Conman

by Richard Asplin

  “Laura,” I said, getting cautiously to my feet, brushing the fluff from my chest “Laura, relax. It’s not a set-up.”

  “I’m leaving,” she said, face dark and angry, taking trembling steps towards the door. “I’m leaving and you’re staying, you hear me? Your money’s gone. Gone, understand? Don’t even think about following me …”

  “Laura,” I said carefully, and bent and retrieved her other shoe, holding it out as a high-street peace offering. “It’s all right. We just want to talk to you.”

  Her eyes flicked back and forth between us warily.

  “I mean it,” I said, raising my own hands in submission. “Please. Andrew?”

  “Right right. We just want to talk. We … we can help you.”

  Laura narrowed her eyes.

  “Look, you say you want to go straight?” I said. “Quit the life? Turn Christopher in? You think what, we’re going to stop you?”

  Laura lowered her heel a tiny bit, almost imperceptibly.

  “Benno here’s a friend of mine.”

  “Benno?”

  “Sorry, that’s me. Andrew Benjamin,” Andrew said, offering a hand. Laura looked at it. Andrew put it back in the air.

  “We set this up,” I said. “eBay. To try to get Christopher out of the woodwork. I … I just want my money back. You can help us. And we can help you.”

  “The comic’s yours?”

  “Who else? Zorba the Geek?”

  Laura took a deep breath, licked her lips and looked at us both, back and forth. Deciding something. Weighing it up.

  We stood watching, breath held, hands aloft. The air conditioning hummed quietly. On the street far below, West End traffic sighed and hissed. Somewhere a siren called out.

  “You’d help me?” she said, voice edgy and firm.

  “I just want my money back,” I said. “Whatever it takes. You want to bring the team down into the bargain, that suits me fine.”

  Laura narrowed her eyes, looking at me. Then at Andrew. Then me again. Then, after a long, heart-thudding minute, she finally tossed her shoe to the bed with a sigh, shoulders limp.

  “Jesus,” Laura sighed. “Look at you. Martin & Lewis. Either of you comedians got a cigarette?”

  It was almost six o’clock. Outside, November had brought a cold darkness to London’s night.

  Inside, Laura was on her second glass of wine, lit by the glow of one of the fatter table lamps. Room service had sent up a greasy teenager with a packet of Lucky Strikes on a silver dish, hotel match-book placed just-so on the doily – it was probably going to cost Keatings about nineteen quid plus tip. Laura curled up in a Regency armchair and smoked them. Meanwhile Andrew and I sat opposite, either side of her, which we imagined made us look like a couple of grizzled undercover cops instead of the two nerdy, totally-out-of-their-depth losers that we really were.

  As she talked, I tried to continue hating her. Really, I did. Brow furrowed, focused, I churned up my stomach, my bile, turning up the heat, adding a sprig of venom and two heaped tablespoons of rage. Got the whole dark, loathsome mixture bubbling away.

  But the mixture wouldn’t set. I stirred and folded and whisked but nothing. Was it her newly acquired vulnerability? Pale hair loose, dwarfed by the armchair, sipping wine like an air-sea rescue victim with a warming hot-chocolate?

  Or was it perhaps her desire to make amends? To join, if not quite the side of the angels, then at least warm up on their reserves’ bench.

  Maybe it was the fact that I’d had something to do with it. That it was the hope in my face that day outside the hotel. That it was my actions as a good husband that finally sold her on taking a different role in life.

  Either way, I could only bring myself to sit and listen.

  “It wasn’t what I dreamed of,” she said, exhaling a long slow mouthful of blue smoke. “As a girl. All this. Believe me, it’s not what I wanted. Not what I wanted at all.”

  “So now you’ve changed?” Andrew said. “You want out?”

  The three of us exchanged looks.

  “Because you felt sorry for my friend here? Finally, after all these years of hate and deceit, you feel … what? Remorse?”

  “I can’t feel this way any longer,” Laura said. She tipped her head back and exhaled a long sad cloud of smoke. “Call it a character flaw. Maybe his Superman fetish appealed to me? Maybe I needed some truth, justice and the American way?”

  Heart thundering, I looked at her curled in the chair, helpless and apologetic.

  “No,” I said.

  “Neil, listen to what she’s –”

  “No,” I said again. “I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it for a second. This isn’t to do with me. This is something else. Why now? Something’s happened, right? Money drying up maybe?”

  “Money – ? Er, fifty grand you gave us, wasn’t it?”

  “Fifty grand I gave your boss,” I said firmly. “How much did you see of that? Ten? Five? Minus expenses? Those new dresses. Shopping trips.”

  Laura’s eyes flickered.

  “He didn’t give you a penny, did he?”

  Laura sucked hard on her cigarette, sloshing back the smoke with a mouthful of white wine.

  “He’s a conman,” she said, placing the glass on a fat side table. “What should I expect? For him to stick to his promises? Fair’s fair? Ha. Everything …” she fixed her jaw. “Everything that comes out of that man’s mouth is a lie. I’ve invested the take on a new mark, money’s tied up in a stocks scheme, trust me, your cut’s safe. Just transferring some funds dearie-dumpling, fret ye not. Meanwhile he’s glinting away in new diamond cufflinks.”

  “So that’s it,” I said. I almost laughed. “It’s nothing to do with me or any other hapless, hope-faced husband. It’s revenge. You’re just out for revenge. And you want us to help you?”

  “Listen,” Andrew whispered appearing at my side, hand on my shoulder. I glanced over. Laura hadn’t moved. “Listen old man. What choice do we have? The game’s up. She knows you and I are in this together now. What else can we do but trust her? Let her go? Let her tell Christopher about our cosy little meeting? We have to trust her. Hell, maybe she does want out. Why else would she let on about the Sparrow Plop trick or whatever it is?”

  I turned and looked deep into Andrew’s anxious face. The same kind face I’d looked at across a chess-board a decade ago.

  “Trust. Right,” I said and looked over at the liar in the chair. “Laura. My dear. You want to tell Andrew here about trust?”

  Laura shifted a little, hands loose, reaching for her wine glass.

  “The scam you revealed. What was it? The Pigeon Drop?”

  She held the glass in her hand, turning it slowly, the lamp light playing on the grease of her lipstick. She looked up at me. She said nothing

  “Explain the details again if you would.” I began to pace a bit, trying to keep a lid on my jumpy, twitchy anger. “Andrew here would just be providing the bait, right? That’s what you told him? And together you’d all con this wealthy mark Christopher has found. Tell me, this wealthy mark. He wouldn’t be a rather rotund, rather portly gentleman would he? With perhaps, oh I don’t know, perhaps a blue baseball cap? Leather handbag? Suite at the Waldorf? Am I warm?”

  Laura looked at me. Then over at Andrew. Back to me.

  I took this look and tossed it over to Andrew. Andrew threw it back to Laura. We did this for a while like three five-year-olds with a tennis ball.“Do you want to tell him?” I said finally.

  “After you,” Laura sighed.

  “Will somebody tell me?” Andrew spat, exasperated.

  So I told him.

  “Me?” he said a few moments later as I rounded off what I’d spent my cramped minute under the bed putting together. It was pretty much what I’d expected him to say. “I’m the target?”

  “Just like I was.” I spun around and faced Laura. “This is how they do it. Con you into thinking you’re helping them play another swindle. I’m guessing the Pigeon Drop
goes according to plan, but at the last minute it all happens to go terribly wrong?” I said. Laura flicked a little ash and blinked a slow, tired blink. “And that valuation agreement you had Andrew sign at the restaurant a few hours ago with the big fat fountain pen?”

  “An insurance policy,” Laura said, beaten. “Accidental loss. So when you realise you’ve been swindled and try to report it, the police find that and presume you must have been in on it for the insurance.”

  “Jesus …” Andrew whistled.

  “Okay okay, I didn’t give you the whole plan. But I’m telling you,” Laura pushed. “It doesn’t matter either way. Because the Fraud Squad will pounce and the whole thing will –”

  “And this. This is who you want to trust to help us?” I spat. “God. What the hell are we doing here?” I felt sick. Physically, deep down in my gut.

  “But Neil. Neil, think man,” Andrew said, trying to slow the whole world down. “What else do you suggest? You want to walk away?”

  “What do I suggest ?” I yelled. “What do I – ?” My mouth flapped loose for a moment, my elbows and wrists deciding it looked like fun and joining in wildly. “I suggest she just gives me back my fifty thousand pounds. She gives me my fifty thousand pounds or we turn her in.” I marched across to the bed and snatched up the brown hotel phone. “How’s that for an off-beat fucking idea?”

  “There is no fifty thousand pounds,” Laura said.

  “Oh really? Really? What a fucking surprise. All gone has it? In four fucking days?”

  “It was in that envelope. The one Henry was waving at the table. Now? Who knows. It’s probably luring some other sap into some other scheme somewhere.”

  “Then you get it,” I hissed.

  “Just like that. For old time’s sake?”

  “No,” I writhed. “No, because it’s that or the police,” and I waved the handset awkwardly.

  “The police ? Who are going to be involved anyway? I told you, I’ve got a barrister negotiating a –”

  “Then … then because otherwise …” and I stumbled a little bit here, losing my momentum rather. I gathered my thoughts up quickly, aware that stuff like this was all in the delivery. “Otherwise I go to Christopher and tell him you’re selling him out.”

  “Do that,” Laura shrugged. “You still won’t have your money back. But, if it’ll make you feel better while you’re living in your one-ring bedsit visiting your daughter every other weekend.”

  The retort caught in my throat, fat and thick. I stood, glued to the carpet, phone receiver in hand. I swallowed hard, blinking.

  Edward. Edward coming home on Tuesday. Talking to Jane. The accountants.

  Fifty thousand withdrawn?

  Divorce. Custody.

  “See, divorce lawyers tend to look more favourably on the parent who hasn’t lost the child’s trust fund in a confidence game, Neil. They’re kind of old-fashioned like that.”

  Andrew and I stood fuming, teeth grinding, our combined frustration threatening to set off the smoke alarms.

  “I can get you your money back,” Laura said finally. “But only if you can help me get Christopher. Working with me, double-crossing the Pigeon Drop.”

  “You’re already double-crossing the Pigeon Drop.”

  “All right, all right, triple-crossing it then. Setting up this play and leading Christopher and the others to the police. It’s the only way you’ll ever see that money again.”

  Andrew and I exchanged sad, spent looks. The world turned beneath us for a while.

  Eventually our shoulders slumped and we sighed shruggy sighs.

  “So … how would it work?”

  twenty-two

  “God, there you are,” Jane scowled at the top of the stairs, Lana hoisted to her hip. “Where have you been? It’s almost nine o’clock.”

  I clambered upward making my apologies and checking my stupid watch. She was right. I gave Jane and Lana a minty kiss, courtesy of Andrew’s hotel gift-shop Polos, and peeled off my jacket hurriedly, my heart thumping like a marching-band bass drum.

  “Sorry, sorry. Mondays, y’know. It was …” I shook my head in an attempt to imply a frankly unlikely non-stop twelve-hour day of poster tubes and ringing tills and scuttled into the kitchen to glug a chin-full of tap water.

  “Mr Dufford’s been through what I could find, but we needed you here for the shop stuff.”

  I wiped sweaty hands on my jeans and shut off the tap.

  “Mr … ?”

  “You forgot?” Jane withered.

  “Forgot? No, no no, don’t be silly. I-I was just held up, that’s all,” and I smiled a thoroughly unconvincing smile. Jane turned and left and I followed, head thudding and spinning.

  Forgot? Forgot what? Dufford?Why does that name mean something?

  I pushed into the sitting room.

  What was – ?

  Oh. Shit.

  Mr Dufford was perched on the edge of our couch. Fountain pen in hand, glass of wine by his feet and parting professionally centred, he had an irritated, in-your-own-time-mate scowl buried behind a professional banker’s smile. He stood, hand out.

  “Mr Martin,” he boomed. “Nice to see you again. Busy afternoon?”

  “Uhm, y-yes,” I gulped.

  “You know each other?” Jane queried, the world tipping over a little.

  “We bumped into each other this mor –

  “Mor … e fool me for forgetting. Ha. Right. Good good. That long ago eh? Crikey. Ahem,” I interrupted, wrestling the words from him, easing him back into his seat boisterously. “Good to er … good to … uhm … crikey, you have been busy …”

  Christ. The sitting room floor was an assault course of files and papers, stapled and paper-clipped, fanned and folded, stacked and strewn. On the couch, among box files and bank statements, Dufford’s laptop glowed in the sitting-room light, a bright Excel spreadsheet filled with black and red columns.

  “Anyway, sorry I missed you,” I jollied, picking my way across the paperwork checkerboard floor to the stereo. “Perhaps we could reschedule for later in the month? Is there more wine sweetheart?” I quickly slung on disc two of Now That’s What I Call the Best Amadeus Hits Album in the World Ever, which Jane had sworn worked in soothing soon-to-be-born Lana. I was hoping it would prove to be just as soothing to soon-to-be livid wives and soon-to-be-aghast financial advisors.

  “Actually,” Dufford coughed, “we haven’t much more to look at. Your wife has given me most of what I need. It’s just the shop’s books. Do you have them to hand?”

  Fountain pen poised, the sitting room went quiet.

  “Might you have that to hand? At all? Mr Martin?”

  Oh Christ.

  “Neil? Hello?”

  “Did you … sorry? Did you say there was more wine?”

  “Neil, the books?” Jane pushed, jigging a gurgly Lana up and down.

  “Oh. Uhm sorry, I think … God, actually I think I left them at work,” I said, face collapsing in contrition.

  “Oh Neil.”

  “Sorry. Sorry Mr Dufford. I … I remember now, I took all the paperwork in to work to sort out. Y’know, t-to make this evening easier.”

  “When was this?” Jane pressed.

  “When? Oh, Saturday.”

  “Saturday? Oh that’s all right, I’ve seen a file of yours in the study …”

  “What?!” I squeaked. “I-I mean, what? Which … er, where?” but Jane had wandered off to search the study. “Shit,” I hissed, leaping after her. “Jane, Jane wait, don’t – Sorry Mr Dufford, uhmm, sorry, one second.”

  God. Don’t let her have found anything. Please.

  I found her rootling through the files by the computer.

  “It was here …”

  “Let me, let me,” I busied, flapping around her. “Go and see to our guest.”

  Jane sighed, turning to look at me, head tilted, beautiful face lit by the soft green glow of the night-light. She slid the nursery door ajar silently.

  “
I can’t believe you were two hours late and still forgot to bring the paperwork?” she hissed, embarrassed. “I’ve had to keep him talking all evening. Dad’s going to go beserk.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, brow furrowed. “I-I mean, yes. Er …” realising just too late how guilty all this uhmming and shrugging appeared, so I began to quickly fuss about the baby, slipping a hand around Jane’s waist, totally over-doing that too much instead. “Busy that’s all. Just busy.”

  “Always busy,” Jane said in an odd tone, peeling out of my arms and pulling open the door again, heading back to our guest.

  Quickly, I scrabbled about the cheap shelving, sliding the file of business account statements out and shoving it under Lana’s cot, pushing it to the back among dust and lost toys. I hurried out to where Mozart wafted down the hall and Jane was coming back the other way with Dufford’s wine glass.

  “Find it?” she said hopefully.

  “Hn? Uhmm no. It er, it was an empty one. I’d taken everything out.”

  Jane looked at me, cocking her head to one side slightly. Something was going on behind her eyes. Something she didn’t like. Something I didn’t like much either. I crossed my fingers that Wolfgang had a particularly stringy, soothy bit coming up in the next five seconds.

  “Are you all right?” Jane whispered softly, edging me away from the lounge.

  “All right? Fine. Fine, I’m … fine.”

  Jane continued her look. I began to panic discreetly.

  God. What had Dufford shown her? What had she seen? How much did she know? And why was Jane looking at me like that?

  “Neil? Are you listening?”

  “Huh, sorry what? I was …”

  “I said you don’t seem fine. You’re all jumpy and nervy. Coming in late, fussing about. What’s the matter?”

  “I’m not,” I said, guiltily. “Just busy. Earl’s Court, y’know.”

  “And you’ve forgotten tomorrow I expect? Being so busy?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Shit shit shit. What the hell was tomorrow? November tenth? Lana’s birthday? My birthday? Clark fucking Kent’s birthday?