The Last Con

by Zachary Bartels

  “I know you,” he said, locking in on Fletcher. “You’re the art appraiser.” He laughed cheekily. “What fun.”

  Fletcher’s phone rang in his hand.

  “Drop it,” Faust said. “And kick it over to me.” He stopped the skidding phone with his toe, then crushed it into oblivion with his heel. “It seems I have the upper hand. You will return my letters, the map, and the monstrance, as well as the object in your hand, and you will get me safely away from this crime scene so I can wash this ridiculous dye from my face.”

  Fletcher saw the shadow of a man crawling along the back wall, approaching Faust from behind. For a moment he thought it was Andrew and felt a wave of relief. Then he recognized the man.

  And nothing made sense.

  “He’s still not answering,” Andrew said, trying to hide his concern. He furrowed his brow, mentally running through options. “Okay, I have a few ideas where your dad might be. None of them are a good place for little girls.”

  “I’m not a little girl.”

  “You’re right. Sorry. But you’re safer here at the church. I’m going to go find your dad. You do me a favor and find someplace really good to hide. Somewhere no one could find you, okay?”

  Ivy nodded.

  “It’s good to see you, Jumpin’ Bean,” he said, and gave her another hug. “Now go. Stay put until you hear your dad calling for you.”

  The man walked quickly, silently out of the shadows and poked the muzzle of a nickel-plated handgun to the back of Faust’s head. “Actually, I have the upper hand, Julian. Drop the gun.”

  “What—?” Meg grappled for words. And Fletcher couldn’t blame her. The man holding Faust at gunpoint was Brad Howard. Only his khakis and golf shirt had been exchanged for a tailored suit. On his finger he wore a large gold ring inlaid with a black Maltese cross.

  “Brad?” Meg said, taking a step toward him, but Fletcher caught her elbow.

  “I think he prefers to be called the Alchemist. Isn’t that right? Or is it Cagliostro?”

  The Alchemist smirked. “I’m whoever I need to be,” he said, the accent from the phone calls coming and going.

  “Farrington?” Faust said, turning to face him. “You’re behind this?”

  “You shouldn’t have pushed me out, Julian.”

  “What choice did we have? You went mad, claimed to be a man who died two thousand years ago.”

  “And how do you know I didn’t witness the crucifixion?” He took a deep breath, in his mouth and out his nose. “Doesn’t matter now. I’ve moved beyond. The people of Malta thought St. Paul was a god. Just wait until they lay eyes on me.”

  “You’re insane,” Faust said.

  “And you’re dead.” The bullet passed through the silencer, emitting a suppressed phut, and then through Julian Faust’s head, emitting blood and skull fragments.

  Ivy pushed up on the trapdoor with the broom handle. From the floor she had barely been able to make contact, so she had brought over a stack of chairs and climbed up on them. Balanced precariously on her tiptoes, she gave another shove with the broom. It swung open, and a folding ladder came tipping down out of the attic, slowly at first, then picking up speed. She jumped down to the floor and pulled the chairs out of the way.

  Don’t think about bats, she told herself, ascending the ladder. The attic was dark and stale, the only light spilling in through a couple roof vents.

  Reaching down through the opening, she gripped the ladder and pulled up. It didn’t budge. She pulled harder and almost lost her footing. Her heart thudded in her chest. It was about eight feet to the floor below and a face-first free fall would be disastrous. She anchored her feet and pulled again. The ladder began to rise slowly, folding against itself. Ivy closed the trapdoor.

  This was a safe place. No one knew about it but her.

  And Courtney.

  “You kidnapped Ivy!” Meg was shouting and crying. “She loves you!”

  “Blame your husband,” the Alchemist said. “We had a good thing going, didn’t we, Fletcher? You assume the risk—I buy what you steal. But then you had to get yourself arrested before I had everything I needed.”

  Fletcher ground his jaw. “I’m sorry to complicate your plans.”

  “A real grifter never apologizes,” the Alchemist spat. “I tried to finish the project without you, but I hit the wall a couple years ago. And so I embedded myself in your life while you did time, prepared my end game. Such an easy mark.”

  Fletcher felt hate bubbling in his guts, dusted with awe. How flawlessly Brad had played him every day of the past six months, working his pride, drawing him back to the city and into the grift. Every comment, every smarmy smile, had been designed to turn Fletcher’s peg. “Where’s Ivy?” he asked.

  “She’s with my wife.”

  Meg let out a wail and clawed at her scalp.

  “Oh,” the Alchemist said. “I see how that could be confusing. Ivy’s with my wife, Lorenza. You’ve met her—only you know her as Courtney. Talented actress. She can play anything from fifteen to thirty-five. Talented grifter too. She’s been keeping an eye on your Ivy for the past few days . . . except when she stepped out to take care of your friend Happy.”

  Meg took two quick steps forward. “Take me! Take me instead of Ivy.”

  Fletcher grimaced. It should have been him throwing himself in harm’s way, not Meg.

  The Alchemist laughed. “Fletcher! Your wife just can’t seem to stay away from me.” He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her close, pushing the gun up to her chin. “Did you tell him about the kiss? Did you?”

  Meg shook her head.

  “Don’t feel bad, convict. Lonely wife. Handsome, concerned friend. Who can blame her? I think I will take you, Meg. In addition to Ivy.”

  “Let her go,” Fletcher said. “Take me.”

  “You see, I would, Fletcher. But you’ve got”—he checked his watch—“forty-six minutes to get me the package or you’re all alone in this world. I’d get moving if I were you.”

  CHAPTER 66

  Lorenza followed Happy’s van back to the church, remaining one lane over and two cars back at all times. The marks had never seen her white Camry and they would likely not even recognize her out of character, but she did things by the book. When the van pulled up to the church, she drove right past, took a left, and parked a block up.

  She had returned from a food run half an hour earlier to find Manny dead and the girl missing. With Manny out of the equation, she would bear the Alchemist’s wrath alone if she did not recover the girl. And the Alchemist’s wrath was not something you walked away from. If you were lucky, you dragged yourself to the hospital. She had married him nine years earlier, when she was nineteen, and they had traveled the world together, shared adventures and experiences that most people would never dream of. But none of that would matter if she failed him now.

  And so she had lain in wait at the lodge, watching from a distance, and followed them here. Maybe the girl was in the church, maybe she wasn’t. But Lorenza knew just where to look first.

  St. John’s was deserted as Dante and Fletcher rushed in, a harvest of empty pop cans and candy wrappers the only evidence of the week’s gathering. They ran up the aisle, Fletcher carrying Andrew’s messenger bag.

  “You sure you don’t want me to call him?” Dante asked, huffing. On the way over, Fletcher had briefly returned the batteries to the two bugged phones. Dante’s showed six missed calls from Andrew but no messages.

  “Forget it,” Fletcher said. “He’s in with the Alchemist. Why else would he disappear right when we need him? Help me with this.” He was at the baptismal font, trying to get a finger grip on the outside of the basin, but failing. Dante had no better luck. The symbols of locust and honey on the sacred trowel had pointed them back to St. John the Baptist, and the shell itself, being a symbol of baptism, brought them here.

  “We should empty it,” Dante said. “The water probably weighs thirty pounds.”

  “How?” Fle
tcher asked. “We have twenty-eight minutes before my family dies. Anyway, the men who designed this wouldn’t have wanted someone sloshing holy water into a bucket, so there must be some other mechanism.” He stepped back and examined the font, trying to push out the frantic thoughts crowding his mind. “Look at the pedestal. Seven-sided. I can’t believe I walked right past five times.”

  “Give me that shovel thing,” Dante said, running his finger along a slight indentation where the basin fit into the pedestal. Fletcher fished the sacred trowel out of the leather bag and handed it over. The top edge of the shell fit perfectly into the indentation, its entire six inches sliding in, shifting the basin up. He pulled down on the handle of the trowel like a lever, tipping the basin. The water poured from the font, soaking into a layer of sand in the base below.

  Fletcher wrapped his arms around the basin and set it gently on the floor. “Let me see that,” he said, holding a hand out toward Dante. He began digging in the wet sand with the shovel, pushing aside the mud until he had uncovered a polished stone surface with a seven-sided cavity in the center.

  “Try to clear that out,” he said, pawing through the bag for the altar relic.

  Dante clawed the sand from the inch-deep recess. Fletcher pulled the cloth from around the septangle and used it to wipe the remaining sand from in and around the cavity. He held the relic over the recess; it was a perfect fit.

  Ivy had inserted herself behind an eight-foot-tall sandwich board sign advertising a week of Vacation Bible School in June of 1987. She’d been feeling increasingly claustrophobic and was considering whether she should abandon the hiding place and try to find a phone to call 911. But her dad wasn’t supposed to be talking to Uncle Andrew, and she feared that such a call might lead to the police taking him away in handcuffs for another six years.

  The whump of the trapdoor opening stole her breath. Light shone into the attic from below, and she heard someone climbing up the ladder. She heard the sound of a pull-chain, and light came from above as well. She pulled herself farther back behind the sign.

  “Ivy? Are you up here?” Courtney’s voice.

  “I’m back here,” Ivy called quietly.

  “Oh, thank God.” Courtney took a few steps forward, her eyes searching. “I don’t see you.”

  Ivy wriggled out from behind the sign and looked at her friend. Something wasn’t right. She looked different. Older. “How did you get away?” she asked.

  “They put me in a different room after the bathroom thing. I pried the window open and dropped to the ground. Come on, I have a car. Let’s get somewhere safe.”

  Ivy shook her head. “No, I’m supposed to stay here.”

  Courtney considered this for a moment. “Okay. I’ll stay with you.” She found another pull-chain and gave it a tug, illuminating the attic all the more.

  “Can I ask you something?” Ivy said.

  “Sure.”

  “What happened to your black eye?”

  Ivy jumped up and grabbed the top of the plywood sign, pulling it down on top of Courtney.

  “A 3D lock,” Fletcher said, “with seven possible ways to insert the key.” He studied the recess. A different word was written at each corner: Hail, Mountain, Wormwood . . . “I got it,” he said. The seven trumpets from the book of Revelation. He turned the septangle so that the first seal lined up with the first trumpet—and all the others as well—and pushed down.

  They heard a click. The two men leaned in expectantly, but nothing happened.

  “It’s a key,” Dante said. “Maybe you have to turn it.” He tried to rotate the ivory relic with his fingers. It didn’t budge. “Wait, I got it!” he said, snatching up the trowel from the floor behind him. He inserted the end of the seven-sided handle into the center of the septangle and twisted. The grinding sound of stone against stone filled the church as the top of the pedestal turned forty-five degrees, then popped up six inches out of its base, revealing a hidden compartment.

  Fletcher tentatively reached into the hollow and wrapped his hand around the old cloth. He gingerly withdrew it, feeling the heft of what lay within. His eyes met Dante’s, and for one exhilarating moment they forgot everything else and grinned at each other like a couple of drunks.

  “It’s smaller than I thought,” Dante said, pulling back a corner and peering in. “Hooo, that’s a lot of diamonds.”

  Fletcher laughed and turned his attention to the cloth itself. The distinctive round stain was there, but was not a perfect circle and was far too small to line up with the monstrance. “Okay,” he said, “I’m going to call the Alchemist. You may as well call Andrew back too. If he’s against us, he’ll know where we are soon anyway. If he’s not, we’re gonna need him.”

  “Should we find the priest first?”

  “Yeah,” Fletcher said. “See where we stand with that.”

  “You believe all that noise about knights coming to rescue us?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll take a long shot right now.” They raced down the hall and up the stairs.

  The door to the church offices was locked and all the lights off.

  “You got a number for the priest?” Dante asked.

  “No.” Fletcher checked his watch. “We’ve got six minutes. I’m calling the Alchemist.” He pulled out the burner phone and inserted the battery.

  Ivy turned and bolted for the ladder. On the third step, she felt Courtney’s hand close around her ankle and she went down, slamming against the attic floor.

  “Who are you, really?” Ivy asked, rising to her hands and knees.

  “Name’s Lorenza,” she answered, grabbing a fistful of Ivy’s hair, pulling her several steps away from the trapdoor and dumping her. She laughed. “I know, I know—you’re tough. You told me. But get this: The guy with the scar? He was my errand boy. He answered to me.”

  “He didn’t really hurt you?”

  Lorenza scoffed. “He only stopped in a few times. It was just you and me in that building. I kept you there. And now I’m going to keep you in here. So get comfortable.”

  Ivy thought again about the fights she’d seen at school, about striking fast and the power of surprise. She began to sob. “I miss my mom and dad,” she said through gasps and hiccups.

  “Stop it,” Lorenza said. “Seriously, cut it out.” She took a step toward Ivy.

  “But-but-but, I just—” Ivy launched herself up from the floor, trying to channel all the power of her legs into her fist. She connected with the woman’s nose, feeling it crunch against her first two knuckles.

  The pain in her fist caught her off guard, as did the meat of Lorenza’s hand smashing into her throat. Ivy fell back to the floor, gasping for breath.

  “Bad move, princess,” Lorenza said. “Do you have any idea how much this nose cost?” She kicked Ivy in the ribs and walked over to an old mirror leaning against the wall to inspect her bloodied nose.

  Ivy grabbed the opportunity and lurched toward the trapdoor. Lorenza sighed, annoyed. She turned and sprang on Ivy, digging a boot heel into her thigh. Ivy screamed.

  “If you’re going to make noise, I guess I’ll have to put you to sleep,” Lorenza said. She knelt down and wrapped her left arm around Ivy’s throat, shutting off the air like a vise. Within a few seconds, the world began to dim.

  CHAPTER 67

  Andrew sat behind the wheel of Dante’s Mustang, gazing up at the lodge of the Egyptian Mystery Rites, considering whether he should take another crack at it. He’d been everywhere else he thought Fletcher might be. He’d called him a dozen times, as well as calling Dante and Meg. It was like they’d all disappeared. Had he been made? No way to know, really, and he couldn’t exactly call the Alchemist now, having killed Manny and released the girl.

  His phone rang on the seat next to him. Dante.

  “Where have you been?” Andrew demanded. “Listen, I—”

  “No, you listen,” Dante said. “We’ve got the necklace. Fletcher’s calling the Alchemist now.”

  Andre
w processed and reprocessed this.

  “Hello?” Dante said.

  “I’m here. Where are you?”

  “We’re at the church. Now, what’d you want to tell me?”

  “Nothing. I’m headed your way now.”

  Ivy pulled herself forward another foot, dragging Lorenza, whose grip tightened all the more. She collapsed against the floor, guessing she would lose consciousness in a matter of seconds. The floor beneath her was swimming, morphing. She could see different pictures in the wood grain. Moving pictures.

  Then she saw the knothole, as big as a quarter. As big as the neck of the little bottle in her shorts pocket. Ivy pulled her arms down by her sides, wriggled her hand into her pocket, then slumped, letting her mouth hang open.

  “Nighty-night,” Lorenza said. She kept her grip on the girl’s throat for a moment longer.

  Ivy could feel the bottom of the bottle with her fingertips. She coaxed it into her hand, pulled it free, and punched it down mouth first into the knothole, snapping it off at the neck. With all her might she stabbed the jagged edge into Lorenza’s arm and gave it a twist, drawing a shriek from the woman.

  Shrugging off her attacker, Ivy stood, taking deep, replenishing breaths. The spinning room slowed. She gripped the bottle tightly and held it out in front of her.

  Lorenza stood and examined the wound in her forearm. “I’m going to kill you for that.” She drew a short but deadly looking knife from inside her boot. “We don’t need you anyway. Not after today.” She feigned a strike at Ivy, who flinched and took a step back onto the broken neck of the bottle growing up out of the floor like a stalagmite.

  The uneven glass crunched under her foot and sliced up through the sole of her shoe, bringing a stab of pain followed by a warm, wet feeling. She looked down for just a second and felt the heel of Lorenza’s boot connecting with her sternum, launching her back through the opening in the attic floor. Her back collided with the ladder and she bounced off, landing hard on the tile.