The Last Con

by Zachary Bartels

“I say we let Fletcher decide. He’s the one staying in the van with him the whole time.”

  Fletcher glanced over at Meg and said, “We’re not kidnappers and we’re not taping his hands. We’re just borrowing some stuff.” He took the denim jacket from Happy and compared it to the three they’d found in the storage space, deciding on the closest match. “This one,” he said, rolling it up tight and handing it to Andrew. “And these glasses. Almost exactly the same frames.”

  “We may have a problem here,” Happy announced. He was extracting the contents of Scott’s wallet and lining it all up on the counter. “I can’t find a key card or a fob or anything that might get us in the door at Fonseca.”

  “Biometrics?” Andrew asked. “Maybe his thumbprint?”

  “I can probably copy that. Let’s scan him first, though.”

  Meg was covering her nose and mouth with both hands. “Am I the only one who feels bad for him?”

  “This is your plan, Meg,” Andrew answered.

  “I know, but he seems like a nice guy. What if he loses his job over this?”

  “What if he does?” Fletcher said. “Whether he knows it or not, Scott here works for an evil corporation whose unwritten mission statement is to sway a thousand-year-old religious organization away from caring for the poor and back toward global conquest. The guy should thank us.”

  Andrew put a hand on Meg’s shoulder. “It’s no big deal,” he assured her. “I slipped a little something into his drink. Think of it as a prank.”

  “Like you did at the Metro Museum?” Fletcher asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Your fellow security guards—you give them food poisoning so I’d have to fill in?”

  Andrew shrugged. “Well, yeah. I dosed them with Happy’s salmonella-E. coli frap. I assumed you knew that.”

  “Broke the water main too, didn’t you? At that megachurch? Made sure we’d wind up at the place with the laser trip wires and the book full of Maltese treasures.”

  Andrew looked away.

  “Yeah, I thought so.”

  “Keep it down,” Happy said. “I’m working here.”

  “What is that thing?” Meg asked, pointing at a bulky wand in Happy’s hand. He had run it over the contents of Scott’s wallet and was now making a slow run over his prone form.

  “I call it the Happy Scanner,” he said. “It’ll find any kind of passive tag or chip. Also useful when sweeping a room for bugs.” The device squealed, low and quiet at first, and then louder and higher as it approached Scott’s hat.

  “Clever,” Dante said. “I guess that’s why he never takes it off.”

  “We’ll need two,” Andrew said. “Can you clone the chip?”

  “Maybe,” Happy said. “Cousin to the chip Fletcher gave Julian Faust in the business card. I have the equipment; it just takes awhile.”

  “In the meantime,” Andrew said, shaking a bottle of black spray-in hair dye, “we’ve got other preparations to make.”

  The foyer of Fonseca’s international headquarters smelled of chlorine due to the elaborate fountain shooting several arcs of water up past the mezzanine. On the far wall, large block letters spelled out the words LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR AN ORDERED WORLD.

  Happy held the door for Dante as they entered and fell in a step behind him, staring down at Scott Sprague’s phone but seeing only a fuzzy mess through the thick lenses of another man’s prescription. He’d been wearing them for less than two minutes and already felt a headache setting in.

  Dante broke off toward the front desk, and Happy made a beeline for the men’s room, rehefting the brown leather messenger bag onto his shoulder. He could feel the sticky hair dye on the back of his ears, and he wanted to check how badly it was running. His case for a real dye job had been unanimously overruled. There simply wasn’t time.

  Approaching the tall, circular desk, Dante offered a friendly “Good morning” to the man behind it. “My name is Pat Crosby, and I’m here to follow up with Mr. Tanner about a grant application.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the man asked.

  “No, but I just need five minutes of his time to clarify a couple things,” Dante said.

  “We have an appointment-only policy here. Let me give you an e-mail address where you can—”

  “Look,” Dante said, leaning on the desk. “We’re busy men, aren’t we? I’ve got about thirty minutes until my next appointment with a donor, and let me tell you, whoever funds this inner-city laptop initiative is looking at a lot of good press. I can guarantee Channel 3’s Hometown Hero award. You can’t buy that kind of good will—especially not for fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “Our philanthropic arm just built two new wells in Uganda,” the man said. “We’re not worried about publicity.”

  “Could you just get Mr. Tanner on the phone so I can ask him?”

  CHAPTER 49

  In the van, Andrew was carefully applying a thick moustache to his upper lip with spirit gum. The color nearly matched his newly sprayed black hair.

  “Remember,” he said to Meg. “You love me, and you’re sure there’s another woman in the mix. Jealousy all over the place.”

  “Got it,” Meg said.

  Fletcher nodded. “Jealousy’s a powerful motivator.” He could feel the card from Brad in his pocket. His phone buzzed in the other. “Dante’s in,” he said, reading the text.

  Andrew double-checked his moustache and donned a pair of big tinted lenses. “Start the clock when I hit the front door,” he said to Meg. “Three minutes.”

  He circled around the side of the parking lot and approached the office building from the west. There were two men in suits waiting in the foyer and a man standing at a reception desk.

  “Excuse me,” Andrew said, approaching the desk. “I was supposed to meet a man here about ten minutes ago. His name is Pat Crosby. Black guy, about yea tall.”

  “Ah, yes. He’s in a meeting with one of our public relations managers. I don’t imagine it will take long. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  “Right in here,” Wesley Tanner said. The short, round man opened the door to a small meeting room and fumbled for the light switch.

  “I appreciate you taking this meeting on such short notice,” Dante said.

  “Well, I only have a couple minutes, but you’re a very persuasive man.” He took a chair and invited Dante to do the same. “I have to admit that we’re a little behind in processing grant requests, Mr. Crosby. So if you could give me the elevator pitch . . .”

  “We’re trying to help fatherless kids,” Dante said. “I need about four hundred thousand dollars and I need it by tomorrow night at six, or I’m a dead man.”

  Meg stalked into the foyer, eyes smoldering and scanning, streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. She spotted Andrew and extended an accusatory finger at him.

  “I knew it!” she shrieked. Every eye locked onto her.

  Happy slipped out of the men’s room and moved quickly down a short hall. As he approached a heavy door at the end of the hall, he heard the lock click off.

  He felt like a Jedi.

  Mr. Tanner laughed. Dante didn’t.

  “Four hundred thousand. You’re joking, right?”

  “I’m afraid not, Tanner. I heard your company has deep pockets and low standards. Did I hear wrong?”

  The stocky man sputtered in frustration. “Yes, you heard wrong, and I’m afraid you’re wasting your time as well as mine.” He stood, his jowls quivering. “I’ll show you out, sir.”

  Andrew stood. “Jeanine? What you doing here?”

  “I’m on to you!” Meg shouted. “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman you’re here to meet!”

  The man at the desk was speaking quietly into the phone while a growing audience gathered from nowhere to watch the show, whispering among themselves.

  “I’m here to meet Pat Crosby,” Andrew said.

  “Is she prettier than me?”

  “Pat
’s a man; he runs a charity for orphans!”

  Pat Crosby—his charity’s request soundly denied—was following the unamused Mr. Tanner down the hall toward the elevator when he suddenly stopped, put his hand to the wall, and gasped.

  “Charlie horse!” he cried. “In my calf! Owww!”

  Wesley Tanner turned slowly and looked up the six inches to meet Dante’s eyes. “Are you quite done?” he asked, hiking up his pants.

  “I’m serious,” Dante said. “Maybe we could revisit the issue of the four hundred grand while you massage it out? Just a thought.”

  “Do you want to follow me now or shall I call security?”

  “All right,” Dante said, pulling his hand away from the fire alarm. The expanding foam pack he had pushed into it would begin swelling immediately. They had maybe twenty minutes before the alarm went off.

  Happy had passed through two more doors and down a flight of stairs. His years of experience designing computer networks had given him something of a sixth sense in locating a network’s hub, and he knew he was close. He moved quickly down another flight of stairs and came face-to-face with a fire door that did not submit to his Jedi-like powers or the chip in Scott’s hat. A keypad mounted on the wall announced ENTER ACCESS CODE on a backlit digital display.

  Swapping Scott’s phone for his own and plugging a headset in, he called Fletcher. “Time to up the domestic dispute to Threat Level Crazy,” he said.

  “A man?” Meg shouted. “Yeah, right! Does he wear lipstick? Because there was red lipstick on the cuff of your pant leg last night.”

  “What? How would that even—?”

  “Is she younger than me?”

  Andrew squeezed his fists at his side. “No, he’s a—You know what? That’s it, Jeanine. We’re through!”

  “You’ll never get rid of me,” Meg vowed. “Wherever you go, I’ll be there.”

  “What, you’re going to follow me?”

  “If I have to.”

  Andrew turned and stalked over to the men’s room door. “Are you going to follow me in here? Ya psycho?” He disappeared into the restroom.

  “You can’t stay in there forever!” Meg shouted. She turned toward her audience and screeched, “What are you all gawking at?” Two dozen onlookers quickly busied themselves with their phones or some manner of convenient paperwork while two large and imposing men closed in on her.

  “Excuse me, miss,” the taller one said, his Adam’s apple looking as if it might burst through the skin at any moment. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Security’s on Meg,” Fletcher reported. “You’ve got your window.”

  “Awesome,” Happy whispered, dumping his leather bag to the floor and unzipping it. “Okay, Fletch,” he said into his headset, “you’ve got an electromagnetic lock with fifteen hundred pounds of holding power. No way to hack the keypad; how do you get in?”

  “I don’t know, cut the power?”

  “Wrong-o,” Happy said, pulling a long slotted screwdriver and a small cylinder of gas from his bag. “There’s a twelve-hour battery backup. Try again.”

  “Spike the power?”

  “No can do,” Happy said, wiggling the end of the screwdriver under the rubber door-sweep. “Suppression circuit.”

  “What then?”

  “Like I said: fire codes.” Happy was unrolling a flat, shiny object. “Code dictates that any magnetic lock have a safety release wired up to a motion detector inside. You know, so people don’t find themselves locked inside a burning building.”

  “I see where you’re going.”

  “I bet you do. By the way, is our guest still sound asleep?”

  “You can’t hear the snoring? Forget about him. How are you going to trip the motion sensor?”

  Happy smirked. “Did you know that nearly 10 percent of all false burglar alarms are caused by helium-filled balloons? It’s true. The Mylar ones especially reflect thermal radiation real nicely and blow around at the slightest breeze. And they conduct heat all right too. I’ve been keeping this one real warm, right by my—”

  “Happy!” Fletcher said.

  “Okay.” Prying up gently with the screwdriver, Happy slid the deflated foil balloon—which featured a cartoon frog dressed as a nurse—under the door until only the mouth remained. He then hooked up the nozzle of a small helium tank and began inflating the balloon. Half a minute later he clamped it off and released it into the room.

  He didn’t breathe for a moment, waiting. Nothing was happening. Perhaps it was stuck somewhere. Perhaps he’d miscalculated. Perhaps Fonseca’s security team regularly disabled their motion sensor the moment the fire marshal left the building. Just when he was scrambling for some sort of plan B, Happy heard the magnetic lock release with a buzz.

  “Am I doing something wrong?” Meg asked, suddenly calm.

  “You’re making a disturbance, ma’am.”

  Ten feet away, a door swung open and Mr. Tanner angrily bustled Dante out.

  “Oh, good,” the red-faced little man said upon seeing the head of security. “Would you please escort Mr. Crosby here off the premises?”

  “Crosby?” Meg said. “Pat Crosby?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Well then, who is my husband sleeping with?” she shouted.

  “That’s it, let’s go. Both of you.”

  Fifteen seconds later Meg and Dante were standing outside, having been warned never to return. And Andrew had emerged from the restroom, his moustache gone, his blazer now balled up in his bag, swapped for a denim jacket, and his eyes obscured by thick-rimmed glasses and a Tigers ball cap. He walked quickly toward the door and heard the lock click open as he approached. The elevator was just up ahead.

  CHAPTER 50

  Down in the bowels of the building, Happy had plugged his laptop into the server and was busy accessing the facility’s internal security.

  “Okay, we’re going to a party line,” he said. “Andrew, you there?”

  “Talk to me,” Andrew answered quietly, six floors up.

  “They’ve got hidden cameras all over the building.” Happy flipped from one video feed to the next. “Are you at the conference room?”

  “I think this is it . . .”

  “Room number?”

  “Six twenty-four.”

  Happy tapped at his keyboard. “Yep, that’s the one. Fish-eye lens covering the room and a second camera right on top of the monstrance. Hang on.” His fingers flew over the keys for another minute. “Okay, the cameras are no longer live, but we have to do this quick. No time to sub in a video loop, so I just froze a single frame—won’t fool anyone if they look close enough.”

  “Alarms?” Andrew asked.

  “Hold on, I’m getting there.”

  “Well, hurry up. I’m feeling exposed out here in the hallway.”

  Then Happy heard another voice over the phone. “Scott,” the voice said. “Scott, come help me with this a minute.”

  Dante stepped over the unconscious man curled up by the van door and sank into a captain’s chair. A moment later the passenger door opened and Meg climbed in the front.

  “How’s it going in there?” she asked.

  “So far, so good,” Fletcher said, eyes fixed on the building. The Bluetooth headset was again blinking in his ear.

  “I hate all this,” she said.

  “We’ll get her back,” Fletcher assured her, his eyes glued to the building.

  Meg shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean. I can’t even think about . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Sorry,” Fletcher said. He could relate. Walling off the fear and uncertainty around Ivy and focusing on a point just this side of the wall was the only way to stay sane.

  “I meant that I hate all this lying and cheating and stealing,” Meg said.

  Fletcher emitted a weak chuckle. “Right, because no one lies in perfect Harbor Beach.”

  “This is different. This whole city is depressing.�
�

  Fletcher sniffed a laugh. “You know what’s depressing to me? Those silk-screened banners at your church with the stock photos of a guy silhouetted on a mountaintop and some vapid inspirational quote written in half a dozen fonts—those make me want to cut my wrists.”

  “Apples and oranges.”

  “A legitimate comparison,” Fletcher said. “I mean, they’re both fruits, so why wouldn’t you compare them?”

  “Are you trying to start an argument?”

  “No. I’m just saying—even in Harbor Beach, people lie and steal. Some people even lie to their tenants and try to steal their wives. It happens.”

  “Okay, tell me what’s going on, Fletcher.”

  “I said now, Scott,” the man was saying. “Let’s go.”

  In his peripheral vision Andrew could see a man with long gray hair, wearing a vest but no jacket, approaching him from the right. He did his best to block his face with the phone and held up a finger at arm’s length in the man’s direction. “Hurry it up, Happy,” he mumbled.

  “You got something more important going on?” the long-haired man asked.

  Andrew reiterated the index finger, then began power walking down the hall, away from the man.

  “Don’t you turn your back on me,” the man said, anger bleeding into his voice. “You report to me. Scott? Scott!”

  Andrew turned a corner and broke into a run, holding the bulky messenger bag against his side. At the end of the hall, he took another right and, spotting a janitor’s closet, ducked inside. He was not sure whether he’d been made, but going back down that hall was definitely a risk.

  The silver-haired man had come within ten feet of him, but only for a moment. Still, Andrew was the wrong build, age, and race to pass for Scott Sprague, and he was fairly sure that the spray-on hair dye was bleeding onto the collar of his jacket. Object permanence aside, at some point the mind stopped filling in details and asked for a closer look.

  Andrew lifted the flap on his bag and reached inside, feeling the handle of the .38. If the angry supervisor stalking the halls discovered him, he could always produce the gun, poke it into the man’s back, and walk him calmly out the front door. But then who would get the monstrance? Happy? Andrew cursed under his breath. Cornering himself in this closet was the height of stupidity.