The Tell-Tale Con (11 page)

“We just want to see the license plate.”

“Why not call the cops?”  Hector asked.

He was seriously starting to piss me off.  Hector was a creep and he was jerking us around.  It was time to do what I was getting paid for, get to the bottom of this.  “Alright, that's enough.  Tell us what you want to let us look at the tape and then we'll tell you if you can have it.  We don't have time for this crap.”

Hector eyed me again, this time with much more respect.  “Alright, let's deal.  How well do you know Yvonne?”

It took me a second to remember who Yvonne was in this conversation.  “I don't know her at all.  But I think I know someone who does.” 

Harrison's eyebrows pulled together and then shot up into his hairline.  “Seriously, Hector.  You're smoking crack if you think Talia can get you a date with Yvonne.” 

Hector smiled, one of the most scheming smiles I'd ever seen in my life.  “Oh, Talia just needs to get me an introduction.  I'll handle the rest on my own.” 

His expression made me long to ask if this plan involved a date rape drug of any kind.  But instead I shrugged.  “If I get the introduction, when do we get to look at the tape?”

Hector grinned again, his teeth so shiny they didn't look real.  “Right after school, Talia Jones.  You're a lady I like doing business with.”

Ugh.  As long as business was all he wanted with me, we would be okay.

 

Sam shut her locker door between second and third period and jerked back in surprise when she discovered me on the other side.  “Talia, jeez, where have you been?  I called your house like a million times yesterday.”

“I didn't get the message.”  Which wasn't a shock.  My mother wasn't known for her valuable note-taking skills.  “I was at the hospital for a long time.  And then I was asleep.”

She clutched her books to her chest and we headed for English, a class we shared.  “I heard about that.  It was all over school.  That is so crazy.”  I thought she was talking about the accident.  A reasonable thing to assume.  “What were you doing with Harrison anyway?  You did ask for his number so you could ask him out, didn't you?”

“Seriously?  I was with Harrison because he lives across the street from me.  He was giving me a ride.  This is what you focus on when you hear I've been almost hit by a car?  Who I happened to be with at the time of the accident?”

She put her hand on my arm.  “I'm sorry.  That was horrible, wasn't it?  I was just shocked to hear you were with Harrison.  Do you need anything?  I mean, can I do something for you?”

And there it was.  I didn't even have to beg.  “Funny that you should ask.  There is something you can do for me.”  I glanced at the names I'd written on my hand.  For a second it was touch and go since I couldn't read his last name anymore.  “Do you know Hector…Aguilar?” 

“Sure.  He's in charge of the AV club.  Why?”

“I need something from him.  He wants to make an exchange for an introduction to someone he saw me talking to in the hallway.  She was talking to me either because I stepped on her foot or because I was with you.  But I'm guessing she's a friend of yours.”

“Okay, who is this girl he's so hot to meet?”

“Do you know,” I consulted my hand again.  “Yvonne Maldonado?”

Sam laughed like I'd told the funniest joke she'd ever heard.  “Uh, yeah.  She's the head of the JV squad.”

Of course she was a cheerleader.  But Hector's ability to score this chick was not my problem.  Just the introduction.  “Yeah, well, you don't have to try to set them up.  I only need to make sure they meet.  Can you help me?”

She thought for a second and nodded.  “Yeah.  Bring your guy up to the third floor.  Mr. Walton's class, after seventh period.  I'll keep her there talking.  Ya'll can walk up and act real casual.  I'll do the rest.”

Getting through the rest of the day was such a pain when I wanted to get this introduction over and see what Hector had captured on tape.  Between classes, I hunted Harrison down to see if he needed any help, but generally he seemed to have it under control.  In fact, only once did he request my help and that was to transfer a large and awkward lit book from his locker to his backpack. 

I was neither popular nor unpopular in the sea of humanity at Metro High.  In fact, I was pretty much a nonentity.  In a school as big as ours, it was easy to get lost in the crowd.  That suited me fine because I enjoyed being invisible.  I was good at it.  Sam sometimes made it hard.  She wasn't popular in the classic sense, but she was certainly well known and well liked and everywhere we went people greeted her by name.  In ten years she'd no doubt be a successful politician.

But even standing next to Sam it was easy to melt into the crowd because everyone's focus was on her chatter, her smile, her immaculate wardrobe and impressively shiny hair.  But as the day progressed, and I headed up and down the halls with Harrison, I noticed a phenomenon I didn't care for at all. 

Harrison wasn't a nonentity. 

And being with him made me worth noticing too. 

Not that he was inherently so cool, but his father was Van Poe, and everyone thought that was interesting.  How annoying did that have to be?  Everywhere we went there were openly curious stares and whispers.  People had no clue who I was, but they were noticing me now.  They wanted to know who I was and why I was cool enough to be with the son of a big shot Hollywood producer. 

I hated it.  Harrison either didn't notice the speculation or he simply didn't care.  Frankly, knowing Harrison, I was going to put my money on didn't care.  By the end of seventh period when we gathered up Hector and headed to the third floor, I was seriously on edge. 

Hector was like a puppy, hopping around the hallways, practically, and sometimes literally, bouncing off the walls.  Finally, we reached the assigned room where Sam was standing near the doorway casually chatting away to a girl I didn't recognize, though we'd spoken before.  She was dark-eyed, dark-skinned and dressed in a cheerleading uniform.  Her eyes were enormous in her face, like some anime girl, except without the schoolgirl uniform.

Sam acted as though we'd come from nowhere, and it was such a surprise.  “Oh, hey.  Yvonne, do you know Talia, Harrison and Hector?”

Yvonne gave us a bored look.  "Oh.  Hi."

 “Hey.”  Hector's waggling eyebrows and the nod of his head suggested this was a smooth pick up line. 

I decided to give Hector a freebie to insure his cooperation once we got to his place.  “Hector is a filmmaker.” 

He shot me a grateful look and then smiled at Yvonne, who brightened like I'd told her that Hector was made out of puppies and butterflies.  Her eyes got bigger, her lashes incredibly dark and long.  “Ohhh. Hiiii.”  She carried out every word like it was an entire sentence all in itself.

 We stepped off to the side and let them talk for a few minutes.  Neither of them seemed to notice us crossing to the other side of the hall.  Well, this was certainly playing out differently than expected.  Hector had obviously known what sort of person he was dealing with when he told us he wanted an introduction, and he'd handle the rest. 

Sam gave Harrison a look and then turned on me.  “What are you guys doing?”

My first instinct was to tell her nothing.  But Harrison didn't share the same instincts.  “Hector has video of the person who hit us.  We're trying to get a look.” 

“Oh, that's so cool.  Call me when you see it.  Maybe it's someone we know.”

Good grief.  “This is something best kept on the down low.” 

“Ohh, right.”  Sam nodded.  “I'll call you instead.” 

I had no idea how that helped, but at least it absolved me of the responsibility for calling her.  She whipped out her phone.  “I don't have your cell number.  What is it?”

Ugh.  “I don't have a cell phone.”

“How can you live without a cell phone?”  She asked, like a cell phone was the same as breathing and water.  I was so not going to explain that there were times that we didn't have a regular phone. 

“I make it through.”

Harrison glanced between us.  “She does have a cell phone.  Just use the one I gave you.”

Sam's expression changed, her eyebrows shooting up into her bangs, her mouth making the easily recognizable O of a girl who was trying to convey how significant something was.  As though Harrison offering his extra cell phone as a way to communicate with me was tantamount to a proposal of marriage. 

“I don't know the number,” I said.

Harrison pulled the twin out of his backpack.  “It's all good.  They're bundled in packs of two in the office.  Whatever mine is, yours is the other.”  He flipped it over.  “1652.   So yours is 555-1651.”

This was so weird and awkward.  Like many mega-rich people I'd met, Harrison didn't realize there was anything strange about giving someone a cell phone to use when you barely knew them.  He didn't care.  There were dozens like it in his father's drawer. 

“I wouldn't want to add minutes to your father's bill,” I muttered, wishing I wasn't being forced to have this conversation.

Harrison appeared slightly perplexed by the argument.  “Like he'd ever notice.  Do you know how many of these things he has?”

My father was a stickler for every dime.  He always knew where each penny he stole was.  He'd notice if I made one long distance call he wasn't expecting, let alone added an entire phone line.  Maybe Van Poe was more like my mom.  She was a financial black hole.  Money slipped through her fingers, and then she was always confused by the fact it was gone.  I guess my parents made a decent couple in that respect, but now that Dad was in prison, I got to be the lucky one in charge of all the cash.  I wasn't the best at it, but I would notice a whole new phone line. 

“Harrison, I don't think…”  Even if Sam hadn't cut me off, my argument would have fallen on deaf ears. 

Sam held up her phone with my number now programmed in.  “Got it.  I'll call you later.” 

“Okay, fine.”  There was no point in arguing right now.  I would slip the phone into his backpack later or something. 

I saw that Hector was doing something to his phone as well, and I figured that he'd already managed to weasel those seven digits.  I had to admit I was impressed.  It was so non-cliché for the head of the AV club to be doing so well with the head JV cheerleader.  They were going to destroy the very fabric of the high school hierarchy if they didn't watch out. 

“Hey, Hector.  We've got somewhere to be,” I reminded.  I considered my interruption as saving the world as we knew it, not blocking the dude's moves. 

He seemed shocked to discover we were still there, like introducing him to Yvonne was some kind of public service, and we'd forgotten about the video.  Or maybe he'd just forgotten we existed, drowning in Yvonne's baby Disney animal eyes.  “Oh.  Sure.  Right.” 

He said one more thing to Yvonne and left her behind, glancing behind him soulfully as though he was going off to war.  He wasn't.  But it was possible that Harrison and I were. 

 

 

Rules of the scam #39

Never underestimate the usefulness of contacts…

 

I got the impression that Sam wanted to go with us, but she hadn't been invited, and I wasn't about to invite her.  We didn't need any more people involved in this fiasco. 

Hector walked to and from school, which made sense because he lived on the other side of the parking lot.  So he wanted to get home by hopping the chain link fence between the parking lot and his father's shop.  But there was no way Harrison was capable of getting himself and that cast over the fence.  So we all waved goodbye to Sam, hopped in Harrison's Prius, and drove around the block. 

Aguilar Auto Body was like every business in this area of town, well, that hadn't been regentrified anyway.  It was an ancient makeshift metal building with signs in front in both English and Spanish.  Hector lived in the house next door to the auto shop, and he led us inside and straight to the back of the house. 

“This used to be the sunroom, but now I use it for my stuff,” Hector said.

He threw his backpack on a chair and surveyed the motley display of audiovisual equipment with pride.  The only things I could identify were the television and the computer.  The rest was kind of a mystery to me.  

“I saw it yesterday.  I thought it was pretty weird the way the driver was acting.  But if no one asked me I had nothing to say.” 

He flopped down in a chair, his shaggy hair flouncing around his shoulders.  “Let me cue it up.”

He pressed some buttons, flipped a couple of switches and turned on half a dozen screens.  “Why do you record the parking lot?”  It seemed just shy of completely creepy to watch people get in and out of their cars all day.  I mean, what was the point of peeping?

“It helps me learn how people move, how they get up and down, how they stand, how they talk to each other, their body language.  Those kinds of things are going to make me a better cinematographer someday.  The footage I took of the movie was invaluable.  It helped me figure out how the filmmakers determine the best shots, where they themselves stand to see the best action.  I could have learned so much more.  If your father hadn't sued me.”

He glared at Harrison. 

I never figured it to be something so pragmatic.  Maybe Hector was slightly less stalkerish and creepy than I'd originally assumed. 

Harrison shrugged.  “I didn't have anything to do with that.  However, I might point out that if you hadn't tried to sell the footage to the press, he never would have known.”