by Peter Craig
Colette laughed and blew into her cupped hands.
“But the other house has got kids, obviously. And they spend a lot of money on glow-in-the-dark neon crap; here’s some ColecoVision cartridges—they even bought the Adam home computer and nobody bought that thing. And look at this: pieces of a Rubik’s Cube. They keep buying them and somebody keeps taking them apart. They’re impatient, whoever they are. But they believe in luck.” He held up a piece of opened mail: a Publishers Clearing House envelope. “That’s the first one of those I’ve seen open in ten houses.”
“Kevin, do me a favor. Take a long, hot shower. And promise me you’ll throw this stuff away when you’re finished making dollhouses out of it. You’re too cute to grow up into one of those people who hoards newspapers and cans.”
Colette brewed coffee an hour before dawn, then sat on the linoleum of the motel’s kitchenette to comb through the salvaged papers with Kevin. “Hon? We got a couple more preapproved applications. No Soc numbers, no maiden names. We got a lot of carbons, but the info is pretty spotty—we’re going to have to send Kev door-to-door. Some of these people won’t have listed phone numbers, but one house threw out an entire bank statement.”
Jerry lay in his boxers on the bed, next to a nightstand covered with beer cans and a plastic motel cup full of bourbon. Staring at the ceiling, he rubbed his hands together rapidly like the forelegs of a housefly.
Kevin said, “That one was full of diapers.”
“Oh, the one with all the bills? Ah, Jerry. They have a baby, honey. I don’t want to sponge off somebody with a baby in the house.”
“You always do this,” he said. “The kid won’t pay a dime.”
“I hate that. There’s so many other people we could find.”
“The baby will be fine. In twenty years he’ll be at Georgetown. Think of him as a little bundle of credit.”
Later that morning, Kevin woke to a radio alarm muffled through the wall beside his head. Colette was still working, wearing a Phillies jersey that hung to her bare knees, forging a petition of phony signatures, and rehearsing a telemarketer’s greeting.
“Congratulations, Mr. Culpepper, this is Janet, from Diners Club International, and you’ve won—damn, what has he won?” On the cabinet beside the television, she had set out a clipboard and an orange sweat suit. She noticed that Kevin was awake and said, “I couldn’t find a Little League uniform, so this will have to do. It’ll be fine.”
While Jerry drove Kevin back into the neighborhood, his hangover was so acute that he pressed a shower cap full of ice against his forehead. The day was sunny and the last lumps of snow had melted to white gravel. The houses now looked like fortresses of pilasters and windows. It was just past eight o’clock, and the last panicked stragglers were leaving the driveways for school. Two boys in woolen uniforms bounded down a sloped lawn to an awaiting car; three girls trotted past, wearing cardigans and kilts over leggings, carrying their books in plaid satchels. Kevin’s mouth was parched. He was dizzy from the lack of sleep. The sweat suit now seemed ridiculous—a few chains short of a Grandmaster Flash groupie—and after trying to tame his curly hair with a comb and water, only the part remained, like a dent in the middle of his head. “Wouldn’t Colette be better at this, Dad? I’m not good at the face-to-face stuff.”
With the ice bag completely covering his left eye, his nose stuffed up, Jerry said, “Don’t be a pain in the ass. You’re a youth at risk. You’re in some inner-city Keep Kids off Drugs program—whatever. They won’t know what hit ’em.”
Kevin struggled through the first pitches, talking to a maid through a peephole, an old woman in a monogrammed robe who gave him a phony smile before slamming the door, and one woman who spoke to him entirely through an intercom beside the doorbell. He explained that he had the day off from school to raise money for the flooded library or the collapsed roof of the gymnasium or a condemned science lab full of hazardous materials. Nothing worked, and he was certain that it was the orange jumpsuit. In the window of a glass door, he looked like a crash-test dummy. Waiting on front steps he became far more intrigued by the array of ornate doorknobs and locks, the zigzags of keyholes, with their subtly changing shapes from house to house, seeming more challenging and compelling than the people who emerged from behind them.
By midmorning Kevin found some success by pretending to have a mild stuttering problem. As long as he looked each mark in the face and smiled, he discovered that people were more polite when he seemed to have something wrong with him, such that by eleven o’clock he had developed a limp and a gnarled hand, along with a more effective story that he was collecting signatures to put a wheelchair ramp at his public school. Six women and three men signed and left their phone numbers, but the coveted Social Security numbers still seemed out of reach. Finally he landed upon the perfect combination of triumph and disadvantage, a young man with a dragging foot asking the pledge of one dollar per mile in the annual Laps-for-Literacy Jogathon; or a boy staring at the doorjamb to ask for a small donation to the Swim for Braille campaign. What Kevin lacked in social skills, he made up for in shamelessness. He was a participant in Bowling for Diabetes, Putt-Putt for Alcoholism, and a dance marathon to raise awareness of Hyperactivity Disorder.
But he was most proud of his response to one confused woman who asked why he needed her Social Security number. Raising his chin, he replied, “The school finance officer says it’s necessary for tax purposes. You’ll be sent a form in the mail, and your donation is tax deductible.” He knew that if he had stumbled during his delivery, she would have caught him; but instead she smiled and complimented him, saying that any young man who could figure out the tax code was destined for great things.
Jerry was so pleased with the information that he gave Kevin a bonus of twenty dollars.
Outside a gas station, Kevin skated in lazy circles around Colette, in the phone booth. She opened the door and said, “They’re going to think I’m in a roller rink, you idiot. Quit it for a second.” He sat down on the board and swayed on the asphalt, watching the glare of late sunlight reflecting off the booth and gathering in the cloudlike edges of her hair.
“Good evening, may I speak to Mr. Culpepper, please? Well, congratulations, sir. My name is Janet, and I’m calling on behalf of Diners Club International to tell you that you’ve won the runner-up’s prize in our annual membership giveaway sweepstakes.” She flipped through her papers and rolled off an auctioneer’s ramble of prizes: RCA XL-100 nineteen-inch color TV with remote, “runs cooler, lasts longer”; the all-new TRS-80 portable computer from Radio Shack; and a complete “luxury lanai” of wicker-rattan furniture. Her tone fluctuated between officious and pageant sweet. “Well, I could use some of your good luck, Mr. Culpepper. Anyway, sir, now to the boring part; this won’t take long.” Of course, she needed to confirm that he was the cardholder and that all information was current. She read his address, phone number, and wife’s name; then asked him for his Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, and place of birth. “Uh-huh. That’s what I have right here in the files.” After another lacquered congratulations, she promised it all within fifteen working days, then hung up the phone and winked at Kevin.
A temporary change-of-address form, forged for one resident out of a crowded household, would divert a stream of mail off the main flow and into a postbox purchased with a phony name. With the pre-approved applications or the information off carbons, they ordered virgin plastic or replacement cards, and they would arrive within weeks amid new offers. Jerry said this was the change of seasons in a con man’s year, from Dumpsters and doorsteps to mail drops and stores. They slept in a different motel each night, and cruised new neighborhoods in rented trucks, back and forth through the industrial moats around Mid-Atlantic cities, where smokestacks fed gray skies and snowflakes fell like ash. They stopped each week at caged storage bins and postal warehouses where Kevin and his father unlocked their new cards from among the stacks of anonymous boxes. They started shopping, ca
refully at first, in towns where Jerry had connections to move stereo speakers, televisions, and silver.
Kevin was so fixated on the process that it surprised him whenever Colette would moan that they were terrible people, destined to a life in hell. So determined to improve his skills, Kevin usually forgot that he was actually stealing from anyone. Though deep down Jerry believed that anyone gullible enough to lose his money didn’t deserve it in the first place, his mantra was that the marks would never suffer beyond a few cents of higher monthly rates and insurance; and this was enough to assure Kevin that thieves were embedded in the system like sin taxes and transaction fees. But every now and then, during a long drive on a listless afternoon or lounging in the motel room as snowplows scraped the pavement outside, Colette would confess her moral qualms about robbing anyone with children, tough lives, pets, elderly parents, or noble professions. Jerry said she needed to get over the idea of a perfect mark. It was rare to find a man both gullible and depraved.
Colette begged Kevin to grow up better than his father, which put Kevin in an awkward spot, imagining both a great heist to impress her and a life in the monastery to comfort her soul. As neither savior nor devil, Kevin understood the profound difficulties in stealing her affections. Late at night, when he would cease thinking about the logistics of new cons and stolen plastic, he would think of her, the way she could be thrilled and ashamed simultaneously, the way she was depressed by any glimpse of pure joy, as if disheartened by the size of her own appetite, until he believed that there was no puzzle as complex as a smart and unhappy woman.
On a cold, dry morning outside Columbus, Ohio, Colette surprised Kevin in bed with an orange and a stack of pancakes topped with burning candles. On the other queen-sized bed she had draped Italian suits, shiny dress shirts, and colorful ties, along with the miserable preppy clothes he was supposed to wear during scams.
“Fifteen was a bad age for me,” she said. “I had a big pimple the entire year. I think I spent most of the time crying with a magazine over my face. But you—my little man—you have now got one lady-killing wardrobe here.”
“How did you find out it was my birthday?”
“Your father wrote it on his hand last week. Don’t get your hopes up, though, there’s a good chance he’s bathed since then. Anyway, you get yourself cleaned up. Don’t take an hour. We’re a brother and sister duo again today. And, Kevin, please, not so much cologne. It’s going to lead the cops right to us.”
That afternoon, they ran one of Jerry’s favorite short cons for some spending cash. Down the aisles of a Christmas tree lot, they walked arm in arm under a crackling speaker of sleigh bells. As usual Colette was lost in her character, saying amongst the noble firs: “… and you know, he’s even going to pay for Louise’s hip replacement. And Becky’s teeth. I swear, Jimbo, I think Santa Claus has got nothing on him.”
Suddenly she stooped down and began looking around the stacks of bound trees, becoming confused and silent. “Did I drop my ring somewhere? I don’t believe this.” She got onto her hands and knees and crawled frantically under branches and along the fences of loose chicken wire, and when she stood up, her stockings were covered with straw and pine needles. The edges of her mouth quivered; her eyes dampened with tears.
Kevin abandoned the ruse for a moment to whisper, “Colette, are you okay?”
She flicked her eyes wide open and said through her teeth, “No, Jimbo—I’m not okay. I lost my engagement ring! Oh my God, this is the worst thing possible.”
Stumbling dramatically as one of her heels broke, she ran toward the lot attendant, a thickset man wearing an orange parka vest like a deflated life preserver. Colette’s hysteria terrified the man. She was crying mascara streaks and gasping with her mouth open so wide she looked to be choking. She’d lost the most incredible ring she would ever have in her life, at least eight thousand dollars, maybe more, and an heirloom. It had belonged to her fiancé’s great-great-grandmother before the Crimean War (what wild ideas she threw into the mix), and he would never forgive her, never, not ever—maybe he would even call off the wedding. She had looked under every tree; her little brother had rooted around like a hound dog: “Get down on your belly and keep looking, Jimbo!” The attendant urged her not to panic. For the next half hour every customer and cashier searched around the needles and tree stands, while the attendant made an announcement—“Attention, Christmas shoppers, we have an emergency …”—until Colette commandeered the mike and promised a six-thousand-dollar reward, no questions asked, to anyone who found the ring. “Money is no object!”
She swooned into Kevin’s arms. As he dragged her across the pine needles, he said to the attendant, “I’m going to get her home. It’s okay. She’s had a terrible shock.”
He patted her cheek, a bit harder than necessary, and she climbed upright to recover herself, balancing on her toes and the one good heel. With a sigh and an ingratiating pat, she said good-bye to the attendant, gave him a bogus phone number, and said she would return when the lot closed at midnight.
On the drive back, when a few tears thickened in her eyelashes again, she grimaced, cleared them with her knuckles, and told Kevin it was just the leftovers.
Then it was Jerry’s turn, and Kevin had witnessed his side of the con in enough tree lots and pumpkin patches to imagine every step. Jerry would pretend to find the ring in a remote corner of the lot and would hold it up to the sunlight with one eye closed. “Looks like this sum’bitch is worth something.” Careful to isolate the attendant, Jerry would ask if a reward had been offered; and he would move, talk, and mull his decisions slowly enough to let the mark’s own scheme hatch. If the attendant was thick enough, he might even feed him the idea: “I bet this thing is worth three grand, at least.” In fact, the attendant would claim, there was a reward: three hundred dollars, and he could have it right out of the register to save any further trouble.
“This might be worth more than three hundred, pal. My brother is an appraiser, and I think he’ll say it’s up there in the high four figures, maybe five—look how it catches the light.” Jerry would leave with the ring; the attendant would grab him in the parking lot. With the restless smile of a novice swindler, he would admit that he hadn’t been entirely honest. The reward was more (once Jerry had managed to work an attendant up to four thousand dollars for a fifteen-dollar cubic zirconia) and, of course, he could have the cash right out of the till.
While Jerry was out finishing the job in the tree lot, Colette took a long bath and Kevin sat on the bed picking the lock on her valise with a sheared piece of coat hanger. Each time he was successful, he briefly inhaled the perfume smell inside, then shut the flap to begin the process again. He was aware of every shift Colette made in the water. Her voice was flat in the tile-and-porcelain cove as she called out questions to him about his new clothes. Would he ever wear those nice suits? Didn’t he think a con man should look good? After a long pause punctuated with mermaid splashes and the stampeding sound of water from the faucet, she asked, “Are you still alive in there, or did I short-circuit your brain?”
Jerry returned with a case of beer, a bottle of wine, and three submarine sandwiches. He threw Colette’s share of cash onto the bathroom counter, and chuckled when she claimed that he’d mugged Santa Claus.
“Close the door all the way, baby. Kevin’s right in the room here.”
“Yeah, and he’s not a Peeping Tom.” A splash of rising knees, a scrape of draining water. She came out of the bathroom with a towel sheathed tight from her chest to the pallid tops of her thighs. “This is my cut? You’re telling me you only made two grand?”
“He was tougher than he looked.”
“Come on, Jerry. There’s no way you’d walk out of there with less than three. Where’s the rest of it?”
“Let’s not do this again. You’re tired. You get paranoid when you’re tired.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to nickel-and-dime me on this. I’m the one who does everything.”
“Uh-huh. You throw a temper tantrum. How hard could that be for you?”
“I don’t just stomp my feet out there—I go out of my mind. I froth at the mouth. Ask Kevin. Why do you think it’s so easy for you when you go back? Because I’m a screaming lunatic and I make these people think I’ve lost the crown fucking jewels. And I’ve pulled this stunt now in every fruit stand and stupid fucking go-cart track in the country; so could I please have a little respect? You know what? Forget it. If you think that’s what I deserve, fine. You lose the ring from now on. See how convincing you are.”
“And you couldn’t negotiate the back end worth a damn, Colette. You know that.”
“I don’t even hear you,” she said, pulling water out of her hair. “You’re not speaking English anymore as far as I’m concerned. You’re speaking some pidgin asshole language I don’t understand.”
“Kevin? Am I nuts here?”
“Oh! Now Kevin is the mediator. Great father, Jerry. Great parenting decision. Oh, and I almost forgot: it’s your son’s birthday. But don’t worry—I’m sure he’ll have another one next year.”
In the bathroom alcove she put on a new lilac nightgown, and as she returned to the mirror, she seemed distracted by how it gripped her around the hips.
Jerry leaned back against the counter. “We got a big week coming up with the new batch of cards. I’m not going to let this kind of suspicion get in the way right when everything is starting to happen for us. That’s nice, by the way. Kind of shiny.”
Swiveling in front of the mirror, she said in a softer tone, “Makes me feel like I’m married and having an affair.”
“Uh-huh. And which one am I? The marriage or the affair?”
He waited, whispered something down the hollow between her shoulder blades. He stared at her waist, where the nightgown lay in ripples like water under a skipped stone, and began to trace them with his rough fingertips, head down and swaying slowly as Colette’s eyes held Kevin’s in the mirror.