I take his hand. It’s the polite thing to do, after all. “I had help,” I say, nodding at Joseph.
“Remind me to keelhaul you later,” Duke says to Joseph, winking.
“Yes, sir.” Joseph’s smile is easy and sincere, as if they’ve joked this way for years. “Mind if I take over for a while?”
“Not at all. I’d like the opportunity to get to know our new intern a little better.” Then Duke turns to me. “Shall we go for a walk?”
I think about contract killers and calculate the number of daylight hours left. Luckily, the summer sun tends to stick around longer than it should. There’s no guarantee an attack won’t come in the middle of the afternoon, but it’s a lot less likely. And I’d rather walk than sit still. I think better when I’m on the move.
I follow Salinger out onto the street, where the line of homeless people wraps around the corner of the building. The air is hot and humid, and I’m wishing I’d thought to wear sandals instead of dress shoes.
“So, how many skeletons have you found so far?”
I sigh heavily. “None,” I admit. “I’m batting a thousand on this one.”
“I won’t ask why you’re investigating me. I’m sure you need to keep your client’s confidentiality.”
“What makes you think I’m working for someone?”
“I looked you up. Fellow grifter, remember? The first Internet entry for you is for your private investigation firm. Since you and I have no personal history, I assume you’re here on behalf of someone else.”
No need to confirm or deny it. He’ll draw whatever conclusions he wants to without my help. But it’s a good opportunity to plant a little misinformation while trying to dig for information of my own.
“How do you know my mother?” I ask.
He smiles sadly. “I didn’t know her well. The Morettis ruled the international criminal underworld. They probably still do. But in either case, you couldn’t be a criminal twenty years ago without knowing Alessandra Moretti. She was destined to take over the family business when her mother retired.”
Per mia fata turchina, A.N.M. For my blue fairy, Alessandra Nereza Moretti.
“I’m sorry. You must have my mother confused with someone else. She’s not the criminal in my family.”
“Maybe not anymore, but she was supposed to be.”
I put one foot in front of the other, my mind whirling. “Anything that scared your mother that much—your mother, who wasn’t afraid of anything—should be avoided at all costs.”
Nope. I’m still not buying it. Heir to a criminal dynasty? That would make me the next in line, and growing up broke and family-less does not exactly fit that paradigm. Besides, nothing has ever happened to me to even remotely indicate that I’m on anyone’s radar for induction into a criminal family cabal. Well, nothing but the strange note on the tuition check that mysteriously showed up for me last semester.
Travo la fata turchina. Find the blue fairy.
No. I still don’t believe it. Too far-fetched. I’m not exactly normal, but I’m not criminal royalty, either.
“I respected your mother, even back then. But I respect her more for giving it up. I know what that’s like.”
“Do you?” I say, letting doubt color my tone.
We walk in silence for a few moments, navigating around the other pedestrians as we saunter upstream. Duke leads me off the beaten sidewalk into Ping Tom Memorial Park. The noise level falls dramatically, which will make his confession easier to hear. He sits at the first bench we come to.
“I didn’t grow up like you or Joseph. I grew up privileged, entitled. But I was just as alone.”
I think of Tyler and Lily and how growing up with all the money in the world doesn’t guarantee you a carefree childhood. “Fleecing people doesn’t win you any popularity contests.”
“At the time, I didn’t know that the great, gaping emptiness I wrestled with was isolation. I thought I could fill it with money and power. I didn’t realize that prosperity couldn’t love me back.”
“Poor rich grifter,” I can’t help but say. “It must have been so hard for you, spending so much of other people’s money.”
He ignores my jab. “I fell into a deep depression. I wandered aimlessly, looking for something, anything to connect with. And then one day I thought, if no one sees me, maybe I’m not worth being seen. It was the darkest moment of my life.
“I happened to be out walking when I passed a woman struggling to get her belongings and her young child off a bus. The passenger behind her was badgering her to hurry up. She looked stressed and miserable, so I picked up the bags she’d dropped and offered her my hand. She took it and smiled at me gratefully.
“The moment her eyes met mine…the closest I can come to describing it is getting struck by a train, but in a good way. I’d never felt anything like it before. She adjusted her burdens and walked away. But that single moment changed my life, because I did the reaching.
“I thought about that exchange all the rest of the day and into the night, trying to figure out why such a tiny act had felt so significant. After hours of racking my brain, I finally realized that my interaction with the woman from the bus showed me that I wasn’t the only one alone, and isn’t that just a half step away from not being alone? More importantly, I realized I could do something about it, something that would finally fill the emptiness I’d struggled with my whole life.
“I gave back the money I stole, where I could. The rest I donated to any charity I came across. I served my time in prison. And when I was released, I founded the New World Initiative.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I see the same signs of alienation and isolation in you. I want to help you the way that woman from the bus helped me.”
I drop my gaze to my hands, swallowing. “I tried connecting with people. It didn’t work out so well.”
“Keeping yourself at a distance isn’t going to work out, either.”
“What kind of a grifter tells his mark that he’s a grifter to earn her trust?”
He smiles and pats my hand. “A reformed one.” He gets to his feet, smoothing the front of his suit jacket. “If you ever want to talk, my door is always open.” Then he walks away, leaving me on the bench trying to reconcile this kindly mentor version of Duke with Mrs. Antolini’s insistence that NWI is responsible for her husband’s incarceration.
Oddly, the exchange reminds me of Ralph. It was probably the fatherly hand-patting. Ralph used to do that to me, too. As I realize that, I suddenly yearn for nothing more than to be that young girl again, exploring Ralph’s trinket shop for the first time. He may have been my dad’s bookie, but he was a good friend. And right now, his shop seems like the safest, sanest place I’ve ever set foot in. But then, as always happens when I think about Ralph too long, my guilt engulfs me and shuts me down. No one knows what happened to him, not even Petrov. Which means I’ll never know, either.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and check the number. It’s Mrs. Antolini.
“Hello?”
Her voice on the other end is garbled and hysterical, the signal cutting in and out.
“Slow down,” I say, cupping the phone closer to my ear to hear better. “Take a breath. What’s going on?”
“It’s my husband. The warden just called. Gerald t-tried to k-k—”
“Tried to what?” I say, walking back toward the NWI building.
“They found him in his cell. Unconscious.”
My chest tightens. “Mrs. Antolini—”
“He tried to kill himself!” She breaks down completely. “He tried to hang himself in his cell.”
“This is twice to a prison now,” Dani grouses as she makes a U-turn with the newly returned Chevelle to reach an exit on the opposite side of the road. “Just because no one has tried to kill you in a week does not mean the contract has been canceled.”
“I need to talk to this guy. I can’t find anything at NWI that lead
s me to Bar63 or the blue fairy. There’s nothing that indicates NWI is shady. The only thing off is Mr. Antolini. If everything keeps leading back to him, I have to find out what he knows.”
“And the uniform will get you into a maximum-security facility’s hospital wing?”
I tug at the cuff of my tab-collar clerical shirt. The sleeves are slightly too long, which makes me crazy. Nothing gives away a disguise quicker than a poor fit. But there’s no hope for it. Clerical shirts aren’t exactly easy to find. At least the matching pants fit well. And by “well,” I mean “like a pair of stovepipes.” As disguises go, this is the least fashionable one I’ve worn in years. I guess it could be worse—I could be dressing up as an inmate. Actually, I might be dressing up as an inmate, if I get caught.
“I want to see him. But he’s on constant visual observation in a safe cell. Impersonating a priest is the best I could come up with on short notice.”
“I find it amusing that you happen to have a priest’s garb in your closet.”
“ ‘Be prepared.’ It’s the grifter’s motto.”
“I thought that was the Girl Scouts’ motto.”
“It’s a popular motto.”
“Do you think it is wise to talk to him after he tried to commit suicide?”
That’s Dani for you. She’s not really of the beating-around-the-bush school of thought.
“It’s the best chance a fake clergywoman has to interview a high-risk prisoner. Besides, he’s vulnerable. I might get more out of him while his guard is down.”
Dani nods. She doesn’t grimace or look offended that I’d take advantage of a person like that. She just nods. More than anyone, she accepts me completely for who I am. I don’t know whether to love her for it or judge her.
“After this, no more errands. You take too many chances as it is. You are still in danger.”
“I know, but it’s not like we have any leads on the person who ordered the hit. Maybe drawing the hit man out will help us.”
She takes her eyes off the road to shoot me a glare. “No, it will not help us. I have ideas of how to get information. But I cannot pursue them if you insist on behaving like no one is trying to kill you.”
“Understood,” I say, more to appease her than because I believe I’ll do anything differently. “I do try to keep myself on lockdown as much as possible.”
“Do you,” she says flatly, her glare receding from pointed to merely grouchy.
We spend the rest of the drive to the detention facility picking apart my conversation with Duke.
“You think he is telling the truth?” she asks.
“I don’t know. He’s a grifter with a lot more years of experience than me. He could easily be conning me, because he knows how to hide his tells.”
Dani pauses, processing. “But you want to believe him.”
I pull my collar to loosen it. I don’t want to admit that she can read me, especially when I’ve been lousy at reading myself lately. But she’s not wrong.
“I want to believe a person can earn absolution,” I say.
She rubs her neck, touching the spires of her cathedral tattoo poking out from under her shirt. “Only a person who believes in absolution can earn it.”
I shake my head. “So you’re saying absolution is subjective? Isn’t that the same as saying it’s imaginary? That any idiot who decides they’re forgiven automatically is? I don’t buy that. Either you can make up for your sins or you can’t.”
“I am saying that it is a path, not a state of being. The first step on the path is believing it can be done.”
I stare out the window at the mix of countryside and suburbia we’re passing on the way to the max-security prison. Unfortunately, they don’t tend to put those sorts of places near cities. Gives me plenty of time to brood about impossible things.
“Do you ever worry about earning forgiveness?” I say as we turn onto the winding road leading from the freeway to the prison parking lot.
“I do not worry about it, no,” she says quietly.
“Because you believe you can earn absolution?”
She doesn’t answer for several long moments. “Because I know I cannot,” she says as she pulls up to the curb to drop me off.
“Dani—”
“I will park under the nearest floodlight. Find me when you are finished.”
And the conversation is over. Dani has an irritating habit of turning herself on and off around me. I prefer to be the person controlling the flow of information. But I’ll let it go for now, because I need to get my head in the game.
I slide out of the car and make my way up the long walk to the front door. Once inside, I approach the glassed-in guard gate. The prison lobby has a completely different vibe from the medium-security facility my dad’s in. For one thing, the word lobby is not remotely appropriate for the empty, cement-floor vestibule that leads to the gate.
“Can I help you, Reverend?” says the security guard behind the bulletproof glass.
“Yes,” I say, adjusting my spectacles. The white and gray face makeup that I sponged into my hair at the temples lends credibility to my disguise, as does my severe posture and air of superiority. “I’m here to visit an inmate. One of my constituents requested I pray with him for healing. He’s gravely ill, and I’m to intercede on his behalf.”
The guard looks bored, which is a good sign my disguise is holding up. He sets a clipboard and pen in a metal tray on his side of the glass and pushes a lever. The tray slides out on my side, and I pick up the contents. I fill out the register with my name, the inmate’s name, and time in.
I put the clipboard and my minister’s license (yes, I have a forged minister’s license—it’s a long story) in the tray, and the guard reels it in. He checks my license and sends it back with a visitor’s badge to clip to my shirt pocket. He buzzes me in, and I push through the scary, spiky-looking turnstile into the institutional hallway leading in one of two directions. The signage is less than helpful, so another passing guard, taking pity on me, points the way to the hospital cells. I thank him and head down the hall.
When I get to the next checkpoint, a guard escorts me to the bank of cells housing the inmates under observation. The guard leading me is a beefy Latino who could give Mike a run for his money. The cells themselves are overly bright, far too much fluorescence to be healthy. The furniture in the cells is not what you see on TV. It looks more like something from an Ikea catalog—smooth plastic supports, rounded edges, padded futons for mattresses. I suppose it’s to keep inmates from hurting themselves, but it makes the rooms look futuristic.
Most of the cells are empty, but a few are occupied. I follow the guard to the end of the row. I’m not sure what I expected to see when I looked through the bars, but the man sitting on the Ikea futon was not it. His hair is stringy, his cheeks hollow, and his eyes stare straight ahead at nothing.
This isn’t normal. He shouldn’t have deteriorated this drastically. Prison’s rough, sure, but this is…this is weird.
“Mr. Antolini?” I say, revising my game plan. I expected him to be hostile, or at least withholding. I don’t have a contingency for him being mentally incapable of answering.
“You’ll have to sit out here,” says the guard, pointing to a chair adjacent to the cell.
“I thought members of the clergy were allowed to see the prisoners without supervision.”
“I’ll be at my station if you need me.”
I mumble a quick thanks and turn my attention to the catatonic inmate. He hasn’t even looked at me. This is going to be harder than I thought.
“Mr. Antolini, your wife sent me to talk with you. She wants you to know that she is worried about you and would like to see you as soon as possible. Do you have a message you’d like me to take back to her?”
He looks at me blankly, then returns to his scrutiny of the concrete wall. So much for the gentle approach.
“She thinks you’re here because NWI brainwashed you into stealing money. Do you
think that’s true?”
He doesn’t look at me this time, but he starts to rock back and forth. He’s mumbling something, which I can’t quite make out.
“Mr. Antolini—”
Before I get out the next question, he stands and shuffles over to the wall. The collar of his too-big shirt shifts down, revealing an angry welt on his neck. I flinch, but force myself to watch. He draws on the wall with his finger. His mumbling increases in volume, so I can just make out what he’s saying.
“…eight two one two eight four nine five seven zero nine eight six three NWI three six eight nine zero seven five nine four eight two one two eight four nine five seven zero nine eight six three NWI three six eight nine zero seven five nine four…”
By about the third repetition, I catch on that he’s reciting a pattern. I pull a receipt out of my wallet and borrow a pen from the guard’s desk. The guard doesn’t look happy about me asking, but I give him a certified clergy glare, and he hands me one. I thank him and head back to Mr. Antolini’s cell. I hold my breath as I draw close, afraid that he’s reverted to his catatonic state. But my luck seems to be holding thus far—he’s still repeating the numbers.
I write down the sequence and stow it in my pocket for Sam and Murphy to analyze later. But a random string of numbers is not exactly what I came here for. I’ll try one more time to break through before giving up.
“Mr. Antolini,” I say, standing close to the bars of his cell. “My name is Julep and I’m trying to get you out of here. Is there anything you can tell me about NWI or the blue fairy—”
Suddenly, Mr. Antolini grabs his head and starts howling. The sound is earsplitting and awful, and the other inmates on the cellblock are getting agitated. I stumble back from the bars, hands over my ears. What did I say? The blue fairy? What the hell happened to this guy?
A couple of guards and a medical technician rush in and take over. My escort guard firmly ushers me out.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Remember to sign out when you get to the front desk,” he says curtly before abandoning me on the other side of his checkpoint.
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