Читать книгу The Notorious Mrs. Wright - Fay Robinson - Страница 9

Cleveland, Ohio

December, 1979

I DIDN’T FEEL RIGHT doing it, but Ray said I had to if me and J.T. wanted to eat anytime soon. Ray was broke—again. All he had in his pocket was a couple of tens and some change. And he still owed last month’s rent on the rat hole we called an apartment.

“Please, Emma?” he asked, saying a couple hundred would be enough for groceries and to have the phone turned back on. “One pocket sting. Somethin’ to hold us over till I score big.”

Slouched next to me on the back seat of the beat-up Chevy, my kid brother let out a low snort and mumbled, “When pigs grow wings,” pretty much what I was thinking but was too chicken to say out loud. Like me, J.T.’s tired of all the bull. Ray’s been promising to pull a major scam as long as the two of us can remember, boasting he’ll get rich and find us a decent place to live, even quit thieving for good.

I gave up on “rich” years ago. These days I’d settle for just owning clothes that haven’t been worn by somebody else.

“C’mon, Princess,” Ray coaxed. “Ain’t nobody better than you at makin’ a drop.”

He smiled his thousand-watt smile, then reached back to pat me on the knee, a fatherly pat I guess you’d call it, but Ray Webster’s never been much of a father to me so I try not to think of him that way. Maybe once he could win me over with his syrupy talk. No more. I’m fifteen going on fifty, too old to fool.

Besides, I hate it when he calls me Princess. He only does that when he wants something.

Disgusted, I turned to the window where my breath fogged a circle on the cold glass and kept me from seeing out. I didn’t care. Nothing outside to see anyway except sad old buildings and dirty snow piled up on the curb.

We’d parked on Frankfort at the edge of the warehouse district, a place I wouldn’t be caught dead in after dark and don’t like visiting even in daylight. The area’s not any crappier than our neighborhood, but the old-lady disguise I had on made me an easy target for muggers.

That’s called irony, I think, but my grades in school suck, so I’m not sure.

The outfit is an old-timey dress, a coat with a fake fur collar and a hat with a big brim that sorta tilts back and has a short veil that dips across one side of my forehead. Pretty cool. The clothes came straight off the rack at the Salvation Army, but they’re classy, elegant even. I don’t look like I’ve stepped out of a mansion on Millionaire’s Row, but you wouldn’t think I was a bag lady, either.

I’d slipped the dress on over my sweatshirt and rolled-up jeans, then stuffed the middle with more clothes to round me out and give me a saggy top. Gloves cover my hands and forearms. Dark stockings hide my legs.

Since I needed wrinkles, I’d made a life mask out of foam latex to put over my face and neck. That part’s always a drag, two hours of baking, painting and gluing, but when I’m done—wow! There’s a gray wig over my dark hair. Artificial teeth force my mouth into a slight pucker. With the glasses and a walking cane, I look like somebody’s sweet, plump granny.

I call my lady Mrs. Abercrombie. She’s my favorite character, but I have others as good: a Puerto Rican woman in her forties, a twenty-something dancer, a fat maid with an attitude. The psychic and fortune-teller I do would fool anybody.

Pretending is fun. Anything’s better than being me. The bad part is ripping people off. And knowing I’m helping Ray, of course. I’d rather poke pencils in my eye than do that.

“Emma, Emma, Emma,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. He shook his head. “What’s got into you lately, girl? Ain’t like you to be so contrary.”

“I just don’t want to do it, Ray. Please, can’t we go home? I’m freezing to death.” Twenty-seven degrees, and the heap of rust that had brought us downtown didn’t have a heater. “Why can’t you lift some wallets instead?”

“Now, Em, you know this works better. Put a hand in a man’s pocket and even if you get away with it, he’s goin’ to the cops. Scam him, though, and he’ll keep his mouth shut. He’ll figure it’s his own fault for bein’ stupid.”

“Get Vinnie to play my part.”

“We need Vinnie to take the call. J.T. here can’t do it. He’s too little.”

J.T.’s twelve and already near big as Ray, but I knew what Ray meant. We needed a man’s voice to pull this off because of the supposed call to Cowell and Hubbard jewelry store a few blocks east on Euclid Avenue. A kid talking on the other end of the phone wouldn’t work.

Ray had asked his friend and sometime-partner Vinnie DeShazo to be that voice. We’d spent most of the day at Vinnie’s apartment, where I’d put on my granny clothes and made my mask.

His wife, Estelle, is the one who taught me about latex appliances and junk like that. She has a job in a funeral home making smashed-up dead people look right again. Creepy job, but the makeup works great for disguises. She lets me have all the free samples she gets from the salesmen, too, so usually I don’t have to fork out any money.

We’d dropped Vinnie off at a public phone before parking so he could wait for my call. He’d play the boss of the swindle.

A cap, a boss and a catch. Three people. That’s what Ray likes to use. As the cap, Ray’d find the victim and set him up for the sting. Vinnie as the boss—or in this case the voice—would make everything seem legit. Then, I’d make the catch. But in short cons like this, the cap can also play the catch. I told Ray that’s what he should do, and to leave me out of it.

“Now, Emma, I’ve taught you better than that. Who’s a mark more likely to trust, a strange man or a kindly grandma?”

“A grandma.”

“That’s right. Besides, I don’t have your touch. I might get caught again. You wouldn’t want that, now would you?”

Maybe I would, but I didn’t say it. The only times I could remember being happy were the months Ray’d been in jail.

“We could pawn something,” I suggested, desperate.

“Can’t. Ain’t got nothin’ left to pawn or fence. I’ve hit rock bottom, Princess. That’s the truth. And you know today’s the fifteenth.”

Yeah, I knew. Keel Motor Company paid its sales-people on the fifteenth and the thirtieth. Mama would expect Ray to come home with money from his check and some kind of Christmas bonus. Only…Ray hadn’t worked for Keel in almost two years.

I closed my eyes and tried to send myself somewhere warm and safe, where I didn’t have to decide between hurting my mama and breaking the law. I was almost there. A log fire burning in a cozy house…my toes stretched out toward the hearth…

A rumbly noise yanked me back to the cold car. J.T.’s stomach growled loud enough to wake the dead. We both giggled, not that it was funny but laughing helps sometimes when you’re stuck in hell.

He was hungry. Cripes, I was hungry! At least during the week we got a free lunch at school, but this was Saturday afternoon and all we had at home was a dented can of peas and a box of raisins. Knowing Ray, he’d throw them together and call it dinner.

I sagged against the door, unsure of what to do. If I helped Ray, at least me and J.T. would get a decent meal out of him for once.

But I’d hate myself, too. I always did.

Then again, I had to think of Mama, suffering in that tiny basement apartment with its peeling paint and leaking pipes. We shared the floor with the building’s ancient furnace and the coal pile. The heat went up. The dust came down.

If I could scam more cash than Ray needed to buy groceries and pay the worst of the bills, Mama might give in and get some medicine for the hurting in her chest.

J.T. slipped his hand in mine and gave it a little squeeze, his way of letting me know he understood the fight going on inside me and whatever I decided was fine with him. My brother can be a jerk sometimes, but mostly he’s pretty great.

“Okay, I’ll pull the stupid drop,” I told Ray with a hard look. I forced him to give one of his tens and swear to use the other to feed J.T. at the restaurant.

“Twenty minutes after we go in, you come,” he reminded me as we got out of the car and headed south on foot. “I need time to pick us one.” A mark, he meant. Some traveler in an expensive suit or an out-of-town businessman we could fleece for whatever money and jewelry he had on him.

As we walked, we left behind most of the run-down buildings. Two blocks over, we came to Public Square and found it packed with people—mamas and daddies shopping or who’d brought their kids to see the Christmas decorations. Higbee’s and May’s department stores had tried to outdo each other with wreaths and bows and lights. Red, green and blue bulbs even glowed from the leafless branches of the trees.

“Look!” J.T. said, pointing. He ran about laughing, taking in all the sights. A fake gingerbread house stood in one part of the square. In another was a manger scene. Music spilled out every time a door was opened.

For a few seconds I let myself believe we were a family and that Ray had brought us to see the animated figures in Higbee’s windows. Stupid. But I couldn’t help it. Those Christmas carols fried my brain, I guess.

I stopped and gazed at the fragrance rings on display at a boutique. Big and gaudy, they had a fake “jewel” that opened, and inside they held a soft wax perfume you could rub with your finger and dab on. All the girls at school had one. I thought they were about the neatest things I’d ever seen.

“Pretty,” Ray said, coming up beside me.

“Pretty hokey,” I said, as if I wouldn’t wear something like that in a million years.

Lesson Number One in Emma Webster’s Book of Survival: never let Ray know what you like or don’t like. If he knows you, he can hurt you. That’s why the Emma he sees isn’t real. She’s a character, like all the others I’ve created.

Ray handed over a small sack, one of the props I’d need, and I stuck it into a pocket I’d sewn into the inside of my coat. He’d chosen to play the game at The French Connection, a restaurant inside a ritzy hotel called Stouffer’s Inn on the Square. Ahead of us, the hotel rose up like a sideways E and seemed to disappear into the clouds.

“You remember the number where Vinnie’s at?” Ray asked me. I nodded. “Don’t let the mark get too good a look at the real number on the receipt or we’re sunk.”

“I won’t.” I’ve pulled this at least ten times, although never here. The scam’s a basic pigeon drop, but my disguise gives it an Emma Webster twist.

In my head I rehearse what I have to do. After I sit down in the restaurant, I wait until no waiters are around, then slip the sack out of my coat and pretend to find it where it might’ve been overlooked for a few days by the cleaning staff—pushed down in the seat cushion of the booth, behind a plant or trapped by a table leg…something that fits the layout and feels right. That part I play by ear.

Inside is a box wrapped in fancy paper and a sales receipt for a $15,000 bracelet from Cowell and Hubbard. Funny that nobody ever wants to open the box and see what’s really inside, but Ray says that’s why they deserve to get bilked. Eight hundred years this swindle’s been around, and dumb smucks still fall for it every day.

Then I show the box and the receipt to Ray and the mark and ask them what to do. Ray pooh-poohs telling the restaurant manager, if that’s what the mark suggests. Call the jewelry store first, he says. Report the package found.

I ask for a phone to be brought to my table. I pretend to call the store and identify myself as Mrs. Wilbur Abercrombie. What I do instead is dial Vinnie.

When I say I’ve found the bracelet, I’m supposedly told the owner has authorized a $1,000 reward for its return. Being an old lady, I get shaky at hearing that. I hand the receiver to the mark to get the information. Vinnie repeats the stuff about the reward. The store will pay it when the bracelet’s returned, Vinnie tells him.

I do a real acting job here. I fan my face and pat my heart. Such a large amount, I say. Oh, my! Since I have arthritis in my hip and can’t walk too well, would one of them return the bracelet? I’ll split the reward with him.

Ray quickly says he will.

But, I point out, I’m trusting a stranger with an expensive piece of jewelry, and I’ve given my name to the store owner. If the bracelet should disappear, wouldn’t I be in trouble?

As a show of good faith, Ray offers to give me his wallet to hold while he’s gone. He takes it out and opens it, then fakes embarrassment. He’s low on cash, he explains. The wife’s taken his money and credit cards and gone shopping. He doesn’t even have his driver’s license on him. He left it in his hotel room.

The mark always jumps in at this point and offers to return the bracelet, seeing his chance to make a quick $500 and cut Ray out of the deal. Ray congratulates us on our good fortune and splits. He does that because being alone with me makes the mark feel okay about leaving his goodies behind. No old lady is going to rip him off, right?

The mark hands over his wallet for me to hold. He leaves with the package. In the fifteen or twenty minutes it takes him to walk to the store and realize he’s been scammed, we’re all long gone in the other direction—with his dough.

Bait, hook, reel in. Disappear clean. That’s how it works. At least it does when Ray takes time to plan the sting properly and scout out the right mark.

This day, though, I felt uneasy. Quick stings with random victims were risky.

“This is it for me,” I told Ray as we came to the hotel. “I’m not helping you again. You’ve got to give up griftin’.”

“Straight life and me don’t get along too good.”

“I know, but you’ve got to try.”

“I will, Princess. Honest. When I hit it big I’ll retire and…”

He went on and on about everything he planned to get me when that happened—nice clothes, a big house, my own car. I stopped listening. I wanted so much to say what was in my heart, to admit I was ashamed to be his daughter. But I couldn’t.

I hate Ray. I mean it. I really do hate him. The problem is…I love him a little bit, too. And that makes me not want to hurt him, even with words.

“Let’s just do this,” I said, cutting him off.

We rounded up my reluctant brother and they left me outside the hotel. As planned, I waited twenty minutes, then hobbled into the lobby on my cane. Wonder replaced my uneasiness. I had to clamp my mouth shut before my false teeth fell out. I’d never seen such a place—marble walls trimmed in gold…curtains the color of wine…arches shooting up two full stories.

A grand staircase led to a huge fountain. Around it people sat on overstuffed couches listening to a man playing a piano and a woman a harp. A sign read that high tea would be served at four. I didn’t know what that was exactly, but it sounded elegant.

I took a hard left down the hall to the restaurant. A guy with a fancy suit and an even fancier accent led me across carpet that was so thick we didn’t make noise when we walked. He asked me where I’d like to sit.

“Over there would be lovely,” I answered, pointing to a spot near Ray and J.T. Ray drank coffee and talked with a bald man at a nearby table while J.T. wolfed down a sandwich. With a scratch of his chin, Ray let me know Baldy was my target.

A waiter wearing white gloves helped me sit. I took off my coat and placed it next to me, then nodded to Ray and the mark. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” they both said.

Opening the menu, the part of me that’s most like Ray came out, skipping the meat and the vegetables and everything practical and going straight for the desserts. I ordered a cup of tea and something called crème brûlée—warm custard with a browned spun-sugar glaze and raspberries. The waiter served it in a delicate china dish with a silver spoon. Heaven.

At that moment, surrounded by those pretty things, I was as happy as I’d ever been. I felt…I don’t know. I can’t say important, because that’s not it. But maybe, for once, I felt not worthless.

I could have stayed there forever but, of course, I was only halfway through eating when Ray signaled me to hurry up. Cursing silently, I put down my spoon and made the drop. Baldy took the bait. I set the hook and reeled him in. When Ray and J.T. left me alone with him, I got his goodies: six hundred in cash and two credit cards.

But then, everything fell apart. Baldy got suspicious. Or maybe he wasn’t so dumb. He had a friend with him, he said, another engineer in town for a convention. Why didn’t he call the room and have his friend come down and keep me company while he returned the bracelet? I smiled and said the only thing I could— “A grand idea.”

Baldy called Friend. Friend came down and Baldy whispered something to him I couldn’t hear. Baldy paid his bill and left with the package. I figured…fifteen minutes. That’s all the time I had to get away, and Baldy had probably told Friend not to let me out of his sight.

I laid my ten on top of my lunch bill, where the waiter would find it. Skipping out on the ticket and having the management after me wouldn’t be very smart right now. I told Friend I needed to be excused. “Ladies’ room,” I said. As expected, he popped to his feet to escort me. I acted flattered. “What a sweet boy you are.”

The bathrooms, I remembered, were between the restaurant and the lobby. I held on to Friend’s arm with one hand and my cane with the other. Slowly I hobbled down the corridor with him. Coming in, the walk had seemed short. Now it felt five miles long. The minutes ticked by. Sweat trickled down between my breasts.

Once inside the bathroom, my problems weren’t over. Two women stood at the mirror. Calmly I went into a stall and pretended to do my business. I waited and waited. I didn’t have much time left. Baldy would be getting to the store any minute. Leave! I wanted to scream at the chattering women.

Finally I heard the door open and the women go out. Racing, I ripped everything off, down to the shoes and my own jeans and sweatshirt. The gloves I kept on for the time being, so I wouldn’t leave fingerprints on anything in the cleanup.

I pocketed the teeth. I didn’t know if the cops could tell a person’s identity from spit, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Hurriedly I put the wallet with the credit cards in the right pocket of my jeans, along with four hundred of the cash. The other two hundred went into the left pocket.

But what should I do with all the clothes? The pile before me seemed huge. No way could I wear them or hide everything on me.

Stay calm, Emma. Use your brain.

If Friend and Baldy decided to squeal, I didn’t want to leave behind any evidence. But I might have to. I looked around, then up. And smiled in relief.

A minute later I strolled out the door. I’d gone in an old woman. I came out teenager. Friend barely noticed me.

With my heart beating a million miles an hour, I left the hotel and ran all the way to the car. By then I was a wreck, shaking not only from cold but from fear. J.T. wrapped me in his coat.

“Where are your granny clothes?” Ray asked.

“In the ladies’ bathroom.” I explained how I’d almost been caught. “I pushed up a tile and hid them in the drop ceiling.”

“Smart girl. But did you get the money?”

“Yes, I got your stupid money!” I took out the wallet and slapped it into his hand. “Didn’t you hear me? I almost got caught!”

“So next time we’ll be more careful.”

Next time? Something inside me broke then. I saw the truth, the real truth, not the one I’d made myself believe for the past few years. Ray wouldn’t change. He couldn’t change. He was a con artist and a thief and he’d never be anything more. If I stayed with him, that’s all I’d ever be, too.

We picked up Vinnie. Him and Ray used the credit cards to get all the available cash off the accounts. Ray was happy. We hadn’t made his big score, but after Vinnie’s cut, he had a little over a thousand dollars. I figured that would last him…two weeks, tops. Maybe less. He’d play cards with his “business associates” and buy them too many drinks. He’d blow it, like always, on stupid stuff we could do without.

Sure enough, he told J.T. on the way home that he’d get him the dog he’d been wanting and also the hockey equipment. He promised us a television. Did I want a pair of leather boots like the ones Estelle had on that morning?

Food was nowhere on his list. Neither was rent. Or paying the overdue utility bills. Or money for medicine.

He tried to talk to me, but I was so disappointed I couldn’t stand to look at him. I stared silently out the window, remembering what had happened to me that day. In only one hour, I’d had the best experience of my life, and also the worst. I’d never forget either.

The pain stayed with me. I couldn’t shake it. Two nights later, after everybody had gone to sleep, I pulled out wigs and clothes from behind the loose wallboards in the bathroom. The masks that went with the disguises were hidden there, too, along with nearly three hundred in cash that had taken me two years to save. I’d known this day would come eventually, and I’d prepared for it in secret.

I felt guilty about having squirreled away the money, but it was my stake. Without it, I had no chance at freedom.

The letter I left for Mama on the kitchen table said I was sorry about having to leave. I was sorry. Grace Webster raised me as best she could. I wasn’t running away from her, but from my life. I prayed she’d understand that.

Inside the letter I stuck the two hundred dollars I’d held back from the scam. My baby-sitting money, I lied. Use it to go to the doctor.

Writing the other note, the one for J.T., was harder. It tore out my guts. I had to do this. Please forgive me. And always remember who loves you best.

Stuffing some clothes into a suitcase, I slipped out of the apartment dressed as a male college student. The series of rides I hitched took me as far as Missouri by the next day. There, I used the second disguise to erase my trail again, becoming a forty-year-old woman.

I bought a bus ticket and headed someplace warm and safe. And, God forgive me the most for this last part…

I never looked back.