Zwerfster Chic

by Billie Kelgren

  Twenty hours isn’t enough time to come up with a solution.

  The primary skill of a good con artist is the ability to determine what it is, at the most basic level, that the target wants. Most cons deal with greed, because greed is a negative character trait that, once you’ve shown someone your capacity for being greedy, you will do almost anything to justify. But that is not the fundamental desire that is driving the person. Greed is only a manifestation — the willingness to compromise personal values to get what you really want. Revenge is the same way. It’s a lashing out at someone or something that has taken away or destroyed any hope you had of getting what you want. What you need.

  Everything comes down to love. Love of self, the love of others, adoration, adulation, admiration, pride — that you’re the best, that you’re the smartest, that you’re needed — acceptance, inclusion, the feeling that you belong.

  So what a great con artist has is the ability to read people. To look at a person, watch their actions, listen to their words and their tones, pick up on the subtle hints and subconscious cues, and from this, know what the person, the target, the mark, really needs.

  It’s what I love about Mia. Without my saying a word, she knows exactly what to give me.

  “Bokkie.”

  I’m turning in circles, uncertain because so many people around me are speaking Arabic and someone could be saying something that sounds about the same.

  “Bokkie.”

  Then I spot her, a good fifty feet away, dressed in a black linen suit and a long, gray scarf draped over her head, its ends thrown back over her shoulders, looking very much the elegant lady. She holds her arms open and is beckoning me into them with her hands, like a mother calling to her child to come give a hug. She’s beaming, telling me with her expression that she’s missed me, that she loves me, and that she wants me in her arms at that very moment.

  Mom is a real sucker for Reds, bawling her eyes out every time, which was a shock, frightening me the first time — she’s not supposed to cry. But she connected with the movie because she saw herself in the Beatty character. She was the Beatty and Dad was her Keaton. Of course, she seemed to disregard the whole disillusionment and death part of it.

  Now I’m the Keaton, but that’s okay with me, because it’s Keaton’s scene. We’re the two Americans in a foreign world, finding one another, and I love being the Keaton. I walk quickly to shorten the distance between us, dropping my bag as I approach, and allow myself to be folded deep into her arms. Oh, so very Beatty-Keaton. Mom would be jealous.

  Mia knows how to give me what I want.

  We hug as long as we think appropriate and then she holds me away from her so she can look me over. She puts her fingers through my hair, fixing the mess of twenty hours of flight, pulling the left side forward because she knows it makes me more comfortable. She places my scarf up over my head and then kisses me lovingly on the cheek.

  “You know, I really missed you,” she says, slipping her arm about me and leading me away. She asks about the trip, my father, how things are in Boston as we make our way out to the taxis. There are glass doors between us and the outside, and when they open, I almost stumble as I smack into the wall of heat.

  “What happened to Brussels?” I ask, prompting her to laugh.

  “We’ll be there shortly. You’re back sooner than I expected, so I’m not done here yet.”

  She motions to the lead cab and speaks in quick Arabic to the driver, asking him to take us to the Hyatt Capital Gate. In that short amount of time, from air-conditioned airport to air-conditioned taxi, sweat is already trickling down my back.

  Sitting in the back, she pats my knee, telling me again how much she’s missed having me around, which makes me blush. Not from embarrassment, but from the thrill of hearing someone say that to me.

  “Since you’re here, there’s something I’ve been wanting to try.”

  The Eleven-Piece Place Setting is a financial scam that’s in the category of asymmetrical serial triplines. I say this as if I know what I’m talking about, but, believe me, I don’t. I never did much with Money when I was in the Bureau, and I certainly didn’t do Scams & Bozos. Besides, I’m not even sure if those guys would know this stuff, because I’m getting my lessons from Mia, who’s in a whole different class. The Bureau would be damned lucky to have her, but they could never afford her. Our room, our suite in the Hyatt, high above the city and overlooking the Gulf, with a bathtub larger than my room in Boston? Well….

  In the Bureau, we were given per diem.

  Mia’s overnight stays are in terms of per annum.

  Anyway, the asymmetrical serial tripline differs from a symmetrical parallel tripline, like an Eight-Piece Place Setting, in that the goal of the asymmetrical is to keep the target moving, from one calamity to another, and having each solution set them up for the next in line. It’s known as a Place Setting because, Mia tells me, it starts on the outside and works its way in, from one side of the plate to the other, one after another, until everything is gone in the end. The larger you can make it, the less likely the target will be able to trace it back to its source, protecting the player. Stacking more and more into the play, however, adds almost exponential levels of complexity, so there’s always a risk of things falling apart and exposing everything.

  Mia tells me that the Eleven-Piece we’re about to play is the largest she’s ever put together, which is both thrilling and worrying to me.

  A symmetrical parallel tripline is the same concept except it uses an even number of “settings,” which collapse inward from both sides simultaneously, giving the target nothing to do but watch it fall. In this case, the target pretty much knows they’ve been set up, but it really doesn’t matter because they are too busy losing everything.

  These plays are duets, meaning they require two and only two players, which are different from mixed doubles, tag team, HOVs, and a buddy-buddy. An HOV, for example, can be played with two or more, like the number of people required in the car. A Slap and a Blowjob is the example Mia gives me of an HOV — it’s a reversed extreme version of a Beauty and the Beast, a play where you distract the target from your actual goal by providing a troublesome nightmare that will keep them busy. A mixed double uses two targets that play against one another, with the players continually rotating sides. Mia mentions A Meeting on the Trolley, but I don’t know the details other than it involves a fabricated holding company, or a real one that’s unaware that it’s being used.

  There’s also, if I remember them correctly, A Shorted Sheet, The Call from Home, The Hot-Tip Fuckup, The Five-Buck Haircut, The Meeting with a Lady, and Charlie Is a Sick Bastard. I might have these all wrong, because it’s so much coming at me at once and I’m being distracted by a wonderfully warm bed and the thick, soft comforter that I’ve slipped myself under. The room’s temperature is set low and I’m operating on very little sleep at the time of my lessons.

  These plays are running without exception in the financial capitals of the world, the majority of which never really pan out because some people simply do not follow the plan. The goal, apparently, is to be left as the smartest one in the room. That, and to earn a bit of traveling money.

  Mia doesn’t say anything at first. She only tries to smile at the two men, who smile in return, and then looks at me with that certain look in her eyes that I’m supposed to be able to read but I just smile heedlessly back at her. We’re all smiling here, as if a baby had just burped its first words at us.

  “I think you’re remembering that wrong,” she says to me, her tone flat and her words measured.

  “What? No, I don’t think so. I have a good memory for numbers.”

  I say this last part to the two men who sit silently, watching us as though we’re some private show for their amusement. I want to assure them that I haven’t made a mistake.

  “Forty-three thousand two-hundred. I’m certain of it.”

  I say this last part to Mia, in an attempt to ask her to stop embarr
assing me.

  “No. You must be remembering it wrong.”

  “I read it this morning. Forty-three thousand two-hundred.”

  It’s strange how you will repeat something as arbitrary as a number, as if repeating it somehow proves you’re right.

  “You read it wrong, then. Too many zeros.”

  She then gives me the most subtle change in expression, but enough of one to cause my smile to drop and my eyes to go a little wide. It’s saying Shut the fuck up!

  I quickly look at the two men who sit with us at the table. One who’s an Arab, though I don’t know from what country, only that he speaks with Mia in Arabic, and the other an Australian, or New Zealander, it’s hard to tell for certain by the accent. They’re both looking at me as I look at them before their gazes shift in tandem over to Mia. The Anzac relaxes into his chair, putting his arms up along the back. He has a rather slight build, so he’s had padding placed into the shoulders of his suit and now it makes him look like a cartoon caricature of a bodybuilder.

  I catch the minute change in their pupils, the tiny shift in the corners of their mouths that they try to hide, but the Arabic-speaker is doing a lousy job at it so he allows himself to express freely what he’s thinking, which is Got you, you fucking bitch.

  Mia speaks quickly in a mash-up of English and Arabic and I turn away, embarrassed by the catastrophe I have now created. I watch the sun as it drops into the Gulf, staring at it so that when I close my eyes, its negative is on the inside of my eyelids. It causes my eyes to water and I wipe away the tears. Tears of my embarrassment, my shame for having spoken out-of-turn and screwing things up.

  The Eleven-Piece Place Setting has been set.

  We wait for the elevator without a word passing between us. I wish we could’ve stayed on the terrace. The temperature outside is finally bearable and the view, with the breeze in your face, is magical. Still, even I know the dangers of overstaying your welcome at the party. Mia is supposed to be livid with me.

  We enter the elevator as separately as a couple fighting their way through a particularly contentious divorce, each of us taking an opposite corner. She stares at the control panel as I examine the floor, and it seems forever before the doors close and the car starts to move. I turn to her, start to talk, feeling a little relieved, but Mia puts a finger up on me and I grumble as I return to staring at the floor. Only when we’re on our floor, down the hall, and behind the closed door of our room does she finally let out a breath and relax.

  “Very good, bokkie.”

  She gives me a peck on the cheek. She’s smiling now and she appears excited.

  “I did this for a living, you know,” I tell her. I mean, Jesus, I was undercover and all. “How long until you know it worked?”

  “A couple of weeks, maybe. Hopefully before July. Though we won’t know if it’s completed until maybe next spring.”

  We stay in the room that night, ordering room service. We had a falling out, after all, so we can’t be seen in public, and we’ll have to leave in the morning to face the consequences of what had happened. The Arab and the Anzac probably figure we’re going to be among the ranks of the unemployed in the next few days, and they plan to reap the benefits of our carelessness. It’s a good bet they’re partying hard this night.

  We watch the sun finally melt into the sea and the city come alive with lights, shimmering like diamonds dropped at our feet as we eat our dinner and share a bottle of wine. Mia lets her guard down a little, smiling more, her eyes glowing behind rosy cheeks. For the first time, she speaks with me like I’m a partner, a companion, and it feels good. I stop after the first glass, though, because I worry this might go too far. I can feel my inhibitions slipping and I have to keep my thoughts in check, my mouth shut.

  I don’t want to ruin everything by asking her about Marie.

  14

  Amsterdam

  I laughed, up until the moment Angel raped me. I mean, it’s not that…

  Shit.

  They sent two agents to question me while I was still in the hospital in L.A. They started, I was told, right after I was brought off the heavy pain meds, when I was finally capable of maintaining a coherent thought and forming a coherent sentence. I don’t remember exactly when that was, so I guess coherence was a relative thing.

  The doctor said I had lost ten to fifteen pounds of body tissue and muscle mass, all from my left side. They were estimating based on their calculations of the mass of the right side of my body, with the assumption that I was kind of symmetrical. Well, I wasn’t kind of symmetrical. My left side was my good side. It had the curves and the lines and the tone that I liked about myself, so when I looked in the mirror, I turned and looked at my left. My right side wasn’t so bad, but when you made comparisons, the left always won. Everything’s a competition, isn’t it?

  I also lost most of my left breast, caught up in teeth and shredded off my body. I loved my left boob. It was the one that tingled the best.

  Anyway, I have no clue as to most of the things they were asking me when the agents first showed up, but they were both men. By the time I could hold an actual conversation with them, though, one of the men had become a woman. I was tapping the morphine dispenser like a teen boy on a PlayStation even though, most of the time, my game controller was broke.

  They wanted some clarification on what had happened at Angel’s headquarters, a little bungalow in Harvard Park that had been abandoned after the two former occupants were found executed in their back yard. Angel had nothing to do with that. He only took advantage of the situation. The deaths were a family thing.

  The male agent asked if I had been sexually involved with Angel before that day, or was that the first time. That is, he was equating my being raped with sex. Even the female agent looked a little dumbfounded, but then she was obviously the junior partner of the team so she didn’t say anything. I wish she had — otherwise, what the fuck was she doing there? I told him that I never had sex with Angel. We flirted, hinted at it, and I fantasized about it sometimes, but it never got itself going.

  He asked if I was armed, which I wasn’t. And even if I were, it would’ve made no real difference. I was stuck from the start, because of the way Angel came at me. I was laughing, believing he was kidding around. He liked to goof off when it was only the two of us.

  He liked me.

  I thought he liked me.

  How the hell could he do something like that to someone he liked?

  The Agent then went on to the other victims at the scene.

  Fuck you! I was the victim at the scene! I was the victim! They were just the bodies.

  Was anyone there besides Angel when you arrived? Who released the dogs? Where did you get the pen? Why did you feel it necessary to stab Angel so repeatedly? Well, we were told it was twenty-seven times. At what point did Mateo arrive? At what point did Luis arrive? Who shot the dogs? Who shot Mateo? Who shot Luis? Who called the police? Why are your prints and your blood on Mateo’s gun? If Angel, the dogs, and Luis were all incapacitated, and you had Mateo’s weapon, why was Mateo shot, at close range, in the side of the head?

  They asked me these same questions every time they came by because that’s what the Bureau does. They ask questions, again and again, sometimes with a slight variation, sometimes without so there will be no misunderstanding, and they wait until you slip up, which you will do, eventually.

  This was when they were trying to stick me with the bodies.

  I didn’t shoot the dogs. That was Mateo.

  I wish I had the chance to tell Mateo’s mother how her son was actually a decent young man, despite the things she was told.

  But how could I possibly do that without her knowing right off that I was the one who killed him?

  We created D.A.M. shortly after we heard Mom talking about the Ferguson issue with the D.A.R. at one of the cocktail parties they used to have at our house with all the people Mom and Dad knew from the college and work. Academia and engineers — you can im
agine how thrilling those conversations were. Still, we sat at the top of the stairs, listening to the commotion, hoping to catch a titillating bit of gossip, mostly because it was our ritual. I mean, it was a little ridiculous by this point — I was in high school, Tonya in junior high, and Naddie was quickly bringing up the rear, so we were all almost grown. We were also sitting around in our daytime clothes instead of our nightgowns because bedtime was no longer at eight o’clock. Still, it was something me and my sisters shared, and, despite all the fighting and screaming and damnations to hell, we sometimes liked to cling to little pieces of our happy (delusional) childhood.

  Tonya heard about the D.A.R. in her private school. Some of the girls talked about joining one day, so they were already looking down their noses at everyone else in preparation. Tonya hated them, the snobby girls, and the D.A.R. itself, which she saw as a social gathering of formerly snobby girls, now snobby women. When we heard Mom lambast them over this Ferguson issue (we didn’t know the details; there was no internet or Wikipedia at the time), we decided, right there on the stairs, to create the Daughters of the Angry Mom, in her honor. (We couldn’t figure how to add an N to it without it sounding ridiculous, but D.A.M. was enough to make us giggle.)

  Some of our friends wanted to join (mostly Tonya’s) because they felt that they, too, had mothers who would qualify. We considered it for a few weeks, but in the end, the three of us decided that it would remain our exclusive organization because, simply put, none of these other girls ever had to endure the grueling initiation process that we did.

  The Sex talk, the Male Perspective talk, the Your Friends Reflect Who You Are talk, the You Are a Reflection of Your Family talk, and, most famously, the Masturbation Is Okay But Just Don’t Take It Too Far talk. (Jesus, Mom! Did Tonya and Naddie get this talk?) There were many more, plus all the minor collective addresses that we endured at the dinner table, plus the memorable quips and admonitions that we tallied up and collected like Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. (It was debatable which were more disturbing.) It was a tradition among us sisters, after surviving a particularly protracted evening at the table, to wait until the folks were gone, and then look at one another and say Damn. Then we would smile and revel in our completion of yet another rite of passage.