The Last Con of Lynton Baltimore
Transcript Excerpt from Episode 4, “Confidence Games”
Professor Stephen Weir:There’s so much misunderstanding about men like Baltimore, and what he does. People think, oh, he’s a criminal; he’s a con man.
Durant:But he is a con man. Isn’t he?
Weir:He’s—well, yes. But we use this term so freely now, it’s lost its meaning, really. Baltimore isn’t making crank calls, asking for an old woman’s Social Security number. He’s not putting himself on dating sites. That kind of scam, he would find distasteful.
Durant:Distasteful how?
Weir:A confidence man—a true confidence man—he’s an artist, not an instrument. He’s studied. He comes from a long line; he knows a long set of traditions. He speaks a language that is unique to other artists of his kind; he only works with other artists of his kind. It’s aristocratic, really.
Durant:You almost seem to admire him.
Weir:I wouldn’t say that.
Durant:He has victims. Innocent people who have been hurt by him.
Weir:A man like Baltimore, a man who does his kind of work, would say that there’s no innocent mark. He would say . . . well, he would say what confidence men have always said.
Durant:And what’s that?
Weir:::chuckles:: He would say that you simply can’t cheat an honest man.
Durant:Well. Well, I suppose I have to wonder about that. Since not everyone, of course, is a man.
Chapter 7
Jess
At 6:30 a.m. in the bathroom mirror of a hotel room just outside of Chattanooga, I look about as disoriented as I feel. My hair half out of the bun I put it in last night after my shower, evidence of how much I tossed and turned on the room’s too-soft bed and too-crinkly pillows. My skin sallow looking, because even in the front seat of that van I sat in yesterday, I fought what felt like motion sickness but what might have actually been nerves. My eyes red and dry, because I spent most of the predawn hours staring up at the ceiling and the blinking light from the room’s smoke detector, wondering how in the world I ended up here.
Of course I know, in the abstract, how I ended up here: the man I knew as Miles Daniels, Mom’s postcards, my sister’s ingenuity, Salem Durant’s obsession with the still-untold ending to a story she can’t let go of. I know I had no choice but to be in this hotel room, Tegan sleeping in the queen-size bed next to mine, her phone’s alarm set for a half hour from now.
But the abstract is nothing compared to how this feels.
How it feels to be getting further and further from home, where I’ve worked hard to be fully in control of my life—and Tegan’s life—for the last ten years. How it feels to have Salem studying me from the back seat of the van, getting one over on me. How it feels to sit next to my sister on a picnic bench in a public park while she answers questions about what she remembers about the man our mother disappeared with.
How it feels to have Adam Hawkins see it all, when I think he can see right through me.
I lift a hand and unwind what’s left of my bun, letting my hair fall heavily onto my back, my shoulders. From my travel kit, I take out my boar-bristle brush, fitting it into my right hand in the way that feels perfectly familiar. I use the handle and my left hand to separate the length into sections, and then I start: one hundred strokes per section, from scalp to ends. Professionally speaking, I know the advantages. I’m conditioning my hair; I’m helping it shine. I’m massaging my scalp; I’m helping keep my follicles healthy.
Personally speaking?
Personally speaking, my mom used to do this for me.
We’re like twins, she used to say, standing behind me while she brushed.I’m so glad you got my hair.
I’d been so glad, too. I loved those moments when she was at my back, brushing tangles away. Even for a kid—and a restless one, at that—it had been meditative. The brush pulling the busy, nagging thoughts away from my brain.
When my mom left the first time, I started doing it for myself. Twelve years old. Pulling away my confusion. Pulling away the way I missed her.
Now, I work through it section by section, detangling: I tell myself that I can stay in control, even far from home. Salem can’t get the better of me again: yesterday’s brief flare of anger in front of her was regrettable but not necessarily repeatable. And Tegan—who talks about Lynton Baltimore as nothing more than a more-normal-than-most boyfriend of our mother’s—seems to be doing fine so far.
But Adam Hawkins, I admit, is like hitting a snag. Honestly, given what he already knows about me via my sister, it has to be only fair I googled him. Not, in fact, after Tegan mentioned it in the van yesterday, but actually the day before, when I’d still been standing in the foyer at Dad and Bernila’s house, watching him drive away, still smarting from that awful moment when I’d called himsecurity.
And from that gentle moment afterward when he’d tried to help me anyway.
