Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle

by Rob Cornell

  “He’s a grifter, and you gave him fuel for his con.”

  She shook her head. A lock of her hair caught against her eyelashes. She brushed it aside. “I didn’t give him anything. We just talked.”

  “What about?”

  “He said he was working for you.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “And you believed him.”

  “Why wouldn’t I? He knew all about our daughter. About what happened with Daddy. How could he know any of that if you didn’t tell him?”

  I didn’t see any reason to drag Sheila into this conversation. Sheila might have screwed up, but Autumn didn’t need to know it. “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “He’s not working for me. He’s trying to juice me for a million bucks.”

  Her already prison pale face turned ashen. “Oh, God.”

  “What all did you tell him?”

  “We just talked.”

  “About what?” A new flame kindled to replace the bonfire that had burned through me when I last had Hersch—or whoever the hell he was—on the phone. “About what, Autumn?” I pressed when she hesitated.

  “About you. About us.” She shrugged. “Not much of anything.”

  “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

  She slapped a hand down on the table between us and leaned forward. “What do you want from me?”

  The guard raised an eyebrow, her hand resting on the hilt of the nightstick on her belt.

  “For once,” I said, “I want the truth from you.”

  “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.” Her eyes smiled, a cold satisfaction in them at using my own words against me.

  “What did you tell him,” I enunciated slowly, “that he didn’t already know?”

  The smile in her eyes disintegrated. She rubbed at the table, pressing so hard the tips of her fingers turned white. “What could I have told him that matters?”

  “Obviously something, or you wouldn’t be wasting my time dodging simple questions.”

  The shadow that passed across her face told me everything but exactly what I needed to know. She had fucked up and she knew it. I tried to think of how. What piece of information could she have let slip that would give him an edge in his so-called “race.”

  I stopped pushing. Stared at her. Either she would speak next, or we would sit in silence until the guard decided we’d glared at each other enough for one day.

  I have to give Autumn credit. She held out a good couple of minutes before the quiet wriggled its way under her skin. I noticed the stone-faced guard even grew a little antsy. But Autumn couldn’t hold back forever. She never could from me. Apparently, she still couldn’t. Strange, considering I was significantly responsible for putting her in prison.

  She pressed harder on the table until the white moved up to her knuckles. Any more pressure and I thought she might snap her fingers clean off. “He asked a lot about Daddy.”

  “Like?”

  “Where he grew up. Who his friends were. What kind of investments he’d had. He even asked about his sex life.” She scrunched up her face in a purely juvenile way—That’s like so gross, it said.

  None of his questions surprised me. I knew what he was doing. I’d done it myself already. Track the path of Lincoln Rice’s past. Try to find someone else who might have known about the black market adoption ring he was involved with. He couldn’t have worked alone. But he had done a good job keeping his secret life separated from his public one. I had reached scads of dead ends. Still, could I have missed something? Something Hersch—I decided to stick with that moniker—might catch in his own investigation. Suddenly I doubted every move I had made while digging into Rice’s life. Maybe I hadn’t dug far enough. Probably hadn’t, because in my search I had ignored one obvious stream of information—not out of carelessness, but out of anger and distrust. Hersch had one up on me because he had gone to Autumn to ask his questions. Something I couldn’t bear to do…until now.

  I sensed some tension from the guard. She was prepping to end the visit. Time almost up. “What was the last thing he asked you?”

  Autumn hitched one shoulder. “I don’t know.”

  “Dig it up, Autumn.”

  “Why is this so important? I didn’t tell him anything that he could blackmail you with for a million dollars.”

  Should I tell her? Give her something to stew over while she stayed trapped in prison, unable to do a damn thing about it? Why should I care? After her betrayal, why worry if she suffered a little? She had earned it.

  I said, “He’s going after our daughter.”

  Her fingers still rubbing against the table made a sound like a windshield wiper on dry glass. She stopped, curled her fingers into a fist. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s trying to find her, to get to her before I do, so he can get his million.”

  Her eyes widened. “You have to stop him.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  She shook her head. “Give him the money, Ridley.”

  “I’m not giving that bastard one cent of my parents’ money.”

  Her voice turned shrill. “It isn’t your parents’ money anymore. It’s yours. Give him the money.”

  The guard stepped away from her post against the wall and started toward us.

  “What is the last thing he asked? The last thing you told him?”

  “Why?”

  “Because once you gave him what he needed, he didn’t need to talk to you anymore.”

  She crunched her eyes in an almost comic expression of concentration. “He—”

  “Time’s up,” the guard said when she reached the table.

  I looked up at her, tried to offer my most charming smile. “Just one more minute?”

  “You want to keep talking, you can join her inside. I bet we can find a nice cozy cell for ya.”

  My Mr. Charming smile gave a little. “Isn’t this a women’s prison?”

  She pulled her head back, feigned surprise. “Ain’t you a woman?”

  Ouch. “You’re too sweet.”

  “Time,” she said, “is up.”

  Autumn reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “I’m sorry.”

  I jerked my hand out from under hers as if she had pressed down on it with a hot iron. “You honestly can’t remember?”

  “Hoe-kay,” the guard said and grabbed Autumn’s arm, tugged her to her feet.

  “Please don’t hate me.”

  Which pretty much guaranteed I would when she spoke again.

  The guard jerked her head in the direction of the visitor’s door. “You need to leave now.” As if on cue, the door opened and another guard, his uniform fit to rip across his belly, stepped into the room.

  I ignored both guards, my gaze locked on Autumn. “Tell me.”

  “Daddy’s last lover,” she said. “I told him her name.”

  The guard holding Autumn pulled her back toward the opposite side of the room. My guard put his balloon belly in my face.

  “Who, damn it?”

  Mr. Belly grabbed my arm. Despite his girth, he had a good grip. His fingers hit a nerve that numbed me from elbow to shoulder.

  Autumn’s eyes filled with tears as she shuffled backward. “Sheila.” Then she turned her back to me and let the guard escort her out of the room.

  “You need a broken arm?” Belly asked.

  I smiled up at him, choking back the boiling gorge in my throat. “I got it.” I stood and yanked my arm free, then saw myself out of the visitor’s room. I had to go through the rigmarole of collecting my things and marching through a series of barred doors. The process was almost too much to bear.

  I made it outside without unzipping my skin and leaping free of it. The air didn’t smell as fresh as I expected. A weird stink permeated from the prison grounds. I almost gagged on it.

  I didn’t remember getting in my car, nor the drive to the hotel. All I could see was a sheet of red where memories should have
been. Somehow, I didn’t get into a wreck on the way over. I guess fate had decided I was wrecked enough.

  Chapter 9

  The clerk at the desk told me no one by that name had checked into the hotel. I tried to argue with him, but it was half-hearted. Obviously, she had either checked in under an assumed name or had her driver/gopher check in under his name—a name I did not know.

  I pretended to head out of the lobby, hesitated long enough until the clerk got involved with another customer, then slipped into the stairwell. Safely out of sight on the first floor, I took the elevator up to where Sheila’s room had been.

  I didn’t really expect to find her still in the room. But if someone else hadn’t yet checked into the same room, maybe I could find a clue where she might have headed next.

  I found something even better than a clue. I found Sheila.

  I had knocked to make sure no one was in the room before attempting to break in. Then I heard the deadbolt click. I scurried through my mind to find some excuse for knocking—Oops, wrong room—until Sheila opened the door and stopped all thinking for a second.

  “Ridley,” she said when I didn’t say something first.

  “I didn’t expect to find you here still.”

  “I hadn’t expected to stay. But I wanted to pay my respects before leaving.”

  I felt a pinch deep in my chest. “You been over yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You want a lift?”

  She thought a second, probably wondering why I’d come back to see her. But she didn’t ask. “Let me grab my coat.”

  I used the drive over to chew on how I wanted to approach her about what Autumn had told me. I wanted to shout accusations and judgments in her face. I’d done enough shouting the last few days, though. Going on the offensive like that wouldn’t get me far with Sheila anyway. She had always had a steel coating over her heart, not cold, but strong. Though the drinking had probably cracked that shell, I could tell by the look in her eyes it still held.

  The snowing had eased up, light flakes dancing on the cold breeze, alighting on the naked tree branches and the headstones in the cemetery.

  Sheila and I stood side-by-side before my parents’ graves, looking down as if we could see them there, asleep on beds of silk and matching pillows. A crust of snow obscured the writing on their headstones. I brushed both of them off with a gloved hand. The thorny brown stems from the roses I left in the fall poked out of the snow, headless, between the stones.

  Sheila took my arm. “I miss them.”

  Despite my anger, her touch felt comforting. I could almost pretend we were back before Autumn had come back into my life, before Sheila had run off, before I’d learned about her secret affair with the man who had sold my daughter. Almost. The sour taste on my tongue wouldn’t let me, though.

  “You’ve kept a lot of things from me,” I said.

  I expected some surprise, but she didn’t so much as turn to me, just kept holding my arm, gazing down at the gravesite, our combined body heat a small buffer against the cold.

  “Well?” I said.

  “I won’t deny it.” She let out a long breath which smoked in the winter air. “What’s on your mind, Ridley?”

  “I went to see Autumn today.”

  Now she did react. I felt her start. “Why?”

  “Because our friend Hersch went to see her first.” I turned to her so I could see her face. “He’s stepped up his con quite a bit.” I explained to her what had happened since that morning, stopping short of what Autumn had told me last.

  The wrinkles around her eyes deepened. “Jesus. I’m so sorry I brought this on you.”

  The faint sound of traffic from the road along the cemetery came like a soft breath over the hill beyond my parents’ gravesite. All other sound was muffled by the snowfall.

  I looked back and forth between the headstones. More flecks of snow had collected on their surfaces. “Has Hersch contacted you since we last spoke?”

  Her voice peaked. “No. Why would he?”

  “How much do you know about Lincoln Rice?”

  “Oh, Lord.” She let go of my arm and faced me. “Autumn knows?”

  I nodded. “And now Hersch does, too.”

  She staggered away from me, her heavy footfalls crunching in the snow. A sudden gust tugged at the hem of her coat, fluttering it around her thighs. Her back to me, I heard her voice, but the wind carried off the word.

  “How much do you know?” I asked again.

  She shook her head, wouldn’t turn back.

  I glanced at my parents’ graves, pulling in a hard breath through my nose. The winter chill burned the insides of my nostrils and carried a metallic scent like cold steel. Then I marched up to Sheila, put a hand on her shoulder, and gently turned her around to face me.

  Tears rolled in the grooves on her face. Up close, I noticed the jaundiced hue to her eyes. How much of her share of the inheritance had she washed away with drink?

  I felt like I stood at the edge of a precipice. The deepest, darkest water breaks against the rocks, like giant dinosaur teeth, below. I could jump. Could plunge into the dark sea and immerse myself in whatever secrets it held. But I had to clear the rocks. This jump could kill me.

  “Did you know about the baby selling?”

  She scowled. “Of course not.”

  “Did you know about my daughter?”

  She inched back, drawing trenches in the snow with her heels.

  My throat swelled. My face grew tight. “No, Sheila. No.”

  “I didn’t know he would…sell her.”

  Flakes of snow caught in my eyelashes. When I blinked them away, their melted remains felt like tears. “What did you know?”

  “That Autumn was pregnant. That you were the father. And that neither of you were ready for such a responsibility.”

  “You were in on it?”

  “We had long stopped seeing each other, but he came to me when he found out. Asked my advice.”

  Each word she spoke felt like a hammer strike to my chest. I could hardly breathe. “Your advice was what? Keep it secret then sell her off to the highest bidder?”

  Her gloved hands curled into fists. “I told you I didn’t know about that.”

  “Why should I believe you? You’ve kept this little lie for almost twenty years. If my parents knew what you’d done—”

  “They did know.”

  I shuffled back as if punched square in the solar plexus. My mouth opened and closed like a perch left on the dock planks to suffocate in time for dinner. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. They knew, and they agreed with our decision.”

  “Your decision? As if it was yours to make!”

  “You were just a child.”

  “I was eighteen. And you all were right. I hope that makes you feel better. I wasn’t ready to be a father. I couldn’t even figure out how to be a son.” The wind buffeted against me, but I felt none of the cold. “But all of you in your self-righteousness never thought to include the baby’s father in the discussion.”

  “What would you have said? Done?”

  I hesitated only a second. “I would have stood by my responsibility.”

  Sheila pointed at me. “That’s why we didn’t tell you.”

  “For my own good?” I twisted my fingers into my hair, ready to tear it out in chunks, maybe some scalp with it. “You knew what I went through after I came back. But you never said a word.”

  “I was ashamed. And I didn’t have enough information to help you, anyway. After I brought your parents together with Lincoln, I stepped out of the affair.”

  “How convenient.”

  “It wasn’t my choice to make.”

  “Mine either, thanks to you…” I swung a hand in the direction of the twin graves. “…and them.”

  “If I had it to do over again—”

  “You don’t.” I turned my back to her. “You don’t.”

  I heard the snow squeak as she close
d the distance between us. Her hand rested on my shoulder. I shrugged it off.

  “What can I do?” she asked.

  “Go the fuck back to wherever you came from. Disappear. I’m done with you.”

  “I want to help.”

  “You’ll get no redemption from me. You want to atone, do it somewhere else.”

  “Ridley, please.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. All that heat burning inside of me had burned itself out, leaving me twice as vulnerable to the cold. I couldn’t stop shivering. “He’s going to contact you.”

  “I won’t tell him a thing.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “I may have made a grave mistake, an unforgivable one, but I’m not your enemy, Ridley. I have no reason to bring you more harm that I already have.”

  She didn’t see the larger picture. She thought it would be as simple as saying “no.” But Hersch had proved he had a set of sharp grifter’s tools. And Sheila had a number of pieces he could dismantle.

  “He’ll offer to give back the money he took from you,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter. I won’t help him. Besides, I don’t know anything that can help him.”

  I forced myself to face her again. She looked like an ugly hag to me now. Nothing like the strong-willed protector she had pretended to be for so many years. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m certain.”

  “How long before you betrayed me were you and Rice lovers?”

  Her eye lids fluttered. “Couple of years.”

  “Did you go out? Meet any of his friends?”

  “He treated me very well. Theatre, restaurants, carriage rides.” She shuddered. “I know he turned out a monster, but I never knew a hint of that while we were together. He was a gentle, sweet man.”

  Who had killed his wife and pawned his granddaughter. A regular old Casanova, hey Sheila? “You only answered half my question.”

  A sprig of gray hair blew free from her tight bun and whipped across her face in the wind. “He introduced me to a few fellow doctors. He called them his Club Med. His clever way of saying they were his club of medic—”

  “I get it.” I wanted to reach out and pull that ridiculous lock of hair out of her face. She let it twitch in the wind across the bridge of her nose. It drove me crazy to look at. “You remember names?”