“First, why don’t you tell me a story, Mr…”
“Jones. Brodie Jones.”
“Well, Mr. Jones, why don’t you start by tellin’ me the interesting story behind that cape of yours. A fella don’t run into too many caped men nowadays. It’s mighty refreshin’ to see.”
Brodie’s pleasure was no longer just a show he was putting on to befriend Bill. It became genuine as soon as he began the story of his cape. He loved telling this story and had much practice in doing so, because the wording was almost identical each time he told it: the fortune-teller, the smell of quiche, becoming a caped avenger—it was all there.
Meanwhile, as Bill hung on to every word of Brodie’s tale, Notmie and Melono were growing tired, their feet were beginning to swell, and they could feel their backs stiffen.
“Does he really have to go into every detail?” Notmie hissed, trying to massage his back without rustling the curtain too much.
Melono shrugged. “I asked him that exact question when he was telling it to me, apparently he doesn’t think it’s as compelling unless he gives every detail.”
“What?” Notmie jerked his head toward Melono. “When did he tell you the story? I don’t remember that.”
“Shh. Bill’s going to hear you if you raise your voice at all. Maybe you didn’t hear him tell me the story because you were unconscious when he did it. The world doesn’t stop turning when you’re in a coma, Notmie.”
“Psh, I know that. Hey, speaking of which, what else did y’all talk about when I was unconscious? You said you discovered a lot of things, but you never told me what.”
They fell silent when they heard Bill speak for the first time since Brodie had begun his story.
“Well that there’s an interestin’ story ya got, Mr. Jones. Now I suppose it’s my turn to tell ya a story.”
“Sure seems like it,” Brodie began. “Say Bill, before we start on another, would you mind getting me a cold one?”
Bill chuckled. “That’s my job, ain’t it? What’s your pleasure?”
“Something domestic, I’m not too picky.”
Bill grinned. “That’s my kinda man right there! None of this sissy ‘I gotta have me my special, light, girly-boy import.’ Just a plain and simple attitude of, ‘If it tastes like piss-soaked bread and’ll get me drunk, bring it on!’” Bill exited, his belly laugh resonating through the room even after he was gone.
Notmie and Melono jumped out from behind the curtain.
“Brodie! What do you think you’re doing? You haven’t gotten any important information from him and we’ve been here over half an hour!” Melono scolded.
“Yeah! And how do you expect us to stay here for two nights without being seen?” Notmie asked, looking at Melono for agreement.
She nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “He’s right.”
“Don’t worry,” Brodie soothed, motioning with his hands for them to keep it down. “I’ve got things under control. You can’t rush it or else it won’t work.”
“What won’t work?” Notmie asked.
“My plan.”
Notmie folded his arms impatiently. “And what plan is that?”
“The plan that will get us the information we want.”
“Wait, what information do we want?”
“The information on—”
“Shh!” Notmie interrupted. “Don’t raise your voice, we don’t want Bill to think you’re talking to yourself.”
Brodie lowered his voice and finished. “The information on Sinclair.”
“What exactly are you looking to find out?” Melono asked.
Brodie shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea, but I know there’s got to be something juicy we’re missing because all the pieces look like they should fit, but we’re still missing the pivotal one that pulls them all together. If I can just find one more piece, even if it’s not the last missing one, I have a feeling things will start coming together.”
“Okay, but can you at least try to hurry? Notmie and I aren’t exactly comfortable behind the drapes.”
“I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.” Brodie fell silent and appeared to be deep in thought. But no, he wasn’t deep in thought, he was deep in hearing. A few seconds later, they heard Bill approaching, whistling a simple tune as he came.
“Hurry! Get back behind the drapes!”
Melono looked concernedly at Brodie.
“Don’t worry, Melono, I’ll find out what we need.” Melono didn’t seem convinced, so he added, “Trust me.”
That would have to do—she knew it was the best they could do—and she slipped behind the curtain just as Bill walked through the door.
“Here we are! This stuff is brewed just a few miles south of Tumbleweed. It’s just about as strong as you’ll find in a domestic. Better than the German’s brew, and that’s sayin’ somethin’.” He handed Brodie a bottle.
“Heh, sure is. ’Specially with all the great things Germany has done for humanity in the past century.”
Bill didn’t catch the sarcasm.
“Yep. I’ll drink to that!” He held up his bottle and Brodie did the same, making a mini-toast to the Germans. Both Bill and Brodie took long sips from their drinks, but while Bill’s bottle was getting visibly emptier, Brodie’s didn’t seem to change at all. As Notmie peaked through a small tear in the curtain, he couldn’t help but notice that Brodie even had a twitch in his eye upon tasting the beverage.
“Does Brodie not like beer?” Notmie whispered to Melono.
“Sure doesn’t look like it, does it?” Melono said, peaking through another rip in the fabric.
“So why did he ask Bill for one?”
“No idea.”
Bill took another few sips of his drink before starting up conversation again. “I s’pose it’s my turn to tell you a story now, ain’t it?
“Sure is.”
“Well, what story should I tell ya?”
Melono waited for Brodie to mention something about Sinclair, but it didn’t happen.
“How about what made you want to open a tavern and inn? Certainly that has to be an interesting story.” Brodie took another sip, but still the amount of beer in the bottle didn’t change.
Bill waved off the suggestion. “Naw, it’s not a very interesting story. Just somethin’ to make a livin’, ya know?”
Brodie nodded his head somberly. “I hear that. We all got to make a living.”
Suddenly he went wide-eyed and pointed to the floor behind Bill’s chair.
“Rat! Rat!” Brodie yelled, hopping both feet onto the couch.
“Huh? Where?” Bill whirled around in his chair looking for the rodent, and as he did so, Brodie leaned over to the dead plant sitting on the side table next to the couch and dumped half of his bottle into the dirt.
“Hmm…” he said after resuming his initial position on the couch, “it must have scampered out of sight.”
“Guess so.” Bill looked worried. “But still, we don’t usually have rats around here. This is a clean tavern, if nothing else.”
If this was a clean tavern, Brodie didn’t ever want to see a dirty one.
“Ahh, well maybe I was just seeing things. It might not have been a rat after all. I just saw it out of the corner of my eye, anyway.” He smiled at Bill.
“Maybe you’re right,” Bill said, but he still looked concerned.
“Rats, what strange creatures. Here’s to rats!” Brodie raised his drink.
“I’ll drink to that!” Bill replied and finished off his first bottle.
“Wow, you finished that off quickly,” Brodie said. “I’m almost done with this one, and I could stand a few more, if you don’t mind. Maybe just when you go get yourself another one you could bring me about four more.”
Bill gave a guttural laugh. “Four? That’s admirable. I’ll get ’um for ya right away. I could do with a few more myself.”
Bill stood up and left the room again. As soon as he was gone, Brodie dumped the remai
ning beer into the browned plant.
Melono stuck her head out from behind the curtain. “Can we get on with it? My ankles are starting to swell from standing here for so long!”
“Right. I’m getting to it, so just be patient. Maybe scoot a stool or something back there and sit down,” Brodie suggested. “Soon he’ll be way too intoxicated to even notice a large lump behind the curtain.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Notmie said, jumping out of his hiding place, grabbing a small table from the corner of the room and dragging it behind the curtain.
“Room for two,” he said, patting the table next to where he was sitting.
Melono simply looked at him before turning to Brodie. “You better get him drunk quick, or else he’s most definitely going to notice us back here.” She sighed and sat herself on the bench next to her cousin.
Bill entered the room again, but he wasn’t carrying any beer. Instead, he had a bottle of a different sort in one hand and two shot glasses in the other. Brodie looked at him questioningly and examined the unlabeled bottle.
“It’s a little bit stronger than beer,” Bill said, noticing Brodie’s confusion, “but I figure, hell, everyone’s gonna be socializing at the auction for the rest of the afternoon, so we might as well have ourselves a good time.”
“Heh, sure thing,” Brodie replied, though his mind was only focused on how he was going to get around taking shots. Beer was one thing—no one would notice if you weren’t actually drinking it—but shots would be a bit trickier to pull off.
“Well, I can’t rightly remember where we left off, but why don’t you tell me how you came to be at this auction,” Bill said, pouring a shot for each of them.
“It’s not that great of a story, really. It’s a little bit like your story about how you started this tavern. A man’s got to make a living, so I came to auction off those shirts and make mine.”
“I’ll drink to that!” Bill exclaimed, and downed a shot. He looked up and expected to see Brodie’s glass empty, but it wasn’t.
Brodie avoided eye contact with Bill, examining his shoe instead.
“You ain’t gonna drink to that?” Bill asked.
“What? Naw, that’s nothing to drink to. Who actually wants to have to make a living? Wouldn’t everyone just rather do what they wanted all day long?” Brodie poured Bill another shot.
“Never really thought about that, but, by God, I think you’re right, Mr. Jones!” Bill took his shot.
Brodie just sat there, drink untouched.
“What would you do, Bill, if you didn’t have to make your living?” Brodie looked Bill in the eyes. Yep, they were beginning to glaze.
This guy’s kind of a lightweight for a tavern owner, thought Brodie.
“Well, I–I donno, exactly. I never thought about it. Maybe… but naw, that’s a silly idea.”
“No, what is it?” Brodie asked.
“Well, there was this one time where I was switchin’ channels and picked up this station I ain’t never seen before. It was strange because I just got reception from it for one day, then never again. The station was nothing but”—Bill tried to remember the word—“interpretive dance. Ever since then, I’ve always wanted to put together a good interpretive dance, but I never had the time, and I never knew what to interpret.”
Brodie stared at Bill across the coffee table in disbelief. He thought he might laugh, but something about it was so far from funny that he couldn’t bring himself to.
“Wow,” he finally said, “I’ll drink to that,” and Brodie took his first shot. Bill took another.
And then another.
They sat in silence for a while, until Bill finally spoke. “Why do ’ey call it a peenya coladas iv dere’s no peenya? Pluz, what’s a peenya anyways?”
Clearly, it was becoming safe for Brodie to ask direct questions without causing too much suspicion.
“I don’t know, Bill. So, what sort of stories did your friend Sinclair tell you? I’d like to hear them.”
“I don ’zactly ’member ’em, but I can try and tell ’em iv you really, really, really want.”
“I’d like that.”
“Okay, well there’s this one,” Bill began, seeming to make a conscious effort to move his lips properly so that he could make the sounds he needed. “This was a good ’un. He told me ’bout how his mom would tell him stories ’bout this curse. Naw, I don’t ’member that one after all. But there was this one ’bout a friend of his… I can’t remember if it was a man or a woman, though. Wait, I think it was both… or neither. I can’t ’member much o’ that one either, come to think of it.”
Brodie tried not to let his frustration show. “What stories do you remember?”
Bill furrowed his brow, straining to recall a complete tale. “Well, there was this one I ’member him tellin’. Stuck with me ’cause it was so random. Still ain’t got no idear why he told it.”
“Well,” Brodie prompted, “what was it?”
“More of a proverb, come ta think it. Somethin’ ’bout a man who was walkin’ by a pond one day when he caught a glimpse of himself in tha water. He noticed he was one good-lookin’ fella and decided to keep a-lookin’ till he felt satisfied. Only problem was, the longer he looked, the more he began ta think ’bout the uses o’ his lucky looks. More he thought about that, more he began realizin’ they ain’t no real use ta him. Tha man ended up throwing a rock through his reflection in tha water… all those ripples did somethin’. Somehow that freed him to go on with his life, only this time he didn’t give a lick about his looks. See? It’s a random story, right? For some reason, Sinclair seemed angry ’bout it, like it was the biggest outrage in tha world. Don’t quite know what ta make of it.”
“Was he drunk when he told you this?” Brodie asked.
“ Boy was he!”
Brodie frowned. Not only did he have a difficult time understanding what Bill was saying through his slurred speech, but he also wasn’t sure what to make of this story. The man in it reminded him of Notmie, but Brodie didn’t see how a little bit of pebble tossing would accomplish anything.
“Do you remember why he was staying here? Where was he headed?”
“Said something about Paris. I think he was French. I don’t know why he was going back to Paris, he never said. But he was pretty rich, so I’m sure he can afford to go to Paris all the time. He gave me some money.”
“Payment for staying here?”
“No… well, yes, he paid for that. But he gave me more money.”
“How much more?”
Bill’s eyes seemed to be struggling to stay open.
“Round ’bouts hundred thousand.”
“Dollars?”
“Well ’course it was dollars, whaddaya think I meant?”
Brodie shrugged. “Psh, well certainly one hundred thousand dollars is a lot just to repay an inn keeper for letting him have a room.”
“Well he told me not to use it all for myself,” Bill said, pouring himself another shot. “He gave me special instructions. He told me, he said to me—he looked me in the eyes just like this—he said, ‘Bill, I want you to have this money,’ and he thumped a briefcase on the table and opened it. ‘Bill,” he said to me, ‘Bill, I want you to have this here money, and I want you to take this here money and take it to that there city auction.’ ’Course he was French, so it was more like, ‘Bill, I want you ’ave ziz ’ere money, and I want you to take ziz ’ere money and take it to zat zere city auction.’ But he didn’t say things like ‘that there’ and ‘this here’, ’cause he was all proper and foreign, so he was more like, ‘Bill, do take ziz money I give you and spend it on ze most beautiful item you can lay your ’ands on, you understand; yes; no?’
“So anyway, I liked Sinclair, so I did as he done told me, and I went to that there city auction. I didn’t expect much more than some ol’ crappy dresser, but when I saw this here shirt,”—he shook the Fraud shirt at Brodie—“I done said to myself, ‘Why, that there’s the most beautifu
l thing I ever did lay eyes on, and so it must be the most beautiful thing at the auction.’”
“What about the Liar shirt? The one with rubies, wasn’t that tempting to buy?” Brodie asked.
“Naw, it was nice, but there were two major problems with it.”
“And what were those?”
“Well first of all, it was rubies. Everyone know’d about Dorothy from Oz and her sandals—”
“Slippers,” Brodie corrected, but Bill didn’t catch it.
“And I didn’t wanna be paradin’ ’round in rubies and havin’ the boys thinkin’ I’d gone girly on ’em.” Bill laughed. “Not that rubies alone could make ’em think I was going girly. All the rubies in the world couldn’t convince the boys o’ that, but it could make ’em wonder, ya know?”
Brodie gave a manly grunt. “I hear that! You’re about as manly as they come!”
“Damn straight!”
“And that’s definitely somethin’ to drink to, if I ever heard!” Brodie prompted.
Bill agreed and took a shot, too drunk at this point to notice Brodie wasn’t doing the same.
“So, what was the second reason?”
“Second reason for what?” Bill asked, his eyes trying desperately to focus on Brodie’s face.
“The second reason you didn’t buy the Liar shirt.”
“Oh, well that’s easy! Sinclair told me not to.”
“What? He told you not to? How’d he tell you that?”
“Well, when he said to bid on the perdiest thing I done saw, he also said it wouldn’t say ‘Liar’ on it. If it said that on it, it wasn’t the perdiest.”
“Hmm,” Brodie said, scratching his head, “that seems simple enough. But if you spent fifty-five thousand on the shirt, what are you doing with the other forty-five? You got any big plans?”
Bill nodded. “Thinkin’ ’bout upgrading this place. We need a stage. I donno why, but I think it’d be a nice addition to this little town. We ain’t got a stage, ya see. All’s we gots is that stadium, but that ain’t no good for things like poetry readin’s and interpretive dance.”
“I see. You seem like a sensitive guy, Bill. Very much into the finer things in life,” Brodie commented.
The Fraud Page 23
