Down to the Liar

by Mary Elizabeth Summer

  “Man, my boss is going to kill me,” I say, scrolling through my phone with my thumb. “This is the second time this week. And it’s a prepay.”

  I pretend to fret, weighing my options. “I don’t suppose you want these tacos? I can’t take them back. Cemitas Puebla has a strict policy about taco delivery time.”

  “Cemitas Puebla?” the mark says.

  I can almost hear the pros-and-cons debate going on in his head. Risk detection. But tacos…I’ve got him interested. Time for the shutout.

  “I’ve got to get back. Thanks anyway, mister.”

  “Wait!” he says. “Is it the Orientales?”

  “Yes, and the Gov. Precioso.”

  A few seconds of silence follow, and then the door opens. The mark—a skinny man in his midforties with a receding hairline and an honest face—stands in the doorway, fully erect and lacking any mechanical aid. Bessie’s camera had better be getting this, or Murphy will be on paperwork duty for the next three months.

  “Extra cheese?” he says.

  “Salsa on the side,” I say, and hand him the bag.

  I could have kept the tacos, I guess, but the man is about to lose a five-hundred-thousand-dollar insurance settlement. He deserves a consolation prize.

  “Thanks,” he says, smiling, as he shuts the door.

  “No sweat,” I say, more to myself than to him.

  Five minutes later, I’m climbing into the van’s passenger seat. I toss the visor into the back for Bryn to pick up later and stow in the disguises compartment. She likes to feel useful.

  “You couldn’t have kept the tacos?” Murphy asks when I fasten my seat belt.

  “Home, Jeeves,” I say, taking off the glasses.

  “That’s not as funny as you think it is.”

  I smile around the pang in my chest. God, I miss Sam.

  • • •

  At 10:28 p.m., I stretch back in my office chair, yawning and rubbing my eyes. Murphy left Café Ballou with Bryn at eight, but I’d wanted to finish the report to the insurance company investigator before calling it a night.

  The footage Murphy captured seems clear enough evidence to me, but I learned early on that if I don’t write out my own observations in agonizing detail for the lawyers, I’ll end up on the stand giving testimony. And I seriously never want to see the inside of a courtroom ever again.

  Julep Dupree, you are under arrest….

  I’d never seen the inside of the juvenile detention center, thanks to Mike Ramirez, the FBI agent who arrested me. Why he stuck his neck out for me I’ll never know, but he did. And because he and his wife, Angela, took me in, I’ve mostly evaded the travesty that is the foster care system. I have a social worker, Mrs. Fairchild, who I see on a semiregular basis as part of my punishment for getting Tyler killed. That’s not how the judge put it, of course, but that’s how it feels, since Mrs. Fairchild asks me about him all the time. She’s totally missing the point, though. I’m not supposed to forgive myself for what happened to him.

  My phone buzzes and lights up. Mike.

  Curfew. Crap.

  I tap out my standard apology:

  At work. Sorry.

  There are few things worse than going from running the streets at will to a ten p.m. curfew. Ten p.m. On a weekend, even.

  My phone buzzes again:

  Grounded.

  This is a game we play.

  You rly want me stuck in your house with nothing to do?

  I’d nearly typed at home because it’s shorter, but, well, no. It’s not my home.

  Buzz.

  Serious this time.

  Tap.

  Suuure.

  Buzz.

  1 week. No phone.

  Good lord. That’s like saying “No coffee.”

  Tap.

  Ouch.

  Buzz.

  No Dani.

  Ha. I’d like to see him try to stop her. For real, I’d probably pay admission. Dani is a nineteen-year-old mob enforcer. She does exactly what she wants, and no FBI agent, let alone Mike, is going to get in her way. I’m not even sure she would listen to me. In fact, I know she wouldn’t.

  Tap.

  Good luck with that.

  Now he’s calling me. I sigh and tap the Answer button. “Who is this and why do you keep stalking me?”

  “Funny,” he says. “I could consider this a violation of your probation, you know.”

  “Blowing curfew by accident is not grounds for probation violation.”

  “Blowing curfew repeatedly is good enough grounds to try.”

  “If you wouldn’t insist on instituting these silly rules, I wouldn’t be forced to break them.”

  “The point of these ‘silly rules’ is to keep you safe. You know, from vengeance-seeking Ukrainian mobsters.”

  “Spending years up to your neck in a covert government agency has skyrocketed your paranoia. No one’s conspiring to kill me.”

  “Yet,” Mike growls. He’s probably referring to himself rather than Petrov, the mob boss I took down last October.

  “Seriously, Mike, if it were two in the morning, I’d understand. But ten o’clock? Middle schoolers are still out peddling Girl Scout cookies.”

  Mike echoes my earlier sigh. I can see him in my mind’s eye rubbing his bald boulder of a head in agitation. “I don’t want to babysit you. Believe me, I have better things to do with my time. But I can’t follow you around to keep you out of the crosshairs either. I’m responsible for your safety. The ten o’clock curfew is the best compromise I can make.”

  None of this is new territory. Since I moved in with him and Angela, we’ve had multiple arguments about my safety. But if Petrov had wanted to make a move to hurt me, he’d have done it by now. I remind Mike of this, but he shrugs it off.

  “Whether Petrov is out to get you or not, you’d better get your butt back home in the next half hour or I really am grounding you this time.”

  “All right, all right. I’m leaving now,” I say.

  “One more thing,” he says. “I’m leaving town for a couple of weeks. I have a bank robbery assignment in New York.”

  “Bank robbery? Aren’t you in the organized crime division? And anyway, doesn’t New York have its own FBI agents?”

  He pauses. Just a tiny fraction of a pause no one else would notice. But I notice. “It potentially relates to one of my cases here in Chicago, so I’m going to check it out.”

  My gut says he’s holding back. “Anything having to do with me?”

  He chuckles. “It was the pause, wasn’t it? Look, kid, not everything is about you. I’m just worried about leaving you here without somebody to hassle you when you don’t make curfew. I don’t want you to feel alone. I am coming back.”

  Ugh. I hate it when I’m blindsided by sappy crap. Especially when it’s tough-as-a-tire-iron Mike trying to be sensitive to my abandonment issues. Yes, my mom left me when I was eight. Yes, my dad’s now in prison for the remainder of my high school years. That doesn’t mean I’m going to break down when the closest thing I have to a parental unit is going on a business trip.

  “Don’t worry about me, G-man. I’ve got this.”

  “I know,” he says. “Just make sure you keep Angela up to date on where you are.”

  I hang up and quickly email the insurance scammer report and video to the insurance investigator. I’m pulling on my jacket when the tarnished bell hanging over the door rings.

  “We’re closed,” I say as a joke, because I assume it’s Dani checking up on me.

  When there’s no acerbic comment in return, I look up. But it’s not Dani’s black-clad, steel-sharp form standing in the doorway. It’s a woman in her early fifties with chestnut hair and a haggard expression.

  “Can I help you?” I ask.

  Instead of answering, she ducks past me to my desk and collapses into the beat-up chair I keep for clients. I sigh and shrug out of my jacket. I’m going to be late, which means I’m going to get another Mike safety lecture. And he migh
t actually ground me this time. Awesome.

  “Mrs….?” I say, having noticed the plain gold band on her left ring finger.

  “Antolini,” she says.

  The name sounds vaguely familiar, but not enough to raise red flags. “How can I help you, Mrs. Antolini?”

  She takes a tissue from her floral purse. I wait as patiently as possible while she dabs at her eyes and blows her nose. I never try to comfort weeping clients. For one thing, it drags out the crying. For another, it’s just as likely to cause awkwardness as it is to cure it. Most people prefer I just wait it out.

  “My husband was arrested a month ago for misappropriation of government funds. He worked for Lodestar. They do informational architecture for several government programs. If he’s convicted, he’ll remain in the maximum-security prison they’re holding him in for the next eighteen years. I can’t find the money he supposedly stole, so I can’t even get him out on bail.”

  She stops to sniffle. So far, I’m not really hearing anything I can help with.

  “I’m sorry that happened, Mrs. Antolini, but I’m not sure I—”

  “It’s not that I think he’s innocent. I’m not that naive.” She wrings the rapidly disintegrating tissue in her manicured hands. “But I know my husband, Ms. Dupree. I know he’d never have done something like this on his own. They put him up to it.”

  “ ‘They’ who?”

  “The New World Initiative. It’s a cult my husband joined just over a year ago.”

  Well, that’s interesting. I remember now where I heard the name Antolini before. Mike has CNN on twenty-four seven, and I remember overhearing a story about Mr. Antolini’s arrest. I don’t recall the embezzlement angle, but I did hear the New World Initiative mentioned. I noted it at the time, because NWI is a leadership and personal development organization that St. Agatha’s sponsors an internship with. Then I get why Mrs. Antolini is coming to me.

  “You want me to take them down,” I say, crossing my arms.

  “I want justice,” she says quietly.

  And don’t I know what that feels like. When Tyler died, I wanted to tear the world down. It didn’t help at all that the man who pulled the trigger was behind bars. I wanted justice. But there is no such thing as justice when you’ve lost someone. Mrs. Antolini just hasn’t figured that out yet.

  “Fair warning: I only ruin people when I can prove they deserve it.”

  “They deserve it. They used my husband to get money for themselves. All you have to do is find it and you’ll learn the truth.”

  “Find the money?”

  “No,” she says. “The blue fairy.”

  “The blue fairy.”

  I hear the words on repeat as I sit in the chapel of Holy Mother of God Church during my study hall period. I claim matters of spiritual pursuit, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Ulrich doesn’t buy my piety. Luckily for me, the academy bylaws don’t allow him to turn me down. It’s one of the benefits of going to a private Catholic school with its very own campus church. There are disadvantages as well, but right now I’m not complaining. I slouch in the straight-backed wooden pew and prop my ankles on the top of the bench in front of me. Not the most humble of postures perhaps, but I’m not exactly a god-fearing person. God has far bigger fish to fry than me.

  To explain the blue fairy, I have to take you back to the bad old days seven months ago when I took down a Ukrainian mob boss to save about a hundred girls from his human-trafficking ring. It’s a long story that started with my dad, Chicago’s second-best grifter, contracting his forgery skills to Petrov, the Ukrainian mob boss, for a significant sum of money. During the job, my dad found out that the forged documents he was making were being used to smuggle Ukrainian girls into the country. So he tipped off the FBI (enter Mike Ramirez), and subsequently got himself kidnapped.

  But my dad is nothing if not a planner. He knew he was gambling with more than his life trying to save those girls, so he hid a series of clues to keep me safe should anything happen to him. It mostly worked. Well, it helped. Okay, it was a terrible idea, and he should have known it wouldn’t stop me.

  Anyway, the first clue came with a gun. My mother’s gun. On the gun was an inscription: PER A.N.M., LA MIA FATA TURCHINA. For Alessandra Nereza Moretti, my blue fairy. At the time, I had no idea my mom owned a gun. I still don’t know where it came from, why she had it, or why she hadn’t taken it with her when she walked out on us eight years ago. But Alessandra Nereza Moretti was undoubtedly my mother, and the thing in my hand was inarguably a gun, and whoever called her “my blue fairy” was definitely not my dad. I gave the gun to Sam, and as far as I know, he still has it.

  In any case, Mrs. Antolini’s mentioning a blue fairy can’t be a coincidence. Coincidences don’t exist. Somehow the New World Initiative is connected to my mother. The question is, what is the blue fairy and what truth is it going to show me if I find it? That the New World Initiative is a cult? That Mr. Antolini was manipulated into stealing the money? Or that my mother was somehow involved?

  Mrs. Antolini was marvelously unhelpful in providing intel. She had no idea what the blue fairy was—only that the two men in suits who questioned her about it wouldn’t tell her anything else. She couldn’t even tell me what agency the men worked for. Which means that the people looking for the blue fairy are likely not legit lawmen. If they were, they’d have identified themselves.

  “Julep Dupree?”

  A young girl of ambiguous Asian descent is standing in the row in front of me. She looks about twelve, and she must be a recent transfer student, because I’ve never met her before. She does look familiar, though, so I must have seen her wandering around campus.

  “Excellent day for devotion,” I say, gesturing for her to take a seat. “How can I be of service?”

  Skipping study hall is not my only motive for hanging out in the chapel. After Dean Porter—St. Aggie’s dean of students and my personal nemesis—nearly busted me outside the music room last semester, I realized I needed a place on campus to meet potential clients where Porter couldn’t go. Then I found out a couple of months back that, per the strict orders of the school’s president, Sister Rasmussen, the dean doesn’t police the chapel. I’m not sure if that’s Sister Rasmussen’s way of protecting the sanctity of the church or the secrets of one Julep Dupree, but I’ll take it.

  My visitor stares at me for five full seconds without saying anything. I raise an eyebrow and start to tell her she should take a picture, it would last longer, but she moves before I do, taking the seat I’d indicated and staring straight ahead. It’ll make conversation awkward, but I have a feeling that the conversation is going to be awkward anyway.

  “I’m Lily,” she says. Simple enough introduction, but the way she says it is weird—assertive, angry. This girl has some kind of baggage.

  “What can I do for you, Lily?”

  She lowers her gaze to her lap, her glossy black hair swishing over her secrets before I can tease them out.

  “Do you have a job for me?” I prompt.

  “No,” she says forcefully.

  “Then what do you want?” I’m too amused to be annoyed. “You came to me, remember?”

  “I—” She stops and glances over her shoulder at me. “I want to…work for you.”

  I laugh. “You want to what?”

  “I need a job,” she says.

  I roll my eyes at this outrageous lie. She’s clearly well cared for—designer haircut, perfect makeup, professionally pressed St. Aggie’s uniform. She needs a job like she needs a makeover. Which is to say, she doesn’t.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “I don’t hire liars.”

  “Aren’t you a professional liar?”

  “Good point,” I admit. “Still.”

  “Okay, I don’t need a job.” She turns in the pew to face me. “I want a job. Not just a job. I want to work for you.”

  “You can’t join me like you would a country club. I’m not hiring.”

  “I was a resea
rch assistant for one of my teachers at my previous school. I type fast, I don’t charge, and I make a mean caramel macchiato. Can Murphy Donovan make a caramel macchiato?”

  “I don’t have an espresso machine.”

  “I can throw in an espresso machine.”

  “I have no need for an espresso machine.” I stare at her, trying to figure her out. Why is she doing this? “Are you trying to piss off your parents or something?”

  She’s silent for several moments before she answers.

  “No,” she says, finally. “I’m trying to learn.”

  “Learn what? How to pick locks? Spy on people?”

  She’s quiet again, thinking. If she doesn’t give me an answer I like, this conversation is officially over.

  “I’m trying to figure out who I am,” she says softly, the suffering in her voice so apparent that I wince. I know too well what that feels like—not just the pain, but not being able to hide it.

  I have no idea what the right thing here is. Giving her what she’s asking for isn’t necessarily a kindness. I grift partly to keep myself afloat and partly because I don’t know who I am without it. But I’m under no illusions that it’s a good thing to be doing. Sure, I use it to help people now. Since everything went down with the mob, I’m on the Captain America side of the law (well, mostly). But I’m still not really a great person. No one, least of all me, thinks I’m a good influence on young girls.

  Lily must sense that she’s losing me, because she says, “I’m looking for the Julep Dupree who saved a hundred girls from a life worse than death. Is that person still around?”

  Fabulous. One act of brainless idealism, and I am never going to live it down.

  I size her up again. The last time I trusted a classmate, he ratted me out to a mob boss. The last time I trusted a barista, he arrested my best friend and then me. You could say I’m a little gun-shy in the trust department these days. But I have a hard time believing she’s duplicitous. I’m practically gagging on the waves of innocence rolling off her. She couldn’t be an FBI agent, and I can’t imagine her in league with someone like Petrov.