Trust Me, I'm Trouble (12 page)

“What does sixty-three mean?”

He eyes me sharply. “It’s your mom’s favorite number. I’m not sure why.” He smiles at some memory I’ll never share. “She had it tattooed on her right hip.”

“Did you know there’s a place called Bar63 in town?” I don’t tell him it’s new. I want to see if he’ll let something slip.

“I didn’t,” he says. And he’s so good that I can’t tell what he’s lying about. “I’d never been to Chicago before the three of us moved here.”

“With all the grifting, you’d never once been to Chicago,” I say suspiciously.

“I spent a lot of time in Thailand.”

I used to trust my father. When did that change? When he didn’t tell me he was working for the mob and then got abducted for his trouble? Or before that? When he abandoned me for those two weeks during which my mother also went missing?

It doesn’t really matter. The fact is I don’t trust him anymore. Not completely.

He takes my hand, interrupting my fidgeting. “Whoever her family was, your mom loved you.”

“Not enough to stay.”

“Maybe she loved you so much she had to leave.”

I pull my hand away and stuff both into the pockets of my vest. It’s time to change the topic.

“I need your advice on a job I’m working. Have you heard of the New World Initiative?”

He pauses. “It’s some kind of pyramid scheme, I think.”

“Yes, maybe. It sells leadership skills and self-confidence to pencil pushers.” I explain about NWI, about the imprisoned embezzler and his wife, my new client.

When I finish, my dad leans back in his chair, arms crossed. “I guess it could be legit. But it’s strange that your client is so insistent that her husband was coerced. Most people don’t need additional motive to steal money.”

“An otherwise honest man might. If he thought his place in heaven would be secured.”

“I thought you said it was business-oriented. Not religious.”

“It’s not religious. I meant it figuratively. But if Duke Salinger is half as charismatic—”

“Did you say Duke Salinger?”

“Yes, why? Have you heard of him?”

“He was a financial investor arrested for fraud in the nineties. A grifter in the Wall Street sense.”

I make a face. I don’t have a lot of respect for that sort of criminal. It’s a lot easier to lie convincingly to someone over a phone than to their face.

“He was something of a legend, actually. He stole a lot of money from a lot of gullible people. But then something happened, and he got caught. Last I heard, he was in the pen.”

“And?”

“That’s it.”

That’s it, my eye. He’s holding out on me for some reason. But I know better than to try to come at him about it directly. “Well, he’s been out of jail long enough to form a lucrative leadership skills–building organization.”

My dad stays silent, his eyes glazed with the preoccupation of his own thoughts. I don’t know whether to push him more or to let it go for now. The last thing I need is for him to shut down completely. So I try a subtler approach.

“There’s more. Mrs. Antolini found a bunch of receipts linking the New World Initiative to Bar63. And she mentioned that the authorities questioning her were looking for a blue fairy.”

He gives me a blank look. “Lots of organizations keep receipts from company outings. It might be nothing.”

“But the blue fairy?”

He rubs his forehead. “If this company is somehow affiliated with your mom’s family, stay away from it. I may not know anything about her past, but I know that she was terrified they’d find her.
Terrified.
Anything that scared your mother that much—your mother, who wasn’t afraid of anything—should be avoided at all costs.”

“But what about Mr. Antolini? If Mrs. Antolini is right that there’s more to this than a trumped-up embezzlement charge…”

My dad gives me a pointed look. “Don’t get too attached to the mark.”

“Mr. Antolini is not my mark.”

“He’s somebody’s mark. It’s a slippery slope, Julep.”

Says the man who got himself shot trying to save a warehouse full of marks.

“Time’s up,” says Bob the prison guard. I kind of hate Bob.

We get out of our chairs, and my dad hugs me tight. “I love you. Be careful.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

And then he’s through the door without a backward glance. I wish I didn’t know that it’s because it’s the only way he can force himself to leave. Sometimes being a grifter sucks.

It isn’t until I’m back in Dani’s rental car buckling my seat belt that I realize I forgot to tell him about the contract killer.

“How did it go?” Dani asks.

“About as well as you’d expect. He either doesn’t know anything or he’s doing a damn good job of hiding that he does.”

“Yes. That is irritating, isn’t it?”

“What?”

She just smirks in response. I stick my tongue out at her, because yes, I am that mature.

We rehash my conversation with my dad and everything I know about NWI on our way back. It doesn’t amount to much.

Salinger found the light, repented his ways—up to and including jail time—and started a company with the purpose of training people in the fine art of grifting without actually using it for evil. At least, that’s my take on it. Technically, it’s a leadership cult—we’ll teach you how to “lead people,” and then you lead them to our program. To some extent, it is a pyramid scheme, in that it builds its power base by turning its members into recruiters.

But in order to be a true pyramid scheme, by definition, it can’t return on its patrons’ investments. That’s the real question Mrs. Antolini’s accusations raise. Is NWI secretly an evil corporation bent on using and abusing its initiates for its own gain, or is it a benevolent, possibly misguided group of people passing on their version of the keys to success?

My money’s on evil. Duke Salinger is a grifter, and a grifter never quits, not really. I’m a prime example of that. I wanted to quit, and now look at me. Is it possible to get out once you’re in? I look over at Dani and wonder if she would ever go straight, if she even could.

“How’d you get into being an enforcer?” I ask her, though it’s not really hard to guess. Street urchin to mob lackey is not a large leap.

She coasts to a stop at a crosswalk. “It was a particularly brutal winter.” A woman crosses in front of us, holding on to a little boy with one hand and waving at us with the other. “Temperatures hovered below freezing for weeks. We lost little Olena first. She was too small to forage, and we could not feed her and ourselves. We tried. We even took her to the orphanage, but they were almost as bad off as we were. No government money. No food or fuel. She did not last long after that. And then the others. We lost nine in all.”

“Jesus, Dani.” I put my hand on her arm, because how could I not? For once, she doesn’t brush me off.

“When the frost broke, I swore I would never go through that again. For
syrota
like us, there are two options—crime and prostitution. I chose crime. I joined Petrov the next week. He fed me, trained me. He taught me to read himself. He was a good boss. Paid us fairly, even by American standards. I did what I could for those who were left. And when Petrov came to Chicago, I came with him.”

I realize then how hard it must have been for her to pull that trigger to stop Petrov from killing me. He had literally saved her life. For someone like Dani, that means a hell of a lot.

“I’m—I didn’t know. You shouldn’t have had to save me from him.”

She blinks, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Petrov. You shouldn’t have had to choose someone you barely knew over someone you cared about.”

She casts me a quick look. “I betrayed him when I started helping your father gather evidence to free the girls, which was before I met you.”

“But you shot him because of me.”

“I did. And I would have shot him again, if you had not stopped me. I have regretted listening to you every day since.”

That shuts me up. Maybe I don’t know as much about Dani as I think I do.

“Do not be so presumptuous as to take all my transgressions as your own, little saint. You have quite enough of other people’s sins on your shoulders as it is.”

When we get to the Ramirezes’ house, she puts the car in neutral and pulls up the parking brake. She looks like she’s about to get out and walk me in. But there’s one order of business I’ve been putting off. I need to get it over with before I lose the guts to do it.

“What?” she says, reading the hesitation on my face.

“I…may have, um, liedabouttextingMike. Okay, bye.”

“Hold it!”

Damn. I’d almost made it to the curb.

“You didn’t text Ramirez?”

I bite my lip and drop my gaze, trying to look penitent.

She sighs and then laughs. “You are…” She shakes her head. “Just go.”

“See you tomorrow?”

She looks at me sideways as she releases the brake. My stomach does this flippy thing that I wholeheartedly disapprove of. Then she drives away without answering, because she knows I already know.

L
et me tell you a little something about grifters. We are a breed of criminal that is a cross between thief and illusionist, and most of us suffer from a complete lack of conscience. I know this, despite the deep, black scar of sympathy marring my grifter soul. So going up against a grifter, practicing or not, is not my idea of a good time.

I can tell when most people are lying like they’re admitting it themselves. They are, in fact, admitting it, with their unconscious facial expressions, their body language, and their vocal inflections. It’s almost too easy, most of the time.

But a grifter is a whole other prospect. Con men have spent years observing and controlling their expressions. Learning Salinger’s tells is going to take time, and honestly, I’m not at my best right now. Sam coming back, all this stuff with my mom, the hit man stalking me. I’m rattled, I’ll admit it. And if I’m too distracted with looking over my shoulder, I might tumble into the trap right in front of my feet.

It doesn’t help that Sister Rasmussen was against me taking the internship. Does she know something I don’t? If so, why not just tell me? Is she hiding something, or am I just growing increasingly paranoid? And if it’s the latter, can you blame me?

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, my hand resting on the ostentatious sunburst that serves as the handle to the New World Initiative’s heavy glass door.

“Are you going in?” says a pleasant, rumbling voice behind me.

I turn to see a thoroughly built guy in his late twenties with boyishly messy brown curly hair under a beanie. His white T-shirt stretches tight over his muscles, and his jeans are the perfect balance between relaxed and fitted. He looks a little too put-together to be real—like a model who’s wandered off a photo shoot.

“Eventually,” I say. “Are you in a rush?”

He smiles, the tips of his perfect white teeth showing. “I have an appointment.”

So do I, actually. It’s the first day of my internship. I’m due to meet the intern coordinator and the other interns for orientation at seven-thirty. It’s seven-twenty-five, and I still have to check in at the front desk. I really shouldn’t be dawdling, especially over something stupid like anxiety.

I fold my arms and step back from the door so he can go past me. But instead, he opens the door, gesturing for me to precede him inside, as if saying
It’s now or never.
He’s not wrong. It has to be now. I have to know if this place is connected to my mom, to my family. And if so, what that says about me.

I blink, my eyes adjusting to the dim lighting of the lobby. The tile floor is a soothing mottled blue and tan. The walls are a shade of green that shifts into blue tones in peripheral vision. Potted plants soften the edges at regular intervals. And the bank of windows looking out onto the street seems to beckon outsiders in.

“Welcome to the New World Initiative,” Beanie Guy says as he walks past me and then past the receptionist into the offices beyond.

The reception desk is substantial, rib-high and curved slightly outward. Though there are stations for two, a single receptionist sits behind the desk, a middle-aged, black-haired woman with too-bright lipstick and a nose ring. Her nameplate says Brigitte. Judging by Beanie Guy and Brigitte, I’m a little overdressed in my slacks, blouse, and heels.

I ask for directions, and she points me toward a conference room on the second floor. Only it turns out to not be a conference room at all. It’s a large, brightly lit obstacle course with blue foam-mat flooring under thirteen structures of rope, wood, and metal.

Several small groups of people are loitering around the room. Most of the groups seem to have a facilitator leading them in some ridiculous-looking icebreaker activities. One group of five is leaderless, though, and, coincidentally, its constituents appear to skew younger than the other groups. They’re sitting on the floor in a loose circle, chatting with each other. The conversation trails off when I walk up.

“You a new intern?” says a pale hipster guy in skinny jeans, glasses, and a sweater-vest.

“Yep,” I say. “You guys, too?”

“Oliver Ackley,” the hipster says, reaching out his hand. I bend down and shake it. He introduces the others, showing off his memory and inherent leadership potential. This guy is clearly the gunner of the group. He cares way too much about being the best.