Conman

by Richard Asplin

  “And people speak this way, they do?” Julio piped up at the back through a cloud of cigarette smoke – his six or seven hundredth query of the morning. “Would say, come this way sir, I have for you some fine Pre-Silver comic for sale?”

  “Oh no no. It’s a technical term. Collectors’ guides, pricing guides, that sort of thing. People will ask for characters more often than not. Got any Captain America pal?”

  Julio nodded and continued with his notes.

  “Earlier the better. Golden is naturally worth more than Post-Golden,” I went on, pacing anxiously, trying to shake off my jumpy nerves. “Pre-Silver more than Silver, you know. Popular characters, your Supermans and Spider-Mans – that’s hyphenated –”

  “Uh, Neil sweetums?” Christopher interrupted.

  “God. Sorry. Sorry.” I clenched my brain, thinking for a moment. “Okay, something like ‘Yeah, Conway’s Post-Silver could have kicked Stan Lee’s Silver Spider-Man’s arse.’”

  “Got it …” Pete jotted. “… arse. Right.”

  This was proving to be the main problem in my hastily ill-prepared lecture. Christopher and his team had no interest in actual knowledge. None at all. Only the appearance of knowledge. The names to drop, the attitudes to adopt. It was almost eleven o’clock and I’d pretty much wasted the first two hours droning on about paper manufacture, insisting they all remove their gloves to feel my beloved Sting poster – the linen-backed surface, how the autograph ink had taken to the cloth.

  “In fact, to be honest, if in doubt about anything,” I said, “just pick something pre-forties and make sneery noises about everything else. Pretend you work at HMV and someone’s asked if you’ve got any Celine Dion.”

  The room nodded and jotted.

  “And what pray can you tell us,” Christopher said. He placed his pipe to one side, licking his lips, fountain pen poised. “Of original pieces?”

  “Pieces … ?”

  “Mnm. Collectables. The one-offs. Micheal Keaton’s Batman codpiece p’raps? A typewriter belonging to this, this …” and he riffled back through his Moleskin. “This Stan Lee chappie?”

  “That he actually used? God, I don’t know. I mean if there was proof he’d written, like, the first X-Men story on it or something, then, gee …” and my eyes widened at the thought. “Something rare like that could be big bucks. But –”

  “Big?” Pete and Julio said together, looking up quickly.

  “Sure. Could be. I mean like anything else there’s an element of fashion to the market. Maybe if an artist dies, or it’s a fiftieth anniversary. ’78 was a good year for Superman gear, what with the movie. But he’s perennial. Most of your Golden-Age-ers are. Any memorabilia for the biggies: Captain Marvel, Batman, Doc Savage …”

  I realised the three men were staring at me. Unblinking, mouths ajar.

  “Am I … what? Am I missing something?”

  Pete and Julio looked across at Christopher.

  He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and then changed his mind, pronouncing it would be a good time for a break.

  “How you feeling dear boy? Quite a morning. All hunky-dory? You’re doing terribly well.”

  Leaving Pete and Julio slapping their notebooks shut and stretching their backs, Christopher slipped an arm about my shoulders, steering me from the damp cramp of the cluttered office, out into the quiet of the shop. Grey winter light peered through the greasy windows, illuminating the faded cardboard and dust. Despite the straining scented trees, the place still smelled of death.

  “Me? Oh, fine,” I said, trying to cover the fat knot of nerves jammed somewhere deep in my intestines. This wasn’t right. Helping these men. Getting involved. Having them here. This wasn’t right. I needed to say something. To stop them. To –

  “Splendiful. Splendifully wondellent in fact.” Christopher wound his kitchen timer around fifteen minutes, setting it purring away once more. “We are but clay on your wheel and you mould us like a young Demi Moore.” He slid his droopy eyes over the still terrain. “Bit slow today?”

  “Today. Yesterday. Tomorrow. Look … Look Christopher, I’m not sure I –”

  “Thousands of sales people are pounding the pavements,” Christopher interrupted in what I now was recognising as his ‘quote’ voice. “Tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why?”

  I looked at him. He looked back at me, eyes shining.

  “Because they are always only thinking of what they want. They don’t realise that neither you or I want to buy anything. If we did, we would go out and buy it. If salespeople can show us how their services or merchandise will help us solve our problems, they won’t need to sell us. We’ll buy.”

  I was about to ask him the origin of this particularly fatuous nugget when his two cohorts appeared from the office. Christopher grabbed Pete’s arm.

  “Pete. Your shopping list. Add a bible for our Mr Chips here.” Pete gave a nod, jotted a note in his book and, zipping up his Barbour, headed out into the freezing street, leaving Julio rustling about with his shoes.

  “Julio, dear?” Christopher said.

  “I check basement,” Julio muttered, elastic-banding two Selfridges carrier bags about his battered walking boots like wellies. “Security in this place is joke.” He shot me a sneery look, spitty dog-end hanging from his lips and he barged past, clamping headphones back over his hair.

  “Then I’ll give our Henry a call I think,” Christopher smiled. “He should be on his way. Best to check we’re not all about to get pinched don’t you think? Yes. Yes, best to be sure. Hmn. Righty-ho,” and he fumbled for his mobile phone and tum-ti-tummed back into the office.

  Thus I found myself alone with just a sickening gutful of dread and the post. I decided to get the post out of the way so I could concentrate fully on the sickening dread.

  There was the usual from Earl’s Court. Parking and unloading facilities. All stalls to be opened by 9am on the thirteenth of November for Health & Safety inspection. Although from the view from the top of my cellar steps, it was looking more and more like I’d have no choice but to cancel completely. Five sopping bin bags, a signed Siegel & Shuster and a cracked Elvis clock weren’t going to make much of a stand.

  Two letters were from green biro obsessives, one of them wanting anything connected to Corey Feldman, pre-Goonies only, underlined four times.

  The bank had written too, of course. As always. I tore it in half and binned it, unopened. Same with the Beevers and Boatman. I couldn’t think about them, my head was too full of Christopher and Jane. Terrified she was going to walk in.

  In fact, I was in no state to worry about basements or bailiffs so I just started tidying up. Filing letters, the Earl’s Court stuff. Keeping distracted, keeping busy.

  Which was why I found it.

  I picked it up, listening for sounds. Nothing. Just the purr of the kitchen timer, Christopher’s mumble and the rustle of Julio splashing below me, cursing in Portuguese. Prising it open carefully, it gave a crackle, half a dozen loose pages slipping from the flimsy spine. It was cheap. Moleskin-looking, but fake. Rymans or WHSmith, two quid tops. The only person I had ever known to carry a notebook like this had been my old university pal Benno. He had favoured the red spiral-bound type and filled it with moony poems about a girl named only as ‘J-’ that had caused something of an awkward evening when I found it slipped inside a Bob Dylan LP. Christopher it appeared was more of the stream-of-consciousness type. Filling almost every page, in his painfully neat nib, a torrential flood of ideas. In no order, with no system. Just on and on and on.

  Friendsreunited. Maurer & Fitzgerald Ltd. Insurance & Valuation. Aldersgate EC1. O’Shea. Breath mints. Matches. Zippo. Bic. Less sleep. Less sleep. Less sleep. Bloomsbury? Revenge. Gold watch. Hamp’, Warwick’, Hertford’? Peter Simons/Simon Peters?

  I flicked an anxious look over my shoulder before turning to another random page.

  ‘People rarely succeed at anything unless they have fun doing it.’ D. Carnegie. EBAY 5PM. Pigeon D
rop. Jump the fence. ‘They were at least agonisingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity, and convinced it was theirs for –’

  “… a few words in the right key,” Christopher completed behind me, making me drop the book with a start. “The Great Gatsby. May I?” he said, holding out a gloved hand.

  “I …”

  “Not a problem Neil darling, not a problem at –”

  There was a honk from the street and the rumbling bubble of an idling taxi.

  “A-ha! That’s our boy,” Christopher said.

  “He late,” Julio called out, thudding up the rickety stairwell.

  “Let us lend a bicep shall we? Come come, animato, animato,” and he pushed me up the shop, through the jangling door to the street.

  It was freezing. The cobbles twinkled, frost dusting them like powdered glass, wind biting noses and chins. The surrounding streets honked with muffled traffic, sirens, delivery vans, restaurateurs and the distant throb of disco from the lunchtime bars.

  A few yards up the street a black cab squatted, grumbling. The passenger door was open, Henry clambering out, peeling the requisite Walkman from his blond thatch. Again, despite the weather, Henry was all big feet and biceps in thin shorts and a lime-coloured singlet. The cabbie was at the swing-down boot, hefting out a large cardboard box. About two feet square and a fist’s width deep.

  “Henry m’boy!” Christopher said, jigging beside me excitedly. “How do they look? Convincing?”

  “Real beauties, mate,” Henry grinned. “Just like the real thing.”

  “Well we’d better let our expert be the judge of that. Bring them through, bring them through. Pete’s shopping, just left. We were enjoying the last fleeting moments of an interlude.”

  Henry paid the cabbie and lifted the box to his shoulder, shooing us in ahead of him. We shuffled inside, Julio twanging out of his carrier-bag galoshes and clearing poster files and newspapers from the counter to make some space.

  “Turn the radio up. That today’s Mail?” Henry asked, laying the box down carefully. “Anything of note?”

  “I’ve marked basics,” Julio said. “Open this up. Let us see what we pay for.”

  “You guys expecting to make headlines?” I asked.

  “Not at all, not at all, “ Christopher said. “One never knows what a mark will wish to discuss, dear boy.” His eyes shone with excitement as he ran gloved hands over the heavy packing cardboard. “One must be in a position to keep a conversation up. One’s opinions on the state of the nation are going to be whatever the mark’s opinions are of course, but you can’t get caught out on the details. Awkward silence gives people time to think. Have the facts at your fingerbobs.” He held out a palm like a surgeon. “Scissors?”

  I scuttled into the back office, rattling about in a Yoda pen tidy, tugging out a Hello Kitty pair and handing them to Christopher. After a moment’s dramatic pause, the three men exchanging nervous smiles, he promptly slashed at the corner staples with a swift one-two. Scissors down, Julio held the box firm and Henry reached in, sliding a large bubble-wrapped display case out onto the desk.

  “Come on, come on!” Christopher jittered and all three dove to the wrap, clawing and tearing at it with Christmas morning giddiness until the tattered plastic fell away.

  “Sweet and lo and behold,” Christopher said, gloved hands over his mouth, eyes shining. Julio and Henry flanked him, hands on hips, nodding coolly at the treasures laid bare.

  “Y’think our guy’ll go for ’em?” Henry said.

  “Neil?” Christopher said.

  I looked, blinking, at what lay within, heart hammering. My mouth was dry, cold lips unpeeling slowly. I swallowed, leaning in a little, fingertips squeaking, smudging the Perspex.

  No. They … they couldn’t be. I bent further, nose inches from the plastic. Surely …

  “Well?” somebody said. It could have been Christopher. Or Henry. Or the cast of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. It really didn’t matter. My mind was full of the treasure.

  “Are these … I-I mean, these are …” My eyes ran over the thinning, salmon pink cotton, pinned to the white velvet back-board. The traces of the original red dye were visible at the edges, where the main fabric met the elastic. And what elastic it was. Shaky and withered, it bunched and rippled like the underside of old fish, a pale watery yellow, ribboned at the waist and leg. I squinted at the faded label at the back, washed and bleached by biting detergent and a half-century of all-American sunshine: King Jockie of Mississippi. You’d have to be a geek to know what these were. What these represented. What these meant.

  “Wow,” I said, dizzily. I gripped the wooden edges of the box and stood slowly. “These … I-I mean, these are what I think they are, right?” I squeaked.

  “Well it seems from your ghostly pallor young Neil that they appear to be. Which for our purposes, is what matters.”

  “They’re fake?” I said, head thudding. This was too much. The world was tipping. First one way, now another. I looked again at the box.

  “Very,” Christopher said. “Courtesy of an unscrupulous tailor just south of Paris. Working only from photographs of course, but he assures me the materials at least are genuine. From the frayed waistband to the hand-soiled gusset.”

  “God …” and I bent down, peering closer, reading the label again, hungry fingers splayed, breath fogging the view. “Th-they … they … I mean, they look … God they …”

  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.

  seven

  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?”