The Last Con

by Zachary Bartels

  Fletcher half shrugged. “Mr. Brinkman, sir, I’m going to go ahead and admit that you lost me a good minute ago. You said this has something to do with Dante?”

  Marcus sucked his teeth for a moment. “The point, Mr. Doyle, is that if you enter the fight, you’re going to wear the scars. Nobody just walks away.”

  “Have we entered into a fight? We sure didn’t mean to.”

  “You threw in with Trick. That’s good enough. And now he’s talking about you guys and some gem heist you got on the line. Says you’re after a big old diamond.”

  Andrew cracked his knuckles and bit his lip.

  “With all due respect to you and your associates,” Fletcher said, calling on his charm and his fake dimple, “we had no idea Dante was involved with the Syndicate.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Marcus said. “I looked into you two. A couple of slick talkers. I’m sick of guys like you drifting in and out of the city. You think because you’re grifters you can operate in Bella Donna’s territory without permission, without paying your share? Well, you can’t. It’s time to pay the piper. And the clock’s ticking. Trick’s got just one more day, which means you’ve got just one more day before it’s all or nothing. Understand?”

  Fletcher opened his mouth to speak, but Andrew squeezed his shoulder and said, “We understand, sir. We’ll make good.”

  “Glad to hear it. And you should know, this is neutral ground. Bella Donna has some respect for what you do, I guess. Wanted to make sure this was done right. My guys are gonna take you back now. You’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER 57

  Andrew’s eyes scanned their room at the Orangelawn Shelter, landing on the two bugged phones. He grabbed them and wordlessly walked back out to the van.

  “That took awhile,” Dante said. “We were starting to wonder.”

  “We met your friend Marcus,” Fletcher said.

  Dante swallowed hard, his fingers gravitating toward his Glock. Andrew came back in, shut the door quietly behind him, and glared at Dante, who glared right back.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Meg said, “but we don’t have time for this alpha male crap. My daughter has one more day.”

  “We have a better chance if we cut this dead weight,” Andrew said, pointing his chin at Dante.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Fletcher said. “We’re all professionals here. We don’t need to like each other, but we’re already down one man and it would be stupid to lose one more.”

  “Fine,” Andrew said, plopping down in a chair.

  “Good,” Fletcher said. “Now, I had some time to think in the back of that van, and I’ve come to a conclusion: we should focus everything on Julian Faust. He’s the key. He’s working against Belltower, trying to play the Knights of Malta. He seems to be collecting documents related to the necklace. And the Alchemist said we were getting close. So we need a plan. We need to work together to create a web of misdirection that gets us the diamond necklace wrapped in the magic cloth. Nothing else matters right now. Agreed?” He looked around at his three partners. Everyone nodded.

  “But Faust had access to all of this,” Dante said, gesturing to the letters, map, and monstrance piled on a card table, “and he hasn’t found it.”

  “Or maybe he has,” Andrew said. “Maybe the question is, where did he hide it? I say we separate Belltower from Faust. The old guy might be half checked out, but he could still know something. Fletcher, you’ve had the most face time with him. You and Meg work the Inside. I’ll put a wedge between them and light a fire under Faust, get him to lead me right to the package. Or at the very least, to whatever he’s got on hand.”

  “What about me?” Dante asked.

  “You can stay in the van. We’re all a little sick of your tricks, Trick. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if you can just stay out of our way.”

  Dante stormed out, tipping the monstrance as he passed it.

  Fletcher righted it and followed Dante out to the sidewalk. “Hey! Can I talk to you a minute?”

  Dante stopped abruptly. “I’m not sweating that clown. Don’t worry. If you can use me in the van, I’ll stay in the van.”

  “It’s not about Andrew,” Fletcher said. “It’s about this.” He held up the tube containing the map, which he had palmed against his side when he picked up the monstrance. “Something’s off.” He carefully pulled out the map and unrolled it, holding the back of it up against a streetlight. “What do you see?”

  “Nothing. Back of the map.”

  “Look closer.”

  Dante squinted. “I can see the outline where the monstrance fits.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Oh,” Dante said. “You think the whole monstrance-treasure-ship deal is misdirection? Keep us off-balance?”

  “I don’t know if Andrew drew the outline or if the Alchemist did. I still haven’t ruled out them being the same person. But I think whoever is pulling the strings here wants us to keep our eyes on the diamonds and the ship so we don’t realize what’s really going on with the cloth. We can rule out beams of light and all that.”

  Dante sat on the curb. “It does seem like he’s trying to keep us off-balance, but I can’t see his angle.”

  “Remember the letter to Grand Master Rohan? He said he was on the verge of acquiring something that would bring power to Rohan and a true elixir of life to them both.”

  “You’re thinking alchemy? Like the Alchemist wants to distill the cloth down to its essence so he can live forever?”

  Fletcher sat down next to him and began rerolling the map. “Makes the most sense to me. But really, what do we even know about the cloth? I guess it came with Paul and his companions to Malta when he was shipwrecked there.”

  “When the locals thought he was a god,” Dante said. “You think the cloth could have helped build up his rep?”

  “Couldn’t hurt. I mean, how could anyone think the apostle Paul was a god? The big-shot preachers in Corinth said he was eloquent in his letters, but unimpressive in person. And church tradition says he was short and ugly with a pronounced unibrow.”

  The two men locked eyes. “The old man in the parking lot,” Dante said. “He had a cloth with a round stain on it.”

  “Got to be on the Alchemist’s payroll,” Fletcher said. “He’s trying to send us some kind of message.”

  “No.” Deep lines were drawing themselves between Dante’s eyes. “I saw him in the jail. Inside. Holding that dirty cloth and wearing those robes. But nobody else noticed him.” He was silent for a beat. Then he stood. “I gotta go. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

  FLETCHER OPENED THE DOOR AS QUIETLY AS POSSIBLE. ANDREW WAS hunched over the card table, filling in the plan. He glanced at Fletcher and returned to his work. On the top bunk, closest to the wall, he could see Meg’s stocking feet. He felt a new knot form in his stomach, somehow worming its way into the midst of all the others. There was no way he could sleep here tonight—near his wife, but so far away. It would be torture. But he desperately needed sleep. He glanced at his watch: eleven thirty. He quietly closed the door and headed back to the van.

  Dante rounded the corner and walked briskly past the shelter’s front entrance. He had parked the Mustang a couple blocks away, where it seemed less likely to get jacked.

  “Reverend Watkins.” The voice made Dante jump. He touched the handle of his gun, but then recognized the man sitting on a bench in the dark. Only every other streetlamp was on in this neighborhood—a cost-cutting measure—and Dr. Foreman had been sitting quietly under one that hadn’t made the cut.

  “Odd time for a walk,” he said.

  “Just heading to my car.”

  Dr. Foreman stood. “Did they get the girl back to her father?”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Your friend Fletcher.” He poked his thumb back toward the unfinished wing. “You all can stay there tonight, but I want you out tomorrow morning.” />
  “I’m not sure what—”

  “You know, you two men are trying to solve the same puzzle. You got two versions of yourself, and you don’t know which is real and which is the mirage.”

  Dante snickered and waited for a smooth response to present itself, but it didn’t.

  “What do they call you? On the street?”

  “Trick.”

  “Is that who you really are, Trick? I’ve heard you talk about Jesus, but you’re chasing after something else, aren’t you?”

  “Trying to find a dirty old rag,” Trick said. “Which is stupid, because I feel like a dirty old rag.”

  “That’s good, son. We’re all dirty before Jesus gets a hold of us. The Scriptures say even our most righteous deeds are like filthy rags in his sight. You could raise a billion dollars for those fatherless kids and it wouldn’t do anything to clean you up. But he died for those filthy rags—all that dirt you and I did. And he’ll wash you clean. Even you, Trick. If you repent and believe. Clean you up good, even give you a new name.”

  CHAPTER 58

  Fletcher pulled the batteries out of the bugged phones. He was alone, so there was nothing for the Alchemist to hear, but for some reason he couldn’t think straight when the place was wired.

  Even with the batteries removed, his thoughts were garbled. He thought of the old man with the cloth. Even at his most fanatical in prison, Fletcher had never believed in visions and the like. Then again, what he believed was very much up for grabs at the moment, along with who he was and what he stood for.

  It was all misdirection. Missed direction.

  He balled up an old Michigan State hoodie of Happy’s and crammed it under his head. The old man wasn’t vexing him nearly so much as his Old Man, who seemed to be rallying more and more as the weeks out of prison ticked by. Inside it was somehow easier to keep him at bay, surrounded as he was by the wages of sin. Fletcher had gone to every Bible study and worship service—even led them. But even back then he knew he had been studying the behavior of the most devout inmates, filing it all away, and mirroring it back to them.

  At his parole hearing he’d trotted out the big leather Bible and paired it with the dimple and the old charm. And now he didn’t even pray. He wondered what a real alchemist would find if he were to boil Fletcher down to his essence, if he put all of Fletcher’s words and posturing in a furnace and burned everything away but the True Him.

  The side door of the van slid open, and Fletcher felt a sudden prickle of adrenaline. Then he saw Meg standing there, a pillow under one arm and a blanket under the other. She climbed into the van, laid the bedding down, and curled up next to him. Then she reached over and grabbed his hand, pulling him up to her.

  They lay there, quietly snuggled together for five minutes before Meg broke the silence. “Maybe if Ivy hadn’t come so early . . . if she had come after we had a chance to grow up a little more.” She was quiet for another minute before adding, “I know you love us, Fletcher. I know you’d do anything for her.” She squeezed his hand. “We’re going to get her back.”

  It was after midnight when Andrew stepped out of the cab and banged on the door of the Warehouse.

  A sliding window opened, and the face of the man who’d van-jacked them earlier that night appeared briefly. The window closed for a moment, and he heard the door unlatch.

  “How did you find the place, Bishop?” Marcus Brinkman asked.

  Andrew smiled. “That van may be twenty years old, but Happy’s been rigging his rides with GPS since Clinton was in office.”

  “I’ll tell you what I told Trick. You can’t talk your way out of this.”

  “I’m trying to talk my way in, actually. I’d like to speak with Bella Donna.”

  “What makes you think Bella Donna would come here?”

  “There’s a little room in the far corner—an office, I’m guessing. It has reinforced steel walls and a bulletproof window of one-way glass. But it’s dark back there, and I could see a light on inside. And when I stumbled in the direction of that room earlier, you tensed right up.” He craned his neck around Marcus. “Light’s still on, by the way.”

  Marcus pulled his jacket back, revealing the handle of a bulky pistol. “Why don’t you get lost?”

  “I think she’d want to hear what I have to say.”

  “I’m going to tell you one more time—”

  An intercom on the wall crackled. “Bring him back.”

  Andrew was patted down and escorted to the office, where Bella Donna sat typing on a laptop.

  “What is it?” she asked without looking up.

  Andrew smiled slickly. “I don’t know what kind of deal Trick tried to cut with you, but I can actually deliver—not just promises, but a place and a time to come and get what Fletcher and I owe you.”

  “Before tomorrow at sundown?”

  He nodded. “Before tomorrow at sundown.”

  She looked up from her computer. “What exactly are we talking about here?”

  “You’re a beautiful lady; do you like diamonds?”

  The robed man stood on the poorly lit street corner, again staring at Dante as he approached.

  “Paul!” Dante shouted. “Paulos Apostolos!” He began to run toward the apparition. As he drew near he noticed that the rag in the man’s hand was no longer beige with a few dark stains. It was almost completely obscured by filth. The old man disappeared around the corner. A moment later Dante followed, but the old apostle had vanished.

  Phantasmagoria—could that explain this oddly dressed man who kept popping up everywhere? With all the technological advances since the days of the magic lantern, anything was possible—3D images, holograms. So why did that seem sillier than the simpler explanation?

  The metal gate was still intact and secure in front of Broadmoor Outreach Tabernacle, although the windows behind it were broken. Dante fished out his key, and a moment later was standing amidst the wreckage. The three men had apparently continued taking out their frustrations after the grifters left, as the entire floor was now littered with debris and broken glass. He went back to the closet and grabbed an old push broom.

  Walking up to the chancel, Dante picked up the bent cross and dented chalice and replaced them on the altar, then swept the floor beneath.

  He dropped to his knees. “I don’t talk to imaginary friends,” Dante said. “And you never seemed to hear me before. But now . . . I’m in a mess. I’m going to die tomorrow if something big doesn’t happen. And the one thing I keep thinking about is whether I’ll be filthy or clean when I stand in your presence.

  “I know you’re there. I’ve known all along. I guess I just figured when the time came, I could talk my way in.” He laughed. “You know I can talk. But I don’t want that now. If you died for my dirt, then wash me. Make me clean. I don’t know if we’ll pull this off tomorrow. I don’t even know if it’s right, but I know I don’t want to be filthy anymore. I want the man I pretend to be when I stand up here to be the man I really am.” He wiped his face against his shirt sleeve.

  “If there’s any way . . . I can wait, I guess.” There were no sounds of angelic choirs, no heavenly visions, no flickering candles or ghostly wind. But a moment later Dante rose, feeling lighter—so much lighter—and walked up to the big cross on the wall. He reached up and grabbed the end of the black pall he’d hung there four days earlier and felt it slide down from the cross, billowing as it fell.

  CHAPTER 59

  JUNE 13, 1798

  VALLETTA, MALTA

  The French knights are unified in this,” said the battle-scarred commander, “all two hundred of them. They will not fight against General Bonaparte.”

  Ferdinand von Hompesch, the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, felt his entrails deflating. He had been elected to his position the previous summer when Emmanuel de Rohan had died after a long and illustrious term.

  “But will they fight with Napoleon against their brother knights?” he asked.

  “I think no
t, but I cannot say for sure. Your Eminent Highness, there are terms.”

  “Terms? Certainly you would not see the first German Grand Master lose all that our order has built within a year of taking office!”

  “There is precedent,” the commander said. “The Moslems expelled our predecessors from Jerusalem after the fall of the Christian Kingdom. Centuries later Suleiman the Turk allowed the Knights to respectfully withdraw from Rhodes. In both cases, we recovered and became even more powerful. If we know anything, we know how to adapt.”

  Von Hompesch shook his head. “With or without the French, our navy can cripple Napoleon’s. He is headed to Egypt, I hear. If he would like any of his ships to be yet seaworthy when he arrives there, he will not spend much time feeding them to our fleet to be chewed and destroyed. Ours is the greatest navy the world has seen, and we have defeated much larger forces than this.”

  The commander rubbed his stubbled chin. “I am afraid it is too late for that. The French have made landfall at seven points on our shores, and the west side of the island has already surrendered to their numbers. This is a one-time offer. The general will allow us to withdraw, but we may bring only one holy relic from Jerusalem with us. The rest of our wealth will become his. If you choose not to accept, I fear it will result in the absolute destruction of our order.”

  The Grand Master looked out over the castle walls for a long time. “Fetch me the skull of St. John,” he said.

  “Sir, you mean his hand.”

  “No. Napoleon can keep the hand. Find me a skull in Pinto’s old laboratories. It will help us spirit out our true treasure—a treasure of which only I know because Grand Master de Rohan told me of it on his deathbed. It will allow the order to start over once again, to adapt. And best of all, it is a treasure that Napoleon himself would kill ten thousand of his own men to acquire.”

  CHAPTER 60

  Fletcher awoke with a start before dawn. His neck was stiffer than it had ever been, but the feeling of his wife’s body, nestled into his for the first time in years, was like heaven. Then he saw Dante and Andrew sitting above him, living reminders that unless they pulled off the impossible, this would be the last day of Ivy’s life.