The Perfect Fake Read online

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Well, my mom’s having heart trouble, and she’s old. She needs me close. I didn’t want to just leave and have you asking, ‘What happened to Ms. Smith?’You’ve been assigned to another probation officer starting today.”

  “I don’t want another PO.”

  “Don’t play like you’ll miss me. You kept sayin’ how I always had my spurs in your ribs.”

  “You do. You don’t let me get away with anything.”

  “Remember now, it’s the straight and narrow path that leads to freedom. Stay on it. You’ll be all right.”

  “So... who has the pleasure of my company from now on?”

  She hesitated before she said, “George Weems.”

  “Not the Weasel.”

  She pointed at him. “You listen to me. He might be tough, but he wants his clients to succeed. You do your best for him, and watch your mouth. He’ll slap you down if you show an attitude.”

  “What attitude?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t you disappoint me.”

  “I promise not to.” They shook hands, and Tom held on. “I’m going to miss you,” he said. “You believed in me, Keesha, when nobody else in the system did. You kept me out of prison.”

  “Good luck, Tom. And good luck with that sailboat! If you ever get around to Tampa Bay, I want a ride.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She sent him back to the waiting room, where he pulled another number off the roll. Fifty-one. He checked the display, which said twenty-four. He rolled the number into a ball.

  “Hey, Daniela.” He leaned close to the smudged glass of the check-in window and waited for her to smile. “Ms. Smith wants me to go right in and see George Weems. Would you find out if he’s available?”

  She lifted the phone while Tom leaned an elbow on the counter and ran his hand over his buzz-cut hair, silently cursing. Bad news, getting George Weems. They had a history, going back to Tom’s first arrest, at age thirteen, busted at the mall for shoplifting He-Man and Battle Cat in full armor. Tom’s father had just died, not that it was an excuse, but Weems had kept him on probation for a year by writing up bad reports for the judge. When Tom and a friend had been caught smoking grass on school grounds, Weems had insisted on a residential facility. That was where Tom had learned the basics of street fighting, which later had served him well in the county lockup. Weems hated all his clients, but he particularly hated anybody who could insult him in complete sentences.

  Tom had been out of serious trouble for four years before this latest stumble, which wasn’t even his fault. If not for a good lawyer, a judge with some brains, and Keesha Smith’s vouching for him, Tom would have been looking at eight to ten years. The judge had given him a year in county and eight on probation. Two years down, six to go. Any major fuckup, they would ship him to state prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.

  Being only marginally incompetent, George Weems had been promoted to the adult division. He hadn’t forgotten Tom Fairchild. The first time they’d crossed in the hall, the Weasel’s eyes had gleamed with anticipation. Lookee who’s here. My, my.

  Keesha was right: Walk the straight and narrow. There was no choice.

  A tap on the glass drew his attention.

  Daniela said, “He says you need to wait. Sorry.” She wrote Tom’s name at the bottom of Weems’s page.

  Tom checked his watch: a quarter past ten. He rode the elevator down. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the shabby probation office, gazing at the Miami Police Department a block away, a building more familiar to him than any church, Tom flipped open his cell phone and called his sister, Rose, to let her know he’d be late. Rose owned a shop that sold antique maps and prints. Tom did the framing and archival coloring. He took next to nothing for this because it was all she could pay him. Rose’s husband had been a drunk, and the only downside to his early departure, a result of rolling his car into a canal, was that Rose had inherited a pile of bills and two kids to raise on her own.

  When the rings flipped over to voice mail, Tom left a message. “Rose, it’s me. I’m stuck at my PO’s office, but don’t worry about that map for Royce Herron. It’s almost done, and I can take it to him by this afternoon, no problem.”

  Tom had chained his motorcycle to a utility pole in the reserved-parking area, rather than leave it in the main lot. The bike was a 1988 Kawasaki he had paid only five hundred bucks for, but a roving meth-head might steal it for the tires. Tom unlocked the storage box and took out a notebook and a mechanical pencil. The notebook contained sketches of the forward hatch on the sailboat he’d been restoring. Ten years ago, he and a buddy had dragged it out of the mangroves, and Tom had been working on it—off and on—ever since. Tom had set himself a deadline. By the end of February, a month from now, the boat would be dropped into the Miami River. Tom would motor it out to Biscayne Bay for its first water test—if he could find the money for engine repairs.

  By the time his number was called an hour and twenty minutes later, Tom had sketched both forward and aft hatches, embellished the gunwales with carved teak, and made a masthead with bare breasts and flowing hair.

  He flipped the notebook closed.

  The Weasel’s office had been decorated in gray-steel file cabinets and brown carpet, all the warmth of a stripmall insurance office. Weems had cranked up the seat of his chair to put him eye-to-eye with his clients. If he stood more than five-four, it was on the days he wore lifts in his shoes. He had light brown skin and eyes a weird shade of gray. A receding hairline and large front teeth made his narrow face even more rodentlike. He knitted his claws together on the wood-grain Formica surface of his desk. “Mr. Fairchild, it seems that fate rejoins us.”

  “It seems so.”

  “I’m gonna tell you first off that whatever your deal was with Ms. Smith, you don’t have it with me.”

  “We had no deals. If Keesha asked me to do something, I did it.”

  “I’ve reviewed your file.” A slight nod indicated the thick folder on the desk. “There’s been a lot of slipsliding on your part. Example: Alcoholics Anonymous. Have you been attending meetings regularly?”

  “Not anymore. I don’t have a problem with alcohol. Ms. Smith wrote that in the file.”

  “I don’t care what she wrote in the file. The judge ordered you to attend AA.”

  “It was a total waste of time. I’m not an alcoholic.”

  “Denial, Mr. Fairchild. Denial. It’s how you got here, and it’s what’s gonna keep you here until you own up to it.” He let the silence hang there while Tom looked at him across the desk. “You’ve been flaunting the terms of your probation. I could write you up right now.”

  The heat in Tom’s neck was starting to make him sweat. He smiled. “You want me back in AA? Fine.” After which he would go out and have a beer. A psychologist in the distant past had written “alcohol abuse” in his file, and it had dogged him ever since.

  “Before you leave, pick up the paperwork. Ask your sponsor to fill it out.” Weems clicked his black ballpoint pen a few times, then began filling out the monthly report form. “Have you made your payment this month?”

  “I just mailed a money order,” Tom said.

  “Uh-huh. The check is in the mail. Your payment is due the first of the month, and today is February the second.” Click-click-click. “It appears to me like you’re consistently late on your payments to the court.”

  “Not always. Not by more than a day or two.”

  “We have a pattern here, Mr. Fairchild. What it is, is a lack of respect for the court. You need to accept your responsibility to pay restitution to the victim.”

  “The so-called victim is the one who ought to be sitting here. He padded the damages by about five grand.”

  “That is not my concern. The judge ordered you to pay, and my job is to make sure you do.” Slowly, Weems turned the pages in the file. “The last financial affidavit is from six months ago. Fill out a new one before you leave.
I want to know the sources of your income, and how you spend it.”

  “Fine.”

  “Do you own a vehicle?”

  “I own a motorcycle.”

  “Do you carry liability insurance?”

  “Yes.”

  “You still earn about two thousand a month?”

  “More or less. It varies.”

  “Do you believe you’re working up to the level of your ability, Mr. Fairchild?”

  Tom tapped the toes of his sneakers together to let off some energy. “I’m building my business. It takes time.”

  Weems clicked his pen. “And what is your business?”

  “I’m a freelance graphic designer. It’s in there. I also work for my sister in her map shop.”

  “Catch as catch can. Are you registered with our job placement service?”

  “I have a job.”

  “Register anyway, and make sure I receive proof that you’ve done so.”

  “Fine.”

  Weems tapped his finger on the page. “Is your rent still eight hundred a month?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Not in this market,” Tom said.

  “You live alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “A lot of my single probationers rent a room to save money.”

  “My place isn’t big enough for a roommate,” Tom said.

  “No, you find a room to rent,” Weems said. “Why can’t you do that?”

  Tom stared at him. Explaining anything to Weems was like talking to a dish of potato salad. Tom lived in a garage apartment ten minutes from Rose’s shop. He kept his tools and his bike in the garage, and the owner let him work on his sailboat in the backyard.

  He said, “I like the neighborhood.”

  Lifting the cover with his pen, Weems let it fall shut.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, Mr. Fairchild. Heretofore, you’ve skated by on the minimum of effort. No longer. You will pay your two hundred and sixty dollars and nineteen cents on the first of every month, and not a day later. If the first falls on a weekend, you will pay by the preceding Friday. You will attend regular AA meetings, and you will sign up for a course in anger management.”

  “Anger management?”

  “Did I not speak clearly enough for you?”

  “Wait a minute.” Tom held up his hands. “When I was released from jail, Keesha said I should take that course, and I did. The certificate’s in the file. Take a look.”

  “You might have taken the course, but it doesn’t seem to have done you much good. I want you to take it again.”

  “I don’t have the money right now.”

  “That’s not my concern. Within a week I want you enrolled in anger management, and on Friday morning, this Friday, I’m going to check the registry of the court to see if your monthly payment arrived. You said you mailed it today? You weren’t lying to your probation officer, were you?”

  “This is fucking ridiculous.”

  The Weasel’s eyes glittered. “You are this close, Mr. Fairchild, to being violated.”

  Tom shifted his gaze toward the ceiling and smiled.

  “Is something funny?”

  “No, Mr. Weems. There’s nothing funny at all.”

  The Weasel’s quiet voice stopped him at the door. “Mr. Fairchild. You might have charmed your way past some people, but not me. We’re going to get you straightened out, one way or another.”

  Clamping his teeth on a reply, Tom went to the main office to fill out the forms. Half an hour later, he pushed through the glass door of the probation office and thudded down four flights of concrete stairs to the emergency exit, which he opened by kicking the push bar.

  He put on his sunglasses and unlocked his bike. Looking up, he calculated which window belonged to George Weems. He pushed his bike under it, swung a leg over the saddle, and jumped on the starter. He gave it some gas. The scream of the 600-cc engine bounced off the building next door, and smoke poured from the exhaust.

  Double-glazed windows muffled the traffic noise. The porch roof and dense banyan trees down the middle of the street blotted out the buildings on the other side. Tom could walk into The Compass Rose, with its dark pine floors, its walls hung with antique maps in gold or mahogany frames, and one of his sister’s classical music CDs playing softly on the stereo, and time would roll backward to when he’d sat under the display table with his crayons and a coloring book. He could almost—not quite—forget about wanting to break the Weasel’s jaw.

  The building had once been their grandfather Fairchild’s house, built in the twenties. The shop was on the ground floor; Rose and the girls lived in the converted apartment upstairs. It was rare to have more than a few customers a day. There were better markets for antique maps than Miami, but their grandfather had founded the shop, and he’d left it to Rose because she loved maps. They were all she knew.

  Coming in through the workroom a little while ago, Tom had found his sister in the front, pulling maps for the Miami International Map Fair, an annual event at the historical museum downtown. Rose always rented a booth and somehow sold enough to survive.

  “Rose, I hate like hell to ask you, but I’m about three hundred dollars short of what I need. If you could lend me the money, I’ll have it back to you by Friday. If I don’t mail the money order today, Weems will be on my ass for sure. He’s looking for an excuse to write me up.”

  The crease between her brows deepened. “Oh, no. Tom, I’m sorry, I just paid some bills, and I don’t have— Wait. Yes, I do.” She went around to her desk and shuffled through envelopes in the outgoing mail. She pulled one out. “This can wait a few days.”

  “What’s that, the bank? No, I’m not going to let you—”

  “It’s all right. Really it is...as long as you’re sure you can get the money back into my account by the end of the week.”

  He nodded. “I’m sure. Absolutely.”

  “Good.” She smiled at him. “Problem solved.”

  Tom could see himself in her green eyes and sandy blond hair. A pretty woman, but worry had sketched lines on her face. She was thirty-eight, the sensible older sister. The rock; the one who had put a $75,000 mortgage on the building to pay for a lawyer who could get her younger brother a year in county plus probation, instead of eight to ten in a state penitentiary. Tom sometimes wondered if he should have saved her the trouble. If he could go back to the moment the cops put the handcuffs on, would he even let her pay his bail? Rose had already given or lent him so much he’d lost track. He had tried to pay it back, but his bike blew a tire, or a tooth had to be filled, or the landlord wanted a security deposit. That Rose still trusted him made him want to scream at her: You fool, don’t do it!

  He unhappily watched her write out a check. When she gave it to him, he said, “I swear to have the money on Friday. I’d go back to prison before I’d take bread out of the kids’ mouths.”

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. It’s fine.” Her eyes searched his. “And you’re fine, too, Tom. Don’t forget that. I know it’s hard for you right now, but just put your head down and plow through it. My advice about Mr. Weems? Ignore him. He can’t hurt you unless you do something wrong, and you won’t. You won’t.”

  Tom managed to fake a reassuring smile. Rose had no idea. There were fifty ways of falling off the straight and narrow. Keesha Smith had been a god-sent piece of luck. He was afraid it had just run out.

  He snapped his fingers. “Hey, I almost forgot. I want to show you something.”

  The workroom was at the back of the house, converted years ago from a kitchen and enclosed porch. Coming in, Tom had tossed his jacket and a brown mailing envelope on the table he used for framing maps and prints. He opened the envelope and slid something halfway out.

  “I’m going to let you see this,” he told Rose, “but just look. Don’t pick it up.”

  On the carpeted surface of the table he set a small map about ten inches by seven and turned
on a gooseneck lamp. Then he crossed his arms and waited. Rose bent over the map, studying it intently, twirling the end of her sandy blond ponytail.

  She was looking at the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and Cuba, surrounded by a narrow border of ocher. Tattered corners. A small stain near the top. Pale pink land; rivers meandering through; settlements as small red forts; tiny script for the place names. The ocean was shaded with thousands of black dots, denser at the shores. A cartouche contained the words La Florida, and underneath that, Hieron. Chiavez, Antwerp 1584. Off the Atlantic coast sailed an inch-long wooden caravel with banners flying, sails puffed out, the bow dipping into a wave.

  “What do you think?”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “You like it?”

  “Ha. What a question. I’ve got goose bumps!” She slowly straightened and looked at him. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Not so fast,” he said. “Can you name the cartographer?”

  “Hieronimo Chiavez. It’s on the cartouche.” “And the publisher?”

  Her eyes shifted back to the map. “Oh, my God. It can’t be an Ortelius. Can it?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You tell me.”

  “Tom, where did you get this?” She gave him a little punch on the shoulder. “Where?”

  “Turn it over.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. You!”

  On the reverse was the shop’s logo, a pink and green compass rose, with directions, the phone number, Web site. And in old-fashioned script, her name: Rose Ervin, Proprietress. Tom said, “You wanted something to give out at the map fair next weekend.”

  She reached for a magnifying glass and held the map to the light. “Ahhhh. Cotton rag paper, the right color and weight, more or less, but . . . there it is. A watermark from Eaton. Busted!”

  “Yeah, but it took you a while,” he countered.

  “Where did you find this particular Ortelius to copy? I’ve never seen it anywhere.”

  “I made it up. I combined three others I saw in the catalogues and put them together on Photoshop. You could say it’s an original Fairchild. I can take the disk to the printer this afternoon. How many should we get? Five hundred?”