Play the Fool by Lina Chern

Author:Lina Chern [Chern, Lina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

I was wrapping a set of tea glasses with engraved removable metal holders when my phone, nestled underneath the counter, lit up: Jamie Cell.

I stuffed the half-wrapped glasses into a waiting plastic bag and thrust it at the customer on the other side of the register. “Here you go,” I said. “Have a nice day.” Watching my phone ring and ring and waiting for the guy to get the hell out.

“Brings back memories.” The guy stared fondly at the bag. He was an older guy with a full head of silver-blond hair, fit and well-dressed, like an actor in an ad for a country club or a hair-replacement procedure. In the course of the ten minutes he had now spent at the cash register, he had told me the story of his many years in Novosibirsk as a bigwig at a multinational aircraft manufacturer. All the while making me unwrap and rewrap the glasses because I wasn’t doing it the way they used to do at Barney’s in New York, where he lived half the year. “See, the way you use these glasses is, when you’re on the long-distance trains up there in Siberia, and you’re drinking your tea, the little holders…”

“Keep the tea from spilling?” I guessed, trying to move the conversation along.

“Exactly!” He acted like I had just translated the Rosetta stone. “I tell you,” he said. Oh God, he was just warming up. I glanced at my phone. One more ring would send it to voicemail, and I had forgotten my password years ago. “I wish there were more honest, hardworking young people like you.” He leaned in and dropped into a whisper. “Especially around here. Know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean.” I shook the bag at him. “Mind if I take this call? It’s my parole officer.” I answered my phone with a flourish.

The man blinked at me, then squeezed his lips together in a bloodless line, grabbed the bag, and stalked out of the store.

“You’re going to want to see this,” Jamie said without preamble. People were typing and talking in the background. “I called Chicago Asian Foods. The good news is, they have security cameras on the loading docks right where they back up to your patio.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“The bad news is the loading dock cameras are crap. The real top-of-the-line stuff is out front. But it’s not a total waste.” More typing and a duck quacking alert sound. “I’m sending you some stills.”

My phone dinged. I put Jamie on speaker and swept through the snapshots. They looked like all security footage did—black-and-white and grainy and crappy. The first was a shot of the whole alley from a high angle. Two trucks in the near loading bays filled most of the screen, and in the upper left-hand corner was my patio door. I could just make out Jessie’s wicker chair. The time stamp at the bottom of the screen read 1:08 p.m.

The next shot showed a figure in black walking toward my patio, hood pulled down.

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