Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) (19 page)

Ed asked, “Where were you?”

And I said, “Home.”

“I called every day of the week but you never answered.”

“Oh, sorry, I turned the ringer off.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to be woken up and then I forgot to turn it back on.”

He rolled his eyes at my absentmindedness and asked, “Where did you get all these bruises?”

Remembering another accident from months before, I laughed, “I was picking flowers on the side of the road and fell down the embankment.”

“You are so clumsy. Are you alright?”

“Perfectly fine.”

The monkey pot was on the top of the liquor cabinet in the living room. Ed looked at its wide eyes, flared nostrils, and oval mouth. He said, “I see Shawn gave you one of his pots.”

“Mmm,” I agreed.

Shawn was an archeologist that made pots that worried his colleagues. They thought his work could pass as genuine Mayan artifacts and didn’t want them out in circulation. For fun, Shawn had aged a couple of his creations, and while it brought an appreciative grin to his face, it served only to further stress his associates.

I preferred Shawn’s work, but I saw the similarity.

He could have identified the pot, but I tried to protect Ed and our dearest friends from having to make unpleasant ethical decisions. And I didn’t want to wrestle Shawn over a monkey when I had Laura to worry about.

And besides, the pot’s identity was not as interesting to me as getting it to Tony in Atlanta. The Cancun boys would never expect it. The act would leave them mystified for the rest of their lives, and I’d get to spend the rest of mine imagining their befuddlement every time they thought of Willow.

~~~~~~

Peachtree Street sounds lovely but I was in an ugly block of brick and concrete offices. Tony was a financial advisor in one of them and his beautiful secretary didn’t like the look of me. “He won’t see you. He’s not expecting you.”

“You’ve made it more than clear he is a busy man, but if you’d just kindly tell him I have come with a monkey, we’ll let him decide if he has the time.”

She looked at the ball of bubble wrap in my arms and thought less of it than me. Getting to her feet, her smile was forced and her words were sharp with disdain, “Tony is not in the monkey business.”

I couldn’t believe she had actually said it. A person could spend their whole life looking for the opportunity to make that joke, and anyone with a middling of self-respect would still back away from it. I had to ask, “Was that your attempt at a witticism?”

But she wasn’t turning around. She slipped into his office with the door tight around her body lest I see him.

And then moments later, she was leaving and Tony’s voice was loud and defensive, “I don’t know what she’s on about but I want you to send her in here.”

I made a quick review of where I was because if I were at the wrong place, this could get odd.

The secretary wouldn’t even look at me, but the way was clear so I walked through. Tony was standing behind the desk with a red angry face which was made vivid against his pink shirt and tie. He was a big ol’ man that looked on the verge of a heart attack, and he needed to wheeze a breath before bellowing at me, “Shut the door young lady and explain what this is about.”

I was more convinced I had come to the wrong place and started forming a story about a monkey wrench. It was all going to be a misunderstanding about a borrowed tool.

But when I turned around from the closed door, he was smiling excited, asking in a whisper, “Is that the monkey head vase?”

“I’m glad you were expecting it.”

“I wasn’t. No one told me you were coming. Let me see it,” and he was out from behind his desk, hands outstretched to take it.

His fingers were too pudgy to get a proper grip on the tape, so I came tentatively forward offering, “Wait, here, let me,” and laid it bare on his desk.

The only time I had ever looked as enthralled as he did, I was holding the velvet muzzle of a white race horse named Tanya.

The terracotta pot on the desk left me cold, but Tony had a fever for it that made his breath rasp harder than before.

I just couldn’t see it.

I wanted to see it though. I stood motionless studying it until he mistook my waiting as a signal for payment.

“I wasn’t told to expect you. I don’t know what agreement was made for your delivery fee.”

I was at a loss. I couldn’t think of a thing he might have that I would want. I said, “Tell me something unusual.”

“What?”

“Tell me something that will shock me. That’s all. A perfect payment: Shock me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Would you prefer I ask for cash?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. You’re weird, aren’t you? You don’t look it. But you are. Aren’t you?”

“By most standards, yes. But maybe you’re weirder?”

“I fucked a cow once.”

“No, that’s not good enough. I’ve heard that one before.”

“Alright.” He was thinking, looking through the solid wall at the place his secretary sat.

I stopped him, “I’ve probably heard that one, too. I’m going to need you to think beyond the flesh.”

“Okay, I’ve got something for you. It has to do with the flesh, but not, you know …” he pointed at his pants.

I nodded.

Pulling his brows together, he went looking for the memory and the way to say it. I had been hoping for something vaguely funny, but I could see from his expression that wasn’t the direction we were going. “I have never told this to anyone.”

I nodded again and waited solemnly.

He appeared a little nauseous and had to swallow. “I was raised by a real son-of-a-bitch. Not my daddy but his. A real piece of work, hand-carved by the devil out of spite. He’d take a belt or a switch to anything he could catch. Thought the whole world was going to hell and he alone stood between it and damnation. He’d beat me for no reason except it was Sunday, always telling me, ‘Those with a forked tongue go to the devil.’”

So far his story was much the same as I’d heard countless times before. Brutal child abuse was common in the South, spanning generations so that it seemed everyone I knew had either been whipped with a belt or beaten with a hair brush. My sister and I were the exception. From a very early age, I knew my parent’s Northern sanity was something to be cherished.

But Tony didn’t have such luck. His accent was Old South. He said of his grandfather, “Bastard always thought I was lying, and if my memaw tried to defend me, he thought she was lying, too, so he’d beat us both. Well, that old bastard died of a stroke. I can’t say that I was sad except to see memaw cry. She was a true Christian. She was an angel. When it was her turn, she’d be going to heaven. And I wasn’t going to have that bastard up there with her.”

Seemed reasonable to me, so I smiled encouragement.

“‘Those with a forked tongue go to the devil,’ that’s what he always said. He was laid out all proper at the funeral home and I came prepared. I had a carpet cutter and a pair of pliers and I was going to send him to hell.”

I didn’t so much laugh as have all the air constricted out of me by surprise.

Seeing that I understood, Tony nodded, “Yeah. But I thought his mouth would just pop open and I’d pull his tongue out easy as pie. But his lips were sealed. Just clamped tight. Fighting me, I thought. Then I saw the stitches. Someone had sewn his mouth shut. Probably to keep the bastard from speaking while they dressed his sorry ass. So, I was using the carpet cutter to get in there, and I was making a hell of a mess. Just sliced his lips from one side to the other and still didn’t get those stitches. So I had to go at it again.”

My own mouth was open and my eyes were wide.

“Every cut I made just opened his lips up like a flower spreading its petals. And then bits started coming loose. I tried to hold them in place but by the time I got his mouth open, I’d near enough removed all his lips.
Hoowee
, I tell you, it was a sight.”

I nodded, imagining it would have been.

“I got his tongue out and forked it down the middle as I intended, but it wasn’t going back in. It was just sort of sticking up out of… It was all,” Tony waggled his fingers over his mouth, “all bare teeth. Didn’t have any lips.”

I grimaced understanding.

“Aw buddy, I tell you, I started panicking. I was trying to shove it back into his mouth but his jaw just opened wider and the tongue wasn’t going away. And like right then, just all of a sudden, I saw him. What he looked like. No lips and all teeth and forked tongue. Flipped me straight out. I started crying and ran into the parking lot to hide.”

Now he was quiet so I had to ask, “And then? I mean… who found him?”

“I don’t know,” he sounded haunted. “I didn’t go back in there.”

Now I did laugh.

“Do you think I’m going to hell for that?”

I laughed again. “No, you’re not going to hell for that.” And when he looked doubtful, “I promise, that is not hell worthy,” but I was only trying to make him feel better. 

“Was that shocking?”

“Yeah,” I took a breath, “that was a little shocking.”

“I’ve never told that to anyone. It’s a goddamn Monday and I just told a perfect stranger that I cut the lips off my dead grandfather trying to get at his tongue. Fucking hell, I don’t even know your name.”

“I can’t imagine that’s going to help anything.”

“Still, I’d like to know. Hell, I just told you I mutilated a corpse.”

“So you did. Okay, it’s Tanya. Your friends know me as Willow, but my real name is Tanya. But that didn’t change a thing, now did it?”

“No, it didn’t. You’re right. Your name doesn’t make one lick of difference.”

~~~~~~

As Miguel had instructed, I called him after the monkey had been delivered. When he answered, I asked, “Miguel?”

“Is Miguel.”

“It’s Willow.”

There was silence and then a quick burst of Spanish and then, “Don’t hang up.”

“I don’t imagine I’d call just to hang up on you.”

“Don’t hang up. You, Willow, don’t hang up the telephone.”

I was laughing through his panic. Then, “Tony has the baby,” and laughed again at how code that sounded.

“The baby?”

“The monkey baby.”

“Tony has?”

“Yes.” And when he didn’t speak, I added, “I thought you should know, in case, oh, I don’t know, he did something dodgy.”

“Dodgy?”

“Crazy or wrong.”

“
You
think
he
is crazy?”

“Well, I happen to know he is. But anyway, the Carmen Ghia is at the Merida airport.”

“Yes, I know this.”

“I messed it up. Sorry about that.”

“No problem. How you destroy the car, I don’t understand, but it’s no problem.”

I heard him breathing and didn’t imagine there was anything else to say. “Well, I just thought you should know. I’ll be going.”

“No, don’t hang up. The baby is where I tell you to go?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” I was hanging up the phone hearing a stream of flummoxed Spanish and the question again, “¿Por qué? Why?”

There was a four thousand dollar refrigerator in the kitchen, sapphires on my fingers, and a Mustang convertible in the backyard. Ed saw none of it.

The front gardens had just been landscaped, the kitchen retiled, and I’d taken a sudden liking to black leather furniture. Ed didn’t question it.

He had a new wardrobe, I had a new wardrobe, and the cat had a jeweled collar. But it meant nothing to Ed.

His friends saw it though. They pushed him to ask. “I mean really, man, what is she doing? How does she afford it?”

Ed said, “She is really good with money.”

His friends stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief.

He asked me later, “You wouldn’t spend three hundred dollars on a pair of jeans, would you?”

“Of course not. That’s ridiculous.”

Ed went back to his friends and defended me, “No, she’s not doing anything.”

For nearly two years, he was blind to it all. He’d wake up at 2:00 a.m. to find me gone, and then hear me return with the sun. I’d say, “I was possessed to buy chocolate,” or pencils, or bullets, “and ran into a friend.” And he’d always believe me.

He had asked only once, “Are you seeing someone?”

And I told the truth, “No, sex is your weakness, not mine.” It was all there in my answer, but he had forgotten what my weakness was.

He saw none of the overt evidence, but he spotted the paper-thin edge of a manila envelope wedged between the reference books on the bottom shelf of my bookcase.

He walked with it into the living room where I was reading and asked, “Why do you have all these birth certificates?”

I was staring stupid at the envelope wondering,
How
? How did he see that but not the extravagant wool rug under his feet? I looked into his face. He knew what he’d found, but he wanted to believe that he had caught it early.

He was so utterly clueless.

For two years he hadn’t heard a thing I’d said. He’d listened to none of my warnings or the warnings of his friends. He was indifferent to my pleading and patronized my tears. He lived in the woods with no passion for me or our life.

And now he wanted answers, but he didn’t know where he was standing. I could see it all clearly though. I knew exactly where this confrontation placed us.

We were on the precipice and freedom was at the bottom of the cliff.

I should have been able to string something together and talk my way clear of it, but he was so earnest and hurt and confounded, and I was genuinely sick of lying to him.

He fanned through the documents asking, “Who are these people?”

There was no explanation he was going to like, so I looked away.

“What have you been doing?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“How long have you been doing this?”

But I wasn’t saying.

He took a week’s leave to tear apart the house. He was looking for the little things, the hidden things, but my other secrets were buried.

He called his friends to ask what they knew. They knew very little but they suspected a lot. He spent hours on the phone looking ashen and weak.

When he finally thought he’d pieced it all together and fully understood, he hid the car keys and locked the doors. Then he turned into the dread inquisitor with only one question, “What have you been doing?”

For five days, I didn’t get three feet from him, couldn’t take a shower, read a book, or walk a straight line through the house without dodging him and the question, “What have you been doing?”

He’d wake me up to ask again and again, “What have you been doing?”

But I wasn’t saying.

I was looking over the cliff, wondering what freedom would be like.

There were so many things I wanted to do. I was a con artist with a mind full of schemes. I had been willing to give up my illicit desires while my love for Ed was pleasant, but now that it was painful, it seemed pointless, and it was also just simply in the way. I wanted to be rid of it.

Ed asked, “What have you been doing?”

And I almost said, but the truth was too much. What had I been doing? Oh my god, what had I
not
been doing? I didn’t think he could handle it.

He asked again and again. For five days we didn’t leave the house. We spoke with no one. He just asked over and over, “What have you been doing?”

It was an interrogation that had turned into torture until finally he offered, “We’ll go for a ride,” as though it would be a break from the oppression. But once behind the wheel, he had a moment of insanity, driving like when we had first met, racing through the curves at a hundred, demanding, “What have you been doing?”

But I still wasn’t saying, so he ripped through the airport gate to bury the speedometer in a race down the runway, shouting, “Is this what you want? You want fear? You want excitement? You want me to scare you?”

Yes, yes, and yes, and it earned him the truth. “I wish you had cared so much a year ago, but it’s far too late to court me back now.”