Conman

by Richard Asplin

  I shrugged like an adolescent, feeling the familiar prickly anxiousness about my neck.

  Laura held my look until I was forced to examine the floor and find invisible dust on my sleeve to pick at. When I looked up again at the tingle of the door, she was gone.

  “Who hell that?” Julio said as I squeezed back into the cramped office.

  “Nobody.”

  “This nobody, she know about us?”

  “No.”

  “Lying,” Julio, Henry and Pete said together.

  “Fine,” I said and reminded Christopher of Rudy’s clumsy rendezvous with Laura’s plimsolls a few short days ago.

  “Where she work?” Julio asked, flipping his notebook, pen poised. “We should watch her.”

  “Tch, we haven’t the time or manpower, young Julioworth and well you know it.” Christopher turned to me. “You trust her?”

  “Trust her?”

  “Have you seen her naked?”

  “What? No. God no. I’m married, I wouldn’t …” The men stared at me blankly. Apparently in their circles, being married didn’t mean what it meant in my circles. “No. I hardly know her. She just works around the corner,” and I held up the greasy bag. “Sandwiches.”

  The four men looked at each other, making little humming noises, passing a thought about the room telepathically until Julio finally spoke.

  “It no matter either way because blow off is going to get us all pinched.”

  “God, Julio, please –”

  “We sit here, mark will land tomorrow. You hope …”

  “Julio –”

  “He have not bought the comic. You have made no approach. We have second-rate McMuffin –”

  “Maguffin. I told you. And in a few moments we’ll know if he’s –”

  “And the blow off is joke. We all going down, I tell you, we all going –”

  Julio stopped complaining suddenly and everyone else stopped pretending to listen.

  Because on the desk, the kitchen timer was ringing.

  “Ahhh, that’s all we have time for ladies and gentlemen. Julio?” Christopher said, and with a sigh, Julio obediently rose, moved to my laptop and began to flurry his gloved fingers over the keys. The machine whirred and blipped as it dialled its signal. Christopher moved to a chair, flexing his latex hands squeakily like a concert pianist.

  “What’s … ?” I began.

  “Five o’clock,” Pete said, stretching his back, reaching for a cigarette.

  Five o’clock? A vague memory from Christopher’s notebook passed through my head without stopping. Five o’clock … Christopher tapped the keyboard with light fingers. Clicking and dragging, the screen slowly stuttered open to a brightly coloured web page.

  “Well look at that,” he smiled. “My my my, said the spider to the fly.”

  The other men gathered about his shoulders silently, seriously, breath held, eyes on the glowing screen. I scampered over and peered through the scrum.

  eBay. The comic-book collectables page. Item? The 1938 edition of Action Comics. Issue #4. The very one Cheng had mentioned. And the winning bid? £5,400. Bidder. GraysonUSA.

  “Fly?” I asked nobody in particular. “You don’t mean … Shit, do you mean …?”

  “Oh well done Holmes,” Christopher smiled. “Yes. The bait is ours. We have sprinkled it onto the virtual lawn, the grassy lay-by of the information-splendid highway as food to tempt Mr Grayson to the surface.”

  “So there’s no real comic?”

  “Regretfully no. However, real or not, Mr Grayson has now won the thing – therefore forcing he and I to meet. Absolutely by chance of course.”

  “But … but what if one of these other guys,” and I flicked a finger at the scroll of other bidders. “What if they’d pipped him to the prize? Bidded higher? This guy. Whittington? Or Peckard Scott or … oh. Right.”

  And that, my friend, is how they do it.

  The team have got about forty phoney items for auction up at a time, watching for the same bidders’ names reappearing. Plus Christopher is watching the genuine auctions too. Anyone buying rare albums, vintage clothes, antique ceramics.

  As he began to type his congratulatory email to Grayson, I asked him straight out: did he really expect this American to buy a pair of forged underpants?

  Christopher didn’t stop typing. He just smiled.

  Nobody was going to buy anything, he said.

  It was cleverer than that.

  A whole lot cleverer than that.

  “Hey?” Jane said, sizzling some veg and beansprouts about the wok in a hissing plume of smoke a few hours later. I was at the cupboard, Lana bouncing on my hip, one hand hunting gingerly for the cleanest wine glasses, the portable on the dining table burbling Holby City.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I asked if business was picking up? You sounded busy today,” Jane said. “Can you get some bowls out.”

  I clattered through crockery and murmured something about hmm-yes, on-and-off or up-and-down or knees-bend-arm-stretch-rah-rah-rah, my head a hundred light years away.

  What if … God, what if this Grayson changed his mind? It could happen.

  We’d all watched apprehensively as Christopher had shared a brief live email exchange with him regarding his successful bid. And sure, Grayson had appeared keen enough in his messages – pleased to have won the item, insisting the transaction was in dollars, asking all the right questions about paper quality and cover condition, how they might arrange a viewing – but you could never tell.

  What if –

  “Oh I’ll do it myself,” Jane snapped. “What’s the matter with you this evening?”

  “Hn? What? Oh s-sorry, let me …”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, clattering out two bowls and attempting to tip the wok and scrape the hissing meal out cack-handedly. “Just take Lana through. Oh and grab the soy sauce.”

  I picked up my wine glass and ooze-a-good-girl-den-ed into the lounge.

  A news bulletin was chattering away to itself on television. I stood and watched for a moment. A be-capped police chief stood beside the revolving Scotland Yard sign, talking sternly about something or other.

  What if what if what if?

  In his email, Christopher had claimed to be a small-time dealer based up in Blidworth, near Nottingham. Yes, he’d typed, he was sure Grayson’s Memorabilia Museum was wonderful but no, he sadly had no plans to visit Kansas in the near future. His only scheduled jaunt was a train down to London this coming Monday for a private viewing of the lots that were to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. The exchange would have to be done some other –

  What? Hadn’t Grayson heard? Sotheby’s? Golden Age Originals? Actual items owned by Stan Lee, Bob Kane, Siegel, Shuster and the rest. Surely as a collector he’d received a catalogue? No? Some sort of oversight, it had to be …

  By now of course we were all watching with shredded nerves, teeth chomping on latex-wrapped fingernails as Grayson’s eager emails pinged back almost immediately. Where? When? Private viewings? London? Where in London?

  “Here you go. You might want to put Lana down first. Did you bring the soy sauce?”

  “Uhh, sorry,” I said. Jane eased herself onto the couch with a shake of the head. I settled the little one beside her and mooched back into the kitchen to rootle around the cupboards, stomach churning. I could hardly eat, appetite swallowed by hollow nerves.

  As quietly as I could, I pedalled open the smeary kitchen bin (£2, nearly new) and scooped a heavy tangle of dinner on top of the tea bags and potato peelings.

  Christ, what if Grayson changed his mind? Didn’t come? Or worse, did some investigating first? Or was an undercover cop? What if he’d made his fortune through twenty-five years in the American underpant industry and could spot a re-sown label and a hand-frayed waistband at 100 yards?

  “It’s in the cupboard,” Jane called through.

  “Okay,” I croaked feebly.

  Leaning against the worktop, bent over
, I took slow, deep breaths, trying to shoo the fear and anguish from gnawing at the raw bone of my insides.

  I felt sick. I felt scared. I felt panicky.

  I felt …

  Well, I felt about twelve years old.

  You see, all this worry? The waiting? The what if? The constant click-clack click-clack, back and forth, back and forth, yes-no yes-no? It was how I grew up. Hell, it’s how most children grow up in a household financed by gambling. The ups, downs and mood swings. A home at turns The Cosby Show – laughs and hugs and chunky sweaters – only to become The Amityville Horror at the turn of a betting slip.

  I had probably spent my entire conscious childhood, from wide-eyed toddler to shuffling adolescent, in this state of constant anxious balance. Never quite settled, never quite calm. On my hands and knees, crashing Matchbox cars along the patterns in the carpet, one ear out, listening for the sound of Dad’s tread. His key, his greeting. The gifts. The grief. Or later, sprawled out with a young Jane, Andrew ‘Benno’ Benjamin and a scrabble board in an echoing University corridor, stomach tight, waiting for a call. Just a loan. Just a few bob.

  My dad was one of those men, y’see. Every family has one I suppose. You probably do yourself. Some distant uncle that always has a roll-up on the go, a deal to be made and a guy he has to pop out and see about something, never you mind, nudge nudge. The sort who leaves loudly halfway through a family wedding, the church echoing to a cheap mobile ring-tone version of the Only Fools and Horses theme.

  Three anxious hours and barely half a bowlful of thai noodles later I was brushing my teeth, Streaky was scoffing his tea, Jane changing Lana in the nursery.

  I stared at my frothy face in the mirror. A new face. The face of a criminal.

  Jane appeared behind me, Lana in her arms.

  “Don’t be long,” Jane said, snaking a hand around my waist and kissing me between the shoulder blades. Her reflection in the soap-spattered mirror smiled sleepily, then left, snapping off the hall light and carrying our daughter to the warm lamp-glow of the bedroom.

  Jane and I had been each other’s escape I suppose. Jane had taken me away from my father, his deals and his schemes. Given me a shot at normal, honest life. While I had grounded Jane and shown her happiness without pony-trials and garden parties, let her be who she wanted to be.

  Was I about to find myself back with my father?

  Would I send Jane scuttling to the bosom of her bloodline?

  I spat and sloshed and unravelled some floss, looking at it closely.

  Did you get floss in prison? Could you hang yourself with it?

  Dad would know.

  See, money won is twice as sweet as money earned, young man, Dad would say. Or, if hard work never killed anybody, who’s that clogging up the cemetery? That was another favourite. All these delivered in a chuckle of cheap scotch and peanuts. See, Dad had no time for the working man. The nine-to-fiver. The commuter. Tch, there they go, he’d say, every morning. And I mean every morning. In his vest, pale ropey arms stretched over the sports pages, roll-up perched in a stolen pub ashtray, slurping sweet builder’s tea from a World’s Greatest Mum mug. I’d be munching Frosties, head in a Superman comic, he’d be staring out through the net curtains in the sitting room, out at the suits and briefcases and umbrellas, hurrying to the station. Tch. There they go. What are they son?

  Mugs Dad, I always had to say. S’right, he’d chuckle back. Teacups the lot of ’em.

  A job. Nine to five. These things were for mugs. A regular income. A car. Holidays. Birthday presents. Shoes.

  Ahhh, give over. Those’ll do ’im another year. Anyway, I’m off out. Fellah I have to pop out and see.

  Heh-heh, never you mind, nudge nudge.

  Twanging off the light, I fetched a book from my satchel and trudged into the bedroom. Jane was sitting up with her Terry Pratchett, stroking a restless Lana on the arm softly with hushing noises.

  “Dad’s pretty pissed off at you stalling his accountant,” Jane said idly. “Says you haven’t called him yet?”

  “Stalling? Who’s stalling? I’m not stalling. I’m just … busy. The basement, Earl’s Court. It’s just a bad time. I’ll call him next week.”

  “That’s what I told him, but you know what he’s like. Wants to know what you’re trying to hide.”

  “Hide?” I clambered in, sliding under the duvet to stop the cold air getting in.

  “Ignore him. What’s that you’re reading there?”

  “Huh? Oh, nothing,” I said, flapping the paperback. “Just uh, I thought I’d give it a –”

  “Dale Carnegie. How to … what is it – ? How to Win Friends and Influence People?” Jane laughed.

  “I know. Someone bought me a copy.”

  “Who?”

  “Hmm? No one. Just a –”

  I stopped.

  I listened.

  “Hear that?” I said.

  Shoving the book to the bedside, I got up quickly and scuttled out of the room, Jane calling behind me. I went to the lounge, to the window. Streaky curled about my ankles. I picked him up and cradled him, pushing the curtains aside and peering out into the orange street.

  A siren. Somewhere.

  My heart thudded hard, my breath held. I could hear the cat purring, vibrating against my body.

  A siren. Approaching?

  I waited.

  What had Christopher said as we’d closed up? Confidence tricksters don’t carry guns or knives. Nobody but the wealthy get fleeced and all they really lose is their pride. Our investigations into Mr Grayson tell us he’s unscrupulous. A crook and a bully and it was only a matter of time before his double-dealing caught up with him. Just desserts, that’s all this is. The police have more urgent things to investigate than people like us.

  People like you, I had corrected him.

  People like us.

  I listened. The siren was getting more distant.

  I let the cat jump to the floor, shushed the curtain closed and moved over to the mantelpiece where, from fifty years away, behind cracked glass, two young men beamed into the camera lens. Boxy suits, brillantined partings, the pose was awkward. The typewriter shoved under an arm, the paintbrush popped into a top pocket.

  The rough household tablecloth around the neck.

  The clean cotton underpants.

  “What was it?” Jane said.

  “Nothing,” I replied, moving back to the bedroom.

  “Nothing? You’re in such a funny mood tonight. Isn’t he Laney? Hmm? Ooze in a funny mood den? Daddy? Yes he is,” and she jiggled Lana in her arms.

  “I thought I heard … s’all right,” and I climbed back into bed, changing the subject as best I could. “I’ll have a go at that bathroom tomorrow. There’s still a yellow stain on the lino from that broken perfume bottle. I’ll get some disinfectant after work.”

  “Work? On a Sunday?” Jane said. She put her book away, snapping off her light and snuggling down with the baby.

  “Yeahhhh,” I said, overloading it with a tired irritability. “I know. It’s just I’ve got all this Earl’s Court stuff to go through, seeing if I’ve got enough gear that’s dry enough to make the stall worth doing this year. Shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Is it finally dried out down there?”

  “Not really,” I sighed. “And the fumes are twice as bad, so don’t … y’know, don’t bring Lana by for a surprise visit tomorrow or anything,” I added as casually as I could. “It won’t be good for her. I’ll only be a couple of hours, tops.”

  “Mnnf,” Jane said, duvet bunched about her shoulders.

  “J?”

  She turned over, mumbling sleepily.

  Ignoring my book, I stroked Lana’s head for a while in the darkness, wishing there was someone to stroke mine.

  A couple of hours, tops.

  Tomorrow. Sunday. 9am.

  Day two.

  I thought about this for a moment. I thought about a Star Trek fan called Maurice. A waterlogged cellar. A s
ummons due in six days. I thought about a pair of pale, aging underpants. A pale, aging in-law. A wife. A daughter. A father.

  A promise.

  I rolled softly out of bed, trudged to the bathroom in the dark, knelt down on a yellow lino stain and threw up a glass of wine and half a bowl of thai noodles.

  eight

  “I’ve got it mate,” Henry’s voice floated out from the back office. “No no, just shot it. Say half hour? … Bonza.”

  “Bonza?” I queried. “What’s bonza?”

  “Henry’s getting us a Sotheby’s catalogue mocked-up,” Pete explained, peering at my creaky till, face scrunched like a half-chewed toffee.

  It was a crisp Sunday morning. Numb fingers buzzed around Starbucks paper cups, breath fogged in the damp shop air and the counter wore a pile of fat Sunday papers like loft lagging. The fire-escape was wedged open to to try get rid of the funny smell, traffic honks and the hum of shoppers floating in on the freezing wind. All in all, a Sunday morning for breakfast in bed, full strength radiators, fluffy dressing-gowns and quiet thanks for not being brought up Roman Catholic. But here I was, surrounded by strangers in a damp, dusty shop, shivering under the warmth of a faulty strip-light.

  “We’ve got a helpful printer dropping our item into a genuine … ah-ha!” and the till drawer sprang open with an antique ching, “… brochure.”

  Leaving Pete to master the till-roll, I moved shivering into the back office cum storeroom cum base-of-operations cum, it appeared, photographic studio. Chairs and boxes had been pushed to one side and on a flashy looking tripod a tiny digital camera perched, peering down at the underpants on their velvet back-board.

  Henry was on his mobile phone, leaning on the work-surface, all sun-washed denim and leather bangles. Christopher paced briskly, brogues squeaking, eyes bright, clapping gloved hands together for warmth. By the chilly fire exit, Julio stood smoking angrily, and by way of no change whatsoever, appeared to have just rolled out of bed. Or more accurately, out of a cardboard box under Westminster Bridge. He had sleep and saliva crusting about his face, his thick hair bunching up on one side, greasy grey combat trousers and hiking boots.