Conman (11 page)

What I was trying to say, of course, was that even flat mounted and displayed like this, without Joe Shuster’s groin inside them, without the matching tablecloth cape, they still looked exactly as they did in the cracked photograph on my mantelpiece.

The rest of the day passed quickly. Fake vintage underpants were slid back into their box, Pete duly returned from his shopping trip and Christopher mapped out the con. How it was going to work. Each man’s role. Step by step.

We were only bothered three times. Two customers – tourists who said whatever the Hungarian was for “this shop stinks” half a dozen times and left – and a phone-call from Jane which sent me scurrying out of the office, hunched over the handset. She was apologising for the night before and checking I’d posted the letters to the bank and solicitor. I whispered it was fine, yes it was all sorted and I hung up, beginning to worry. A little bit about the lying to Jane, but a great deal
more
about how these lies were the least of my worries.

My head consequently started to hurt, a situation not
remedied
by the disagreement going on in the back office.

“
Mnyesss
,” Christopher said, slowly, stretching the word like a
trombone
note. “Yes, agreed. The blow off is still patchy. The timing’s …”

“The blow off is no good,” Julio sighed through the stale fug of his cigarette smoke. “I been saying for weeks.”

“Have I missed something?” I said, sitting down. “Blow off?”

“Step nine. We take his roll – now we ask mark to get up and walk,” Julio said. “Not go run to police, not pull gun, no swear revenge. Just happily tip hat, thank-you madam and take stroll into sunscreen.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“Because dear fellow,” Christopher bobbed, “if the play is right, the mark never discovers he was conned. He walks away having lost his money, but convinced it was just bad luck. Or that it was his own fault somehow.”

“Or in this case,” Pete said, “convinced he’s made a –”

Pete stopped at the sound of the door tingling.

The room went quiet, breath held, the only movement being wide white eyes clacking to-and-fro like desk toy marbles. Teeth clenched, I slid from my seat and moved to the office doorway.

“There you are, skulking out the back. You want leftovers? I’ve got cold burnt cheese and tomato or cold burnt cheese and ham?” Laura said, tugging a greasy paper-bag from her apron. She was wandering up the shop, little red ballet shoes squeaking, peeling off her green coat to reveal a dark cotton print dress in the 1950s style: full skirt, belted waist and a little red cardigan pulled tight across her chest.

“Wait. Shit,” I said, moving quickly to meet her halfway. “You can’t stay.”

“What?”

“You can’t … It’s … I’m kind of in the middle of –”

“What have you got back … Ohmigod!” she said, hand flying to her mouth. “The man! The trick! You
agreed
! Is that … ?” Laura leant in conspiratorially, whispering. “Is that
them
?”

“No,” I lied. Apparently not very successfully.

“Ohmigod, let me say hello,” and Laura began to push past.

“Shit, no no no,” and I found myself with my hands on her squirming shoulders.

“C’mon, just a peek …”

“
No!
” I barked. She wriggled in my grip. “I
mean it.
These guys aren’t mucking around. Laura, please just,
Laura
!”

She stepped back suddenly, the shop falling into quiet.

“Sorry,” I repaired, stomach twisting. “Sorry but … look, this is serious stuff. You can’t
be
here.”

“Spoil sport,” Laura said with a childish pout. “You want the ham?” and she handed me a greasy bag.

“Sorry. I-I mean thank you,” I said and Laura turned to go. “You don’t have to … I mean, it’s
nice
. The sandwiches. The coffee,” I said. “Having you pop in …”

Laura looked at me, blinking, expressionless.

“… but you shouldn’t feel … that you
have
to, I mean. Because of me helping out. There’s no …”

I was waiting for Laura to leap in. Say something. Smile, laugh,
shrug. Make some gesture to help me out of this hole.

She continued to stare. She continued to blink.

“What I mean is, the debt is repaid. Thank you,” and I rattled the sandwich bag.

Laura blinked one more time and then sent her hand into her apron for her cigarettes, lifting them out and removing one, all without breaking her stare.

“Your new friends don’t want me around?” she said finally, clinking her Zippo shut and pouting a curl of syrupy smoke from her lips. “Or
you
don’t?”

I shrugged like an adolescent, feeling the familiar prickly
anxiousness
about my neck.

Laura held my look until I was forced to examine the floor and find invisible dust on my sleeve to pick at. When I looked up again at the tingle of the door, she was gone.

“Who hell that?” Julio said as I squeezed back into the cramped office.

“Nobody.”

“This nobody, she know about us?”

“No.”

“
Lying
,” Julio, Henry and Pete said together.

“Fine,” I said and reminded Christopher of Rudy’s clumsy rendezvous with Laura’s plimsolls a few short days ago.

“Where she work?” Julio asked, flipping his notebook, pen poised. “We should watch her.”

“Tch, we haven’t the time or manpower, young Julioworth and well you know it.” Christopher turned to me. “You trust her?”

“
Trust
her?”

“Have you seen her naked?”

“What?
No
. God
no
. I’m married, I wouldn’t …” The men stared at me blankly. Apparently in their circles, being married didn’t mean what it meant in my circles. “No. I hardly know her. She just works around the corner,” and I held up the greasy bag. “Sandwiches.”

The four men looked at each other, making little humming noises, passing a thought about the room telepathically until Julio finally spoke. 

“It no matter either way because blow off is going to get us all pinched.”

“God, Julio, please –”

“We sit here, mark will land tomorrow. You
hope
…”

“Julio –”

“He have not bought the comic. You have made no approach. We have second-rate McMuffin –”

“
Maguffin
. I told you. And in a few moments we’ll know if he’s –”

“And the blow off is joke. We all going down, I tell you, we all going –”

Julio stopped complaining suddenly and everyone else stopped pretending to listen.

Because on the desk, the kitchen timer was ringing.

“Ahhh, that’s all we have time for ladies and gentlemen. Julio?” Christopher said, and with a sigh, Julio obediently rose, moved to my laptop and began to flurry his gloved fingers over the keys. The machine whirred and blipped as it dialled its signal. Christopher moved to a chair, flexing his latex hands squeakily like a concert pianist.

“What’s … ?” I began.

“Five o’clock,” Pete said, stretching his back, reaching for a
cigarette
.

Five o’clock
? A vague memory from Christopher’s notebook passed through my head without stopping.
Five o’clock
… Christopher tapped the keyboard with light fingers. Clicking and dragging, the screen slowly stuttered open to a brightly coloured web page.

“Well look at that,” he smiled. “
My my my, said the spider to the fly.
”

The other men gathered about his shoulders silently, seriously, breath held, eyes on the glowing screen. I scampered over and peered through the scrum.

eBay
. The comic-book collectables page. Item? The 1938 edition of
Action Comics.
Issue #4. The very one Cheng had mentioned. And the winning bid? £5,400. Bidder.
GraysonUSA
.

“
Fly
?” I asked nobody in particular. “You don’t mean … Shit, do you mean …?”

“Oh well done Holmes,” Christopher smiled. “Yes. The bait is
ours. We have sprinkled it onto the virtual lawn, the grassy lay-by of the information-splendid highway as food to tempt Mr Grayson to the surface.”

“So there’s no
real
comic?”

“Regretfully no. However, real or not, Mr Grayson has now
won
the thing – therefore forcing he and I to meet. Absolutely by chance of course.”

“But … but what if one of these other guys,” and I flicked a finger at the scroll of other bidders. “What if they’d pipped him to the prize? Bidded higher? This guy. Whittington? Or Peckard Scott or … oh. Right.”

And that, my friend, is how they do it.

The team have got about forty phoney items for auction up at a time, watching for the same bidders’ names reappearing. Plus Christopher is watching the genuine auctions too. Anyone buying rare albums, vintage clothes, antique ceramics.

As he began to type his congratulatory email to Grayson, I asked him straight out: did he
really
expect this American to buy a pair of forged underpants?

Christopher didn’t stop typing. He just smiled.

Nobody was going to buy anything, he said.

It was cleverer than that.

A whole lot cleverer than that.

“Hey?” Jane said, sizzling some veg and beansprouts about the wok in a hissing plume of smoke a few hours later. I was at the cupboard, Lana bouncing on my hip, one hand hunting gingerly for the cleanest wine glasses, the portable on the dining table burbling
Holby City.

“Sorry, what?”

“I asked if business was picking up? You sounded busy today,” Jane said. “Can you get some bowls out.”

I clattered through crockery and murmured something about hmm-yes, on-and-off or up-and-down or
knees-bend-arm-stretch-rah-rah-rah
, my head a hundred light years away.

What if … God, what if this Grayson changed his mind? It could happen. 

We’d all watched apprehensively as Christopher had shared a brief live email exchange with him regarding his successful bid. And sure, Grayson had
appeared
keen enough in his messages – pleased to have won the item, insisting the transaction was in dollars, asking all the right questions about paper quality and cover condition, how they might arrange a viewing – but you could never tell.

What if –

“Oh I’ll do it myself,” Jane snapped. “What’s the
matter
with you this evening?”

“Hn? What? Oh s-sorry, let me …”

“Don’t worry,” she said, clattering out two bowls and attempting to tip the wok and scrape the hissing meal out cack-handedly. “Just take Lana through. Oh and grab the soy sauce.”

I picked up my wine glass and ooze-a-good-girl-den-ed into the lounge.

A news bulletin was chattering away to itself on television. I stood and watched for a moment. A be-capped police chief stood beside the revolving Scotland Yard sign, talking sternly about something or other.

What if what if what if?

In his email, Christopher had claimed to be a small-time dealer based up in Blidworth, near Nottingham. Yes, he’d typed, he was sure Grayson’s
Memorabilia Museum
was wonderful but no, he sadly had no plans to visit Kansas in the near future. His only
scheduled
jaunt was a train down to London this coming Monday for a private viewing of the lots that were to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. The exchange would have to be done some other –

What? Hadn’t Grayson
heard
? Sotheby’s? Golden Age Originals? Actual items owned by Stan Lee, Bob Kane, Siegel, Shuster and the rest. Surely as a collector he’d received a catalogue? No? Some sort of oversight, it had to be …

By now of course we were all watching with shredded nerves, teeth chomping on latex-wrapped fingernails as Grayson’s eager emails pinged back almost immediately. Where? When? Private viewings? London? Where in London?

“Here you go. You might want to put Lana down first. Did you bring the soy sauce?”

“Uhh, sorry,” I said. Jane eased herself onto the couch with a shake of the head. I settled the little one beside her and mooched back into the kitchen to rootle around the cupboards, stomach churning. I could hardly eat, appetite swallowed by hollow nerves.

As quietly as I could, I pedalled open the smeary kitchen bin (
£
2, nearly new) and scooped a heavy tangle of dinner on top of the tea bags and potato peelings.

Christ, what if Grayson changed his mind? Didn’t come? Or worse, did some investigating first? Or was an undercover cop? What if he’d made his fortune through twenty-five years in the American underpant industry and could spot a re-sown label and a hand-frayed waistband at 100 yards?

“It’s in the cupboard,” Jane called through.

“Okay,” I croaked feebly.

Leaning against the worktop, bent over, I took slow, deep breaths, trying to shoo the fear and anguish from gnawing at the raw bone of my insides.

I felt sick. I felt scared. I felt panicky.

I felt …

Well, I felt about twelve years old.

You see, all this worry? The waiting? The
what if
? The constant click-clack click-clack, back and forth, back and forth, yes-no
yes-no
? It was how I grew up. Hell, it’s how most children grow up in a household financed by gambling. The ups, downs and mood swings. A home at turns
The Cosby Show
– laughs and hugs and chunky sweaters – only to become
The Amityville Horror
at the turn of a betting slip.

I had probably spent my entire conscious childhood, from
wide-eyed
toddler to shuffling adolescent, in this state of constant anxious balance. Never quite settled, never quite calm. On my hands and knees, crashing Matchbox cars along the patterns in the carpet, one ear out, listening for the sound of Dad’s tread. His key, his greeting. The gifts. The grief. Or later, sprawled out with a young Jane, Andrew ‘Benno’ Benjamin and a scrabble board in an echoing University corridor, stomach tight, waiting for a call. Just a loan. Just a few bob.

My dad was one of
those men,
y’see. Every family has one I suppose. You probably do yourself. Some distant uncle that always
has a roll-up on the go, a deal to be made and a guy he has to pop out and see about something, never you mind,
nudge nudge.
The sort who leaves loudly halfway through a family wedding, the church echoing to a cheap mobile ring-tone version of the
Only Fools and Horses
theme.