Red Glove (2 page)

Waiting is the hardest thing about any con job. The moments slip by and your hands start to sweat, anticipating what’s coming. Your mind wanders. You’re all keyed up from adrenaline, but there’s nothing to do.

Distraction leads to disaster. Mom’s rule.

I turn back toward the restaurant and slip my gloved hand into my pocket, touching the wadded-up piece of panty hose. I hacked off the foot with a room service knife.

I keep focused, eyeing the crowd, watching my mother vamp up her incredibly slow stroll. We could be here awhile. And, honestly, this plan might not even work. That’s another thing about cons; you have to go after a bunch of marks before you find the perfect one. The one you can really take for all he’s worth.

We wait for twenty minutes, almost a block apart from each other. Mom has done all the innocent things someone does on a nighttime stroll: smoked a cigarette, checked her lipstick, made fake calls on the cell phone she borrowed from me. I, on the other hand, have taken to begging for change. I’ve made about $3.50 and am about to land another quarter when Clyde Austin lurches out of Morton’s.

Mom starts to move.

I jump up and take off toward her, yanking the panty hose down over my face. That slows me down some, because there is no way in hell these things are sheer. I can barely see.

People start yelling. Yeah, because a guy with hose over his head is never the good guy. He is, in fact, the stereotype—maybe even the archetype—of a bad guy.

I keep running, flying past my mother and yanking the gold clutch out of her hand.

She adds her screams to the chorus.

“Thief!” my mother screams. “Help! Heeeeelp!”

Now, this is the tricky part. I have to keep running, but I have to run just slowly enough that a drunk and out-of-shape guy with a couple of martinis rolling around in his belly actually thinks he can catch me.

“Please—someone!” Mom shrieks. “He has all my money!”

It’s really hard not to laugh.

I practically run into Clyde, making sure he’s got a shot at me. But I’ve got to give it to Mom. She’s right when she says that guys want to be knights in shining armor. He grabs for my arm.

I let myself fall.

It’s a bad one. Maybe it’s the panty hose over my face, or maybe I’m just off balance, but I go down hard on the asphalt, scraping one hand so roughly, I can feel my glove shred. I’m pretty sure I scrape my knees, too, but all they feel is numb.

I drop the purse.

Clyde clocks me in the back of the head before I can push myself to my feet. It hurts. She better appreciate this. Then I’m up and running. Full out. Pulling that crap off my face and hurling myself through the night as fast as I can.

Leaving Clyde Austin to be a hero, bringing a damsel in distress her golden clutch purse.

Leaving him to notice how charming she is when her eyes well up with gratitude.

Leaving him to check out her rack.

*    *    *

Mom is exultant. She breaks out the bottle of Prosecco from the minibar while I pour frothing hydrogen peroxide over my hand. It stings like crazy.

“He wants to meet for drinks tomorrow night. I told him it was the least I could do to take him out. He said that, after what I’d been through, he was going to pay, and that was that. Now, doesn’t that sound promising?”

“Sure,” I tell her.

“He’s going to pick me up here. At six. Do you think I should be ready when he gets here or do you think I should invite him in for a drink while I do a few last little things? Maybe be in my robe?”

I make a face. “I don’t know.”

“Stop thinking of it that way. This is a job. We need someone to provide for us. Pay for your fancy school—and Barron’s loans. Especially now that Philip can’t be sure how long he’s going to stay employed.” She cuts me a dark look, like I somehow forgot that I’m the one that got him in trouble with the boss of a crime family. Like I am going to start caring. They’ve done much worse to me.

“So long as you don’t work Clyde,” I say quietly. “You don’t need to. You’re plenty charming on your own.”

She laughs and pours her Prosecco into a water glass. It fizzes like the peroxide. “Like mother, like son. We’re both charming when we want something. Right, Cassel?”

“So I want you to stay out of jail,” I say. “So what? Is that supposed to be a secret?”

The doorbell of her room buzzes. “What did you order?” I ask her, and head over to open it.

Mom makes a sound of alarm, but she’s too late.

Clyde Austin is standing in the hallway, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s swinging from one hand. “Oh,” he says, embarrassed. “I must have the wrong room. I thought—”

Then he gets a good look at me—at the blood on my jeans, the scrape on my bare hand. And he sees my mother sitting on the bed. And he knows. His face goes ugly.

“You set me up,” he says. “You and her.” The way he says “her” tells me everything he’s thinking about us.

I start to explain, when he swings the bottle at my head. I see it moving, but I am too clumsy, too slow. It makes a hollow, horrible thunk against my temple.

I hit the carpet, dizzy. Dull pain makes me nauseous. That’s what I get for underestimating the guy. I roll onto my back just in time to see him over me, raising the Jack Daniel’s to strike again.

With a shriek Mom rakes her nails against his neck.

He whirls around, wild, swinging. His elbow connects. She flies back against the desk. Her magnifying mirror cracks against the wall, the shards falling like glittering confetti.

I reach up my bare hand. I could stop him with a single touch.

I could change him into a cockroach.

I could transform him into a puddle of grease.

I really want to.

Clyde has gone still, though, looking around like he suddenly doesn’t know where he is. “Shandra?” he says gently, reaching for my mother. “I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“That’s okay,” Mom says in a soothing voice, getting up slowly. She winces. There’s blood on her lip. “You just came by to bring me a little liquor, didn’t you? And you saw my son. Maybe you mistook him for someone else.”

“I guess,” he says. “We got along so well that I figured why wait until tomorrow night? And then . . . He does look like the mugger, you have to admit.”

Mom’s an emotion worker. She can’t change his memories; my brother Barron could do that, but he’s not here. What Mom can do with a single bare-handed touch is make Clyde Austin like her so much that he’s willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. About anything. Everything. Even this.

A wave of dizziness overwhelms me.

“That’s true, baby,” she says. “He does look a little like the mugger. It was an honest mistake. I’m just going to walk you to the door now.” Her fingers go to his neck, which should make anybody flinch—bare fingers, no glove—but it doesn’t bother him at all. He lets himself be steered.

“I’m really sorry for what happened,” he says. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“I understand,” Mom tells him. “And I forgive you, but I don’t think that we can see each other tomorrow night. You get that, right?”

Shame heats his face. “Of course.”

My vision blurs. She says something else soothing, but not to me.

*    *    *

We check out in the morning. Sunlight makes my brain feel like it’s throbbing inside my skull. Sweat slicks my skin—the kind of unnatural sweat that comes along with injury. Each movement makes me as dizzy as riding a thousand roller coasters all at once. While we wait for the valet to get my car, I fumble through my backpack for sunglasses and try to avoid looking at the dark bruise on Mom’s shoulder.

She’s been totally silent since she told me we were leaving—all through packing and even the ride down in the elevator. I can tell she’s seething.

I feel too sick to know what to do about it.

Finally my ancient and rusted Benz drives up to the front of the hotel. Mom hands something to the driver and gets the keys while I slide in on the other side. The seat is hot on the backs of my legs, even through jeans.

“How could you answer the door like that?” she shouts as soon as we pull away from the curb. “Not looking through the peephole. Not calling out to ask who was there?”

I flinch at her voice.

“Are you stupid, Cassel? Didn’t I teach you better than that?”

She’s right. It was thoughtless. Stupid. Private school has made me careless. It’s exactly the kind of dumb mistake that separates a decent con man from an amateur. Plus the blowback from the emotion work makes her unstable. Not that she isn’t normally pretty unstable. But working magnifies it. So does anger. There’s nothing for me to do but ride it out.

I was used to her being like this when I was a kid. But she’s been in jail long enough for me to forget how bad she can get.

“Are you stupid?” she screeches. “Answer me!”

“Stop,” I say, and lean my head against the window, shutting my eyes. “Please stop. I’m sorry, okay?”

“No,” she says, her voice vicious and certain. “No one’s that pathetic. You did it on purpose! You wanted to ruin things for me.”

“Oh, come on,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking. I said I was sorry. Look, I’m the one with the goose egg to show for it. So we have to leave Atlantic City? We’d have to leave in a week anyway when I went back to school.”

“You did this to me because of Lila.” Her gaze is on the road, but her eyes glitter with fury. “Because you’re still angry.”

Lila. My best friend, who I thought I killed.

“I’m not talking about her,” I snap. “Not with you.”

I think about Lila’s wide, expressive mouth turning up at the corners. I think about her spread out on my bed, reaching for me.

With one touch of her hand, Mom made Lila love me. And made sure I could never, ever have her.

“Hit a nerve?” Mom says, gleefully cruel. “It’s amazing you actually thought you were good enough for Zacharov’s daughter.”

“Shut up,” I say.

“She was using you, you stupid little moron. When everything was said and done, she wouldn’t have given you the time of day, Cassel. You would have been a reminder of Barron and misery and nothing more.”

“I don’t care,” I say. My hands are shaking. “It would still have been better than—” Better than having to avoid her until the curse fades. Better than the way she’ll look at me once it does.

Lila’s desire for me is a perversion of love. A mockery.

And I almost didn’t care, I wanted her so much.

“I did you a favor,” my mother says. “You should be grateful. You should be thanking me. I got you Lila on a silver platter—something you could have never in your life had otherwise.”

I laugh abruptly. “I should be thanking you? How about you hold your breath until I do?”

“Don’t talk that way to me,” Mom roars, and slaps me, hard.

Hard enough that my battered head hits the window. I see stars. Little explosions of light behind the dark glasses. Behind my eyelids.

“Pull over,” I say. Nausea overwhelms me.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice seesawing back to sweet. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you okay?”

The world is starting to tilt. “You have to pull over.”

“Maybe right now you’d rather walk than deal with me, but if you’re really hurt, then you better—”

“Pull over!” I shout, and something about the urgency of my tone finally convinces her. She steers the car abruptly onto the shoulder of the road and brakes hard. I stumble out while we’re still moving.

Just in time to heave my guts up in the grass.

I really hope no one at Wallingford wants me to write an essay on how I spent my summer vacation.

CHAPTER TWO

I PARK MY BENZ IN THE seniors’ lot, which is much closer to the dorms than where underclassmen are forced to leave their cars. I feel a little smug until I shut off the engine and it makes an odd metallic cough, like maybe it just gave up the ghost. I get out and kick the front tire halfheartedly. I had a plan to fix up the car, but with Mom home I never quite got around to it.

Leaving my bags in the trunk, I walk across campus toward the Finke Academic Center.

Over the doorway of the large brick building hangs a hand-lettered sign: WELCOME FRESHMEN. The trees rustle with a light wind, and I am overcome with a feeling of nostalgia for something I haven’t yet lost.

At a table inside, Ms. Noyes is looking through a box of cards and giving out orientation packets. A few sophomores I don’t know too well are shrieking and hugging one another. When they see me, they quiet down and start whispering instead. I overhear “kill himself” and “in his underwear” and “cute.” I walk faster.

At the desk a blotchy, trembling girl and her father are picking up dorm keys. She clings to his hand like she’d be lost without it. This is clearly the first time the girl has spent any time away from home. I feel sorry for her and envy her all at once.

“Hey, Ms. Noyes,” I say when it’s my turn. “How’s it going?”

She looks up and smiles. “Cassel Sharpe! I am so pleased you’ll be living on campus again.” She gets me my manila folder and room assignment. In addition to the exclusive parking lot and, bizarrely, a stretch of grass—no, really, it’s called “senior grass”—seniors also get the best dorm rooms. It looks like mine is on the ground level. I guess they’re a little leery of me on a high floor after that whole almost-falling-off-a-roof thing.

“Me too.” And I am glad to be back. I really, really am. “Has Sam Yu checked in yet?”

She flips through the cards. “No, you beat him.”

Sam has been my roommate since we were sophomores, but it wasn’t until the end of last year that we got to be friends. I’m still not really good at friendship, but I’m trying.

“Thanks. See you later,” I say. There’s always an assembly on the first night before classes start. Headmistress Northcutt and Dean Wharton tell us that we’re intelligent, capable young men and women, and then proceed to lecture us about how only the school rules keep us safe from ourselves. It’s a good time.

“Try to stay out of trouble,” she says with a grin. Her voice is teasing, but there’s a firmness there that makes me think she doesn’t say this to all incoming students.