Con Academy by Joe Schreiber Page A

Programmers. Silicon Valley by way of MIT.”
    â€œInteresting,” he says, and I can hear him clicking buttons on a keyboard while an infinitely more complex array of switches and sprockets start turning in his mind. “Yeah, I can think of five guys right off the top of my head that I can get up there by tomorrow. What’s the angle?”
    â€œI’m running the online poker swindle on a mark here, a rich jerk sitting on a trust fund the size of Mount Everest. But in order to make it work, I need a full boiler-room setup with computers and phone lines. And . . .” I pause and swallow hard. “I kind of need it by Friday.”
    â€œFriday?
This
Friday?” There’s a long pause, and I realize Uncle Roy is laughing. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”
    â€œSorry,” I say. “You know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t really need it.”
    â€œSame old William, God love you.” He chortles. “Hey, remember back when you soaked that entertainment lawyer for sixteen grand in Reno? You weren’t even ten years old at the time.” His voice practically glows with fond recollection. “Geez, kiddo, your mom would be so proud.”
    â€œThanks,” I say.
    â€œI’ll be on the first flight out tomorrow morning.”
    â€œWait.” At first I think I’ve misheard him. “What?”
    â€œMy grand-nephew losing his cherry in the big con—you think I’d miss this for the world?”
    â€œUhhh,” I mumble. It’s all I say, but when it comes to somebody as intuitive as Uncle Roy, it’s one “uhhh” too many. When Roy speaks again, all the laughter has disappeared from his voice, replaced by a suffocating vacuum of suspicion.
    â€œYour old man’s involved in this, isn’t he?” he asks.
    â€œWell . . .” I can’t lie to Uncle Roy. Even if I could, he’d know it in a second. “Kind of. But it wasn’t his idea. I had to bring him in on the deal.”
    â€œWilliam . . .”
Uncle Roy groans. It comes out sounding like a growl, as if I’d just awakened a sleeping bear midway through hibernation. “Why’d you go and do that, kiddo? You know you can always come to me for help. Why’d you have to bring that dirtbag into it?” Uncle Roy has never liked Dad, even back before Mom died, and things have only gone downhill since then. “Is he on the sauce again?”
    â€œNot that much.”
    â€œIs he on the lam from somebody?”
    â€œI don’t know.” At least this much is true. In Roy’s mind, Dad has always been the worst kind of grifter, careless and greedy, which makes him a walking occupational hazard. It helps explain why Dad spent the first part of my life in and out of prison, while Roy’s never seen the inside of a jail cell. “You think I should cut him loose?”
    â€œToo late now, kid.” Roy sighs. “If you drop him now, he’ll queer the pitch. What’s the nearest airport to you?”
    â€œManchester,” I say.
    â€œThen I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    â€œYou’re still in?”
    â€œSomebody’s gotta keep your interests at heart,” my great-uncle says, and like that, he’s gone.

Fifteen
    A FTER U NCLE R OY HANGS UP , I DECIDE TO LIE BACK DOWN for five more minutes of sleep. The next thing I know, it’s eleven o’clock (I guess the fancy-schmancy Connaughton blackout curtains really work). I’ve already missed World History and Economics, and the dimly functioning part of my brain manages to realize that I’m going to be late for English Lit, even if I could somehow magically teleport myself fully dressed to Mr. Bodkins’s classroom.
    â€œCrap!”
I jump out of bed, throwing on clothes and grabbing my backpack, then run across the already deserted quad and trying to come up with an excuse for my tardiness. My