“We’ll find him, Julep,” he says, his voice not so much soothing as certain. The irony is that I’m usually the certain one. In fact, I was certain myself not ten minutes ago. But my dad’s voice is echoing in my head, calling out to me to be careful of the azaleas, conversing with Sam’s mom about the state of health care. Silly, inconsequential stuff to inspire such deep and abiding angst.
I sigh and try to pull myself together. “Jeez, I had no idea I had such capacity for emo.”
Sam looks down at the soundboard and makes a few adjustments, then says, “Well, I think we’re ready. Want to hear it?”
I get up and dust myself off, though there’s more likely to be an alien spaceship in here than a speck of dust.
“Let’s do it.”
Sam pulls his headphone cord out of the jack and hits Play, or at least, that’s what I think he does—the soundboard is indecipherable to me. My dad’s voice booms out of the speakers, and Sam moves a few sliders to get the sound down to a reasonable volume.
“Good afternoon. This is Joe Dupree, Julep’s dad. I approve Julep’s absence from school on Thursday. She was at the hospital with me. I’m sure you understand. Thank you for marking her absence as excused.”
The excused sounds a little more like “excuse-duh,” but other than that, it’s seamless.
“It’s not perfect, but it should fool the dean,” Sam says.
“It’s wonderful, Sam,” I say, squeezing his arm.
Then I hear a ping coming from my laptop. I make an unladylike dive for it, pushing the screen back as I stand, cradling the keyboard in my other arm and hoping it’s not another fake-ID request.
But finally, Murphy’s username—WoWarlock98—appears in the Sender field. I click to open the message, and voilà! A high-quality, full-on face shot of my muscle-car stalker. She looks pissed, which makes me happy.
“You got it?” Sam asks, coming to look over my shoulder.
“Yep. Murphy came through.”
“How’d he do it?”
I bend my head to get a closer view. Her face and shoulders are surrounded by the car’s window frame. Her expression is definitely in the scowl family, but she doesn’t seem to be in the act of hopping out of the car or drawing a weapon.
“I told him to use the car as an excuse to get close. He pretends to be interested in the car, taking pictures from several angles before ‘accidentally’ getting a shot of the driver when she rolls her window down to tell him to get lost. Brilliant, huh?”
Sam chuckles. “Now if only you’d use your powers for good instead of evil.”
I forward Sam the email with the image.
“What are you going to do with her picture, anyway? It’s not like we don’t know what she looks like,” Sam says, returning to his seat in his audio-captain’s chair.
“True. What we need to know is who she is and who she’s working for. And I’m not doing anything with the picture—you are.” I poke him in the chest.
“Really.” He leans back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. He sounds somewhat resigned, which is often the case when we’re hip-deep in a job.
“I need you to hack the FBI facial-recognition database.”
I pause, waiting for the inevitable “you must have fallen off the crazy wagon if you think I’m doing that” spluttering as his chair tips over backward, spilling him on the floor.
Instead he just sits there, staring at the ceiling.
A minute passes. Then two. I start to get nervous.
Sam is not the nonreacting sort. What is he thinking? That I’m nuts? Maybe I am nuts. Maybe I’m standing here like an idiot asking him to do the electronic equivalent of getting a strawberry-nutmeg smoothie from an ATM.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
That’s all he’s going to say? Okay?
“Okay,” he repeats.
“But—won’t it be hard?”
“Sort of like trying to chip through the Hoover Dam with a toothpick.”
“Oh.”
He still hasn’t changed position. Or looked at me, for that matter.
“But you can do it?” I ask, fiddling with the corner of the cabinet.
“I will try. I always do.”
We fall into a strange silence I’m not used to hearing between us. Something’s been off about Sam for the last couple of days. Probably has something to do with the mess I’ve gotten him in. He did get his car run off the road. And I’ve been so wrapped up in trying to find my dad that I’ve been asking a lot of Sam without giving anything back. That has to be getting old.
“I am grateful, Sam. For all your help. I know I don’t say it a lot.”
I feel at a loss for something to say to make him stop staring at the ceiling.
“That’s all?”
I frown at him even though he’s not looking at me.
You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m not really the touchy-feely type. I have my moments. I can emote with the best of them when the situation calls for it. But I don’t tend to wear any of my weak and vulnerable bits on my sleeve. One of the ten con-man-dments: Always keep your feelings close to your vest.
“I couldn’t do it without you? You’re the man? What are you looking for, here?”
“Not that,” Sam says. “I mean, is that all it is? Gratitude?”
“All what is? I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Sam looks at me then, and his gaze is the most direct and intense I’ve ever seen it. It lasers right through me. My insides melt a little around the beam of it, cauterizing the hole even as he creates it. He gets out of his chair and leans over me, his face inches from my nose.
“Is that all I am to you? A sidekick? A tool you can use when you need to hack into something?”
My heart stumbles over the question. Is that really what he thinks?
“You’re my best friend,” I say, swallowing. “You know that.”
He looks disappointed in my answer, though I can’t figure out why. So I try again, my voice dissolving to a whisper. “You’re my rock, Sam. If anything … changed between us”—I can’t say if you leave me without breaking something inside, I just can’t—“I don’t—I couldn’t—I’d be lost.”
And then, as quickly as it came, the crazy intensity leaves Sam’s eyes and he slouches back against the soundboard, looking tired.
“All right,” he says, rubbing his face. “Never mind. Let’s just make the call.”
He’s typing the dean’s number before I can even respond. I want to stop him, make him understand how much I value him. But my grifter Spidey sense is clamoring at me to leave it alone. At least for now. Eight years of friendship and we’ve never had a come-to-Jesus moment like that one. Not that we haven’t argued, or he hasn’t balked at some impossible task I’ve set for him. We’re best friends; we’re going to get into some disagreements.
But this was different. I’ve unwittingly unleashed something capable of breaking Sam’s faith in me. As much as I want to resolve it, I can tell that if I keep pushing him to find out what it is, I’ll just lose him faster.
Before I come to terms with this new complication, the dean’s answering machine picks up the line. Sam and I calculated the best time to call the dean’s office to have the greatest chance of getting her voice mail. After years of working the system, we have her routine down pat—four-thirty coffee break, in her office for another hour, rounds of the campus to make sure the buildings are empty and locked, back to her office to pack up, and then home.
The trick for us was to call when she was out of the office but before she left for home. Sounds like we’ve timed it perfectly. Sam begins the playback of the recording.
“Good afternoon. This is Joe Dupree, Julep’s dad. I approve—”
“Hello? Hello?” the dean’s voice interrupts. Sam races to stop the recording before she realizes what’s happening.
Damn it. She must have been waiting by t
he phone to catch me out. What is up with my awful luck lately?
I give Sam a sharp nod. He punches a few buttons and inches up a slider from a different track on the soundboard. My dad’s voice comes through again, this time with a good deal of static interference masking some of his words.
“… Hello? Sorry—there seems to be some … on my end of the … wanted to confirm Julep’s absence is excused as she … at the hospital …”
Then Sam disconnects the call.
“Whew,” I say, clinging to the soundboard as I sink to my heels. “That was close. Glad we decided on the backup.”
“Do you think she bought it?”
“Doubtful,” I say. “But she got a call. She can’t prove anything. I’m safe for now.”
“Safe?” Sam says, sounding exasperated. “What about any of this is safe?”
I push myself to my feet and place a hand on Sam’s knee. It stills under my touch.
“I have to go,” I say, unsure where we stand after our earlier … whatever it was. “I owe you. I won’t forget.”
I draw the door shut behind me and wince a little as it clicks into place. Then I beat feet to the bus stop at the end of Sam’s street, catch the 379, and settle into the circle of my troubling thoughts.
I change bus lines twice before giving up entirely on getting my brain in order. But it isn’t till I’m on the train home to Forest Park that I realize I’m being followed.
THE NEW GUY
The thing about being tailed is that if you’re a good grifter (and I’m a great grifter), then you don’t have to deal with people tailing you. So I’m hardly an expert at detecting them. If I didn’t have to make so many connections to get home from Sam’s house, I’d never have noticed him.
That’s right. Him. This time I’m sure of the gender. In fact, I even know the guy. I’ve only seen him a handful of times, but I’d bet my last latte it’s him.
Once I caught a glimpse of the Yankees cap at the “L” station after having noticed it two bus rides back, I knew I was being followed. Then it was only a matter of creative phone-camera use to get a clear view of his face.
Disembarking didn’t help me get rid of him. He’s there now, four people back, his shoulders hunching his jacket collar up enough to cover the lower half of his face. Too bad for him I’ve already made him. The only question is, now what?
Throwing prudence out the window, I take a quick turn into an alley I sometimes use as a shortcut to get home. A few steps into the alley, I duck behind a Dumpster and wait for him. The smell of moldy cheese and rotting marinara with an overload of garlic identifies this particular Dumpster as belonging to Scalpetti’s, the Italian bistro on the next block over. I’m hoping the slime on the asphalt under me is spilled olive oil, but I would not bet my last latte on that. Thankfully, my shadow is only a few yards behind me.
I hear his footfalls echo under the ever-present street noise. He slows when he doesn’t see me. When he’s about even with my hiding place, I leap out and grab his hat so he has to deal with me.
It isn’t until a few seconds later that I realize I might not want him to deal with me. I’ve surprised him, though, which is gratifying. He whirls to face me. Then he sighs, shoulders slumping. Not the reaction of a hardened criminal bent on my destruction.
I fold my arms, the bill of his hat bumping my elbow. “The Ballou’s a good ten miles from here.”
“Look, it’s not what you think,” says not-so-much-a-barista Mike.
“Hard to believe, since what I think is that you’re following me.”
“Okay, it is what you think. But not for the reason you think.”
I pull out my phone. I have no intention of calling the police, but he doesn’t have to know that.
“You have until I finish dialing nine-one-one to tell me what the hell you think you’re doing.”
I touch the nine.
“I was hired to follow you, to protect you—make sure no one tries to hurt you.”
I pause, thumb poised over the one.
“What?” I say.
“I’m a private investigator,” he says, fishing through his pocket and handing me a card. I take it with my hat hand since I don’t want him snagging my phone. It reads MIKE RAMIREZ, PI, along with a bunch of phone numbers, an address on the North Side, and the lamest tagline ever:
We put the “private” in “private investigator.”
“Who hired you?” I ask, though I’ve already surmised the answer. I’m going to kill my dad. First a screwy scavenger hunt, and now this? If the mob hasn’t already strangled him, I might.
“I have to respect client confidentiality,” Mike says, having the good grace to look both embarrassed and a little afraid of me.
Client confidentiality, my eye. He might know where my dad is, or at least give me a clue that will point me in the right direction.
I touch the one.
“Wait. I’m trying to help you.”
“Help me by telling me who hired you,” I say, touching a third number, the Call button, and then raising the phone to my ear.
Mike rubs his head, thinking.
“Hello? Yes, I’d like to report a man following me.”
“Okay! Christ! You win.”
I give him an expectant look, phone still at my ear.
“Sam Seward.”
I hang up on the tinny computer voice repeating “Your call cannot be completed as dialed; please check the number and dial again” and hand Mike his hat.
“That boy is so dead.”
“He’ll fire me if you tell him you caught me.”
“That’s the idea.”
“You could use the help. Rumor is you’re a person of interest.”
“To who?” I ask. My dad may not have hired him, but he may know what I need to find out anyway: Which mob?
“I don’t know,” he says. “Just that some of the street crews are keeping an eye out. No hit order, though.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” I say with not a little sarcasm.
“Please don’t narc on me. I have the time, and you need someone watching your back.”
“Yeah, like I need a hole in the head. No offense, Mike, but I can’t be stumbling over a bodyguard right now.”
“I really need this job. I haven’t had a client in months. If I can’t make this stick …” He spreads his hands palms-up in a helpless gesture.
Which is probably the only argument that would sway me. Well played, Barista Mike. Well played. When did I become such a freaking softy? In the absence of any convincing evidence to the contrary, I decide to blame Tyler.
I string a couple of unsavory swearwords together with Sam’s name on the end and retrieve my backpack from where I dropped it.
“Come on,” I say to Mike, gesturing down the alley toward a nearby diner. “Might as well fill me in. I need some caffeine, anyway.”
Once we’re settled into the cracked vinyl booth at the diner, I scan Mike with my patented grifter scrutiny. I don’t think a PI would care one way or the other about my extracurricular activities, but one can never be too sure. Most PIs are out-of-work cops. Not all, of course. Some are fresh-faced newbies with more Philip Marlowe in their brains than sense. They wash out pretty quickly, though. It’s the haunted-eyed cops who linger.
A waitress with a vintage-style updo and a bored expression comes over to our table.
“I’ll have coffee,” I say, ignoring the rest of the menu.
“Me too,” Mike says. “Black is fine.”
“Tough guy, huh?” I tease. Something about him, hulking as he is, reminds me of a puppy. A puppy in the same doghouse as me—straddling the line between honorable and shady, trying to eke out a living in a city that only respects the really rich and the really dirty.
“Nah,” he says, patting his gut. “Wife has me on a diet.”
“The things we do for love,” I say. But when the waitress brings our cream-colored mugs, I drink my coffee black as well. I like my froofy dri
nks froofy and my blue-collar brew as bitter as burned oven scrapings.
“So you’ve been following me since that day at the Ballou?” I ask.
“Off and on. The Ballou’s as close as I can get to school grounds.”
“And you don’t know which set of wiseguys wants me watched?”
“I’m not that connected. I don’t work the syndicates, but I hear things. If I get a bead on it, I’ll let you know. What do they want with a high school kid, anyway?”
I eye him without answering. What does he already know? What can I get away with not saying?
“Most kids, especially rich kids, don’t get noticed by the mob. You got something they want?”
“You’re looking at what I’ve got,” I say.
“It helps me protect you if I know from what angle.”
He’s pushing, but he’s still within the bounds of normal curiosity and professional interest, so I’m not too worried about him. I could tell him about the key and the clue, but I won’t. At least, not yet. PIs are notorious busybodies. He wouldn’t be able to help himself, and he’d probably trample all over my dad’s trail. Besides, the guy lied to me. That kind of thing takes time to get past.
“I don’t have anything that belongs to anybody but me,” I say, taking another swig of coffee.
“Fine, don’t tell me. But I’ll probably stumble across it sooner or later. Trust me, sooner is better than later, and telling is better than waiting. If I have to stumble across it, it’s usually too late to help.”
“Noted,” I say. Then I have a thought. “Actually, there is something you should see.”
I retrieve my laptop from my bag. When it blinks on, the first thing to pop up is the picture of my stalker. I turn the screen to face Mike.
“Do you know her?” I ask, though I’m not holding out much hope for a yes.
Mike shakes his head. “Who is she?”
“She’s as bad at following me as you are,” I say. “But then, she’s not actually trying to stay hidden.”
Mike perks up. “Is she part of the family that’s harassing you?”
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