t do it. Not any more.”

  “You’re retiring?”

  “While I still have a soul to be redeemed.”

  “And you decided this … what, just now on the bed? Bloody hell, I’m a better kisser than I thought.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You want the truth?” There was the distant tinkle of tumblers, a screw-top lid bouncing on glass. “I made up my mind at eleven o’clock last Thursday morning. November the fifth. Outside the Waldorf Hotel.”

  Under the bed, I held my breath. My pins & needles gave a tingle. Hello, I thought.

  “We were playing a mark. Some Zorba the Geek who needed a quick buck to get himself out of a hole. Cheers.” There was a beat and a sigh as she swigged her wine.

  “Nerd made flesh. God you should have seen his flat. Superman here, Superman there. Anyway. Everything had gone like clockwork. Just another con trick. I was standing waiting when he arrived with the score. Fifty thousand pounds.”

  “Fifty grand?”

  “I never said it didn’t pay. Not bad for five days’ flirting, eh? But …” and Laura thought for a moment. “It was the look on his face. It was wrong. It wasn’t greed. He wasn’t licking his lips or rubbing his hands. It was this look of hope. This pathetic look of hope. The sad bastard. Because he wasn’t doing it for himself. He was doing it for his wife and daughter. This wasn’t some fat tourist we were fleecing. This guy was that rarest of mythical beasts – the good husband.” She chuckled dryly and lit another cigarette. “Even when I’d try it on with him in his crappy little shop, he’d always pull back. He was just a pitiable, desperate man terrified of losing his family. How exactly did he deserve to get fleeced?”

  I listened as the room went quiet. Laura smoked her cigarette and sipped her wine, easing herself back into her chair. Andrew said nothing, just curling and flexing his toes in his black socks.

  “Which is,” Andrew coughed after a moment, “well, a heartwarming story Linda …”

  “Laura.”

  “Laura. Sorry, I’m having difficulty keeping up. All this has come as something of a surprise.”

  “Just think yourself lucky you didn’t meet me a week ago.”

  “But I’m not a priest. You still haven’t quite explained why you’re unloading all this on me.”

  “Why? Friends,” she said. “Now, Christopher says that there’s no such thing as friends. ‘Friends’ to Christopher is an American sitcom. Nothing more. He believes that anyone you get on with in life is merely someone who hasn’t found you out yet.”

  “Charming.”

  “The team? Pete, Henry, Julio? They’re the same. We aren’t pals. We don’t hang out because we get on. There’s no trust. Any of us, if caught, would squeal on the others like that. We’re Get Out Of Jail Free cards. Nothing more. That’s what Christopher has always taught us.”

  “And you’re going to cash them in. Right? Is that what you’re saying? As part of your retirement? A big golden fuck-off.”

  “They’re going to offer me immunity. Full immunity.”

  “They?”

  “Fraud Squad. I’ve spoken to a barrister. Off the record, of course. He’s cutting me a deal. My freedom in exchange for the team, caught red-handed in a last final scam.”

  “The scam in question being …” and Andrew followed this thought to its inevitable conclusion. “Oh. I see.”

  I lay there and listened as the whole point of Laura’s visit, the purpose of her confessional,
finally settled in quietly between them. They sat and looked at it for a while in a silence heavier than … well, heavier than the double mattress I had balanced on my head.

  Laura excused herself and I held my breath as I watched her pad across to the bathroom.

  “It’s up to you,” she said and the door slid shut with a hiss and a slam.

  “Neil?”

  “Christ,” I gasped, breathing out with a dusty cough, my crushed lungs like two hoover bags. I edged out a few inches into the glare of the room, gulping a few dry lung-fulls, wincing at my cricked neck. Andrew scuttled over hunched low.

  “What do we do?” he hissed. “Do you believe any of this?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered, rolling sore shoulders in the tiny space. “She’s either wiping her slate clean or just trying to make you think she’s wiping it clean.”

  “Having her on side would make it easier to get your money back though. There’s no denying that.”

  “True,” I said, my head weary with worry. “But this is the third character I’ve seen this woman play in five days. And there’s something not quite –”

  “What’s going on?” Laura said flatly.

  “Shit –”

  “I heard . . what are you – ?”

  “Er, Laura, j-just hold on …”

  “Who’s there? What the hell’s – ?”

  Laura moved around the bed, around Andrew’s crouching frame and caught sight of me, half in, half out. It shook her all about.

  “Shit,” she said, stumbling backwards.

  “Wait, it’s all right, Laura,” I said, puffing and heaving myself free but Laura was panicked, skittering like a bird trapped in a strawberry net. She grabbed up her bag and a shoe, holding it out like a weapon, stumbling about the room.

  “What is this?” she said loudly, eyes wide and fiery. “What’s … Is this some kind of set-up? Who else is here?” She stabbed out with her stiletto, moving fast across the room, flinging open the empty wardrobe, Andrew backing away, hands raised.