Blues for Zoey

by Robert Paul Weston

  “Is it really true your friend was playing that thing in public? On the street? What is she, an idiot? Doesn’t she know what it is?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t—I mean, didn’t. I don’t know if I’m gonna see her.”

  Myers sighed. “Okay, kid, listen. I don’t want to scare you or anything, but I’ll tell you what I found out. Cope ran around with some pretty crazy guys out in LA. Bikers, dealers—all kinds of people. What I hear is that the Cope family have enlisted the help of some very heavy hitters.” He paused. “If you ask me, this shit’s going fubar, so do yourself a favor and tell your friend to sit on it. Don’t take it out on the street. Don’t show it to anybody. Just sit on it, okay?”

  “Wait,” I said. Somewhere, I found a sliver of my regular voice. “I need that money, I really do. You told me—”

  “We all need money, kid. It’s what makes the world go round. But don’t worry, I’ll look you up when I’m in town again.”

  “Again? You’re leaving?”

  “I told you, I was only here a couple days. I’m sure we’ll get to do business when things cool down.”

  “You can’t. You promised!”

  “I only said I was interested.”

  “But—”

  “Look, I’m already on my way to the airport.”

  “No, wait! You don’t understand, I wrote her a whole bunch of checks! I really need that—”

  Money, I thought.

  I didn’t say it out loud because there wasn’t any point. Andrew Myers had hung up.

  69

  Seven Unanswered Texts

  and One Long-Ass Phone Message

  2:04 p.m. Zoey, BIG mistake! Don’t cash the checks. OK?

  2:07 p.m. Did you get my message?

  2:08 p.m. I can’t buy this thing. I need the $ back. k

  2:13 p.m. EMERGENCY. Please call me!

  2:32 p.m. Seriously. We could both b in DEEP shit. Both of us! Just call

  2:49 p.m. Zoey, wtf? ANSWER YOUR PHONE!

  3:00 p.m. OK ... the truth: I lied. I screwed up. I made

  a mistake. Just call me. I need to tell you something.

  I dialed Zoey’s number. “Zoey, it’s Kaz. I really need to talk to you. I know I said I was an honest person, but the truth is I’m not. I mean, I am, but I wasn’t—not when it really mattered. So I’m gonna tell you everything, okay? I’m gonna be honest, just like you said. But first I have to say that I know you weren’t completely honest with me. I know you didn’t build that instrument yourself. I don’t know how you ended up with it, and I don’t care. Maybe you found it, maybe someone gave it to you, but maybe what you don’t know is that it once belonged to Shain Cope … yes, that Shain Cope. He made it. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. When you left it with me that time, this guy came into my work, this movie producer from LA, and he knew it as soon as he saw it. He offered me a ton of cash to buy it and I should have split it with you, but I guess I was mad because you never told me the truth. So I bought it off you instead and I’m so sorry. But now I’m in huge trouble. Maybe we both are. It turns out Shain Cope’s family sent some very bad people—like bikers or something—to get his instrument back. They may’ve been watching us, so please, please be careful. The guy said it was too dangerous for him to buy it right now. So, um, that’s another reason I’m calling. Because I need the money back. Because there’s something else I didn’t tell you. That money I was saving wasn’t for school. My grades are shit. I’ll never get in anywhere. The real truth is, that money was for my mom. Remember how she acted when you met her? It’s cuz she has this disease. It’s called somnitis and it’s super rare and it basically means she has these comas. They just happen, and someday she’s just not gonna wake up. I was saving that money to get her into a special clinic in New York. So you see? I need it back. The money I gave you. I really need it back. So please call me, okay?”

  70

  Memento Mori

  I took an eastbound streetcar all the way across town. In the brightness of the afternoon, the unfinished apartments looked worse than I remembered.

  I buzzed Zoey’s apartment a million times (give or take). Eventually, an old man came hobbling out of the building. When he opened the door, I slipped inside. I bashed on Zoey’s door, yelling for her to open up. It wasn’t long before that same old man came back—this time with a security guy. I told them Zoey was my girlfriend, but neither of them cared. The guard told me to get lost.

  I sat on the gravel out front and waited. But then something occurred to me. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? There was another way to find her. So I hopped on the first streetcar going back the other way.

  Falconer College gets made fun of a lot in the Chronicler. The most common slur is to call it one endless parking lot, and, walking across the grounds, I had to agree the criticism was apt. Everything there was the same shade of gray.

  When I asked the man at the reception desk, he said he had never heard of the Philosophy of Music Department. “We don’t have one of those.”

  “What about just a philosophy department?”

  “Are you a student?”

  “I’m looking for someone. I need to find Professor Zamani. He should be—”

  “We don’t have ‘professors’ at Falconer. We have instructors.”

  “Okay, Instructor Zamani.”

  The guy typed the name and then shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t have that name in the system.”

  “Can you check by course? He teaches a course called Philosophy of Music.”

  The guy squinted at his screen. “Oh, wait, sounds like one of the weird adult ed courses, which means he’ll be a sessional. So if he’s anywhere, he’s in here.” He took out a big blue binder and flipped through an index of names in the opening section. “Here we go. Paul Zamani.” He tapped the page, shaking his head in wonder. “No kidding. He teaches Philosophy of Music and—” He snorted. “Jazz Appreciation. I can’t believe we do a course called Jazz Appreciation.”

  “Is he here? Where can I find him?”

  “You might be in luck. It says he keeps office hours this evening.”

  I followed the directions to another building. Paul Zamani’s room didn’t have a name on it, just the number. When I knocked, a voice said, “Yeah-yeah, come in.”

  Zoey’s father sat facing the door, reading a science fiction novel. His feet—in a pair of scuffed brogues, the left one half devoid of its sole—were propped up on his desk, which had nothing on it but a red pen.

  He was thin like Zoey, with her same sharp features. His dirty-blond hair was swept back from his head, making him resemble a bird of prey, an eagle or a falcon. A tattoo of a robot wrestling a gorilla tumbled out from under his rolled-up sleeves. Both his ears were punched full of metal, the most prominent bauble being that of a grinning silver skull.

  Everything about Paul Zamani fit with my idea of Zoey, but not in the way I expected. He looked so young, more like someone Zoey would hang out with, not someone who would help her with her homework.

  “Mr. Zamani?”

  “Yeah? Can I help you with something?”

  I didn’t quite know how to start. For a moment, I stared dumbly, mesmerized by the shining skull that dangled at his jawbone.

  “Memento mori,” he said.

  “What?”

  He put the book down and brought one hand to his ear. “It reminds me to live a full life because no matter what we do, one day we’ll all end up like this.” He cocked his head sideways, flicking the skull with a fingertip. “You in one of my classes?”

  I shook my head. “I’m in high school. But I know your daughter. We’ve been hanging out. I bought something off her. Her instrument, actually, which I’m sure you know about, but it turns out I can’t—”

  “Waaay-way-way-way-wait. What did you say? My daughter ?”
>
  “Zoey.”

  He yanked his feet off the desk and leaned forward, smiling like this was all a joke. “I don’t even know anybody called Zoey.”

  “Yeah, you do … she’s … ”

  Your daughter?

  The words wouldn’t come out. They were stuck in all the gaps in my head, gaps that were just becoming clear as I stood there, gaps like the missing pieces in an unfinished puzzle.

  Paul Zamani shook his head. “You have so got the wrong guy.”

  “But … wait … ”

  “Do I look like somebody with a kid?”

  “She told me she was your daughter.”

  “Who did?” He was more serious now.

  “Her name is Zoey.”

  “And how do you know this girl? She go to your school?”

  I shook my head. “You can’t miss her, she’s … she’s … ” I didn’t know how else to put it. “She’s beautiful. Kinda goth, kinda punk, and bright blue eyes. And dreads, all dyed pink and pur—”

  “Oh, wait. Zoey Jones!”

  “Jones? ”

  “That was months ago. She enrolled in my class last term, but she never paid her fees so after a couple weeks they booted her out.” He looked down and nodded to himself. “But you’re right. I know I’m not supposed to say this sort of thing, but yeah, I agree. She was quite … striking.”

  I nodded.

  “She said I was her father ?”

  I nodded again.

  “Why’d she tell you that? It’s impossible. How old is she? Like, twenty?”

  “Twenty? Really?” Could she be that old?

  “Anyway, I am definitely not her dad.”

  When he said the word dad, something tightened in my chest. It was the biggest hole in the puzzle, and I’d found the piece that fit.

  “No,” I said. “You’re not.”

  “Well, that was easy. What convinced you?”

  “You can’t be Zoey’s father. Because I’ve already met him.”

  71

  The Truth about Zoey Zamani

  She wasn’t real.

  72

  The Girl Who Didn’t Exist

  “Who’s the victim?” asked the woman behind the desk at the police station.

  “Me.”

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Almost seventeen.”

  She asked if I wanted a parent or guardian to be there while I gave a statement, and I told her no way. She took me into a small, yellow room with a computer hooked up to a camera that recorded everything. Before I got very far with my story, however, she stopped me.

  “There’s another officer who’ll want to talk to you,” she said. “Someone from the fraud squad. Detective Singh.”

  She left me alone for a while, and when the door opened again, this huge cop came in. “I hate to break this to you,” he told me after I’d explained much of my story, “but it’s unlikely we’ll get your money back. At least not for some time.”

  “Okay,” I said, speaking slowly, trying not to hyperventilate.

  On the way to the police station, I had already braced myself for the possibility that Zoey would be untraceable, that I might never see my savings ever again. If that happened, I had a plan.

  “Let’s say it’s really gone and we really can’t get it back. Do you know if there’s a reward for returning Shain Cope’s instrument? Like maybe from his family?”

  Singh shook his head. “We can check, but I don’t think it’ll do much good. I’m fairly certain that instrument you have is a fake.”

  “A fake? ”

  “This girl you met, Zoey—she said she made it herself. I imagine she did. It’s probably the one true thing she told you.” He turned the computer screen to face me and clicked around until he brought up a bunch of scanned documents. “The Shain Cope robbery was cleared up years ago. Everything was recovered, including two missing instruments, but the family didn’t want to publicize the recovery because they thought it might encourage copycat thieves.”

  Singh showed me photographs of the recovered instruments. A saxophone made from plumbing pipes, and a second one—shaped like a cross. Stranger still, it was tiny. Compared to the object I knew as the “rood rattler,” the thing in the picture looked like a child’s toy. It was little more than a maraca in the vague shape of a crucifix.

  Next, I scrolled through mug shots on the computer. We started with the women, but I didn’t find Zoey. The men were next. It took almost an hour, but I finally found him. Zoey’s father.

  His face was clean shaven and his hair was shorter and bleached white, but even without the sculpted goatee, I recognized him. It was Andrew Myers. Only that wasn’t his real name. Just like Zoey Zamani, there was no such person. His real name was Philip Konig. His file showed that he had a daughter named Zoey.

  Zoey Konig.

  “The fiddle con,” Detective Singh whispered.

  “What?”

  “It’s an old con game. People pulled it seventy or eighty years ago. The trick was to convince somebody to buy a famous violin, which of course was a cheap fake. But if you can play it—I mean really play it, really make it sing—then even a cheap fake can sound like a Stradivarius.” He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. Stale, warm breath hit me in the face. “Amazing. I didn’t think anybody pulled stuff like this anymore.” The look of utter stupefaction on his face told me what he really meant: I didn’t think anybody was dumb enough to fall for something like this anymore.

  Singh explained that Philip Konig was a thief and a con artist. He’d spent his life criss-crossing the continent—and much of the world—staying afloat by pulling scam after scam. He’d been arrested several times, along with his girlfriend, a woman named Evelyn. Zoey’s mother. The files contained reports from social workers, too. These were from eight or nine years ago, when Evelyn consulted with them while Philip was serving time.

  Evelyn told the social workers she no longer wanted to live life on the run, but that Philip would never stop, that he was addicted to the thrill he got out of swindling people. Evelyn claimed she couldn’t afford to raise a child on her own, so she left Zoey in a foster home and promptly vanished. Later, when Philip got out, he was able to convince a court to release Zoey into his care.

  “The daughter takes over where the mother left off.” Detective Singh closed his eyes, massaging the bridge of his nose. “He probably taught her everything he knows.”

  Seeing the list of aliases made me think of something.

  “Wait—I wrote the checks to Zoey Zamani. That’s not her name. She shouldn’t’ve been able to cash them, right?”

  Singh took a deep breath. “They’d have a dummy account, opened with forged ID. Elementary stuff for someone with Konig’s record.” He clasped his large hands and set them gently on the desk. “What I don’t get is, why you? You’re just a kid. Konig goes after wealthy immigrants and retirees. Easy targets, people with money who don’t understand the system.”

  “I don’t understand anything.”

  “I hope you do now.”

  “Maybe, but—wait. Immigrants!”

  “So?”

  “Dave Mizra.”

  The detective was baffled. “I’m sorry, who?”

  “A guy who sells jewelry across the street from where I work—where I used to work. His name’s Dave Mizra, and we used to think he was the richest guy on our block.” Another piece of the puzzle was falling into place. “Oh, shit. He’s the one they were after. They probably thought he was rich. They would’ve seen the Shain Cope posters in his shop. This was all about hooking him, not me. At least not at first.”

  I remembered the night I stared in at the shadowy poster of Shain Cope. Zoey had snuck up on me. Planning a robbery? she’d asked.

  She really had been.

  Then there was wha
t “Andrew Myers” had said on the phone. If you ask me, this shit’s going fubar. Fubar. I never made the connection, but now I saw he was right. Right then, it was a good way to describe my life: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

  In the computer files Singh showed me, there was one picture of Zoey. It had been taken when she was twelve or thirteen, just after she was placed in foster care. In the photograph, she was standing in the midst of a frumpy family in some anonymous suburb. There was a mom, a dad, a kid brother. Zoey’s hair was different. It was a deep, chocolatey brown, full of waves and ringlets. The wind had caught one wisp and blown it across her forehead, just like one of her dreads. While everyone else was looking at the camera, Zoey’s eyes squinted up at the sky. Her thoughts floated with the clouds, and I couldn’t help wondering, was she the same with me?

  Every moment we’d spent together, had her mind been somewhere else?

  73

  “Claire de lune,” Part 2

  On my way home from the police station, I couldn’t get Zoey out of my head. The brightness of her eyes. The slight downward turn of her mouth. Her hair. Her throat. The tattoo at the small of her back. I’d never be able to forget any of it, no matter how much it hurt me to remember.

  When I was almost home, I saw A-Man was coming out of the Sit ’n’ Spin, a bag of towels bulging under both arms.

  “Told you he’d be back. B-Man, I mean.” He scowled into the street. “Some asshole hit Razor with his car.”

  “I know,” I said. “I met him in the park.”

  A-Man nodded. “Dog’s dead. B’s pretty down about it.”

  “I’m pretty down myself.”

  “Yeah, we heard you got fired.” He glanced back inside. “Would’ja believe John offered me the job?”

  “He did?”

  “I didn’t take it. Wouldn’t be right. Anyway, poor guy can’t live without you. Give him a couple weeks, he’ll hire you back.”

  “You think?”

  “Sure. Sit tight, you’ll see.”

  As I started up the stairs to our apartment, a strange thing happened. I heard music—and not just any music. I heard the slow, unmistakable keen of the rattler, its bow sawing across the strings.