It was a little bit hard to hear the guy in the background. But, as they’d hoped, it wasn’t too hard. “Going great, let me know if you have any questions.”
“Nope, that’s not him,” Laurie said softly. They had seen a couple of pictures of Rocky, but they were blurry to varying degrees, and most of the guys here had caps and sunglasses. But Laurie knew she’d recognize Rocky when she heard his voice. That, she had experience with. Ryan made a couple of minutes of conversation with Not Rocky about what sounded like a collection of belt buckles—Laurie was afraid to lift her head and look over, even though he was only a few tables away—and then he moved on.
“Hey,” he said again. “Good morning, how’s it going?”
“It’s going good, man, thanks for coming out.”
“That’s him,” she said toward the ground. “That’s Rocky.”
She knew she should stay farther back, but she turned and walked over toward the table next to Rocky’s, directing her face resolutely away from him and trying to look like she didn’t want anyone else to try to strike up a conversation either. Just as she got near, she heard Ryan say, “Can we talk somewhere? I have a question that’s kind of sensitive.” They’d figured Rocky was used to this, that people would constantly want to tell him in secret about something they had in their attic or their car that they thought might be so valuable that they didn’t even want to speak of it in the presence of random people walking around a public event.
“Sure,” Rocky said. “Angie, I’m taking a second, keep an eye out.”
Even criminals have women to keep an eye out.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walk with Ryan over toward a big black pickup truck with a decal on the side that said FINE GOODS BY ROCK. They leaned on the truck. Laurie started picking up and putting down a series of Precious Moments figurines.
“So what’s up, how can I help?” Rocky asked.
“My name’s John.” Yep, that was him. John No Last Name.
“Hey, John.”
“And I think we know somebody in common,” Ryan said. “You know Matt Pell?”
“Yeah, he’s got a store in Camden. We’ve done some work together.”
“Well, he and I have done some work together, too.” Laurie held her breath. Baby figurine. Angel figurine. Figurine with a little sheep. This pause was long. Uncomfortably long. Glacially long.
“Have we met before?” Rocky said. “Did you grow up around here?”
Didn’t I know you in college? Didn’t you date my sister?
“No,” Ryan said.
“I could have sworn. Like, I’ve seen you.”
“I just have one of those faces.”
“You’re sure we’ve never met?”
“Sometimes people think I look like the guy from Suits.”
Another pause. “Oh yeah. I think that’s it.”
Laurie tried, but couldn’t help it: She coughed with her fist over her mouth so that nobody could see her trying not to smile. But of course, this was the extremely easy part.
“So,” Rocky said in his slightly muffled voice, “you know Matt.”
“Right. I think he gave you a piece. A duck. Yeah? A Kittery.”
“Let’s say he did.”
Laurie flicked her eyes over and saw Ryan turn to face Rocky as he leaned on the truck. “He’s full of shit,” Ryan said.
“That’s often the case, yeah.”
“He’s specifically full of shit about this. He and I dummied up that duck. It’s a fake. We found it, we thought it might be a Kittery, but it wasn’t. So we did some work on it until it looked like it was. We were supposed to be going fifty-fifty.”
Rocky put his hands on his hips. “What happened?”
“I got nervous. I told him I thought we needed to lower the expectations, sell it as a nice piece but not a Kittery. Too much money involved, too complicated. I didn’t want to pursue it, you know? Because it was kind of fraud?”
“Ah, shit,” Rocky muttered.
“He didn’t want to hear it. We had a big fight about it, and he told me we could talk about it again and figure out what to do. Next thing I hear is that he’s trying to sell it through you. And he’s cutting me out.”
“He showed me proof, though. Pretty solid.”
Laurie’s heart sped up. She could feel a crackle in her skin.
“What did he show you, exactly?”