The Last Con

by Zachary Bartels

  Fletcher was silent for a moment. The smile had left his face.

  “Walk with me, son,” Andre said.

  They left the gym, crossed through the atrium, and entered a sparsely decorated chapel containing a pulpit at the back and about eighty chairs lined up in rows. Dr. Foreman deposited his leather attaché on the wooden platform up against the lectern and sat down next to it.

  “How long you been out?” he asked.

  “Three months.”

  “And you’re hitting the wall?”

  Fletcher wavered for a moment. “You could say that.”

  “Happens to everybody. You feel like you’re faking it, don’t you?”

  Fletcher perked up. “Exactly.”

  “That’s the big question,” Dr. Foreman said. “Which you is the real you? The one leading the study groups in the cellblock? The one who fell at the foot of the cross empty-handed that night in Jackson? Or the one who finds his identity in doin’ dirt and stealing from people?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Don’t tell me, son,” he said, folding his palms out. “And don’t tell him either. You need to ask him. That’s how identity works. And when you do, you’ll find . . .” He trailed off.

  Something had caught his attention across the way from the chapel. He pulled his glasses from his breast pocket and put them on. The preacher’s bright eyes slowly darkened, concern etched into his face.

  Fletcher cranked his head around, trying to follow the preacher’s gaze, and found himself looking across the atrium into the director’s office. Through the window he could see Mark Walker talking to a well-dressed man about Fletcher’s age.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Andre said, crossing to the office in long, quick strides.

  Seeing no reason to sit in the empty chapel, Fletcher followed him out, looking around for Kyle and his brother.

  “What are you doing here, Reverend Watkins?” Dr. Foreman’s deep preacher voice carried from inside the office like a foghorn across a harbor.

  Fletcher involuntarily took a few steps back, cocked his ear toward the slightly open door, and pretended to fiddle with his phone.

  “Same as you, I imagine,” the man answered. His voice was less stately, but just as refined.

  “I’m here to preach the Word and encourage these women and children,” Dr. Foreman said. “And you’re handing out more of these? Trust me, there’s no half million dollars in this place. If there were, we’d use it to finish the back wing.”

  “I thought you’d appreciate what I’m trying to do here,” the other man said.

  “I’ve heard of some of the things you do, Dante. The kind of things you hear once and dismiss. But you hear them ten times and you start to wonder. What does this man want, Mark?”

  Fletcher closed his eyes. He had trained himself to listen in on hard-to-hear conversations. It was an effective way to learn about a mark. Or, in this case, Mark.

  “Same thing he wanted yesterday,” the director said. “A copy of our donor list. I told him we have a privacy policy.”

  “Why don’t you head back to your own church?” Dr. Foreman said, more a demand than a question.

  “You’ll see how wrong you are when we’re up and running,” Dante vowed. He stormed out of the office and past Fletcher, then caught himself and doubled back.

  “Do you work here?” he asked.

  “Just volunteering today.”

  Dante peeled one of the flyers off the stack and handed it to Fletcher. “This place has insanely high overhead,” he said, gesturing up at the high ceiling. “You know anyone who really wants to help fatherless kids, have them call me. Ninety-three cents of every dollar goes directly to those kids.” He pointed at the flyer, which featured a stock photo of some boys who looked just the right combination of dangerous, lost, and adorable.

  “Um, okay,” Fletcher said, watching Dante disappear into the sun.

  His phone, still lodged in his hand, vibrated. MESSAGE FROM THE ALCHEMIST, it read. Fletcher pocketed the flyer and opened the message.

  Meet me in Romeo’s pew. Thirty minutes.

  CHAPTER 16

  Fletcher had to put the cab ride on Meg’s credit card, which didn’t sit well with him, particularly after using Meg as an excuse to vacate early.

  “Hey, Tiffany, I’ve gotta run. My wife needs me,” he’d told their college-aged group leader, holding up his phone as if it corroborated his story. She’d made a pouty face for a few seconds and then waved at him with one finger, like one would wave at a child.

  He instructed the cabbie to drop him off two blocks from the church. The last thing he wanted was to bump into Father Sacha again while skulking around inside. He fell in behind two older women on their way up to the church’s large double doors. He quickened his pace and held the door for them, smiling with the old charm.

  “Thank you, young man,” they said, nearly in unison.

  “My pleasure.” He walked close to the plumper of the two, bending down and inspecting the large red hat on her head, one eye searching for the curious little priest who had grilled him the night before. It was hideous—the hat—covered in some sort of decorative tulle and an assortment of pins and brooches.

  “I really like your hat,” Fletcher said. “I wonder whatever happened to women wearing hats to church. It’s just so classy.” They smiled widely at each other, then at Fletcher. “Do you think the priest is in there?” he asked, pointing through the doors to the church proper.

  “No, he’s meeting with our women’s mission group in—” She looked at her watch. “Oh! We’re late! Come on, Hazel.”

  While they bustled away, Fletcher walked halfway up the center aisle of the church and sat down in the very spot where the teenagers had been entangled the night before. He opened the text from the Alchemist and replied I’m here. Looking around, he was slightly disappointed that the murals and plasterwork had not been nearly as well maintained as they seemed in the dim light of the previous night.

  His phone juttered against the pew beside him, drawing sharp looks from two devouts praying a few rows ahead of him.

  Look under your seat.

  Reaching between his legs, he found another manila envelope taped in place. He wrenched it free and pulled it up close to his chest. It was sealed shut with the same symbol as the envelope from last night, currently buried at the bottom of his bag. In the light of day, he could see much more detail in the wax seal. The S was actually a snake, impaled with an arrow and holding an apple in its mouth.

  Fletcher’s heart lagged for a moment. It was the Seal of Cagliostro. This made zero sense. He put a pin in the stream of thoughts that was about to erupt and cracked the envelope. Inside he found a stack of papers held together with a paper clip. On the top were three hundred-dollar bills—grease money, he assumed. Under that was another print of him and Andrew, eye to eye, yesterday’s newspaper featured prominently. The last three pages were full of single-spaced text. His phone began to ring, and he walked back out into the vestibule.

  “I’ve got the information,” Fletcher said.

  “Good. To your right, there is a men’s room. The door is locked. Go inside.”

  Fletcher surveyed the door in question. Both the door and the lock were flimsy, and Meg’s credit card again came in handy, providing access to the small restroom. Hanging on a garment hook on the wall were a white Borrelli shirt and a tailored Brooks Brothers suit. On a plastic chair next to the sink were a pair of dress socks and shoes and a necktie. He felt a prickle of excitement. Without having made a single decision in that direction, Fletcher Doyle was going back on the grift.

  “I understand you usually work the outside,” the Alchemist said. “But I need a fresh face on the inside. Is that a problem?”

  “I can do it,” Fletcher said, pulling off his jeans.

  “Good. Get dressed and catch a cab to the drop point listed in the packet. The mark will meet you there at one fifteen. You can review the details en route. This should
take only an hour or two. Let me know when it’s done.” The line went dead.

  Fletcher dumped the phone on the chair and got dressed, not at all surprised that every item fit him perfectly. After all, Andrew was in the mix—somehow—and he had frequently procured a variety of outfits for the two of them to wear when pulling off jobs. In fact, Andrew had kept a storage space filled with every conceivable wardrobe and uniform that a grifter might need, in both his size and Fletcher’s.

  Glancing in the mirror, Fletcher felt another large chunk of his confidence fall back into place. He hadn’t worn a suit since his trial and, man, could Fletcher wear a suit. He tightened his tie and checked the time on his phone: it was only twelve thirty. He had plenty of room to take care of this and get back before Meg and Ivy returned.

  He twisted his own clothes up into a tight roll, walking out of the bathroom and down the hall into the church’s new addition, the envelope and his street shoes under one arm. To his right, down a short flight of stairs, a fire exit caught his eye—wedged back among a small city of file drawers. Seeing no alarm, he decided this was his best way out and, later, back in.

  He filed his clothes under C in the nearest file drawer, then forced the heavy door, which clearly hadn’t been opened in years. He propped it with his hip while carefully pulling away the remnants of duct tape that had held the envelope to the pew. He shoved some tape into the catch in the doorjamb, filling it up, then covered it over with a flat piece of tape along the latch plate.

  The fire exit was now an entrance.

  Stepping outside, he found himself in a small, rather derelict garden and followed a stone walk up to the street, opposite the way he’d come in. As he cleared the church property, he glanced back over his shoulder and found his eyes drawn up to a third-story window and a man gazing out in Fletcher’s direction. He and Father Sacha made eye contact for just a moment before Fletcher disappeared from view.

  It took a few minutes to find a cab. Once inside, he relayed the address of the coffee shop where the drop was to take place and settled in to review the particulars. It was a grift that he and Andrew had pulled a number of times to raise capital between big jobs—a digital upgrade of a classic that grifters used to call the Wire. He and Andrew called it the Wireless.

  The Outside Man had roped the mark earlier, dropping hints about his friend—portrayed by the Inside Man—who had a surefire way to make money on the stock market. He’d seen it in action, he would say. It was all very technical, but the way he understood it, this guy had a job working at a major Internet server hub, giving him access to incoming data a full second before it arrived at the end user. In the space of that second, an algorithm would analyze the data and determine which stocks to buy and which to dump, resulting in a huge profit for the friend. The catch, of course, was that the Inside Man could not be directly involved without arousing suspicion, given his employer. And the Outside Man had now placed so many successful transactions on his behalf that he was in danger of himself gaining unwanted attention.

  That’s why they needed the mark. He could take over making the Inside Man’s trades for him and, as payment, invest some of his own money as well and walk away that much richer, risk-free. The mark would even be allowed to see it in action on a laptop computer in a coffee shop or some other neutral place, and then would be permitted to participate with a few small, but ever-increasing, amounts. Each time he would see a significant payoff, serving only to whet his appetite for more.

  Then, when the mark had gathered, cashed out, and borrowed as much money as he could scrape together, and handed it over to the Inside Man, the server would conveniently go down at just the wrong moment, while the mark’s money was tied up in a worthless, tanking stock, causing an enormous loss. The mark always freaked out, of course, but he couldn’t exactly go to the police and complain that the illegal stock scam he signed up for hadn’t worked out. Bestcase scenario: the mark begged for a second go at it and scrounged up more cash, which was also lost, before the mark was cooled and cut loose.

  This had all been done already—with Andrew as the Inside Man, Fletcher guessed. Fletcher would be coming in as the Fixer. In some cases, it wasn’t money that a grifter wanted from his mark. In those situations, it was best to get the mark heavily indebted, then bring in a fresh face posing as the guy who could make it all go away if the mark will just provide a little money—generally enough to recoup the job’s expenses—and X. In most cases, X was information or an introduction, which would then be leveraged into a more lucrative grift with a bigger fish as the mark.

  The profile provided by the Alchemist was short on details. Fletcher would have to take it on faith that the mark was providing what had been agreed upon. All he knew was that it would come in a briefcase. And apart from a name and a basic physical description, he knew nothing of the mark’s identity. But this kind of drop was child’s play for an experienced grifter. Besides, that the mark was a mark at all told Fletcher what he needed to know. It meant the man was greedy and looking for a shortcut. That would make him easy to manipulate.

  Fletcher was able to pay cash for the cab this time, which felt good, and he arrived twenty minutes early. Stepping out onto the street, he remembered to remove his wedding ring. Never a good idea to broadcast a weak spot like a wife or child. He’d gained a bit of weight since coming back home and had a hard time wrenching the gold band off.

  D-Town Bean was a self-consciously hip coffee shop with semiarty framed photographs covering the walls and about two dozen tables spread across a spacious dining area. Mediocre indie rock blared from above, drowning out any nearby conversation. It was a good place for a drop. Fletcher would have chosen it himself.

  He surveyed the clientele. There weren’t many open tables, and he quickly found what he needed: a burly, bearded man with neck tattoos and a lip ring sitting in the corner, reading a magazine and drinking something thick and black. Fletcher walked over and sat down across from him.

  “How would you like to make two hundred dollars in the next half hour without having to get up from your chair?” he asked. The man shot him a quick menacing look and turned back to his reading. Fletcher set one of the hundred-dollar bills on the table and slid it over to him.

  “Here’s half now,” he said. “I’m not asking you to do anything weird. Or really anything at all. I’m going to be meeting someone right there,” he said, pointing to an adjacent table, “and I just want you to sit here and glare at the guy. Anything makes you uncomfortable, go ahead and leave and keep that.” He pointed at the bill. “Otherwise, just lock onto him with an intimidating kind of a—yeah, just like that. Just your natural sort of . . . vibe.”

  The man nodded, almost imperceptibly, and palmed the bill.

  Fletcher ordered a six-dollar coffee drink—more milk and hot air than coffee—and chose a seat with a peripheral view of the door. He sat upright, staring straight ahead, his expression unreadable. It was imperative that a grifter be in character before making contact with a mark. Those who got cocky, who thought they could turn it on and off at will without any method or preparation, usually saw things go south quickly.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the door open and a very tall man in a very cheap suit walk in holding a briefcase. That would be the mark, Mr. Paul Mason. Fletcher felt his guts twist a little at the sight of a telltale lump in the man’s suit coat—waist level, about four o’clock.

  That would be a handgun.

  CHAPTER 17

  The mark’s gaze slowly panned the coffee shop, landing on the prearranged signal: the word Ultima on the side of a coffee cup—scrawled there twenty minutes earlier by Fletcher’s barista. The lanky man approached cautiously.

  “Are you the guy?” he asked nervously, holding the briefcase close to his body with one hand and fiddling with his watch with the other.

  “No,” Fletcher answered. “There just happens to be a man named Ultima enjoying a latte in this particular café at this exact time. Sit down.”
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  “All right,” Paul said. He pulled back the chair opposite Fletcher and awkwardly wedged himself into it. He set the briefcase down on the floor, unconsciously crouching his body to the right in an attempt to cover it up. “I could get fired for this, you know.”

  Fletcher looked right through him. “You don’t pay these people and looking for work will be the least of your worries. I was brought in because I can make this whole thing go away. But I’m going to need what you’ve got in there.”

  Paul brought the briefcase up onto the table, but didn’t release his grip when Fletcher tried to receive it.

  “Mr. Mason, I’m not sure what kind of options you think you have here, or why you brought that piece to a business transaction, but let me assure you of something: I’m your last chance to walk out of this intact.” He sat back and smiled a thin, cold smile. “I didn’t bring a gun. Never do. Instead, I bring the Crusher.”

  “The what?”

  “The Crusher. To your left.” Fletcher kept his eyes on his mark. “About two hundred and fifty pounds, backward baseball cap, big beard. You see him?”

  Paul’s prominent Adam’s apple made a slow run up and down his neck. “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “His parents called him Dwight, but the guys in his cellblock decided that Crusher better suited him. You’ve got five seconds to give me this case or you’re going to find out why, firsthand.”

  Paul released his grip.

  “Good,” Fletcher said. “And don’t worry about this coming back to you. That’s the last thing my people want.” He tapped the briefcase, having no idea what was inside of it. “Trust me; we’ll use this wisely.” He slid the latte over to Paul. “Here, I didn’t touch it. It’s salted caramel. I want you to stay in that seat until you’ve finished every drop. Then you walk out of here and forget we ever met.”

  “What about the other thing?” Paul asked.

  Fletcher was thrown momentarily off-balance. “Uh, yeah, we’ll expect you to follow through on that too,” he said, walking away from the table, case in hand. He paid his accomplice before stepping swiftly down a back hall, past the restrooms, and into the alley behind the café. The moment the door clicked shut behind him, his phone buzzed.