“No, I guess it isn’t the same,” I said.
“When did you lift it from me?” she asked.
I was no expert pickpocket, but I had been bleeding everywhere and the snowstorm was gusty and Victor Flowers’s yard was dark and Ellen was practically carrying me to her car. Distractions were everywhere. Our bodies were close. I knew which pocket to pick. It wasn’t complicated.
“I lifted it from you exactly when I decided to.” A smug reply, but I believed I had earned the right.
She didn’t seem well. I wondered how much of our half-million buy-in she had borrowed, and at what interest rate. I wondered who might be after her, what sort of trouble she was in. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I had a buyer all lined up. He’s probably still interested.” Another neck scratch. “I can give you thirty percent. That’s a huge amount of money, but we have to move on this. You have to tell me where it is. I’ll take care of everything. But you’ve got to tell me where the bell is.” When I didn’t reply, she said, “All right, thirty-five percent.”
“Take a good look at my left hand,” I told her, “and say the words ‘thirty-five percent’ again.”
“Forty percent,” she said.
“You’re getting closer,” I said. “But first I want to know how it all started. How did you know what to steal? How did you know about the safe?”
“Come on,” she said, “you think a man like Victor Flowers is going to keep that bell a secret from everyone? The greatest thing he ever owned?”
“How’d you know it would be in the safe?”
“Because the bell came first. The safe came second. The safe only existed because of the bell.” She shook her head. “He showed it to the guy who installed the safe. Who happens to be a guy I work with from time to time.”
She knew the safe guy. Of course she did. I’d forgotten what should have been ingrained: the secret was rarely as elegant as the trick.
And why would Victor Flowers agree to let his home be used as a place to catch a card cheat? That was the other thing I couldn’t figure out. “Why would Victor invite this kind of trouble into his home?” I asked. “What was in it for him?”
She didn’t answer right away. She surveyed the visiting area, fingers twitching, and I wondered if maybe she really had become an addict. Finally, she faced me again and said, “A 1695 Stradivarius.”
“A violin?”
“A violin played at the premiere performance of the New York Philharmonic in 1842.” She spoke flatly, as if reciting a memorized set of facts. “I promised a meeting with the current owner, who wanted to sell the instrument but didn’t want to pay a big commission to an auction house. With my connection, Victor could have gotten a great deal on it.”
“But the story was made up, I assume.”
She was watching the trees, the yard. “A little creative thinking, a little Wikipedia.” She scratched her neck. “But none of that matters. The bell. That’s what matters. That’s everything. And you need a buyer. Otherwise, it isn’t worth anything. You know that, right? Forty-five percent. What do you say? Huh? I’ll even pay the safe guy his points out of my share, but we have to do it now. People are following me. I don’t know if it’s Victor’s people or the guy I borrowed the buy-in money from. I abandoned my apartment. I don’t go to work anymore. We’re both at risk until we sell the bell, get the money, and disappear. That’s the only way to do it. I can get it done, but it’s got to be now, Natalie. Please.”
I listened to the mourning dove’s familiar call.
“Fifty percent,” she said. “Okay? Partners in the truest sense of the word. I’m so, so sorry about your fingers. Jesus, Natalie, I swear I never in a million years thought they would do something like that. If I’d thought for a minute they’d—I mean, they’re just guys, you know? Guys with money. I’m so sorry, but let’s do this, huh? Fifty percent. Partners.”
I let her talk until the words trickled to a stop. Quietly, I said, “Fifty-one percent.”
“Huh?”
“I want fifty-one percent.”
“Are you being serious?”
“Fifty-one.”
She sat, fuming and flummoxed, the player at the table with the losing hand and everyone knows it. Finally, she said, “And then you’ll do it? We’ll have a deal?”
“I don’t know why you’re making this so complicated,” I said. “Fifty-one.”
I clasped my hands together and set them on the tabletop, our old signal for the con to begin, only in reverse and minus two fingers. She looked away, then up at my eyes.
“Okay,” she said. “You want fifty-one percent. You want that, then fifty-one it is. All right? That’s over. Now where’s the bell?”
I met her gaze, saw the hunger in it. I almost felt bad for her when I said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what bell you’re talking about.” I stood up and waved the guard over. “Good-bye, Ellen.”
“Wait—no, no, no—we just agreed—”
“Ma’am?” Simon was coming our way.
“We’re done,” I told him.
“No!”
“Ma’am, all right, let’s go.” Gently, he took her arm. She stiffened but knew better than to resist. I watched her go and listened to the birds.
I wished Ellen had come at two o’clock instead of three-thirty. Now there was very little time before dinner. In the white-walled dayroom I joined my regular poker game, already in progress. Today they were playing for small bags of Fritos and mini Snickers bars.
At North Ridge, the poker chips were a remarkably durable composite of toilet paper and soap. The game was Texas Hold’em with a couple of crazy house rules and strict limits on raising. Over the weeks, I was steadily improving my play. Yesterday we’d played
