The Last Con

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The Last Con Page 23

by Zachary Bartels


  “Are you ready to check out?” came a pleasant voice.

  Meg turned and found herself face-to-face with a young woman who could have easily been her sister. “Sorry?” She laughed. “Oh, no. I’m actually a professor. Adjunct.”

  The girl looked back at her, waiting. In addition to being female, the young woman was pleasant and smartly dressed—the very antithesis of the socially awkward nerd Fletcher had predicted. Meg thought about going back to the van and sending him and his dimple in to do the heavy lifting. No. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “Okay,” the librarian said. “How can I help you?”

  Meg handed her the little slip of paper with the catalog number on it. “I need to see these letters. They’re in the rare books and papers room, I guess.”

  “No problem. I just need your faculty ID.”

  “That’s the thing,” Meg said, smiling apologetically. “My purse was stolen last night, all my credit cards, IDs. Everything. I’ve spent the whole morning on the phone.”

  “What a nightmare.”

  “I know, right?” Meg said. “Look, I don’t need to check the letters out or anything—just need to write down a few passages.”

  “I’m sorry.” The girl frowned. “They’re just really strict about that. The head of security, Mr. Vilhena, he can be really mean. Can’t you just have them make you another ID?”

  “I could, but it’s the second one I’ve lost,” Meg said. “And Mr. Vilhena was so nasty to me last time. So condescending.”

  “Did he say ‘strike one’? He said that to me yesterday.”

  “Yes! And he called me ‘darling,’ but, like, in a derogatory way. I really don’t want strike two.”

  “I know what you mean.” The girl chewed her lip for a moment. “I’m Melanie, by the way,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Tabitha,” Meg said, firmly shaking. Her childhood cat had been named Tabitha.

  The librarian’s eyes darted this way and that, and then she said, “Come on, follow me.”

  She led Meg through a door labeled LEGACY ROOM and into a lavishly decorated parlor full of high-back leather chairs, antique furniture, and soft lighting.

  “Have a seat and I’ll bring you the letters,” Melanie said. “But can you make it quick? We don’t want you-know-who coming in here. You’d think it was the Pentagon for how often he asks to see IDs.”

  “I just need three minutes,” Meg said.

  Melanie stepped out, and Meg let her eyes drift around the room. It reminded her of the country club she and Fletcher had belonged to during their few years of plenty. Indeed, ignorance had been bliss. The thought of their former life brought a pang of longing, followed by a deeper pang of regret.

  The sound of the door opening dragged her back into the present. “Here they are,” Melanie said, handing her an archival folder and a pair of white cotton gloves. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that these are as old as our country.”

  “I’ll be very careful. And very quick.”

  “Great,” Melanie said. “Call me if you need anything. Oh, and you’ve come unbuttoned.” She pointed at Meg’s shirt, hanging open.

  “Oops!” Meg said, blushing. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t get so close,” Andrew said.

  Dante shot him a look. “I know how to tail a car.”

  “This is different. We’ve got the GPS on them; we’ve got their position here.” He gestured at the iPad on his lap. “And this car may as well have a big NOTICE ME sign in the windshield.”

  “It’s a classic Mustang,” Dante said. “If you don’t love this car, you’re not an American.”

  “The car’s fine. It’s the driver. Hey, they’re getting off the next exit. Looks like we’re going uptown.”

  “Tabitha,” Melanie whispered. “Psst!”

  It took Meg a moment to remember that she was Tabitha and tear herself from the project at hand.

  “Yes?”

  “He’s coming. You need to go or he’ll ask for your ID. He always checks in here first.”

  “Okay.” Meg snapped one more picture and stuffed the last letter back into its plastic sleeve.

  “Here,” she said, handing the folder and gloves to Melanie. “Thank you so much.”

  She stepped out the door and nearly collided with a broad-shouldered man with silver hair and a black suit. A name badge clipped to his jacket pocket identified him as ANTHONY VILHENA, HEAD OF SECURITY.

  “Pardon me, miss. May I ask what you were doing in the Legacy Room?”

  Behind him, Melanie’s face was a frozen mask of horror.

  “Mr. Vilhena. Just the man I want to see. I had to duck into that room because a student has been stalking me, and I didn’t want him to see me.”

  He drew down his brow. “What’s his name?”

  “David,” she said. “David St. Hubbins.”

  Vilhena nodded slowly. “I think I’ve heard of him. Why don’t we go fill out a formal complaint?”

  “I’m sorry,” Meg said. “I’m late for an appointment. I’ll be happy to set up a meeting with you. This has to stop.”

  “Of course.” He handed her an off-white business card. “My campus extension is here. I’m sorry for this trouble, and believe me, we’ll get to the bottom of it.” As Meg made for the door, she heard the man say, “The door to the Legacy Room is to be locked at all times. That’s strike two for you, young lady.”

  Meg power walked back to the van as quickly as her three-inch heels would allow, climbed in, and threw the sliding door shut behind her.

  “Where’s Happy?” she asked.

  “He’s in the library,” Fletcher answered. “Said he may as well use the time to research. I just texted him. Sounds like you did pretty well?”

  She held up her phone. “They had six letters. I got shots of all of them.”

  “Front and back?”

  “There was nothing written on the back.”

  Fletcher fought down a pained expression.

  Meg sighed. “You want me to go back in?”

  “No, that’s okay. You did good in there. Kept it together.”

  “I’ve learned how to handle a crisis, Fletcher. The hard way.”

  They were both silent for a moment. Then Fletcher asked, “Isn’t David St. Hubbins the lead singer of Spinal Tap?”

  Meg shrugged. “First name that popped into my head.”

  The side door slid open again and Happy came flopping in, three heavy tomes in tow.

  “Can you believe I had to sign up to audit a class just to get a library card?” he asked, incredulous. “I’m taking step aerobics. Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  Fletcher started the engine. “What have you got there?”

  “Some decent stuff. The Knights Hospitalers, Monks of War, and I’ve been reading this one: Secret Societies and the French Revolution. May be useful.” He mopped the sweat from his brow and fought to catch his breath.

  “Look at you.” Fletcher pulled out onto the street. “You wouldn’t make it through ten minutes of step aerobics.”

  CHAPTER 42

  MAY 30, 1786

  PARIS, FRANCE

  Cagliostro was called before La Parlement of Île-de-France in the early afternoon. He took to the witness seat like a peacock, wearing a coat of green silk embroidered with gold, his hair divided into tresses that met in the back and fell to his shoulders.

  The attorney for the crown approached him with little attempt to mask his contempt. “Who are you and whence do you come?”

  Cagliostro pursed his lips, as if he had never considered this question before, and answered in a bombastic voice, “I am an illustrious traveler.”

  The assemblage burst into laughter. Some cheered.

  “What do you mean by this?” the attorney demanded.

  “You do not truly wish to know the answer to your query, nor could you understand it. What the court will learn about me is that I have lately been a dupe of this woman, Madame de LaMotte. A c
onvenient scapegoat. And why? Because I sought to help my friend the good cardinal avoid falling prey to her machinations. For that crime, a commissaire and a horde of policemen burst into my home last August the twenty-third, dragged me from my bedchamber, and helped themselves to many of my priceless elixirs, balms, and precious liquors. For this same crime I have been detained in the Bastille without a hearing for nine months, like a babe in the womb of injustice, before now being birthed to this place, where I will receive my freedom in the sight of all.”

  More cheering rose up from the gallery.

  “Have you been listening to the testimony of those who came before you?”

  “I have,” said Cagliostro.

  “You are aware, then, of the order of events presented to the court. You know that, when Cardinal de Rohan could not pay the first installment for the necklace, the jewelers Böhmer and Bassange sent an appeal to the queen.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And you heard Madame de LaMotte describe how you promised to use alchemy to multiply the diamonds so that each of you had the equivalent of the entire necklace?”

  Cagliostro rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

  “Do you deny that you appear to be at the center of all of these events?”

  “I do deny it, for you miss a simple and fundamental fact of the case. I did not arrive in Paris until January thirtieth of last year, at nine in the evening. There are many who can bear witness to this. However, the cardinal, by his own testimony, had already treated with the jewelers on the twenty-ninth of January.”

  The attorney opened his mouth to speak, but his words seemed to flee.

  “You asked who I am and whence I come,” Cagliostro said. “Perhaps I should start at the beginning.” He leaned forward in his seat and spoke in a solemn tone. “I was born to Christian nobility and abandoned on the shores of the enchanted Island of Malta . . .”

  CHAPTER 43

  Trick drives like an amateur,” Andrew said.

  “You mean I drive like a man, not a grandma?”

  They were gathered back in the main auditorium of Broadmoor Outreach Tabernacle. Having cleared away the neat rows, they sat on folding chairs arranged in a circle like some sort of support group for grifters. Only in reverse.

  “At any rate,” Andrew said, “Belltower and Faust spent the whole morning in the Lodge of the Egyptian Mystery Rites.”

  “Cagliostro’s sect,” Fletcher said. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall in those meetings.”

  “Well, no luck there,” Dante said. “Andrew Bishop, the famous grifter, was unable to talk his way into a senior citizens’ clubhouse.”

  “You need a password. Why was I the one trying to get in anyway? Faust already knows my face.”

  “Have you seen my face?” Dante asked. “Ironically, it’s not the right color for the Egyptian Mystery Rites.”

  “Tell me you had better luck than us,” Andrew said.

  “Meg came through,” Fletcher said. “Got six letters and translated most of it on the way back.”

  “Hit us with the highlights,” Andrew said.

  Meg flipped through her notepad. “Well, something that comes up several times is a group of 647 allies. Is that how many Knights there were?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “Anything more specific?”

  “Twice he calls them alliés chatoyantes.”

  Fletcher felt his blood pump a little harder. Nothing was sexier than his wife speaking French. A look at Andrew’s face told him he wasn’t alone in this assessment. Fletcher gave him a hard glare. “What’s that mean?” he asked.

  “Oh, sorry. It’s like, shimmering allies.”

  “Look that up for us, Happy,” Fletcher said. “Six hundred forty-seven shimmering allies.”

  Happy typed at his laptop for a few seconds. “Oh, there’s a band called that. In fact, they’re playing the Fox Theater tonight.”

  “Really?”

  “No. Zero results.”

  “Money, maybe?” Andrew mused. “Gold coins?”

  “Wait,” Fletcher said. “Diamantia.”

  “Come again?”

  “When the Alchemist sent me to look in the altar at St. John the Baptist’s, there were all these Greek words along the back. The one that opened up, popped me in the head, was diamantia. But all the others were Bible words. Locusts, lions, judgment. I don’t think the word diamonds even occurs in the Scriptures.”

  Happy typed in a search on his laptop and announced, “Nope. Not in eight different translations.”

  “Then why would that be on the face of the altar cavity? Unless, at one time, there were diamonds in there. Try looking up 647 diamonds.”

  “Whoa,” Happy said. “Now we’ve got some hits. Lots of them. They’re all pretty much about the same thing: the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Wait a minute.” He pushed his laptop aside and began flipping through the books he’d checked out, muttering. “Here it is: when the Knights had to abandon the Island of Malta in 1798, they were only allowed to bring the skull of St. John. ‘Witnesses claimed that an old cloth with a distinctive stain could be seen protruding from the eyes—a cloth rumored to contain innumerable diamonds.’ ”

  “When I was at the altar,” Fletcher said, “the Alchemist asked me more about the cloth than the septangle inside of it—especially how old it was. The original cloth could indicate the necklace nearby.”

  “Am I the only one here who doesn’t know anything about this necklace?” Dante asked.

  “It’s not what you think of when you hear ‘diamond necklace,’ ” Happy said. “It was like five necklaces in one, with diamond tassels hanging off it. This thing would put Mr. T to shame.” He dumped the book and picked up his laptop. “Six hundred and forty-seven diamonds, 2,800 karats. Here’s a replica.” He turned the screen toward the others.

  “That is ugly,” Meg said.

  “That’s what Marie Antoinette thought,” Fletcher agreed. “But even apart from the historical value, the diamonds alone would be worth a hundred million today, easy.”

  “Whatever happened to it?” Meg asked.

  “No one knows for sure. The main grifter involved was a woman named Jeanne de LaMotte. It’s assumed that she sent her husband to England to break down the necklace and sell the diamonds individually.”

  Andrew nodded. “A couple dozen of the scallops did turn up in London. But none of the real big rocks was ever seen again.”

  “I’ve always thought of that whole grift as kind of a mess,” Fletcher said. “But if Cagliostro was the mastermind, we have to assume he meant for it to fall apart like that.”

  “Fall apart how?” Meg asked.

  “It sort of caused the French Revolution. Even Napoleon said so.”

  Andrew rubbed his stubble. “But Cagliostro was no revolutionary.”

  “No,” Fletcher agreed. “But what if it was all misdirection? You steal something that big and you need an epic distraction.”

  Andrew furrowed his brow for a moment. “If we zoom out, it does have all the pieces of a solid grift. Each player has a peg. De LaMotte wanted money, the jewelers wanted to unload the necklace. The cardinal wanted more power.”

  “What cardinal?” Dante asked.

  “Prince Louis de Rohan.”

  “How could he be a cardinal and a prince?” Meg asked.

  Happy laughed. “How could he not?”

  “You’ve got the snare too,” Andrew said. “I mean, what could the cardinal say in his defense—‘Sorry, Your Highness, but I thought I was having an affair with your wife?’ The guy even burned the supposed letters from the queen, even though they were the only possible evidence to get him off the hook.”

  “But what about the fix?” Fletcher asked. “Cagliostro’s accomplices all turned on him. De LaMotte accused him of masterminding the whole thing, along with alchemy and blasphemy. He was locked in the Bastille for close to a year.”

  “Further stoking revolutionary sentiments,” Andrew pointed out. “It made the king
look like a bully. People loved Cagliostro. He was at the height of his rock-star fame when all this went down.”

  “And don’t forget he was acquitted,” Happy said.

  Fletcher and Andrew wheeled.

  “What?” Happy shrugged. “I read the Cagliostro memoir. I just thought it was bogus.”

  “So maybe he wanted to be tried,” Andrew said, “so he could be completely exonerated. There are even apologists today who insist he was the victim of a long con, rather than a criminal mastermind. Just shows how good he was.”

  “Any object permanence?” Meg asked.

  “Absolutely,” Fletcher said. “They had a woman dress up as the queen and meet with the cardinal one night, and they made sure he saw de LaMotte’s husband acting as the queen’s valet, which fixed his place in the cardinal’s mind. That’s probably why he felt so good about handing the guy a hundred-million-dollar necklace.”

  Andrew slapped his knees. “This is the same game every grifter is working today and the same cons they were running in the twenties. It’s Newman and Redford a hundred and fifty years earlier.”

  “Butch and Sundance?” Meg asked.

  “No, The Sting. All the elements are the same: the Roper, the Inside Man, the cast—only Cagliostro is all of them and everyone else is a mark. And a fall guy. Think about that; at the end of the day, everyone but Cagliostro paid the price. The cardinal lost his titles and was banished; de LaMotte was sentenced to life in prison and her husband to life in the galleys. Marie Antoinette was beheaded. The whole country was plunged into chaos, and Cagliostro got to sail away from it all while throngs of admirers cheered and wished him well. What does this tell us?”

  “That people get hurt,” Meg said. “There’s always collateral damage.”

  Andrew balked. “I was thinking more like: Cagliostro got his hands on the necklace and then disposed of everyone else.”

 

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