“You mean to tell me you’ve been wearing those shoes for the past decade or so?”
She shook her head, laughing sadly. “They’re pretty new, actually. I forgot about that promise to myself until quite recently. The boots were waiting for me when I got released from jail, a gift from my friend. A thank-you of sorts for something I did for her.”
Her mouth turned down at the corners, and it was all Asprey could do not to chuck the table aside and take her into his arms. The sight of a man in creased khakis and a billowing Hawaiian shirt in the distance stopped him from doing anything of the sort.
“Target at three o’clock,” Asprey called, returning his attention to his newspaper.
Poppy seemed grateful for the distraction. “Just remember not to touch your mustache, and we’ll be fine, okay? There’s no need to draw any more attention to it. It already looks like something out of a bad seventies porno.”
“That’s exactly the look I’m going for. I don’t know how many underworld mobsters you know, but I believe the pornstache comes standard.”
“I know underworld mobsters,” she countered.
“You do not.” He laughed. “You picked the first gambling-slash-mafia cliché you could think of and ran with it. Me? I would have gone for something more subtle and culturally sensitive. Like high-profile politicians getting together for a weekly poker game. Or city cops playing fast and loose with their pensions.”
“Very funny.” She was forced to swallow the rest of her retort, since her suitor chose that moment to approach the table, taking note of Poppy-as-Natalie’s cleavage with a leering twist to his lips that Asprey would have liked to smack right off his face.
“Hey, Todd,” she cooed, reaching up to receive a quick kiss. Asprey forced himself to watch with a bland, almost detached interest. He was supposed to be Rufio. Rufio didn’t flinch at public displays of affection or disgusting men taking up with women practically young enough to be their daughters. Rufio was jaded and worldly and sparkly.
“And who is this, Natalie?” Todd asked as soon as they separated. “You haven’t introduced me to your friend.”
“I’m so sorry. This is my third cousin, Rufio. I used to work with him at the Tea Room—he got me the job there, actually. Rufio, this is my special friend, Todd.”
Todd murmured a distracted hello, and it was clear the wheels were turning inside his head. He seemed like one those men for whom heavy thought required intense focus—it was amazing how many people Asprey knew who were like that. Winston, for example, always looked constipated whenever he worked through a conversation of any complexity. To some extent, Graff was like that too. He had a tendency to withdraw when he needed time to think through a problem.
Asprey preferred the quick back and forth of reactionary wit. He might not be able to conquer worlds, but at least he could hold his own at a cocktail party.
“Rufio happened to walk by and offered to keep me company while I waited for you,” Poppy said. “I don’t know why I was so surprised to run into him. You can always find my cousins milling around this place. Sometimes it feels like we grew up here.”
Asprey stood and gestured for Todd to take his spot, careful to let the newspaper fall open to the horse races, where he’d made a few random marks in red.
“Don’t let me keep you from your lovely companion,” he said, adding just a touch of a European accent—enough to sound tough, not so much his authenticity could be questioned. See? He shot Poppy a pointed look. Like Graff, she’d had her doubts about his acting abilities—neither of them realized exactly how much of his life was spent pretending. “I was on my way to an appointment anyway.”
“No, please stay,” Todd urged. He grabbed a chair from a nearby table and pulled it over, metal scraping the concrete. “I’ve been dying to meet some of Natalie’s family.”
Asprey met Poppy’s eyes and swallowed a laugh. No man said that unless he either wanted to get married or was looking for a high-stakes mafia poker game.
“I don’t know why you haven’t introduced me before,” Todd persisted.
She let out a peal of laughter and toyed with a strand of her wig. “Oh, Todd. You’re funny. I’ve mentioned my parents at least ten times. They’re just the start. Between the two of us, Rufio and I must have almost a hundred aunts and uncles milling around. We’re one of those big, well-connected families. A finger in every pot, you know?”
Todd nodded eagerly, and Asprey couldn’t help but be impressed by it all. For weeks she’d been sowing the seeds, and now the pieces fell into place around them. A nice, big family. Vague references to money and politics. Ties to an underground gambling ring straight out of a Rat Pack movie. He was tempted to beg entry to a quiet, family game of indeterminate stakes himself.
“We have at least a hundred,” he agreed breezily. “I’m supposed to meet a few here in a short while.”
Poppy ran a finger negligently up and down Todd’s arm. “Oh, are you going to see Drago? You must give him my love.”
“I’ll try, but it’s not your love he wants.” Asprey frowned and stabbed at the paper. “What he wants is my money. My stupid horse lost again. Lucky Seven? There’s nothing lucky about him.”
“You’ll win it back,” Poppy said confidently. “You always do. Don’t forget—I’ve seen you walk away from the tables a very rich man. Well, right before you lose it all again.” She turned to Todd with a laugh. “It’s the family luck. We never seem to land a winning streak for long.”
Todd’s throat worked up and down, signaling his greed.
“But I don’t want to bore you with all my family details. Rufio really should go.”
“There’s no need to hurry,” Todd insisted. He turned his chair so it faced Asprey, Poppy all but wiped from the situation. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“Well…” Asprey checked his oversized gold watch—yet another piece of Rufio’s sparkly bits.
“I insist.” He flicked a hand up, as though they were at a restaurant that catered to douchebags rather than a run-down bar with two types of beer on tap. But they must have known him here, because a man in a blue T-shirt came right out to take their order. “Two Buds,” Todd commanded.
“Um…three?” Asprey suggested, nodding his head at Poppy.
“What was I thinking—three, please,” Todd amended. “This is great. You, me, Natalie…where was it you said you all worked together? The Tea Room? I’ve heard they sometimes set up private poker games. Is that true? Natalie is damnably mum on the subject.”
“Oh, you know how it is,” Asprey hedged. He dropped his voice a notch. “There’s been some heat lately. We’ve got a floating game. Invitation only.”
“What are the chances of a guy like me getting one of those invitations?”
Asprey studied the man carefully, pretending to take his measure. “That depends, my friend, on the kinds of stakes you’re willing to make.”
“I make them all, Rufio. I make them all.”
Across the table, Poppy bit her lip to keep from smiling.
Asprey shared her enthusiasm. This was exactly how they needed this to go. Todd was practically chomping at the bit for more information, struggling to play it cool but falling short in his Jimmy Buffet outfit and eager lean over the table.
It was strange, coming face-to-face with a mark like this again—and on purpose. Most of the time, Asprey ran from his victims as fast as he could, getting in with the job and out again before he made the kind of human connection that would allow him to feel actual remorse.
What Poppy did, the long con, was scary. She sat across from this man more than once, sharing meals, swapping spit. She looked him in the eye and made dates she actually intended to follow through with. And by her own admission, she’d spent six weeks building up her game, gaining Todd’s trust.
Asprey suppressed a shiver. For the first time since he and Graff and Tiffany had started this robbery stuff, he realized the situation might be out of his reach. That Poppy might be
out of his reach.
But he’d made a deal, and she trusted him to make this work.
Asprey liked that feeling more than he cared to admit.
Chapter Twelve
“You’re going out again.”
Poppy shoved her wig and shoes into the gym bag and zipped it before turning to face her friend, a cheerful, yogurt-covered Jenny resting on Bea’s hip as she stood in the doorway to the spare bedroom.
“Yep, I sure am,” Poppy confirmed brightly, even though Bea hadn’t posed her words as a question. “I joined a gym.” She pointed at the bag as if to confirm the statement.
“And that’s what you’re doing on a Saturday night? With all that make-up on?”
Shoot. She’d forgotten she already shellacked on ten layers of foundation and mascara, hoping to save time before she met Todd at the strip club.
“Um, yes?” Even though lying came naturally to Poppy in all other areas of her life, she had a hard time not being straight with the people she cared about. “Look, I know it’s a bit odd, me looking all made up.” She searched for an appropriate excuse, landing on the handiest one—and the one that wasn’t a total lie. “…but there’s this guy.”
That got her. Bea bounced Jenny and let out a contented sigh. “I knew it! I knew something was going on with you. Don’t play with Mommy’s earrings, honey.” She set the toddler down. Jenny, true to the title, toddled on her unsteady feet toward the bed and started playing with a pile of Poppy’s numerous lipsticks and giant blush brushes, which were spread out over the multicolored patchwork quilt Grandma Jean had made out of all Poppy’s childhood clothes. “Who is he? Where did you meet? Please tell me he has a nice, normal job.”
Poppy stepped back. “Whoa, Mama Bear. Slow down there.”
“No way.” Bea put her hands on ample hips. “You’ve been running in and out of this apartment for weeks, never mentioning where you’re going or why. I’m trying to respect your privacy and everything, but I’ve been worried about you. Is he cute?”
Before she could stop it, an image of Asprey flitted through her mind, all the lean muscles of him folded into carefully tailored clothes, the easy laughter that rose to his unfairly full lips. “Yeah. He’s really cute.” A sigh from somewhere deep inside her chest escaped. “Polished. Fancy. Not at all like the guys I normally go for.”
Bea didn’t blink as she pulled an eyebrow pencil from out of Jenny’s mouth. “You think he’s got money?”
“Yeah, I do,” Poppy said truthfully. “But it’s not really something we’ve talked about. He’s nice, but it’s not like we’re to the point where we’re spilling all the deep, dark secrets, if you know what I mean.” More like they were dancing around the secrets, whirling against one another until she had a hard time holding her balance.
“Taking it slow.” Bea nodded firmly. Hoisting Jenny into her lap, she sank to the bed. This time, her gaze wasn’t direct, and she busied herself with lining up the pots of make-up. “So he doesn’t know about your past, then? About your grandmother? About jail?”
Poppy closed her eyes. There was no easy way to answer that question.
When Bea first offered her a place to live after she’d been released from jail, Poppy had been seconds away from turning her down. There was too much between them, both said and unsaid, to make life very comfortable. And that was all she’d really wanted—not the kind of comfort that came from a penthouse with a view or bubble baths every night, but the kind that could only be offered through a clean slate. She’d wanted anonymity. She’d wanted the freedom to come and go according to her own schedule, no questions asked.
Jail hadn’t been terrible, at least not in the way the movies taught her to believe. There had been a surprising amount of opportunity inside—books to read, classes to attend, time alone to think about her life. A straightforward plea of breaking and entering hadn’t made her worth much notice to anyone, and she’d done her best to keep things that way by putting her head down and staying out of everyone’s path. In terms of life experiences, it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened.
But living that lifestyle for two whole years, the staying quiet, the not making waves—it wasn’t her, and that was where the real cost had come in. The old Poppy would have told Bea every last secret, spun her around the room and mimicked the warden’s New Jersey accent, which all the women in her block had decided was adopted solely for show. The old Poppy would have admitted how she’d purposefully antagonized the other women to avoid unwittingly forming alliances, and how lonely that had made things.
The new Poppy found it easier to keep her secrets close and comfortable—and she wasn’t sure that feeling would ever go away.
Which was why it was so hard to be here now. Bea was constantly searching for the girl she knew and remembered, and her disappointment as each day passed and old Poppy was nowhere in sight drove them further apart. And it hurt, knowing she constantly let her friend down. If Poppy had anywhere else to go, she would.
Everything came at a price. Even home.
“He knows some of the details,” Poppy replied, taking Bea’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “So far, it hasn’t scared him away.”
Bea glanced up at the shelves on the bedroom wall, where Poppy stored the few personal effects she had. The wobbly brackets held a worn copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, the only book she’d been able to actually finish in high school, and a framed photo of her ten-year-old self smiling into the warm, weather-beaten face of the woman who’d raised her. There was also the conspicuous wooden box containing all that remained of that warm, weather-beaten woman. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
“You have to talk about it sometime,” Bea said softly. “I just wish…”
“What is it?” Poppy faced her friend then, exhausted with the talking and the tiptoeing and the monumental struggle to get through each freaking day. She leaned down and gave Jenny a kiss. She loved the way the little girl smelled, like baby shampoo and candy. “Do you wish we could go back and undo the job? Do you wish you hadn’t gotten pregnant? Do you wish I’d kept my mouth shut and let you have Jenny in a jail cell so she could be taken away and raised by foster parents? We made our decisions, Bea. I know you want us to go back to the way we were, but I’m not sure the person I was exists anymore.”
Bea’s face crinkled with unshed tears and the stoicism of a woman who’d made hard choices and had to live with them.
“I just wish you’d had a chance to say good-bye to your grandmother before she died.”
“Well, I didn’t.” Poppy’s words were harsher than she meant, but she had to get out of there. She was going to be late for the poker game—and she was going to ruin her make-up.
“Are you at least going to do something with her ashes?” Bea asked. “It’s weird, Poppy, leaving them up there like some kind of shrine. What are you waiting for?”
“I have one little thing I need to do first,” Poppy promised. She forced herself to smile brightly as she grabbed her gym bag, once again resorting to half-truths. “Grandma Jean invested some money before she died—did I tell you that? I’m working with the financial broker right now to get the returns she’s owed. Then I can give her a proper sendoff.”
Bea lifted a brow, but she busied herself scooping up Jenny and clearing away Poppy’s make-up. “No. You never mentioned it. How much did she invest?”
“About eighty thousand dollars.” Poppy slipped on a pair of tennis shoes and ignored the way Bea’s eyes grew wide.
“Holy crap, Poppy. You’re serious?”
“She was a wily one, Grandma Jean,” Poppy agreed. “I’m guessing most of it came from all those bridge games she played down at the senior’s center. She went there for, what? Twenty years? And she almost never lost. That’ll add up after a while.”
“You know she cheated, right?” Bea asked.
Poppy laughed. “Everyone knew she cheated. But no one cared because it was worth it to have the privilege of playing with her.”
“‘And you give it back if it turns out they need it more than you’,” Poppy added. Even if it meant losing two years of your life.
“Growing up with that woman was a trial.”
“Maybe. But it was also never dull.” Poppy waggled her fingers at Jenny. “You listen to your mommy, okay? Go to bed without a fight for once. And don’t wait up, Bea. It’ll be a late night.”
“Buh-bye, Pop,” Jenny said, waving good-bye by opening and closing her fist as quickly as she could. It was all the sendoff Poppy needed. She would see this job through to the end, and then she was out of it for good. Just like Bea wanted.
Yeah right.
Poppy had been to one or two strip clubs in her lifetime.
It wasn’t a fact that filled her with pride, and she would have been thrilled to say she never gave in to the catcalls of a raucous crowd and hopped up on stage for her turn at the pole. But her life was nothing if not a warning to all the wayward youth of the world.
Finish high school. Get a real job. And for God’s sake, leave your pants on.
“Bouncing Booty.” Todd craned his neck to read the marquee, which boasted not just one but two neon signs flashing the surprisingly mobile rear-end of a woman bent at the waist. “This place seems nice.”
She wished he were kidding. “It does the trick,” she offered, moving out of the way so he didn’t get any funny ideas about the bounciness of the booty nearest him at the moment. Thank goodness for chasteberries—if they didn’t finish this soon, she’d have to suggest an increase in his wheatgrass regimen. “But we have to go in the back door. They run the game out of one of the storerooms. You know, to keep things quiet.”
It didn’t really make sense to her—if she was going to run an illegal poker game, she’d do it somewhere no one suspected, like a bingo hall or a roller-skating rink or somewhere else with windows and clearly marked exits. But Asprey had insisted this was the most authentic place. Also, he claimed to know a guy who could get them in for cheap.
Confidence Tricks Page 12
