The Real Deal

“Thank you for sharing all that. I’m glad you were honest with me. And even though I’m on a man diet, I’m glad you’re the one who broke it with that kiss,” she says with a sweet lift of her lips.

“Me, too.” I want to kiss her again, all day long. All of a sudden, all my reasons for not kissing her seem unimportant. They seem meaningless when I look at her, with her hair a wild tangle from my hands, her eyes inviting.

But then, a familiar ring sounds from my pocket. Force of habit kicks in, and I grab my phone. It’s Heath.

I answer instantly. “Hey, there.”

“Hey, little shit,” he says, and I cover the mouthpiece and tell April, “My brother.”

“You got a minute?” he says to me.

“Yeah, give me a second.” I turn to April. “I’ll be fast.”

She shoos me along. “Talk to him. Meet me back at the house?”

“You sure?” I whisper.

She nods. “Absolutely. You can find it? It’s only a couple blocks away.”

I salute her. “I can find it.”

She gives me a faint wave, and I turn the other way, pressing the phone to my ear. “Hey, what’s up?”

“What’s up with you, man?”

His voice is deep and rough. It’s sandpaper and grit. “Just finished some work, and I took a break to play a new game on the Xbox, but it bored me.”

“Ah, so I’m the recipient of your boredom? Or Lacey is out?”

He laughs as I wander slowly up the block. “Lacey’s working, but I have some work, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Your big brother isn’t such a screw-up. I’ve picked up work here and there. I have some new clients.”

“I never thought you were a screw-up.”

He laughs dismissively. “You know better than anyone that I was. You don’t go to prison for eighteen months without being one.”

“It was ridiculous that you went.”

“I deserved to be there. But I also deserve to be out.”

“No doubt. What sort of work are you getting, Heath?” I ask, my throat crawling with nerves. It better not be the kind of work that put him behind bars in the first place.

Heath went to the pen for fraud. He ran some shady online scams, and the one that earned him a two-year felony conviction that was shortened to one year and six months was a pump-and-dump stock scam.

“I told you last time I’m expanding my computer work,” he says.

I groan as I reach the end of the block. In the distance, a boat’s horn bleats.

“Heath,” I say, like a warning, “you’re not doing that again, are you?”

“Straight and narrow, baby. Just like you, right?”

“You know I’ve been good since County.”

“That was the real bullshit that you went. I wish I could have stopped you.”

“Nothing could have, right? Besides, you were out of town with Addison.”

“Don’t mention her name.”

My shoulders tighten. “Why? Has she called you?”

“No. Because I try to put her out of my mind.” A door creaks open on his side of the call. “Ooh, Lacey’s home.”

Lacey was always the one for him. He’d give up everything for her. He’d run to her. He’d turn to her. I just wish I knew if he went straight for her, too. I want to believe him.

“Tell Lacey hi from me.”

“Hey, handsome!” she says, shouting from nearby into the phone.

“Somehow I’ll see you soon. Miss you, you little bastard,” Heath says.

“Miss you, too, dickhead,” I say with nothing but great affection for the person who, for all intents and purposes, raised me once our parents were gone. I love him like crazy.

He’s my family. My only family. He stayed by my side. He didn’t put a bullet in his head when our parents died.





Chapter Twenty-three

Theo

Arm wrestling was only the start.

After Heath and I learned we could con college guys out of dough, we put our enterprising teenage brains together and tried to figure out whom to trick next.

We weren’t targeting anyone in particular. We were targeting our pasts, we were aiming for our future. Heath was pissed we had to leave Boston to move in with our aunt. He was in love with his high school girlfriend, and he hated leaving Lacey behind to live with someone we barely knew. Our aunt didn’t care what we did. She was so loopy on pain meds and chasing down more Vicodin that the two wayward charges sent to live with her meant little. We were nothing but trouble, and we had jack shit.

When someone kills himself, life insurance doesn’t often pay out. I don’t know if my father knew this little loophole or not. His policy was only a year old, so even if it would have paid off later, it didn’t matter. It didn’t pay then. We had no money for college. We had no money to live. It was sink or swim, do or die. In retrospect, we could have tried to win jobs at a grocery store, a gas station, a pizza place. Carved out a niche as upstanding young citizens, teenagers earning minimum wage.

We didn’t want minimum wage. We wanted what our mom wanted for us.

“Go to college. Challenge your mind. Earn a degree,” she’d said.

We chose the fastest path we could devise to get from point A to point B.

We were troubadours of the Jersey boardwalks, fashioning ourselves into modern-day fraud-preneurs.

First, we were quick-change artists, tricking gas station registers in a grift that we played all year long. It’s simple, and like a magic trick, it relies on sleight of hand and confusing the mark. I’d pay for a pack of gum with a ten-dollar bill, get back nine ones and change, and then tell the clerk I had a one-dollar bill, and exchange ten ones for a ten. I’d make more change, and do it so quickly, the clerk would get flustered to the point where I’d swapped ten dollars for twenty. The key was having several change transactions running at once, and that’s how we stayed ahead of the clerks.

We had speed and confidence on our side, and that was honestly all we needed to rack up a thousand a month going store to store with that grift. That doesn’t pay for college, though, so Heath didn’t start school when he turned eighteen.

But short cons lead to long cons.

And once you hustle money from frat guys and clerks, you get thirstier for more.

That’s where Addison entered the scene. She’s the same age as my brother. She became his girlfriend after he finished high school, and she started conning with us. She was our badger, and she was nineteen. I’d scope out the marks on the beach, men whom she’d then chat up. She’d get them to buy her a drink, then go back to our place.

Heath would play the part of her big brother, barging in, covered in tats, bulging with muscles, promising to rip the guy’s lungs out. Leave my sister alone! Shake him down for all he’s worth or we’d call the police.

That’s why when I told April and her friends that my “acting credits” included The Badger, I wasn’t really lying. It was like a nightly act we performed, and we cleaned up.

We were masters, too, at The Rental. We’d list an apartment online for rent at just below market value, asking for first and last months’ rent up front. Payment would clear the bank, new tenants would arrive, ready to move in, but the same unit had been rented to others. We were nowhere to be found. Now you see us; now you don’t.

That’s how we made a living that was better than slinging fastfood. Better than any job.

There’s a rush when you pull off a scam. It’s a high, a thrill, a burst of adrenaline. We got ballsier and more daring, and you know what? We were never caught. Not once.

The irony is I went to county jail for two weeks for something else. I didn’t lie in my GigsForHire ad. I’ve done time. I did a stint behind bars when I was nineteen. Heath was away on a trip with Addison. They’d traveled to South Carolina for a vacation and a little gambling grift. Addison fronted the dough for a gambling ring they were setting up. They were trying to make his college pot swell courtesy of poker. Meanwhile, I’d been working on my own side business, selling fake IDs to college students who wanted to get plastered more easily.