But he doesn’t seem bothered. He doesn’t even wait for either of them to reply, though Tegan looks like she’s about to.
He simply takes over, making a plan of his own.
“And you’re Charlotte’s daughters.”
* * *
“SHEwas very friendly,” MacSherry says, sipping idly from his iced tea. “Very funny and charming. She seemed to love the area here.”
He gestures with his glass, all around us.
We’re around the back of the ranch house, on a large stone patio overlooking the thick woods. When MacSherry led us here, he gestured to a grouping of mismatched chairs, all arranged around a brick fire pit that does not look professionally constructed, and invited us to sit as though he’d just brought us to the luxury by-the-sea resort he’s dressed for. He offered us drinks: sweet tea or Coke. He said he had cheese and crackers inside.
Salem and I had exchanged a confused, surreptitious glance—thisis the man who once secured two-and-a-half million dollars from a Greek shipping heir for a painting that turned out to be a forgery, and a pretty bad one, at that? The man who once successfully impersonated an MI5 agent for at least a year in the 1980s?—and then we started setting up some of our equipment as best we could on the rickety fire pit.
Now, he’s holding court, reclined with one slim leg crossed over the other in a faded lawn chair as if it’s a throne. If he’s bothered by being ambushed, he doesn’t show it. He’s been blowing smoke for at least the last forty-five minutes.
“At the time,” he continues, his voice taking on a wistful quality, “my mother was still living. She and Charlotte got on very well during the visit, and—”
“Mr. MacSherry,” I interrupt, because every time he says the name Charlotte, I can somehowfeelJess get more tense. Twice he’s mentioned the “remarkable resemblance” between them. He’s taunting her.
“It might be helpful if you could talk more about the nature of that visit. If you could talk to us about your relationship to Baltimore, and why he might have come here.”
I don’t look over at her, but I’m pretty sure Salem approves of this. She favors a loose style when interviewing, but MacSherry is more than loose. He’s liquid.
“Relationship!” he echoes, laughing. “I wouldn’t call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
He looks over at me, and I guess I owe it to the nickname, but I think of a video I saw on the internet once: a house cat sitting on the edge of a desk, casually swiping items off its surface. A knowing glint in its eyes. A cup of pens, a tape dispenser, a stapler.
“Probably I’d use a term you’re familiar with, what with your . . .history.” He smiles, turning his taunting toward me now. “We were teammates.”
Jess clears her throat. It’s so loud. The only thing I don’t like about it is the way it draws MacSherry’s attention back to her. His eyes catalogue her face as he smiles, smiles, smiles, and I swear: If he says “remarkable resemblance” again, fuck the plans.
It’ll be flattening time.
Lucky for him, he gives up and turns back to me.
“Do you know what a roper is?”
Salem snorts. Obviously I know what a roper is, being on this job. I did my research.
“I don’t!” says Tegan. She’s leaning forward in her chair, excited.
“Ah,” says MacSherry, clearly thrilled, and if I were writing copy for the intro to this interview, I know exactly what I would say. I would say that this is a man who loves to hear himself talk. A man who longs for a captive audience. I’d say I’m pretty sure that it’s the talking that keeps MacSherry grifting, rather than whatever it is he goes after in the grift.
“A roper is a”—he slides his eyes toward me briefly—“ateammateI sometimes have. He might, after quite a lot of careful work, facilitate an introduction for me. To someone that I wish to know better.”
Tegan blinks at him. “I mean,” she says flatly, that excitement from before muted with annoyance, “I can just look it up on my phone, if you’re going to be like that about it. Allmysteriousor whatever.”
I almost—almost—laugh. Instead I snap my gaze toward Jess, just in case she does.
Just so I don’t miss it.
I see the barest, most beautiful quirk at the corner of her mouth. It’s a syrup-drenched stack of pancakes. It’s nowhere near a laugh, but still. I could eat off that quirk for days and days.
Salem actuallydoeslaugh this time, and whether it’s authentic or tension-breaking, I can’t really tell. I do know that MacSherry joins in, and while I could be overthinking it, it seems . . . reluctant. A saving-face laugh, anI’m not going to let a teenager get the better of melaugh.
