City of Brick and Shadow

by Tim Wirkus

  On this end of town the buildings had a grimy, abandoned quality to them, their lack of an ocean view rendering them valueless to the hordes of vista-hungry tourists that infested the northeastern seaside town almost year-round. It was a wonder that any business stayed afloat in this landlocked neighborhood. For Sílvia and Aurélio, however, the privacy these floundering businesses offered suited their needs perfectly.

  The ice in Sílvia’s glass shifted with a faint clatter. Years later, after they were married, Aurélio would admit to her that his plan that first afternoon on the bus had been to play the reluctant friend, stringing her along for a few hours, or days if necessary, until she let down her guard and he could lose her in a crowd, disappearing from her life completely. Instead, Sílvia had proven to be an adept con artist in her own right, insisting on being included in one job, and then another, acquitting herself admirably in both instances. Aurélio had begrudgingly admitted that having a partner could come in handy, that he could vastly expand his repertoire if he had someone else to work with. He had agreed to a trial partnership—six weeks of working together, and then he would make a decision. Now, two weeks in, the initial hesitancy with which he had approached the venture was fading quickly.

  Sílvia ran her finger along the rim of her chilled, sweating glass.

  “How much longer do you think we can work this town?” she said.

  Aurélio raised his glass and took a drink.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Another two days. Maybe three.”

  He set down his glass.

  “And then what?” she said.

  “And then we keep following the coast,” he said. “Wherever there’s a beach, there are tourists.”

  Although he favored working tourist towns, Aurélio rarely conned the tourists themselves. He had explained his theory to Sílvia like this:

  “Wherever there are tourists, there’s a lot of money changing hands, which represents, of course, a great opportunity. To a novice in the business, the tourists seem like ideal marks—they’ve got disposable income that they’re excited to spend; they travel in big, dumb herds; and they’re usually not from the area. But the money’s not in the tourists. Sure, you can earn some pocket change with an occasional Upstairs Dry Cleaner or a Fumbled Baby, but these routines are crude, and more importantly, they’re unprofitable. What’s more, tourists are much warier than you’d think. They read the safety tips in their guidebooks, and most of them are at least somewhat aware of how conspicuously foreign they are. So they compensate by being suspicious of any sort of financial proposition that seems out of the ordinary, which makes them terrible marks.

  “Most importantly, though, tourists aren’t bored. They’re on vacation, they’re having a good time. And I’m more and more convinced that boredom in a mark is at least as important as greed.”

  “Then tourist towns are a wash?” Sílvia had said.

  Aurélio had shaken his head.

  “Don’t forget about all that money. Where there are tourists, there’s money. This is true. So if we’re not getting the tourists’ money directly from the tourists, then we have to take it from the people who take it from the tourists. The restaurant owners, the tour guides, the souvenir vendors—these are the ideal marks, and I’ll tell you why.

  “First, they overcharge for everything. Really overcharge. Because they can. And that shows us that they’re greedy. But more important than that, they’re bored. Their jobs are just like any job in that they’re doing the same repetitive thing every single day of the tourist season, but it’s worse because they spend their working hours watching people on vacation, people having a good time, which reminds them that they’re not having a good time, that they’re tired of selling the same snow globes, or giving the same tour, or whatever it is, every single day. Most cons bring some novelty to their routine, and even if there’s a risk involved, it’s an escape from the grind of their boring, repetitive jobs.

  “So basically, they have all this money from tourists, they’re greedy, and they’re bored. They’re the ideal marks. Also, most of them like to consider themselves savvy businessmen, so even when they do realize they’ve been conned, they’re unlikely to tell their friends about it. You can work one tourist town pretty securely for five days, maybe a week.”

  Sílvia had listened carefully, taking note of not only what he had said, but what his face, his body, his voice had been doing while he said it. In that conversation and in others like it, as Aurélio explained some personal theory or trick of the trade, Sílvia couldn’t help but feel that she was being given temporary, unfiltered access to Aurélio’s mind. Having seen him adopt so many other personas so convincingly, however, she suspected that this apparent openness could just as easily be yet another pose for yet another willing mark.

  Aurélio ran his thumb over the moisture condensing on the outside of his glass.

  “So how do you think that last one went?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” said Sílvia. “I thought it went fine.”

  Aurélio nodded.

  “Specifically, I guess, I pulled off the ‘I’m in a hurry’ attitude more naturally than I have before—that seemed to work well.”

  “I agree,” said Aurélio.

  “I also didn’t worry as much about what to do with my hands while I was talking.”

  “Good.”

  “I did feel like I pushed a little too hard after you called him on the payphone. I could see him hesitating and I got nervous.”

  “Yeah,” said Aurélio. “It’s a natural mistake. That’s why Junior Cabral’s first rule is ‘Be a good listener.’ Let the mark make the proposition himself. You’ve just got to drill that into your head.”

  Despite the youthfulness that his name suggested, Junior Cabral was a bearded, middle-aged legend of a con artist. During his prime, he had sold a nonexistent copper mine to a former vice president; convinced a small neighboring country that he was a double agent willing to give up his country’s secrets, if the price was right; and conned an elite coalition of leading businessmen out of half of their fortunes by claiming to be a descendent of Sir Francis Drake in possession of information that would lead them directly to the legendary privateer’s as-yet-undiscovered personal store of Spanish gold. He had also mentored the promising young Marco Aurélio. Any time Aurélio brought up Junior Cabral, it was to invoke the man’s sacrosanct authority, an authority that carried the same weight as scripture.

  “Right,” said Sílvia.

  “But overall, you’re really getting the hang of it,” said Aurélio.

  He looked at his watch.

  “We should get back to work.”

  “Okay,” she said, but he didn’t stand up.

  “Just to be clear on something—” he began, and paused.

  “What?” she said.

  He said, “I don’t think you’re unattractive.”

  She shrugged.

  “I don’t care if you do or you don’t,” she said.

  “I’m just saying, that’s not what I meant earlier.”

  “Fine,” she said.

  Aurélio nodded. He pulled a few bills from his pocket and left them on the table next to his half-empty glass. Sílvia got up from the table and the two of them headed off to their next job.

  • • •

  Almost by accident, six weeks became six years. During the initial month and a half of their then-tentative partnership, Sílvia mastered the Fisherman’s Widow, the Cairo Bait-and-Switch, the Vasco da Gama, and the Embassy Turnaround. She revised and updated several old cons—the Pigeon Drop, the Old Violin, the Bootlegger’s Gambit—to great success. Together, she and Aurélio even developed a few scams that, as far as they could tell, were entirely original. Without ever explicitly discussing it, Aurélio took Sílvia on as a full partner in his business, and their life together fell into a regular pattern.

  They would spend a month working a series of coastal tourist cities, spending five or six days in each one b
efore moving on to the next. Once they made enough money, they would hole up for a few months in some small, inland town, developing new scams, polishing old ones, and consulting maps and tourist guides to decide where they would work next. To help them maintain their focus, the towns where they stayed during this downtime boasted nothing that might be of interest to even the most curious vacationer—no colonial-era churches, no ocean views, no remarkable restaurants, no museums of any kind. Finding towns like this was no easy feat, but with time, the two partners had accumulated a respectable list, a kind of anti-tourist guide of places that suited their particular needs. Distraction free, they found it easier to stay confined in their rented rooms, dedicating themselves to their craft.

  During this time, they reassured one another that their relationship was strictly professional, that neither of them had any intention of complicating a perfectly functional business partnership with any kind of romance. Never mind that the two of them were inseparable, even when they weren’t working. Never mind that Aurélio got upset—“You don’t want to overdo it,” he’d say—every time that Sílvia’s flirting with a mark seemed too sincere. Never mind that they shared a bed everywhere they stayed; it was more cost-effective, they reasoned, and any activities that might be construed as romantic could be justified as an effective means of unwinding from the stresses of their chosen line of work.

  This carefully maintained illusion was shattered after six years of working together, when, one morning, Aurélio suggested that they get married. They were on the bus, which had become not only their physical means of transport from the tourist cities to the small towns where they holed up, but also an important liminal space, a chance to decompress between identities. As usual, they sat next to each other, Sílvia with her eyes closed, sleeping or trying to sleep, and Aurélio paging through a magazine he had picked up at the bus terminal.

  “Hey,” said Aurélio, nudging Sílvia awake.

  “Hm?” said Sílvia, opening her eyes and looking around in an almost-concealed panic.

  “No,” said Aurélio, “nothing’s wrong.”

  She looked at him.

  “Then why did you wake me up?”

  “We should get married,” he said.

  She pulled the jacket she was wearing more tightly around her body.

  “What?”

  “We should get married.”

  “Like, for a new scam?” said Sílvia.

  “No,” he said, “because I love you.”

  She said that certainly complicated things. He said he knew that. She told him she’d need some time to process this. He said that he’d expected she would, that he hoped she’d take some time to think it over before giving him an answer.

  For nearly a month after that, neither of them mentioned Aurélio’s proposal. If waiting for Sílvia’s answer bothered Aurélio, if it was any kind of strain on his psyche, he, not surprisingly, didn’t let on. Sílvia tried her best to match Aurélio’s poker face, but she worried that her unease was beginning to show.

  When Aurélio had asked her to marry him, she had felt not shocked, but pleased—relieved almost. Her reflexive, unspoken answer to his question had been an unqualified yes, a reaction that, when she had recognized it, had startled her. She thought back to the first job that she and Aurélio had worked on together. Beforehand, he had explained the bare bones of the routine to her:

  “Accomplice One—in this case, you—comes out of the restaurant of an upscale tourist bar holding what looks like an expensive diamond bracelet, but is actually just a piece of costume jewelry. It’s important, by the way, to start the routine soon after, but not during, a busy time at the bar. Also, Accomplice One should look like a solidly middle-class tourist. That way they trust you, but still believe that you wouldn’t turn down some money if it was coming your way. So Accomplice One approaches the bartender and explains her dilemma—she found this bracelet on a sink in the ladies’ room. She would like to try to return it to its owner—it looks valuable—but she’s not sure how to go about it, and she has to be to the airport to catch her flight home in just a few minutes. Accomplice One and the bartender puzzle over the dilemma.

  “About this time, Accomplice Two—in this case, me—calls the bar, and in his most convincing imitation of a middle-aged rich man, explains that his wife has lost her bracelet somewhere, that she has no idea where it could be, that it means a lot to her, and he’s offering a reward of a thousand reaís to anyone who can find it. The bartender tells him he’s in luck. Someone at the bar has found the bracelet on a sink in the ladies’ room. Accomplice Two tells the bartender that he’ll be there in half an hour with the reward money.

  “At this point, the bartender hangs up the phone and explains the situation to Accomplice One who, although relieved that the owner has been found, reminds the bartender that she can’t wait around for half an hour, that she has a flight to catch. Now, this point in the routine is key. It’s best if Accomplice One waits for the bartender to make the suggestion, and given time, he usually will. If he’s like most marks, the bartender will usually give Accomplice One a song and dance about how he’d be happy to stick around and return the bracelet himself, but his shift is ending and he has someplace to be. If there were some incentive, though, maybe—

  “It’s tempting for Accomplice One to jump in at this point and make the proposal, but it’s better to hold out and let the mark do all the work. So Accomplice One plays dumb and asks if he has anything specific in mind. And then the bartender makes the following proposition: what if they split the reward money? He’ll give Accomplice One five hundred reaís from the till right now, and when the guy comes with the reward money, the bartender will replace the cash from the till and keep the other five hundred for himself. It’s a fifty-fifty split. Now Accomplice One agrees, with just a hint of reluctance. She might even propose a lesser share for the bartender, but in the end, she agrees to his terms, takes the money, leaves the bracelet, and gets out of there to catch her flight. The wealthy guy never shows up, of course, and the bartender is stuck with what he discovers to be nothing more than a convincing piece of costume jewelry.”

  When Aurélio had finished explaining the routine to her, Sílvia had refused to believe that it would work.

  “It’s so obvious,” she had said.

  “No,” he had said. “It works. It’s like a magic trick. If you don’t know what’s going on, it seems impossible—how did he find my card? Where did those doves come from? How did he catch that bullet in his teeth? But once you know how it works, you’re not sure how you were ever fooled to begin with. It all seems so obvious. It’s the same with cons. When something’s happening in the moment, most people don’t question it, and if they do, they ask the wrong questions. And if you run a con quickly enough, and with enough nonchalance, your mark won’t even have a chance to question it.”

  And sure enough, their first job together had gone exactly as Aurélio had described it.

  Now, six years later, Sílvia felt like the victim of a grand misdirection. It wasn’t that she thought Aurélio had conned her into loving him, but that she had somehow conned herself out of realizing how she felt about him, keeping her own attentions carefully focused elsewhere as she secretly fell in love with her business partner. She had never intended for her current lifestyle to become permanent. She had assumed, on following Aurélio to Verópolis all those years ago, that her then-burning interest in Aurélio’s line of work would, after a few months of firsthand experience, be extinguished, just as her interest in being a lawyer or a detective or a coroner had. Satisfied with what she had learned from the partnership, she would slip away one night while Aurélio slept and return to her university just in time for classes to start, just in time to change her major yet again. But she hadn’t lost interest and she hadn’t left. Over the years she had gradually severed ties with her school friends, her university professors, even her parents. And now here she was.

  Sílvia finally broke her silence on t
he subject of Aurélio’s proposal as the two of them pored over a map of the nation’s coastline, looking for cities they hadn’t worked over yet, or that they had worked over so long ago that they could now safely return. They were in bed at the time because that’s where Aurélio preferred to work. He would often spend hours a day propped up with pillows like an ailing king, his maps, almanacs, and notebooks spread out on the rumpled sheets before him. Although Sílvia preferred the stable austerity of a desk or a kitchen table, when the two of them collaborated she would generally concede to Aurélio’s preference and join him in bed. He would sweep aside his unruly spread of papers and she would sit next to him, cross-legged and upright in contrast to his sprawling slouch. As far as she could tell, working in bed was one of the few, if not the only indulgence that Aurélio allowed himself. Moving from town to town, the only possessions he carried with him were the ones absolutely necessary for the work—he owned no clothes that weren’t part of his working wardrobe, no books that didn’t relate in some way to the business. If he had a hobby, Sílvia didn’t know about it.

  The closest thing he did have was his plan for the Ultimate Con. From time to time, Sílvia found him scribbling away in a battered composition notebook that contained—he had explained to her—his developing ideas for the greatest con imaginable. Sílvia had looked inside once and found the pages filled with indecipherable notations that looked almost mathematical. Aurélio had told her the project was more a thought experiment than anything else—it was what he did to unwind. Even in his recreation, then, Aurélio behaved with disciplined, priestly dedication to his craft.

  Given this asceticism in all other facets of Aurélio’s life, Sílvia found his habit of working from bed deeply endearing.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to a city on the map. “We haven’t been here yet.”

  “Are you sure?” said Sílvia, leaning in closer for a better look.