Swindler & Son by Ted Krever

Author:Ted Krever [Krever, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little David
Published: 2018-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

The Protected

And from then, my life changed.

Harry gave me my life back. He gave me agency, the sense that I could do something, that I could stand up for something, even if all I stood up for was swindlery (is that a word? If not, I want credit for it! Who do I know on the Oxford committee?).

“And then he taught you HARRY’S RULES,” Sara says.

“Well, no,” I admit through gritted teeth. “There are no HARRY’S RULES, really. I made up HARRY’S RULES once we started working together.”

This is a very sensitive moment. The first time I tried explaining HARRY’S RULES to Sara, it broke up our marriage. I thought I was filling in the details to something she already understood. I was very wrong about that and now I worry that, with this admission, I’m picking at the scab.

“Like I said, Harry’s the swindler. He’s never had any rules—he’s always made it up on the fly, taken his chances and went to jail when things went bad. It’s all part of the game for him.”

“But not for you?”

“Not for me. I did the same thing with Harry that I did with you—I took a leap of faith, impulsively, and then spent every moment after trying to make it safe, buff away the risks, rationalize all the things that excited me in the first place. I saw something I wanted but never expected to actually get—when I did, it scared the shit out of me.”

“You don’t trust the truth, why should you trust people?” she says and I feel myself redden.

“I just always feel like I have to improve the odds.”

“How’s that working out for you?” she asks and I have no answer. She holds up her phone. “I did a series on Qumrahdi when they unveiled the new downtown a few years ago. There’s a tiny ruling family who own everything, flaunt their wealth, their own people hate them but get paid heavily just for being citizens. There’s a huge population of foreign workers stranded there, sixty to a two-bedroom apartment, swindled into onerous contracts, unable to pay off their debts, one rather fictitious step above slaves. Every year, several die because they’d rather try walking away across the desert than live in those conditions. Nobody trusts anybody there. They’re not going to help us find Harry unless it serves somebody’s interests—somebody with pull.”

Diamante returns to his seat, holding up the tracking map on his phone. “Harry’s right here,” he says, pointing out a building at the edge of a field of blue, the northern coast of Qumradhi.

“Is it a big building? Where is he inside?”

“It says it’s sixty stories—where is he? No idea. I have to scan more when we get there.”

“That’s all that thing tells you?”

“It’s just an app!” he protests and I realize how tired we all are. “I forgot I’d installed it until you reminded me. I’m surprised it works at all.”

I nod, apologetic. “Okay, I hear you. We’ll figure it out when we get there.

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