Book of Night(83)

But just because people did those things didn’t mean they were good ideas. More like pressing a bruise to check if it still hurt.

Going to bother your ex-boyfriend’s roommate felt a lot like one of those things people did but shouldn’t.

It took a few more calls, but Charlie discovered that Liam Clovin was a resident at Baystate Medical Center. That made getting to him more difficult in some ways and simpler in others. Charlie couldn’t just make an appointment and confront him when he came in to treat her for her bunions, or whatever.

But medical residents are famously exhausted, and exhaustion means limited attention. Liam was going to be concentrating on his job, which meant that he’d have nothing left over to detect a trap before it sprang.

Not only that, but Liam Clovin was on the cusp of all his hard work paying off. He’d sacrificed a lot of wild nights to get where he was, put in the time studying, took out loans. As a medical resident, he was so close to six figures that he must be able to taste them. He had plenty to lose.

Charlie had practically nothing.

There were several ways to waylay medical students, but the simplest was to hang out in the cafeteria around lunchtime. They might have lectures, or other duties keeping them from a particular hour, but if she waited, he’d get hungry eventually.

But to spot him, she was going to have to figure out what he looked like. Her initial searches online were fruitless. No photos of him with other medical residents at Baystate, although she scrolled through official images for the better part of an hour. He didn’t seem to even have a Facebook. Finally, she discovered a picture of him in Remy’s graduating class at NYU. There he was, Liam Clovin, red-haired, squinting against the sun. And not far off, Edmund Vincent Carver, looking straight into the camera.

Charlie pulled out clothes she used for this kind of role. A pale blue turtleneck to cover her tattoos. Her regular jeans. A brown bobbed wig that she could shove her hair under. Neutral makeup.

By the time she’d driven to Baystate Medical Center and parked as far out into the visitor lot as was possible, she’d slid into character.

Inside, she gave her driver’s license to the bored woman at the desk, and when asked, claimed to be meeting a cousin in the cafeteria. That part of the hospital was open to the public, so no one had any follow-up questions.

She asked for directions at the gift shop, her gaze checking for cameras as she went. There were plenty.

The Baystate cafeteria reminded her of the one at the community college where she’d taken two classes in psychology before dropping out and taking a six-week bartending course instead. It had steel counters, no surface that couldn’t be quickly wiped clean. The smells were familiar too—reheated frozen things in gravies thickened with cornstarch, milky chowder, onions, and hazelnut coffee.

Charlie found a table in a corner and waited. After the first half hour went by without incident, she got up and found herself a prepackaged ham with swiss on rye, a coffee, and a water. By the time Charlie returned, someone had snagged her table. She found a new spot, chewed, and checked her phone.

She had an angry—and possibly booze-soaked—message from Adam on her real phone:

you bitch you should have just left us alone. You think that _oreen is I to leave me bacuase of what you said to her then you ha ve another thing comgin. she is as angry at you as I am and amybe more now that I told her the wayt hat you tricked me and stoe what was mine. She tld me everything/ bitch bitch bitch I hoper you die.



She set the cell down on the table, feeling as though it had bitten her. She ought to have seen that the situation was going to go bad once she’d lifted the book. Hell, Suzie Lambton had told her it was going to blow up in her face way before that.

I hoper you die too, fuckknuckle, Charlie thought, and deleted the message.

She was trying to calculate just how much she’d screwed up, when Liam Clovin walked into the cafeteria. He was pale and skinny, with a reddish beard. Since he was a classmate of Edmund’s, she knew he had to be around her age, but the scrubs and facial hair made him seem older.

Because he’d done something with his life. Not like her. Charlie Hall, spending half her time trying to blunt her fangs and the rest of it hunting.

She waited until he’d gotten his food and found a table.

“Hello,” she said, sitting down next to him. “Mind if I sit here?”

Now, some guys think that women con artists have it easy. That all they have to do is show some leg, like Bugs Bunny hitchhiking in drag, and the mark screeches to a halt, tongue lolling.

First of all, that’s not even a little bit true.

And second of all, if a woman decides a low-cut top is necessary, that’s because cons work differently for her. Offer a man a business opportunity and he’s suspicious, not that it’s a con, but that because she’s a woman she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It’s a delicate business, to act clever enough to be taken seriously and still make him feel like he can screw her over.

And if he wants to screw her too, well that’s an even more delicate business.

But while the disadvantages that a woman con artist had were manifold, there were advantages. For instance, women seemed less threatening. If a man had sat down across from Liam, he would have reacted differently. He might not want Charlie there, but he didn’t seem worried she was dangerous.

“No,” he said, annoyed. “I mean, yes, I do mind. I really don’t want compa—”