The Fraud

by H. Claire Taylor

  “Was that… intentional?” he asked.

  Sinclair grinned. He would have answered the question, but before he had a chance, Melono turned her sharp gaze from Sinclair to Captain Alex. “Alex, you ass, did you really come here to pay Sinclair compliments, or did you come here to help?”

  Melono had a point. “Well, what do I do?” he asked, desperate for her guidance.

  “Oh gee, I don’t know, maybe come untie us?”

  “ Bad suggestion! ” blurted Sinclair. He grabbed a large cantaloupe from the same assortment of fruit and threw it at Melono, hitting her in the chest and knocking the wind out of her.

  While Notmie’s punishment had been astonishing, The Captain found Melono’s to be nothing short of cold-blooded. Seeing her tied to a chair, hunched over and gasping for air was too much for him to take lying down. Seething, he walked toward Sinclair, gripping the neck of the wine bottle menacingly in his fist.

  But Sinclair wasn’t fazed. As Captain Alex got within a few yards of him, Sinclair snapped his fingers. Bad guys snapping their fingers is never a good sign; The Captain knew this from experience. The last time someone had snapped like that, he had woken up a week later in the hospital with yellowed bruises and a tattered cape draped over the end of his bed. From that experience he’d learned two things: first, bad guys snapping their fingers is never a good sign, and second, if you want to take on one fairy at a renaissance festival (who wouldn’t recognize a badass costume cape if her life depended on it, apparently), you have to take on all her fairy friends, and some of them are mean, bulky dudes.

  As soon as the sound waves traversed the distance between Sinclair’s fingers and Captain Alex’s ears, The Captain froze, his eyes widening. He heard a shuffle of feet to his left, then to his right, then a few more to his left. As he looked, he saw roughly ten people emerge from behind the draped fabric around the room.

  Hmm, he thought, this is probably going to complicate the situation for me…

  But certainly a man of action would have rejoiced at these odds, thrilled to be provided with the opportunity to take so much action. However, Captain Alex was already getting sick of being a man of action. Men of action probably got their butts kicked daily, anyway. Even still, he had to do something to help Melono. She was a damsel in distress… but mostly he knew that if he didn’t help her and she happened to escape by other means, she’d likely kick his ass for his inaction.

  Sinclair seemed to be having a grand time, laughing heartily at Captain Alex’s expense.

  “Per’aps I should introduce you to my friends. Zis is Francis” —the man Sinclair pointed to had jagged features and was generally the roughest looking beret-wearing man Alex had ever laid eyes on. Francis went and stood behind Sinclair—“and zis is my niece Camille,” Sinclair continued, pointing to a pretty, petite girl around Notmie, Melono, and Captain Alex’s age who stepped out from behind the drape and went to stand sheepishly and subserviently behind Melono’s chair.

  “Oh please, Sinclair,” Captain Alex said, “spare me the false courtesy.”

  Such a defiant statement broke Sinclair’s façade for only a moment before he snapped back to a smile.

  “Please, do ’ave a seat and chat wiz me for a time.” Sinclair motioned across from himself to an orange chair shaped like a giant hand.

  The Captain wasn’t keen on having a giant hand groping his butt. “And what if I don’t feel like ’ aving a chat with you? What are you going to do, get your friend Francis to hit me with a mango? Or maybe vegetables are his weapon of choice, in which case perhaps he’ll just beat me with a celery stick.”

  Sinclair’s face remained stern. “No, no vegetables I am afraid,” he said, “unless you count guns as a vegetable.”

  Captain Alex’s bravery quickly imploded in his chest, leaving a stabbing pain in its place.

  “Cap’n!” Notmie yelped. “Guns aren’t a vegetable! You better sit down.”

  The Captain barely heard him. He was too busy staring at Sinclair, trying to size him up.

  “I think you’re bluffing. You don’t have guns. I think all you have is fruit”—he motioned to the bowl—“and more fruit”—he motioned to the guards positioned around the room.

  Sinclair said nothing, but snapped his fingers again, and immediately the sound of guns being unholstered echoed off the walls. Captain Alex soon saw that every French person in the room, except for himself and Sinclair, was wielding a very, very large gun.

  Sinclair grinned maliciously. “You will sit and talk now; yes, no?”

  “I don’t see why not,” The Captain said, changing his tone to a far more polite one and taking a seat in the giant, groping hand.

  Sinclair folded his hands loosely in his lap and relaxed, and why not, considering all the firepower that was backing up his every command.

  “You ’ave ze money; yes, no?”

  “You mean the money you paid Bill and the other guy to buy the shirts?” asked The Captain. “Yeah, I have that. Here’s ninety-five thousand in checks and there’s another five thousand in cash that’s out in the limo. I would have written you a check myself, but I knew you wouldn’t trust it.”

  “You’re right, I would not ’ave. So, Bill told you about ze money I gave ’im?”

  “It’s amazing what people will tell you if you get them drunk enough.”

  Sinclair grinned. “Indeed. And speaking of drink, I see you ’ave somezing quite tasty and rare in your ’and. Is zat a present for me?”

  If ever there was a situation where it seemed like the “right time” to crack open this bottle of vintage Champagne, this opportunity for a possible peace offering had to be it. But the anger and resentment that Captain Alex felt for Sinclair, his cronies, and everything French, including the wine, kept him from thinking along those logical lines. Instead of handing over the bottle, The Captain reached inside his shirt pocket, pulled out the checks, and handed them to Sinclair.

  Sinclair accepted the checks without any further inquiries about the wine. “I suppose you will want to see your friends Mae and ’Al now; yes, no?”

  “I’m going to go with ‘no’ on this one,” Captain Alex replied.

  Sinclair obviously hadn’t been expecting that. “Well… good, because you don’t get zem!” he said. “Plus, zey are not even ’ere!”

  “I figured that much.”

  “You… you did? But ’ow?”

  Captain Alex scoffed. It was an impressive scoff for how scared he was feeling.

  “You think you’re smart just because you’re French, but you have no clue, do you? Guess what, I’m French too, but I guess you already knew that because you’ve been following the line of Phil so closely for so long. What are you anyway, some kind of freaky stalker?”

  “Enough!” Sinclair demanded.

  “Sicko.”

  Sinclair began throwing a mini-tantrum, stomping his foot on the floor and pounding his fists on his knees. “Shut up! Shut up! Why is it zat you are not shutting up?”

  “I’ll shut up if you explain to me what’s going on around here. Everything.” Captain Alex’s heart was racing, but he knew he knew Sinclair’s tantrum boded well for him, so long as it didn’t build too much and result in a bunch of guns being fired. “I want to know the whole story. It better be good, and it better have a damn good reason of why you hit Melono in the chest with a cantaloupe!”

  “What about me!” Notmie asked.

  The Captain sighed. “Oh, right. And I guess it wouldn’t hurt if you explained why it was necessary to chunk a citrus at Notmie.”

  “You do not really care about zat last question, so I’ll disregard it for ze time being.”

  Captain Alex shrugged his shoulders lightly and allowed Sinclair to keep talking.

  “Now, while you ’ave shut up, I am ’appy, so I shall ’umor you by giving you a few facts zat you may find are of interest before I kill your friends.” Notmie let out a slight whimper. “Ahh, I see you did not expect zis. Perhaps you, Mr. Jon
es, are wondering why I do not just kill you, too; yes, no? Well, if you sit quietly for just some time longer, it will all be explained. I believe you will find my explanation quite satisfactory, if not intriguing.”

  “Actually, Monsieur Pontier, I already know why you won’t kill me. Oh yes, I know. You need me to stay alive to maintain your sick little scheme. If I die, the curse is broken.”

  “Zat is correct.”

  Sinclair and The Captain stared at each other as Sinclair wondered what else The Captain knew and acted like he wasn’t worried about The Captain knowing what he knew, and The Captain was trying to act like he knew more than Sinclair thought he knew. It was all very convoluted, but so are most stare-offs.

  Sinclair was the first to break the silence.

  “If you zink zat anything you ’ave done zus far ’as been unknown to us, you are quite mistaken,” he said, smiling. “In fact, everyzing you ’ave done ’as been laid out before you. I see you are surprised by zis, Mr. Jones, but zis doesn’t seem like news to your lady friend’s ears.”

  Captain Alex looked over to Melono. She kept her gaze on Sinclair as her head gave the tiniest nod. The Captain whipped his head back toward Sinclair, indignant about his own uninformed position.

  Captain Alex addressed Sinclair harshly. “What do you mean by ‘laid out before you?’ What does that mean? I think you’re full of it!”

  “Now, now, is zat ’ow you speak to someone who ’as a dozen guns covering ’is back? And to clarify, when I say ‘laid out before you’ I simply mean zat everywhere you’ve gone, every decision you’ve made, ’as been influenced by factors outside yourself—us, in particular—if you realize it or not.”

  “Since when? Since Notmie hit me with his car? You couldn’t possibly have planned that!”

  Sinclair grinned and fiddled with his mustache. “Indeed, zat was one of the few things we did not plan, but it does not mean we didn’t know it would ’appen. It was worrisome at first, but luckily we ’ad a contingency plan in case something like zis ’appened.” His voice trailed off.

  “Something like what?”

  “Something where ze two families met. We’d kept tabs on everyone, and wiz complete success up to zat point. ’Ad zat little encounter never ’appened, you zree would not be ’ere. But our contingency plan worked for ze most part. Our only mistake was underestimating Notmie.”

  Melono couldn’t help but laugh. “You underestimated Notmie? How stupid are you?”

  Sinclair snatched a kiwi from the bowl of fruit and reared back, ready to throw. But he stopped before he let go. He looked at the kiwi, frowned and set it back carefully in the bowl.

  “You’re one lucky girl, Melono. If I didn’t ’appen to really love kiwi and mourn ze slightest mistreatment of zem, zis fruit would ’ave left a nice lump on your forehead. Let zis be a warning to you for what I will do if you speak anozer word.”

  Melono rolled her eyes at the threat, but fell silent.

  “Roll your eyes all you want, Mademoiselle Finkle,”—he spoke the name with complete disdain for the awkward and generally un-French sound of it—“but remember, you and your brainless cousin are dispensable to me.”

  “How did you underestimate Notmie?” Captain Alex asked, trying to redirect the anger that was focused on Melono.

  Sinclair easily transitioned back to his explanations, seeming to delight in the opportunity to explain his genius plans. “We’d watched ’im grow up and ’ad never zought ’im capable of realizing ze drawbacks to ze curse. ’Is display at ze family reunion was a surprise to us all. Indeed, we’d been led to believe we knew everyzing zat was going to ’appen, but we were mistaken. We’d never counted on ’im stealing a limo or even ’aving ze slightest desire to break ze curse and zerefore end ’is reign of unearzly beauty. As soon as ’ee ’ad left ze reunion, we knew we’d make a grave error in judgment, but like I said, we ’ad a contingency plan.”

  “And what was that?”

  “We ’ave connections.”

  Part 26

  Cormac McCormac

  “Oooo, that’s so scary,” said Captain Alex sarcastically, waving his hands around dramatically.

  Sinclair remained unfazed. “But ’ave you not realized of ’oom I am speaking?”

  Captain Alex didn’t speak or move. Then it hit him.

  Larry.

  Sinclair misinterpreted the silence as that of cluelessness rather than dawning comprehension.

  “Ahh, well I wouldn’t expect you to. You see, Notmie isn’t ze only one we’ve been watching. We know quite a bit about your brain capacity—or lack zere of—as well. We know ze story of ze cape, we know about ze International Convention for Caped Avengers you were traveling to when Notmie ’it you wiz ze limo, and we know about your parents… and zeir demise.”

  It took all the self-control Captain Alex could muster to keep from leaping out of his chair to try to wrap his hands around Sinclair’s throat. Somehow he managed to settle on using harsh words instead. “Of course you do, you French bastard. You ugly, ugly… hideous… unattractive…. You were the ones who killed them!”

  He rocked his head side to side noncommittally. “Technically, no,” he said. “It wasn’t any of us in zis room ’oo sat zere and watched your parents die, but you are correct in ze connection you’ve made; it was our group ’oo was responsible for zeir murder.”

  Captain Alex disregarded strategy for a moment, only wanting to get some answers for his own selfish reasons. “Why? What was so important that you would be willing to kill innocent people for it?”

  “You’ve already seen it. You already know ze answer to zat question.”

  Captain Alex scoffed. “You mean the family trees? Ha! You think that justifies murder? You’re crazy. Psychotic!”

  “You ’ave not realized why we needed ze trees. You ’ave not even asked. No matter, I will tell you anyway. We ’ad been able to track most of ze line of Baron up until zat point, but zere were always zose few ’oo escaped our attention. People we don’t know exist can ’ardly be of any use to us; yes, no? We estimated zat ze family tree would increase our profit by fifty percent, but as it turns out, we were wrong; it increased our profit by one ’undred percent!

  “I can see it in your eyes zat you’ve been wanting ze answer to zis question for quite some time, Mr. Jones, but some people are just not so good wiz words, as we all saw during your conversation with Melono in Larry’s living room.”

  Captain Alex turned fuchsia. “How did you know about…”

  “Do you still ’ave zose feelings for Melono? Is zat why you turned ze same shade of red when I fruited ’er? Does she still feel ze same sort of apazy for you as she confessed on zat day? Let us find out.” Sinclair motioned for Francis to step forward. He aimed the gun at Melono’s thigh.

  “A shot in ze leg won’t kill ’er… but zen again it might. Arteries are fickle zings, you never know when zey’ll rupture and zen”—Sinclair snapped again and Francis cocked the gun—“oops! Dead.”

  Captain Alex tried to meet Melono’s eyes, but they were closed as she held her breath, waiting for the shot to be fired. He couldn’t take it.

  “ What do you want? ” he screamed. “ Why are you doing this? ”

  Sinclair flicked his wrist in Melono’s direction and Francis aimed his gun at the ground then returned to stand behind Sinclair.

  “What do I want?” His gaze was intense now, boring into Captain Alex’s eyes as he finally got to the point. “I want you zree to forget about ze curse. I want you to go your separate ways and stop your curse-breaking quest. It will lead nowhere. Zere is only one way to break ze curse, and as you zree ’ave realized, it involves killing all of one family. Zere are far too many people in Notmie and Melono’s bloodline to kill zem all, and we wouldn’t want to eizer. You, ’owever, are the last of your line. But you seemed to ’ave already figured zat out.”

  A conversation Captain Alex had had with his mother years and years ago began to cloud his mind. At the tim
e, the conversation hadn’t meant much, but now he finally understood the hidden significance of it. Surely his mother must have known about the curse and that it was still very much alive and real. Her genealogy must have led her to realize that Alex was the last of the bloodline. But why didn’t she ever explain any of it to The Captain? Maybe she thought he was still too young. Perhaps she’d just never had the chance.

  “Ma,” an eleven-year-old Brodie Alexander Jones had asked, “why don’t I have any other siblings?”

  His mother smiled and replied, “Because you’re good enough. We don’t need any other kids because we have you. I was an only child, too. Sometimes it gets lonely, but you’ll never have to share a bathroom.”

  Brodie laughed. He’d shared a bathroom with his father’s sister for a whole month while she tried to “get on her feet again” and it was one of the worst experiences of his life. Not only had he walked in on her twice, leading to an impromptu anatomy lesson, but she’d often left her dirty laundry on the floor. The last thing any eleven-year-old boy wants to find in his bathroom is dirty lingerie in a size XXL.

  He’d always thought back on his mother’s words and seen them as her normal pampering of his ego, but now he realized there was more to them. Was he the only child because she knew it would keep him safe? Did his mother know the French were watching? Did she know this was the only way to insure he was protected? Did she know she wouldn’t be around much longer to protect him herself?

  “Why are you protecting the curse?” Captain Alex finally asked Sinclair.

  “I would like to say it’s somezing valiant like true love or a greater good, but alas, ze reason is ze same as everyzing: money and power.”

  “Now, you see,” The Captain began, cocking his head to the side and rubbing his hand absentmindedly over his bald spot, “money and power aren’t motivation for everyone, so let’s just pretend I don’t know what you mean. Explain it to me so that, say, even Notmie could understand.”