Fiddle Game, page 11
“All right. So, he didn’t catch you. And you didn’t tell him then. When did he find out?” Olli wondered, already over the slight offense.
“I think it was four or five years later it came up organically.”
“Organically.”
Razor waved his right hand, cigar firmly between his fingers, the motion vague. “There was a chance for me to have a wardrobe change and I took it.”
“And he was upset at you, then?”
“A little.”
“How upset?”
“Let’s just say it was a good thing that I was grown then.” Razor brushed it off.
Olli grunted and shook her head a little. “Well. That was convenient.”
Razor smiled a little and nodded.
“How’d that happen?”
“Right now? I’m in the middle of a story!” Razor protested. “Perhaps if we have more time. I can tell you that story, too.”
“Aces! Exactly how long is this snowstorm supposed to last again?!” Olli tilted her head sharply, her voice jumping up an octave. “I’m not going to live here, ya know.”
“Why not? It’s not so bad! It’s nice here. We have good food, and you can still do your job from here! Think how much quicker your commute would be to work in the morning.”
Olli blinked a couple of times. She tilted her head and cleared her throat. “My job is to arrest people like you.”
Razor tutted. “There’s no one like me.”
Olli rubbed her eyes a little and shook her head slightly. “I’m not going to live here. As soon as this storm is over, I’m going back home.”
Razor chuckled. “Another story for another time, eh?”
Olli nodded. “All right.” She stretched her hands over her head and sighed a little. “How long did it take before the auction for the fiddle started?”
“Took him almost a half hour more.”
“Two hours. That’s impressive for a man who just invited himself to the table,” Olli mused.
Razor nodded. “I suppose I could say that I learned from the best. And then built upon it.”
“He had to be proud of you.” Olli mused quietly. “At least a little bit. He raised a mafia don.”
Razor seemed to ignore her statement. “It really was something...to see him actually work. He told me about his adventures, but to actually see it happening in person. That was really something…”
Anthony wrapped his right hand over his left fist, set his elbows on the table, and set his chin on top of his hands. He watched the man with his father, doing his best to soak in the mannerisms.
He didn’t want to miss the exact second that his father brought up the violin to buy it.
As he waited, his mind started to wander off. He studied his father’s clothes, and he pondered again how it was that his father had such expensive things. How could he have possibly found the money to buy them? There were times they barely had enough to keep their kitchen stocked at home.
“Did he steal them?” Olli piped up, her tone more excited than it should have been.
Razor blinked a couple of times and used the moment to take a slow pull on his cigar. He studied her for a moment and slowly blew the smoke out toward the ceiling. “Tell me something, Doll?”
“Sure.”
“Do you interrupt everyone? Or is it just me?” He smirked.
Olli froze and looked at him for a moment, trying to process the question.
Razor chuckled and raised an eyebrow. “Olli?”
Olli blinked. “I’m thinking.”
Razor laughed heartily. “You should come around more often. You are such a light in this office.”
Olli snorted and rolled her eyes. “Razor,” she chided. “I come in here all the time! Remember? I was here two weeks ago.”
Razor scoffed. “Yes. I remember.” He rubbed his neck a little and smirked at her. “Every time you do, I hurt. And yet, I always enjoy our times together.”
Olli smiled slightly and looked thoughtful for a minute. “You’re right. As much as I like using you as a test dummy for different ways to knock a man out...maybe you should just...leave me alone more often.”
Razor shrugged. “A problem for a different day.”
Olli nodded. “So? Did he?”
“Did who what?”
“Steal the threads!”
“I don’t know!” Razor chuckled a little.
“Aces! Why not?!” Olli tossed her hands and looked at him like he had never disappointed her more.
“Have you asked your father questions about his whole life, Olli?” Razor looked at her and his eyebrows jumping up.
Olli stared at him for a moment before pointing to herself with both of her first fingers. “Anthony...what part of me makes you think that I didn’t bombard my father with questions? I’m literally a detective. I make a living asking questions. About everything. Usually with multiple follow-up questions.”
“We really should stop calling each other by our first names,” Razor mused.
Olli nodded and half flared her eyes. “Agreed. It’s strange. I don’t like it.”
“Can we get back to me story now?”
“But...what about...the suit?”
“I don’t know, Doll. I didn’t ask. I was young, remember? Just a child.”
“And now that you think about it?” Olli tilted her head and smiled, her tone curious.
Razor made a thoughtful noise. He puffed on his cigar for a moment, pondering what she had asked. “I’m quite sure he had them tailored for him, Doll.”
“So not just bought, but tailored?” Olli clarified.
“They fit him much too well to be off the rack or stolen.”
“And you would be the man to know now.” Olli raised her eyebrows slightly and then bobbed her head. “I guess it makes sense. You’re right. Expensive clothes, nice hat...that had to be a strange thing to see him like that.”
“It was. Shocking.”
Olli made a small noise of understanding. “All right. You can keep going.”
“How very kind of you.”
Anthony looked between his father and the man sitting across the table from him.
Now that they had been talking for a while, it seemed that the man was starting to relax more. He was starting to smile a little easier, and his motions were getting more and more verbose.
His father was laughing at all the right points and asked questions here and there. Everything he did seemed to be well placed. Every word intentional.
Worst was the waiting. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to bring the conversation around to the violin. In fact, it almost seemed like he was completely ignoring it.
Anthony adjusted and sat up when his father set a hand on the violin, suddenly all his attention on it.
It was such a sudden change in conversation; it was hard to miss.
The man looked at the violin and shrugged a little; he talked for a bit, probably explaining how it had come to be in front of him. Judging by the looks that he kept tossing toward the door, he was expecting to see who he was talking about any second.
He must have mentioned at some point as he was talking, because Anthony’s father looked toward the doorway and then half shrugged.
After the conversation and study of the door had slowed down, Anthony’s father looked at the man across the table from him and half sat up. He leaned forward to rest his arms on the table. The way he glanced around, it was obvious that he was sharing something that he considered to be private. A smirk crossed his face, and he nodded slowly, trying to drive his point home a bit more.
Anthony smiled to himself when he saw the man’s eyebrows jump to their max height. He slipped out of his chair and worked his way closer to the table where his father was sitting. If he was closer, he would be able to hear what was going on. He thought that he would be able to just watch it unfold. But really, he couldn’t stand not being able to hear what was going on.
He forewent the table that was directly next to them. No need to risk being seen by his father if he happened to look around. It seemed he was doing a lot of that.
Anthony walked to the second table away and claimed the chair that was mostly behind his father. It would be easier to hear them from there, and that much harder to see him unless his father felt the need to turn completely around and looked directly at him.
This was going to be the perfect place to listen in on what they were saying.
This was his chance to get close and really see what it was that his father was capable of.
Maybe he could learn something too.
Chapter 11
The One With The Offer
“You’re telling me, this old piece of junk is worth how much again?” the man tilted his head and looked at the old, beat-up violin sitting on the table.
Gio nodded and smirked. “That’s right. It’s incredibly rare.”
“This.” The man poked at the violin with a single finger, his gruff voice skeptical. “This is a piece of junk that a poor young boy worked for a few summers to afford.”
“Be that as it may, I’m telling you, whoever it is that sold this violin to that boy?” Gio leaned forward, his body language pulling the man across from him in automatically. “They had absolutely no idea what they were selling him. They would have never sold it otherwise.”
The man nodded slowly. He processed for a minute before sitting upright slowly. He tipped back into the backrest of the chair, pushing it past the point where all four legs were on the ground, and the top edge of the backrest was propped up against the wall behind him. After looking at Gio for nearly a full minute without saying anything, he pointed to his chest. “Ernesto.”
Gio smiled and offered his hand across the table. “Pleasure to meet you. Now. Ernie. May I call you Ernie?” He chuckled a bit and smirked. “Ernie? What do you say you and I find a deal we can both live with?”
“I can’t just give it to you. What about the boy?” Ernesto protested. He folded his arms over his chest and looked at Gio for a moment, half shaking his head.
“How about this? What if I give you a nice sum for it. You can give the boy the money, and he can get a different violin?” Gio shrugged. “We’ll call it a win-win.”
“I can’t just take your money.”
“Oh. But you can,” Gio assured. “Do you want to know why?”
Ernesto tilted his head and adjusted his arms over his chest. He narrowed his eyes. “And why is that?”
“It was stolen from my family over ten years ago.”
“Aces! You’ve got to be kidding me!” Olli scoff-laughed. She brought her hands up to rest her palms on either side of her forehead. “You’re a con man. Your dad was just…” She half shrugged and shook her head. “He’s just a compulsive liar!”
Razor blinked and puffed on the cigar in his hand. He shrugged. “Sometimes you say things to make the story work.”
“You make a story work,” Olli corrected. “There’s a pretty substantial difference between making a story work and point-blank lying.”
Razor frowned a little and made a noise like he wasn’t sure that he agreed with her. “I wouldn’t call it lying.”
“What would you call it?” Olli tilted her head, and an eyebrow jumped up a little.
“Creating a story.”
Olli blinked and stared at him for a minute. “Creating a story…” she nodded a little. “Gotta be honest. I didn’t see you sidestepping that one that easily.”
Razor smirked. “Not my first time.”
Olli looked at him a moment like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to continue to chase the lying angle or if she wanted to move the story along. After taking another second to process, she cleared her throat. “Did you know that he was going to say that?”
“I didn’t even know that he had that suit. What makes you think I would know he was going to say something so off the wall like that?”
Olli made a thoughtful noise. “How surprised were you?”
Razor thought for a moment, pondering the question. “It caught me a little off guard, if I’m being honest, Doll. But I honestly didn’t know what to expect at that point, either.”
Olli’s lips pursed together a little. She shrugged slightly and bobbed her head. “What did Ernesto say after that?”
“Nothing. For a long time.”
“Trying to figure out if your dad was lying to him?”
“No.”
Olli pulled her head back a little. “No?” she repeated.
Razor shook his head. “No. It wasn’t quite like that. It was something else.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I think he was trying to decide how much it was worth to him.”
“So he was thinking of running a con on your dad?”
Razor shrugged. “No, I think it was a little more to do with being greedy than running some sort of con.”
Olli nodded. “He had no idea that he was being lied to?”
“Honestly, Doll, the way my father said it...He had me wondering if someone in my family used to play violin and no one had told me about it.” Razor chuckled quietly and shook his head. “Say what you will about his bald-faced lying. The man could make you feel the story he was trying to sell.”
Olli grunted and nodded. “So what did Ernesto say?”
“Stolen, you say?” Ernesto mused, testing the word like he was checking to see if it fit.
Gio nodded. “Terrible, isn’t it?” he shook his head, clicking his tongue a few times. “I don’t know what this world is coming to. People stealing things that belong to others.”
Ernesto grunted and nodded, completely agreeing with him. “Terrible.” He shook his head and hefted his shoulders once.
“I swear they’d take the kitchen sink if it wasn’t bolted down,” Gio griped, though he seemed a bit more dryly amused than anything.
Ernesto chuckled and shook his head, clicking his tongue. “It’s the parents.”
“I agree. Spoil the child and look what happens.” Gio sat back against his chair and sipped his drink. “People really should raise their children better, don’t you think, Errnie?”
Olli snorted and started to laugh.
Razor tilted his head and looked at her, confused. “What? It’s what he said.”
“Nothing.” Olli waved her right hand back and forth in front of her. “Nothing. It’s just...the irony isn’t lost on me.”
Razor tilted an eyebrow and then smirked. “Ah. You’re laughing about the raising children, comment.” He smirked a little and shook his head. “I suppose, looking back on it now, it is a bit ironic.”
Olli snorted and giggled again. “I was actually.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t sound like he was home often. And I don’t think most parents would raise their children to be con men.”
Razor shrugged a little and bobbed his head. “I won’t argue that with you. And I agree. He wasn’t around much. But my mother was. And she made sure that I have the manners that I’ve built my life upon.”
Olli sobered a little and cleared her throat. “Right.”
The silence stretched between the two of them for a moment too long.
Razor puffed on his cigar for a moment and cleared his throat. “Shall I continue?”
Olli blinked a couple of times and nodded. “Yes, please? Sorry. I interrupted again.”
“How much?” Ernesto wondered, his tone and look shrewd, like he had guessed at what Gio’s plan was.
Gio shrugged. “How much does the boy owe? I’ll double it. That way the boy’s tab is paid off, he gets some money, you get some too.” He smiled brightly. “For your trouble.” He winked at Ernesto in a broad, knowing way. “And I get my violin back. A win for all of us.”
“Only double? I thought that it was a priceless family heirloom.”
“I didn’t say that it was priceless.” Gio shrugged a little. “Honestly, I’ll probably sell it once I get back home.”
“He didn’t waste any time, did he?” Olli scoffed.
“My father was a master at reading people. He apparently thought that he could push Ernesto hard.” Razor shrugged.
Olli grunted and bobbed her head. “Did he take the bait?”
Razor smirked and nodded. “He did.”
Ernesto sat where he was for a minute. A thoughtful look crossed his face. He shifted how he was sitting and looked at Gio closely.
Gio’s right eyebrow went up slightly and he sipped his drink. “What is it, Ernie?”
“You say that you want to sell it when you get back home?”
Gio bobbed his head, trying to make it look like he wasn’t fully committed to the idea, but it was the most likely option. “I probably will.”
“But why go through all that work? Buying it here, traveling with it…” Ernesto regarded Gio for a moment. “Sounds like a lot of fuss to sell it when you get back.”
“What else am I going to do? If I want to get top dollar for it, I’m going to have to bring it back with me. It’s not like I’m going to be able to convince someone of it’s worth here. I could be a grifter for all the shop owners around here know. And I really have no way of convincing him.” He grinned and chuckled a bit like he thought that it was a brilliant joke.
“Well. Aces...add downright…” Olli blinked slowly a few times. “He was brash.” She stared into the middle distance between her and the desk and scoffed a little.
“The closer you are to the truth, the more authentic it feels.” Razor shrugged.
“That’s like saying that you’re less likely to get hurt because you’re close to danger.” Olli laughed and shook her head.
“Isn’t that how you live your life, Doll?” Razor looked at her and raised an eyebrow slightly. “You’re here right now. Some would say The District is very dangerous. And yet, here you are. Safe as can be.”
Olli paused for a moment while she thought about it. She nodded slowly and grunted. “I suppose that’s true. Though, the only reason I’m safe is because it’s you and not Ace or Two-Timer.”
“It’s not a perfect example.” Razor shrugged.
