Trust Me, I'm Trouble (14 page)

“Could be one of them was forced by their parents.”

“That’s why I said ‘maybe.’ But it’ll take time to determine that.”

My grifter senses are tingling. I’m itching from the inside out, and it’s driving me nuts.

As we pull up to the curb, I consider my first line of attack.

“So. Crime?” Murphy says, reading my mind.

“Crime.” I shoot him a quick and dirty smile before hopping out of the van and into the gutter. He doesn’t wait for me to get inside and I don’t watch him drive away. For a sidekick, he shows an admirable lack of codependence sometimes.

“Hi, Brigitte,” I say, approaching the reception desk.

Without looking up from her computer she points down a row of cubicles. I veer in that direction, scanning the rows for wandering interns. It takes me all of three minutes to find them.

“You’re late, Dupree,” Ackley says when I slide into the only seat left within the fabric-paneled walls of the intern pen. “Joseph already gave us our assignments.”

I don’t bother to respond. Instead I pick up the assignment lying on my keyboard. Photocopying. Awesome.

The other interns are either chatting with each other or starting their assignments. I take a lap around our tiny pen, glancing over shoulders to see if there’s a better project I can trade for. There has to be something that will give me a legitimate reason to spend some unaccompanied quality time in the file room. Let’s see. Shredding, no. Spreadsheets, no. Ah. Filing. Perfect.

“Hey, Aadila,” I say, smoothly, eying her sizable pile of manila folders. “Quite the stack you’ve got there.”

She narrows her eyes suspiciously. “Yes. It’s why they don’t pay me the big bucks.”

“Any chance you’d be willing to trade?”

“For what?”

“Photocopying and a Lunchable.”

She snorts. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“Photocopying and my undying devotion?”

“Please. Do I look like I just fell off the rainbows-and-cat-GIFs truck?”

“Photocopying, the Lunchable, my undying devotion, and fifty bucks?”

She hands me the first of several stacks of folders. “Better not be that pizza-with-pepperoni crap. I’m a turkey and cheddar girl.”

I’m starting to like this intern. She kind of reminds me of me. Well, before I got soft, anyway. I hand her the presentation packets I was supposed to photocopy, the Lunchable, and the fifty bucks I’d gotten from the ATM this morning in case I needed to bribe somebody. She counts it in front of me, which just makes me like her more.

“Nice doing business with you,” she says, then swivels back to her computer to check her email.

I heft the stack of folders and make my way deeper into the bowels of the building. After a few wrong turns, I end up at a heavy, solid door with several industrial-strength padlocks. Out of professional curiosity, I set down the folders and palm the nearest lock. A Brinks shrouded shackle padlock. Tough to pick. Very tight cylinder. You have to rotate it backward to get past the security pins. I’ve managed it only once, and that was at home under ideal conditions. The other locks are of similar caliber. Which makes me wonder what the hell is behind this door. Must be something worth seeing. I make a mental note of its location for future perusal.

After asking for directions, I finally track down the file room, tucked away on the third floor. There’s a file room attendant, a Filipina version of Brigitte with dark blue hair instead of bright red lipstick. This pretty much wrecks my snooping plans. I spend the next two hours filing Aadila’s folders and asking every stupid question imaginable to frighten off blue-haired Brigitte, whose name turns out to be, ironically, Scarlet.

I’m filing attendance records and accounting data. But without the personal records of the initiates, the info I have access to is meaningless. I need names to go with dates and numbers. Salinger says that the initiates’ profiles are confidential, which means if there’s anything to find, it’s probably in those files. Unfortunately, those files are locked in a file cabinet in direct line of sight from the attendant’s desk.

There’s no point in wasting my time checking into what Salinger says is fair game. Unless he knew I’d go for the forbidden stuff and therefore hid the smoking gun in plain sight. Unless he figured I’d figure that he’d figure I’d go for the forbidden stuff and hide the smoking gun in plain sight, so instead he put it in with the forbidden stuff. Ugh. Grifters. I may have to straight up ask him—pit my people-reading skills against his. I can’t tell you how much I do not want to do that. Which circles me right back around to the file room and that pesky attendant.

When Scarlet pulls out her lunch bag to eat at her desk, I finally give up and go for plan B. I unlock my phone, dial the main NWI number, and ask to be transferred. Scarlet gives me a dirty look for talking on my phone, so I move into the hall where she won’t hear me.

When the person at the other end picks up, I say, “Hi, it’s Julep. How would you like to make another fifty bucks?”

Five minutes later, Aadila hobbles into the file room with a giant stack of folders that she can barely see over. A foot or so from the attendant’s desk, she fakes a trip and spills the folders all over the floor, the desk, and the attendant. Scarlet scrambles to save the papers from her lunch, or her lunch from the papers, or both. Aadila floods Scarlet with apologies, straightening her hijab as she picks herself up from the floor. She’s either a consummate stage performer or she really wants the money.

Attendant distracted: check. Locked file cabinets picked: check. I try to move as little and as quietly as possible to avoid attracting Scarlet’s attention. I have minutes at most to work with, so I’ll have to snap pictures of the names on the folder tabs and look them up later. Lucky for me, the folders are labeled with first, middle, and last names, as well as a thumbnail-sized picture of the initiate.

I’m working from the bottom of the file cabinet up to avoid being noticed as long as possible. I’ll probably make it only about halfway or so before they’re done refiling all the mixed-up paperwork, or Scarlet notices me, whichever comes first.

I’ve gotten entirely through the
R
s when I hear renewed cursing from Scarlet and even more effusive apologies on Aadila’s part. Something about a drink spill. Excellent. I may have to permanently recruit Aadila.

I’m just about to the
J
s, feeling the rush of getting so much classified information in one fell swoop, when I see a name that kicks the breath out of my lungs.

S
AMUEL
L
.
J
ACKSON

It’s the alias I gave Sam when I made his fake ID last year. I look at the thumbnail picture, and it’s Sam, all right. That
idiot.
What the hell is he doing? I filch his folder and slip it in my stack of random files. I slide the drawer shut and relock it. Then I gesture at Aadila to wrap it up as I walk out.

Time to torture my meddling ex–best friend.

• • •

I don’t manage to sneak away from the intern pen again until after three. Joseph rounded us up after lunch for some weird “relaxation exercise” that only fueled my rage fire. Aadila fell asleep during the exercise, cushioned, no doubt, on the mattress of cash I’d had to cough up for her help this morning. Ackley was relaxing so hard that he probably gave himself a headache. The others followed the assignment correctly enough, though, that Joseph seemed satisfied.

The moment Joseph leaves our cubicle area, I slide Sam’s file out from the middle of the stack and go through it. His application reads like a grifter’s dream—executive vice president of a securities company with money to burn and connections that lead all the way to Capitol Hill. No matter what Salinger is looking for—money, secrets, blackmail fodder—Sam has built himself up to be able to deliver it. If Salinger is shady, he won’t be able to resist trying to fleece Sam.

But how could Sam have even known about the NWI job? I sure as hell didn’t tell him.

I’m torn between furious and impressed. This took planning. Not to mention, he has to pull off executive vice president. His height and confidence help, but he’s still only seventeen. Even in an age full of Google and Facebook, it’s hard to sell such power so young. And he’s not selling it to just anyone. If Salinger takes one look at him, he’ll see right through him.

I flip through a few more pages to get Sam’s leadership workshop schedule. Five minutes later, I knock on a fifth-floor conference room door.

“Come in,” says a lilting voice with a slight Indian accent.

I poke my head into the room. “Sorry to disturb you, Dr. Raktabija, but may I speak with Mr. Jackson for a minute? I need a little more information for his file.”

“Of course,” she says, nodding at an almost unrecognizable Sam. Tailored, pin-striped suit pants with a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled up to midforearm. Glasses, dominating posture, the whole enchilada. He’s a different person, even from the new Sam who came back from military school.

Sam smiles vaguely at me with not a spark of recognition. I don’t know what happened to him the past six months, but he got good. Too good.

I barely keep it together long enough to round a corner before I haul him into a bathroom, slam the door, and lock it behind us. I crank up the water to drown out any yelling I might be tempted to indulge in.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I hiss at him as quietly as I can, considering.

He drops the persona like cutting away a curtain. His eyes snap to mine. “I’m helping. Like Murphy asked me to.”

“
Murphy
asked you to?” That’s it. I’m docking that boy’s pay. Right after I deal with this boy. “Well, you can officially butt out, Sam. This is
my
job, not Murphy’s.”

“Well, maybe Murphy thinks you’re in over your head.”

“Oh, yeah? Murphy thinks that?” I’m glaring at the person who really thinks that. “I’ll have to remind Murphy that I’ve been doing this for longer than all the rest of you put together.”

“Murphy may believe that, but I know the truth. I’ve been doing this just as long as you have. Three-card monte, remember?”

Of course I remember. Sam and I made a bundle of cash fleecing our fourth-grade classmates with that old card trick before the principal cracked down on us. But it’s not the same for him as it is for me. I’ve been steeped in grifting my whole life. He’s had only his friendship with me as experience.

“So you just thought you’d show up and run your own con without telling me? Brilliant move, Samuel Jackson.”

“I figured you’d find out eventually. I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to pull me into a bathroom and risk blowing my cover.”

I point at myself. “This isn’t stupidity; it’s fury. Do you think I’d really let you stick around after crashing my con like this? You could have ruined my entire scam.”

“What scam?” he asks, gesturing at the file in my hand. “You’re digging through file cabinets like a damn cop. You stopped being the roper the second Salinger realized who you were. You’re not the shill anymore, Julep. You can’t be.”

My angry retort dies in my throat, because as much as it kills me to admit it, he’s right.

Sam’s face softens as he sees the acknowledgment in mine. “It has to be me,” he continues. “Salinger would have done his homework. I’m the only one who was never part of your investigation business. If there’s anyone he wouldn’t see coming, it would be me.”

“I can’t just sit on the sidelines, Sam. It’s my
mom.
”

He shakes his head. “I’m not suggesting you sit on the sidelines.” Then his mouth quirks up in a smirk as familiar to me as my own.

“I’m listening.”

• • •

“I still don’t see how a card trick is going to convince Salinger to spill all his secrets,” Murphy says, after I’ve soundly chastised him for bringing Sam into the picture.

“It’s not the card trick, Murph. It’s the principle behind it.”

“Which is?”

Murphy takes the exit off the freeway toward the Ramirezes’ house. Coaxing the van to slow down takes some careful pumping of the brakes so that the whole thing doesn’t tip over. It perhaps wasn’t the smartest purchase. But I have bigger problems than Bess—son of a muffler, now Murphy’s got me calling it that. The
van.
Not Bessie—the
van.

“The three-card monte is a scam where you fool the mark into thinking he can beat the dealer,” I say. “With the cards, you plant a fake player who loses in a blindingly obvious way while the mark is watching. The mark thinks the planted player is an idiot and the dealer is giving away easy money. Then there’s also a roper, or shill, who nudges the mark to play. If they’re good, the mark can’t resist placing a bet. As soon as he does, the dealer pulls the sleight of hand so that the mark guesses wrong. If you’re lucky, the mark bets again a few times before giving up and you can empty his wallet when he’s not looking.

“In this case, Salinger is the mark. He’s expecting me to try to con him. What we’re hoping is that he’s not expecting me to turn over the real con to a new player.”

“So you’re the fake player who loses?”

I smile. “Yes and no. It’s not a perfect analogy. I’m also the lady.”

“What lady?”

“The ‘lady’ is the Queen of Hearts, the card that the mark is asked to pick out of a set of three. The fake player loses in an obvious way to make the mark believe he can easily win, but the lady is what truly distracts him. It’s the thrill of the game. The competition of getting one up on the dealer. As long as I keep Salinger distracted, Sam can pick his proverbial pocket clean.”

“You really think that will work?”

On the one hand, it’s a brilliant plan. Use me to distract Salinger from the real mole. On the other hand, the role reversal is hard for me to get used to. I don’t like being on the edge of the game. I prefer having my hands in the thick of it, knowing what there is to know immediately so I can deal with it on the fly if necessary. Sam’s plan forces me to rely on him to make split-second decisions. If he makes a mistake, he could bring down the whole con. If I make a mistake, at least I’m the one who pays the price. I don’t like the idea of Sam being closer to the line of fire.