The Last Con

by Zachary Bartels

  “Agreed,” Fletcher said. “But we need something solid to go on. Some direction for our next step.”

  “How about a name?” Meg underlined a word on her notepad and turned it toward the group. “He said he had entrusted the location of the shimmering allies to José Pinto da Fonseca. Whoever that is. And he gave the Grand Master the key to identify it.”

  “A literal key?” Happy asked.

  “No, a number: 19.12.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Ivy was sitting on the floor behind Courtney, braiding her hair and whispering seeds of dissent in her ear.

  “A lot of girls at my old school had moms in jail,” she said. “Did you know you can make a knife out of a toothbrush? Maybe we can get that guy to give us each a toothbrush.”

  Courtney twisted around and asked, “How do you make it into a knife?”

  “I think you just sharpen it against a brick or something.”

  “Do you have a brick with you?”

  “No,” Ivy said, and returned to braiding.

  “Just forget that stuff, okay? We can’t escape. Whatever these guys want from your dad, I’m sure he’ll give it to them and they’ll just let us go.”

  “I doubt it,” Ivy said. “My dad hasn’t really been there for me much.”

  “Well, I’m not picking a fight with that guy out there. You don’t know what they did to me. And there’s not just one of them. There’s, like, three, and the other two are even bigger and meaner.”

  “There’s only one now,” Ivy said. “And if you don’t want them to hurt you again, we need to get away. You can stay behind if you want, but I’m getting out next chance I see. He talks to me like I’m a baby because I’m small. But I’m going to surprise him. I’m tough. I went to the worst school in America when I lived here.”

  Courtney scoffed. “Was it a nursery school?”

  Ivy’s brow sharpened. “No. And I saw some really bad—”

  Both girls jumped at the sound of the door opening. The man dumped a McDonald’s bag on the floor.

  “Got you some hamburgers.”

  “Am I going to be able to brush my teeth?” Ivy asked sweetly.

  “Nope,” he answered. “And you get one more visit to the bathroom tonight, so you better wait until you’ve really got to go. Now watch your shows and eat your burgers.” He disappeared from view for a moment and then reappeared, rolling two bottles of water toward them. “Keep behaving,” he said, “and you’ll get out of this alive.”

  Fletcher was filling up Ivy’s air mattress, upon which he would be trying to sleep, when he heard his wife’s phone ring. He killed the little electric pump and listened.

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “No, not yet. I’ve been praying, though, and I have a good feeling. Courtney’s a smart girl. She’ll turn up.” Meg met Fletcher’s eyes, and he suddenly realized that he was glaring. Covering the mouthpiece with her hand, she retreated to a corner of the building for a more private conversation.

  Fletcher knew he couldn’t justify the rage was feeling. How could anyone blame Brad for following up on every possible lead in finding his daughter, in seeking out anyone who might bring him comfort in all the uncertainty? He turned the pump back on. Another segment of the mattress opened up, revealing a tattered picture of their family, taken the Christmas before he’d been arrested. Fletcher had noticed the photo taped to the wall next to Ivy’s bed upon first arriving home from prison.

  He wanted to cry, but he knew he couldn’t. If he broke down now, Meg would too. Then neither of them would be any use.

  A few hours earlier they had ordered in dirt-cheap pizza, which tasted predictably like dirt, and continued fleshing out their theory. For her part, Meg had done a more comprehensive translation of all the letters, and the whole group had gone through them word by word. And still, their only leads were that name, José Pinto da Fonseca, and that number, 19.12. The Internet had identified the man as Grand Master Manuel da Fonseca’s illegitimate son, but there was little information available beyond that. Midevening, Happy had lost faith in the information superhighway for the fifth time that week and gone old-school, combing through his books, pen in hand.

  The first signs of fatigue had manifested themselves in Fletcher’s mind and body at about ten and, knowing he needed to be well-rested in order to be effective, he had suggested they ready their bedding. Meg had reacted harshly, intimating that she would not sleep at all until Ivy was safe in her arms again. Fletcher had not pursued the debate.

  Meg walked back into sight, pocketing her phone and rubbing at her eyes. Fletcher screwed the valve cover into place on the air mattress and walked over to his wife, reaching out to comfort her. She slipped to the side and said, “Don’t.”

  Courtney held firm in her principles through dinner and the hour that followed, while Ivy turned up the volume on Spongebob Squarepants and, in a complete reversal of roles, delivered an unbroken stream of whispered peer pressure to her older friend. Only instead of suggesting clandestine trips to the church attic with a boy, Ivy was lobbying for an uprising.

  Now in the bathroom, having stalled as long as she could—the toilets all flushed, hands and faces washed and rewashed—Courtney had apparently realized she could not sway her young friend.

  “Okay,” she whispered, “but let me be the one to spray him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m taller,” she said. “I’ll get him in the eyes and you run to the door and see if it’s locked from the inside. I’ll kick him where it really counts.”

  Ivy grabbed both of Courtney’s hands, stood on her tiptoes, and pushed her forehead against Courtney’s.

  “What are you doing?” Courtney whispered.

  “Dear Jesus, help us escape right now. Help Courtney’s aim be good and let the door be unlocked. Or else, please help my dad come through so we can go home. And forgive us for our sins. I love you, Jesus. Amen.”

  She dropped Courtney’s hands, handed her the aerosol can, and knocked on the door. “We’re all done,” she called.

  Several years earlier Dante had transformed the roof of the church into a rather nice patio, complete with furniture and fire pit, which was of course illegal, but the police response threshold in the neighborhood had long since passed from zoning infractions to shots fired.

  The grifters felt the cool night air revive them. Meg had tried calling the Alchemist on the burner phone ten times, intent on speaking with Ivy, but was met each time with a recording informing her that the voicemail box had not been set up.

  The discussion on the roof turned back to William Belltower and how he might be wrapped up in all this.

  “That lodge could be the key,” Fletcher said. “A point where Cagliostro reaches through the centuries to connect with the very guy the Alchemist had us grift.”

  Dante sipped on a bottle of mineral water and asked, “You think maybe the lodge is the secret society Cagliostro and Fonseca started?”

  “No, the lodges were just a way to generate capital and create an enduring network for his grifts. Brilliant scam; he claimed to be ‘restoring’ Egyptian Freemasonry, but he was just making it up as he went.”

  Andrew took a puff on his cigar. “And it might have aided the diamond heist—if the revolution really was a bit of misdirection that spun out of control. A lot of revolutionary thought was fomented and fermented in those lodges.”

  Fletcher nodded. “The count knew how to read the times. It was the Enlightenment, and all the long-held doctrines of the church were falling away, which left people chomping at the bit for anything supernatural. Not unlike today, really. Look at the titles on the bestseller list: New Age stuff, spiritualism, build-your-own god . . . odd for a ‘secular’ society.”

  Andrew grinned. “My man found the peg of all Western society and turned it. Egyptian Freemasonry, séances, phantasmagoria . . .”

  “What’s that?” Dante asked.

  “You’ve heard the expression ‘smoke and mirrors’?” Happy said. �
��That’s phantasmagoria—the art of creating ghosts and phantoms by projecting images into smoke using a mirror and lenses. Overwhelm the senses, and the mark is yours. Same thing with alchemy. It was all misdirection.”

  Andrew examined the embers at the end of his cigar. “Cagliostro knew his marks. I mean, if you or I see a candle melted onto a human skull, we think cartoons, bad tattoos . . . but not in the eighteenth century.”

  Meg, who had been staring silently into the light-polluted sky, spoke up. “Why does he call himself the Alchemist if people aren’t falling for smoke and mirrors anymore?”

  “It’s not about wizards in a laboratory trying to mix magic with science,” Andrew said, exhaling smoke. “Sure, most dabblers in alchemy were just trying to turn common metals into gold. As a short con, you could do worse. I mean, no one really wins, but no one really wins three-card monte either, and that’s still around.

  “But alchemy grew in prominence for more than a thousand years. That’s not a fad; that’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. At its deepest levels, alchemy is about distilling a thing down to its essence.”

  Happy nodded. “And some brilliant people have been into it. Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth, Carl Jung, half the Manhattan Project . . .”

  “But to Cagliostro, it was just a grift,” Fletcher said. “That’s what set his Egyptian Rite apart from all the other forms of Masonry: the promise that by the time you reach master Mason, you would have mastered alchemy too—meaning the ability to create gold from other substances and home-brew the Elixir of Life.”

  “And he had a ready supply of marks,” Andrew said. “He’d find guys who had hit the ceiling in the Scottish Rite or York Rite, and offer them a chance to attain something higher, purer, and more mysterious. That’s a strong peg.”

  “I’m really starting to hate this guy,” Meg said.

  Andrew snuffed out his cigar. “Don’t hate the grifter; hate the grift.”

  The bathroom door opened and the man with the scar walked in. When he was just two feet away, Ivy leapt to the side. She looked back and saw Courtney raise the bottle up toward his face and punch the nozzle. The disinfectant came shooting back in her eyes. Courtney screamed.

  Ivy’s first thought was about blondes and cheerleaders and how stupid they could be, but then the bottle came rolling in her direction. She nabbed it up and unleashed a stream of cleaner into the man’s face. He shielded his eyes with his hand while closing the gap between them, knocked the bottle from her grasp, and threw her six feet into the bathroom door.

  The impact knocked the breath from her lungs. The kick that came next hurt more than anything she’d ever experienced—physically, at least. Dazed and defeated, she slumped to the ground. The sound of water running and furious splashing let her know that at least she’d managed to hurt the man. Courtney’s sobbing just confirmed for her what she should have already known: Courtney was unreliable.

  Next time Ivy would escape on her own.

  She felt the man grab her up roughly with wet hands. He carried her with impatient strides to the door of the room that had become her cell and ejected her onto the sleeping bags. The door slammed and the lock turned behind him.

  Ivy sat up and gingerly felt the back of her head. There would be a bump there, but it would be worth it. No blindfold this time. She now had the lay of the land between this room and the bathroom. She had seen the way out.

  Then she heard Courtney’s muffled screaming.

  CHAPTER 45

  While Andrew and Fletcher were turning in, Dante slipped out, mumbling something about an errand. He made the fifteen-minute drive to the Warehouse in less than ten, parked on the street, and locked his Glock in the glove box.

  A thick-necked nondescript in a black suit met him at the door and told him to wait there.

  A minute later Marcus Brinkman emerged, barking, “Give me your phone. Arms up.”

  Dante complied, and a moment later he was allowed to enter the Warehouse.

  “You got a lot of nerve asking for this sit-down, being five hundred large in the hole,” Marcus said. “I know you can talk, Trick, but there’s no talking your way out of this.”

  Dante nodded.

  “Follow me, then,” Marcus said. He led him to the middle of the vast building where a large free-standing room had been erected. From without, it was a big ugly cube covered in metal beams, conduit, and insulation. Dante had only been here once before. It was neutral ground. Nothing illicit was permitted, which made it a safe place to meet without fear that one party would pull a double cross and tip off the cops. The steel frame and wire mesh on the outside contained any signal from a cell phone or informant’s wire.

  But the inside was dry-walled, carpeted, and outfitted like the kind of swanky boardroom you might find near the top of the Renaissance Center. Marcus opened the door and motioned for Dante to enter.

  “Three minutes.” He closed the door.

  Sitting at the head of the table, hands folded before her, was the most beautiful woman Dante had ever seen.

  “Hello, Mr. Watkins,” she said. “It’s good to finally meet you in person after all these years.” Her tone was professionally distant but nowhere near hostile.

  Dante opened his mouth but found no words in the chamber. All of his dealings with Bella Donna had been through Marcus. None of his criminal colleagues had ever seen her either. He’d heard occasional vague tales of her beauty, but they hadn’t prepared him for this.

  For the first time in memory, Trick couldn’t talk.

  Dante had expected Bella Donna to be Italian, with dark hair, chestnut eyes, and olive skin—the female equivalent of a Mafia don. But she was blond, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned. Her long, shiny hair looked like it had been carefully put up that morning but was now just beginning to fall. He guessed her to be somewhere between forty-five and fifty.

  Finally finding his voice, Dante said, “I, uh, wanted to talk to you about the money I owe you.”

  Bella Donna leaned back and crossed her legs, her shiny stockings glistening under the fluorescent lights, derailing Dante’s line of thought again.

  “Five hundred thousand dollars,” she said. “Do you have it?”

  “I have some of it,” he said, cringing as her eyes darkened. “But I’m gaining momentum. I have two new lines of income going—neither steps on your interests and both are very lucrative.”

  “How much do you have?” she asked, half interested.

  “About a hundred.”

  “Do I strike you as someone who would accept 20 percent of what you owe me?”

  “No, ma’am, not normally. But I’ve been a lucrative player in the organization for some time, and I just figured you’d rather have the money and my continued services, rather than neither.”

  A smile bit at the corner of her mouth. “What is this new enterprise?” she asked.

  “It’s a fund-raiser. Very vague, very hard to confirm, but easy to sell. You know me; I can talk. If you want, I’ll gladly resume my ordinary duties and also work this angle. And I wouldn’t even ask for a cut. I’ll do it indefinitely until you think I’ve made up for my mistakes.”

  “Mr. Watkins, do you know what I hate in a man?”

  “No.”

  “Desperation.”

  Dante felt like he’d been punched in the stomach again. “I’m, uh, sorry if I come across as—”

  “A better question: Do you know why they call me Bella Donna?”

  He wet his lips. “Because you’re, uh, a beautiful lady.”

  “No. In fact, it’s the name of a plant. It was used to dilate the pupils of young ladies because they thought this made them more beautiful and seductive. For years women did this, assuming it to be safe, harmless—and in small doses, it can be. But when used carelessly, belladonna is a deadly poison. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you think I’m beautiful?”

  Dante nodded.

  “Do you think I’m harmless?”
r />   “No.”

  “Good. Now, if you don’t have something more impressive to offer me, I’m afraid this sit-down has cost you one day off your grace period. The full five hundred thousand dollars will be due Saturday night at six.”

  “I understand.” Dante pushed himself up from the chair. He paused for a moment and sat again. “You know what? I do have something more impressive.”

  Bella Donna sighed. “Well, what is it?”

  “Do you like diamonds?”

  CHAPTER 46

  Fletcher awoke just before six, feeling ragged but oddly alert. He went up to the roof with a notion to watch the sunrise and pray. His thoughts kept him preoccupied, though, and he reentered the building twenty minutes later without having spoken to the Great Architect.

  He found Happy buzzing around, plugging his laptop into a projector in the sanctuary, and Dante brewing a pot of coffee in the back. Against the wall, Meg was asleep on her air mattress, one of Happy’s library books hugged to her chest, another next to her, and her Bible wedged under her shoulder. Fletcher chuckled. He’d found Ivy in a similar state of entanglement with her own books on more than one morning.

  He reached down and carefully extracted the Bible, which fell open, ejecting a vast collection of sermon notes, bookmarks, and the like. Fletcher knelt and began gathering the items. Something caught his eye. It was a small greeting card, lying open and signed with a big “Love, Brad.”

  Fletcher knew he should just pile it together with the rest and put it all back in the well-loved Bible, but instead he pocketed it and set the Bible next to the mattress. Relocating to the small unisex bathroom, he retrieved the card and examined it. The front was teal with a big cartoon heart in the middle and read “You Are Loved.”

  He opened the card. “Gorgeous, I know you feel completely abandoned, but I hope you know there’s someone who will never abandon you. Love, Brad.”

  Fletcher read the card twice, then slid it back into his pocket.