Sam smiles vaguely at me with not a spark of recognition. I don’t know what happened to him the past six months, but he got good. Too good.
I barely keep it together long enough to round a corner before I haul him into a bathroom, slam the door, and lock it behind us. I crank up the water to drown out any yelling I might be tempted to indulge in.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I hiss at him as quietly as I can, considering.
He drops the persona like cutting away a curtain. His eyes snap to mine. “I’m helping. Like Murphy asked me to.”
“Murphy asked you to?” That’s it. I’m docking that boy’s pay. Right after I deal with this boy. “Well, you can officially butt out, Sam. This is my job, not Murphy’s.”
“Well, maybe Murphy thinks you’re in over your head.”
“Oh, yeah? Murphy thinks that?” I’m glaring at the person who really thinks that. “I’ll have to remind Murphy that I’ve been doing this for longer than all the rest of you put together.”
“Murphy may believe that, but I know the truth. I’ve been doing this just as long as you have. Three-card monte, remember?”
Of course I remember. Sam and I made a bundle of cash fleecing our fourth-grade classmates with that old card trick before the principal cracked down on us. But it’s not the same for him as it is for me. I’ve been steeped in grifting my whole life. He’s had only his friendship with me as experience.
“So you just thought you’d show up and run your own con without telling me? Brilliant move, Samuel Jackson.”
“I figured you’d find out eventually. I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to pull me into a bathroom and risk blowing my cover.”
I point at myself. “This isn’t stupidity; it’s fury. Do you think I’d really let you stick around after crashing my con like this? You could have ruined my entire scam.”
“What scam?” he asks, gesturing at the file in my hand. “You’re digging through file cabinets like a damn cop. You stopped being the roper the second Salinger realized who you were. You’re not the shill anymore, Julep. You can’t be.”
My angry retort dies in my throat, because as much as it kills me to admit it, he’s right.
Sam’s face softens as he sees the acknowledgment in mine. “It has to be me,” he continues. “Salinger would have done his homework. I’m the only one who was never part of your investigation business. If there’s anyone he wouldn’t see coming, it would be me.”
“I can’t just sit on the sidelines, Sam. It’s my mom.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not suggesting you sit on the sidelines.” Then his mouth quirks up in a smirk as familiar to me as my own.
“I’m listening.”
• • •
“I still don’t see how a card trick is going to convince Salinger to spill all his secrets,” Murphy says, after I’ve soundly chastised him for bringing Sam into the picture.
“It’s not the card trick, Murph. It’s the principle behind it.”
“Which is?”
Murphy takes the exit off the freeway toward the Ramirezes’ house. Coaxing the van to slow down takes some careful pumping of the brakes so that the whole thing doesn’t tip over. It perhaps wasn’t the smartest purchase. But I have bigger problems than Bess—son of a muffler, now Murphy’s got me calling it that. The van. Not Bessie—the van.
“The three-card monte is a scam where you fool the mark into thinking he can beat the dealer,” I say. “With the cards, you plant a fake player who loses in a blindingly obvious way while the mark is watching. The mark thinks the planted player is an idiot and the dealer is giving away easy money. Then there’s also a roper, or shill, who nudges the mark to play. If they’re good, the mark can’t resist placing a bet. As soon as he does, the dealer pulls the sleight of hand so that the mark guesses wrong. If you’re lucky, the mark bets again a few times before giving up and you can empty his wallet when he’s not looking.
“In this case, Salinger is the mark. He’s expecting me to try to con him. What we’re hoping is that he’s not expecting me to turn over the real con to a new player.”
“So you’re the fake player who loses?”
I smile. “Yes and no. It’s not a perfect analogy. I’m also the lady.”
“What lady?”
“The ‘lady’ is the Queen of Hearts, the card that the mark is asked to pick out of a set of three. The fake player loses in an obvious way to make the mark believe he can easily win, but the lady is what truly distracts him. It’s the thrill of the game. The competition of getting one up on the dealer. As long as I keep Salinger distracted, Sam can pick his proverbial pocket clean.”
“You really think that will work?”
On the one hand, it’s a brilliant plan. Use me to distract Salinger from the real mole. On the other hand, the role reversal is hard for me to get used to. I don’t like being on the edge of the game. I prefer having my hands in the thick of it, knowing what there is to know immediately so I can deal with it on the fly if necessary. Sam’s plan forces me to rely on him to make split-second decisions. If he makes a mistake, he could bring down the whole con. If I make a mistake, at least I’m the one who pays the price. I don’t like the idea of Sam being closer to the line of fire.
Besides, I’m still not sure how much I can trust him. I know he’d never intentionally put me in harm’s way, but his leaving hurt a lot, and his staying gone hurt even worse. What if trusting him again puts me right back in the same place?
“I’ll be honest, I’m not used to Sam calling the shots. But the grifter in me senses that this plan is a good one. The right one,” I say.
Murphy considers that for a moment and then says, “Good enough for me.”
“I’ll be sending you a list of names to start background checks on.”
He groans. “Can’t we get Lily to do it?”
“I think Lily’s big memorial reveal was her way of tendering her resignation,” I say. “The absolute radio silence from her since last Thursday is kind of a giveaway.”
“Then why is she sitting on your doorstep?” Murphy says as he pulls Bess—the van—okay, fine, whatever—up to the curb.
Sure enough, Lily is sitting on the front stoop of the Ramirezes’ house, scrolling through her phone.
Fabulous. The last thing I want to do right now is have a come-to-Jesus moment with a member of Tyler’s family. My stomach is still grouchy from my confrontation with Sam. Now I’m about to have my nose rubbed in a big helping of Lily-guilt.
“I could keep driving,” Murphy says.
“Such a gentleman.”
“Or I could call Sam again.”
I give him a look so dirty he’ll need to shower with chlorine to wash it off. “And I could revoke your paycheck.”
“Hey, you owe me. Where would your full-monty plan be if I hadn’t looped Sam in?”
Sometimes I just can’t even. “Three. Card. Monte,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Whatever,” he says.
“I’m getting out before I resort to violence.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He shoots me a goofy grin designed to make me smile. It almost works.
My corporate heels and I clack onto the sidewalk. Bessie rolls and coughs and sputters away, leaving me alone to face the aftermath of my transgressions.
Lily hears me coming and looks up from her phone. She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t immediately try to knife me, either, so I’m calling it a win.
“Lily,” I say. “How can I help you?”
She swishes her black hair over her narrow shoulders, pocketing her phone and getting to her feet.
“I want an explanation.”
“Okay. Explanation for what?”
“For why you killed my brother,” she says.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I say, though it sounds lame even to me. I’d like to say that I didn’t kill him, that it wasn’t me who pulled the trigger. But that would sound even lamer. “I
was angry at him for betraying me, but I still…”
“You still what?” Lily asks.
I don’t answer, because I can’t sum up my feelings for Tyler in a single word. It’s just not that simple.
She walks away. “This was a stupid idea. I don’t know what I thought you could possibly say.”
I grab her arm as she passes. “You wanted me to fix it, because that’s what I do. I fix things. But I can’t fix this.”
She yanks her arm out of my grip. “I don’t want you to fix it. I want it never to have happened in the first place!” Her face breaks and falls apart, though not a tear falls.
“If I could undo it, I would.”
She laughs like porcelain shattering. “You’re supposed to tell me that he didn’t die in vain. That he died saving all those girls—the ones who idolize you now. You’re supposed to say that his sacrifice had purpose, that he was a good person, that he’ll never be forgotten.”
“What good would telling you any of that do? He didn’t die saving those girls. He died saving me. And I didn’t deserve it. No one knows that better than I do.”
She turns her back to me. Stiff, unyielding. I should let her go, but some part of me desperately wants to fix it for her. Or rather, for him. It’s the least I can do for still being here when I shouldn’t be.
“His sacrifice was senseless,” I say. “But he was a good person. And I, for one, will never forget him.”
“He was a jerk,” she says, her voice shaking with anger. “A giant jerk. He ate all my Halloween candy. He teased me constantly about being short. He even tried to burn my hair with a lighter once.”
She glares at me, daring me to contradict her, to force her to say only good about the dead. But I wouldn’t do that.
“Did you know him at all?” she says. “His middle name? His favorite color? Did you know about the time he set a rubber tire on fire in the backyard and tried to put it out with a five-hundred-dollar bottle of wine?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t. But I wanted to,” I say.
She snorts and turns away again.
“Why are you here, Lily? What do you want from me?”
“I want you to give me my brother back.”
“Okay,” I say.
She blinks at me. “Okay?”
I nod and sit down on the patch of grass I was just standing on, about three feet from the stairs leading up to the Ramirezes’ front door. Lily looks down at me, perplexed but with an edge of curiosity. Curiosity wins, and she plops down opposite me.
“Close your eyes,” I say, nervous because this idea could go wrong in a hundred thousand ways.
She complies, her face shuttering as she prepares for what’s coming.
“All right. Open them.”
When she does, I contort my features into a ridiculous face, designed to make a child laugh. Tyler told me once that he did this to cheer his sister up when she was upset. It worked on me then. I’m hoping it works on Lily now.
A silent moment passes. Then her expression crumples completely, and she drops her head into her hands, sobbing. I know better than to offer her comfort. So I offer her memories instead.
“Your brother put a dead rat in my locker to get my attention. He spied on me for a gangster at your father’s request. He lied to me about nearly everything. But he once offered to watch the world for me while I slept. And I still hear him saying that to me every night before I drift off.”
Lily doesn’t look at me. She weeps for several more minutes without so much as glancing up. Then she jumps to her feet, whirls toward the street, and takes off at a run.
I can’t say I’m sorry to see her go. I have my own demons to bleed. I wipe my eyes and head into the house.
• • •
I spend all the next day trying to figure out a way past the locked door. I know I’m supposed to let Sam do the heavy lifting on this one, but getting on the other side of that door would be a coup. And it’s what Salinger expects me to try to do. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have put up giant neon Julep signs pointing straight to it.
I’m not even close to successful, though. I keep getting interrupted. Apparently, people actually expect me to work at this internship. If I have to staple one more initiate packet, I may stuff it down Joseph’s throat.
The only time I get within a foot of that padlock is when Joseph leads me past it on our way to the second floor to clean up the ropes-challenge room. I glare at the door, at Joseph, even at innocent Brigitte as I walk by. I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to. Having to wait on getting through that door is not going to make this process any faster.
“Everyone hates the ropes course at first,” Joseph says as we’re collecting the extra mats. “Though we don’t usually start the initiates on the wall. You’re special.”
“I’m actually very ordinary.” I fold up a few of the mats and carry them to the closet.
“That’s initiate-level thinking,” Joseph says as he stacks gym blocks. “The point of NWI’s program is to break people out of the mind-set that underachieving is normal.”
When I emerge from the closet, Joseph is standing by the doorway.
“What about the overachievers?” I ask.
“Overachievers tend to be underachievers in other areas of their lives. They burn themselves out and ruin their relationships because they never learned how to fail.”
“So you teach people how to fail?” I say.
“We teach people that failure is just part of the process. That the end goal isn’t perfection, it’s adaptation.”
I follow him down the ramp to the main level and back to the offices. I’m surprised, though, when we pass our cubicle and continue on to the back of the building.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“I want to show you something,” he says. For once, his easy smile is absent, his expression pensive. If I’m lucky, it means he’ll finally reveal something I can use. If I’m not lucky, it means he’s discovered my real reason for being here and is about to kick me to the curb, special dispensation from Salinger or no.
When he leads me to the mysterious locked door, my heart goes into adrenaline hyperdrive. I thought for sure I’d have to break in to get to the treasure trove of information I’m assuming is locked behind it. But Joseph is taking me right to it.
As he fishes out his keys, he says, “We have to keep the door locked for privacy reasons.”
“Privacy reasons” could mean anything. Still, I have a range of expectations of what could be hiding behind that door—another room of tell-all files, a lab of wall-to-wall computers, a cache of nuclear weapons—but what I see is about as far from any of those as you can get.
A line of people in heavy overcoats, carrying plastic bags stuffed with filthy clothes and odds and ends, winds around the room. At one end of the line is a folding table with a clean-cut girl in wire-framed glasses sitting on the other side, taking notes. Standing next to her is Duke Salinger, wearing a light gray suit that stands out like a sore thumb in the warehouse full of itinerants. He’s chatting with each person as they approach the table, shaking hands, patting shoulders, even offering a hug to a privileged few. Then he stows a few disposable plastic containers in a tote bag and hands one to each person with a warm smile before greeting the next person in line.
“A homeless shelter?” I say, stunned.
“Nothing that formal,” Joseph answers. “Four years ago, when Duke first started outfitting the NWI building, he noticed the growing homeless population in this neighborhood. There had been a spate of homeless deaths from lack of services. So on a whim, he bought this building and had the door installed to connect it to the NWI building. He asked for volunteers from the staff to provide services to the homeless population.”
“But why no publicity? There’s nothing on the NWI website about a philanthropic arm of the company.”
“It’s not always about what you get out of it.”
It isn’t? First I’m hearing of
it.
Joseph smiles at me as if he can sense my internal snark. “I know—it came as a shock to me, too.” He gestures at Salinger. “But it’s the reason I’m now on this side of the table.”
It takes a moment for me to process what he’s saying. “You were homeless?”
He nods. “I was sixteen when my dad disowned me for coming out. He told me I broke our family, though he was the one who threw me away.”
“Wow, Joseph,” I say. “That sucks.”
He shrugs. “It gets better, right? Anyway, I migrated north to Chicago just after spring thaw. I heard about this place from a friend. After a few conversations, Duke took me under his wing. My NWI family supported me through getting my GED and eventually hired me. I literally owe them my life.”
We’re interrupted by a black guy in a calf-length, shiny pleather raincoat and stained purple bowler, holding a pug named Bill, apparently, as that’s what Joseph says when he pats the dog. The intrusion gives me a few minutes to ponder this new development. Not just Joseph, but Duke and NWI as well. Grifters aren’t typically known for their generosity. I can’t think of a single con artist who works in a soup kitchen in his downtime.
So what am I going up against here? Did Salinger really go straight? If so, what happened to Mr. Antolini? How did he end up embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars without so much as a blip of a prior criminal record? Something else must have triggered his descent into thievery. Organizations that secretly sponsor soup kitchens just don’t have that evil tinge to them.
When Joseph finishes his conversation, he turns back to me. “Hungry?” he says.
I shake my head. “Why did you want to show me this?”
His expression morphs from inviting to empathetic. “Not every wall is as obvious as a twelve-foot wooden structure,” he says gently. “Some walls are actually ruts—ways of being we’ve become entrenched in for one reason or another. But we don’t have to stay there. I just wanted you to know that I know what I’m talking about. Personal experience.”
As I’m absorbing this, Salinger approaches us, hand outstretched. “Ah, Julep. So you’ve discovered my big secret.”
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