Down to the Liar(12)

My gut says he’s telling the truth, but then, my gut has been wrong before. Like Mike, for example—my gut was all kinds of wrong about him. Guts are notoriously unreliable, and every good con artist takes his gut feeling with a grain of salt. But a grifter is, by nature, a gut-follower, and after all, there is no such thing as a safe bet.

“Murphy’s already scanned every device I own,” he continues. “What else can I do to prove it to you?”

I pull out my phone and swipe through a few screens to bring up my case notes. “You can alibi out.”

“How?”

“Prove to me that you were nowhere near an electronic device at eight-thirteen last Tuesday night, or seven-thirty-four the Saturday night before that, or—”

As I watch, I get Facebook notifications that the abusive accounts are posting more vitriol against Skyla.

“What the—?”

Carter crosses his arms. “Even if I could prove I was swimming the English Channel Tuesday night, I could have easily scheduled those posts ahead of time.”

I give him a sour look. “So much for alibi-ing out.”

“Look, I don’t mind being a suspect.”

“Mark.”

“Whatever, I don’t care. I just want you to catch whoever it is and make them wish they were never born. So as long as you don’t rule out everyone else, I’m fine with it. Investigate me all you want.”

“It is not him,” Dani says, coming up from behind Carter.

Carter yelps in surprise and turns too quickly, smacking into the wall.

“H-how did you get into my house?” he splutters.

“Through your bathroom window. You will need a new screen, by the way.”

Carter gapes at her. “I changed my mind. I don’t want you investigating me.”

“What do you mean, it’s not him?” I ask Dani.

She hands me a sketchbook flipped open to about halfway through. Carter makes a grab for it, but Dani blocks him with a warning look. She gets antsy when people move too fast.

The sketchbook shows panel after panel of graphic-style storyboarding. It’s actually not bad. It’s not Marvel quality, but it’s not bad. More to the point, it shows a more dashing version of Carter ninja-slashing through a horde of masked invaders and saving the damsel in distress—the damsel being a pretty faithful rendering of Skyla.

“This isn’t proof,” I tell her, handing the sketchbook back to a mortified Carter.

She raises an eyebrow at me. The eyebrow says, Oh, please—any child could tell he’s not involved. Stop wasting time.

“Fine.” I relent in a huff. To Carter, I say, “But you’d better not leave town.”

When I realize how coplike I sound, I make a face. Dani’s lips tilt up at the corner, which is her way of busting up laughing. I give her a dirty look, but it doesn’t make her stop.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?” She opens the door for me. We both ignore Carter.

I sigh. “I guess it’s down to the wire.”

—

Dani drops me off at the Ballou so I can get my stuff. She offered to drive me home after, but I’ve still got an hour till curfew and I want to do some strategizing before heading back to Mike’s house.

I drop into the comfy, thrift-store-fabulous armchair I usually reserve for clients and prop my feet on my desk. The wire. As if this job weren’t bad enough already.

The wire game (for those of you following along at home) is about convincing a mark you can guarantee he’ll win the lottery as long as he pays you for the ticket, rather than buying it like he normally would.

In the telegraph days, when small delays between events and reporting of those events were common, cons would set up fake betting parlors and trick a mark into plunking down all his money on a racehorse they said they knew in advance would win, when in fact, they knew the horse would lose. The mark would bet big money on the “sure thing” only to forfeit all that money to the cons when the “winning” horse actually lost. The cons running the scam would then split the cash and move on.

The beauty of the scam is that the mark can’t go to the cops without admitting he was trying to place an illegal bet. It’s a neat little trick that’s netted a lot of people some easy money. But it’s not without its drawbacks.

For one thing, it requires a lot of people to pull it off—people who can turn on you, mess up their parts, or just plain not show up. Marks are easy to lead. Associates are not.