FROM FAKER

Chapter One

The dog is enormous—a purebred Great Dane, every inch a champion. His coat is a silvery gray, thick and shiny. His name is Lord Gladstone, who Dad says was a British prime minister from way back in the day. That makes sense because the one word that describes this animal is dignified. His massive head is held high, reaching all the way to my shoulder and almost up to Dad’s.

The sleek body is motionless, even though we’re in the middle of an open field, with endless directions to explore and butterflies to chase. Lord Gladstone is above all that.

“Some training, huh, Trey?” Dad observes. He’s holding a leash, but it’s slack. The dog is the picture of self-control.

“He’s awesome,” I agree.

The helicopter appears as a dot in the sky, growing larger and more detailed as it approaches. The wind comes up as the craft hovers briefly overhead, then begins to descend. I raise my hands to my ears, but the roar doesn’t bother Lord Gladstone. He doesn’t move a millimeter, except for the slight rustling of his ears.

The chopper comes down on a flat section of grass about forty yards in front of us. We hang back as the motor dies and the rotor slows and stops. Mr. McAvoy unfolds himself from the passenger seat of the bubble and starts toward us. I’ve met him a couple of times before. Rudy, my roommate at the Spealman School, is his son. The McAvoys are pretty rich. That’s not unusual for Spealman, which is a fancy boarding school. I’ve gone to a lot of schools like that. My family isn’t rich, but Dad needs to be close to people who are. It’s important for his line of work.

Mr. McAvoy walks over to meet us, but his eyes never leave Lord Gladstone. “Well, you weren’t kidding about him. He’s really something. I’ve never seen a dog who could keep his composure through a helicopter landing.”

My father sticks out his hand. “Parker Whitfield—Junior to my friends.”

Dad’s full name is Parker Whitfield II, which makes me Parker Whitfield III. Those weren’t our names four months ago and they won’t be our names four months from now. But it works, because no matter what we call ourselves, he’s always Junior and I’m always Trey.

Mr. McAvoy shakes hands, first with Dad, then with me. He even shakes with Lord Gladstone, which seems to please the man to no end. “What a beautiful animal!” he exclaims.

Mr. McAvoy then inspects the Great Dane like a man who’s used to being around dogs but isn’t really an expert on them. That’s exactly what we were hoping for. As Dad always says, the intersection of too much money and too little know-how is the sweet spot of our family business.

Dad hands over a thick file folder containing Lord Gladstone’s pedigree papers and other documents about his history.

Mr. McAvoy skims through the papers. “I’ve had dogs my whole life, but I can’t say I’m familiar with the show circuit. Seems like a solid investment, though.”

Dad nods confidently. “There are prizes to be won, for sure. But the real money will come in breeding fees once he’s a champion.”

“Yeah? You really think he’s got what it takes?”

“We use only the best trainers and our handlers are top-notch,” my father assures him. “It will happen with this one. He’s special.”

At that moment, Lord Gladstone stands taller, as if proving Dad’s statement.

Mr. McAvoy stays with the dog a little longer, peering and occasionally poking. The Great Dane bears this with restraint, like a movie star who has to put up with the paparazzi every now and then. At last, McAvoy takes out a check and hands it over to Dad. “My investment in full.”

I’m amazed at how fast it disappears into the pocket of my father’s blazer.

Dad beams. “You won’t regret this. The next time we see each other, it will be in the winner’s circle at Westminster.”

We shake hands again and Mr. McAvoy asks me to give his best to Rudy.

“Yes, sir. Will do,” I assure him, keeping my grip firm and looking him directly in the eye. Dad actually made me practice that before the helicopter came.

“You have to convince them you belong,” he told me. “If they think you’re part of the club, the sky’s the limit.”

Mr. McAvoy gets back in the chopper and the three of us—me, Dad, and the Great Dane—watch it take off and disappear into the distance.

Dad pats his pocket. “Another satisfied customer.”

“Where to now?” I ask. “Back to Spealman?”

“Soon. First we have to get rid of the mutt.”

I stare. “He isn’t ours?”

“Are you kidding? What would we do with a dog?”

“But the dog show! The winners circle at Westminster!”

My father smiles—a warm, friendly smile. It’s honest and open and makes people like him and trust him. That’s usually a mistake.

“We don’t have to own a show dog. We just need marks like McAvoy to think we do. This dog’s a rental. We have to get him back to the agency before they charge us for an extra half day.”

I don’t know why I’m so surprised; I should know my father by now. “You rented Lord Gladstone,” I say.

He nods. “The dog’s an actor. I know a guy who rents out trained animals for TV commercials. That’s where I got him. And his name isn’t Lord Gladstone. It’s Ernie.”

My father is a genius, but not at science or art or inventing a new app that changes the world. His gift is in separating people from their money. Mr. McAvoy thinks he’s investing in a show dog. But since there is no show dog, what he’s really doing is handing money over to Dad.

Basically, my father is a con man, a swindler, a flimflam artist. I know that sounds bad, but he’s never tried to keep it a secret from my sister or me. That’s why our names change and we move so often. What he does is against the law. If he gets arrested, he’ll go to jail and Arianna and I will probably wind up with Child Protective Services. That’s a scary possibility, but, believe it or not, I don’t think about it too much. Dad is really good at what he does, and that includes being good at not getting caught. When a scheme is over, we move on. Arianna and I don’t question it because it’s the only life we’ve ever known.

It’s not for everybody. Our mother couldn’t hack it, and that’s why she went her own way shortly after Arianna was born. I barely remember her, and Arianna never knew her at all. Dad is all the family we’ve ever needed. He looks after us when we’re’ sick and puts Band-Aids on scraped knees. Maybe he doesn’t bake our birthday cakes, but he always remembers to order them. We haven’t been neglected. We’ve always been happy kids.

There are other words for con man: crook, thief, criminal. But I never think of Dad that way. If you win on Jeopardy!, nobody thinks you’re being sleazy because you used your brain to make money. Besides, Dad only takes money from people who have tons of it—guys like Mr. McAvoy, who ride helicopters because they consider themselves too important to waste time in traffic. That’s why I’m always sent to fancy private schools like Spealman. It’s to meet rich kids with rich parents and introduce them to my dad. Marks, he calls them. It sounds better than victims. And anyway, they can afford it.

Dad opens the door and Lord Gladstone obediently crams himself into the back seat of the car. Even though I know the truth, I can’t bring myself to think of him as Ernie. Most dogs hang their heads out the window and drool into the breeze, but not him. He sits up straight on the floor, his huge head reaching almost as high as the dome light.

“He sure looks like a real champion,” I comment.

My father laughs. “Of course he does. Attention to detail—that’s everything in this business.”

These are the moments I love the most—when it’s just the two of us, and Dad’s telling me some of the tricks of his trade. It’s unspoken, but I’m definitely going to be his partner one day, so it’s important for me to learn how he thinks. Plus we don’t get to spend a lot of one-on-one time together, since I’m always away at boarding school.

On the way back to Spealman, we veer into an outer suburb of Boston and drop Lord Gladstone off at a small building with a sign reading critterstars—furry and feathered talent. Dad takes the Great Dane in and settles up with the guy he knows. That’s another thing about my father: He always “knows a guy” who can provide exactly what we need at exactly the right time. It’s kind of Dad’s superpower.

The Spealman School is less than an hour away, but it might as well be in another world. Picture Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s place, only instead of a house, somebody built a whole campus of stately redbrick buildings with lead-paned windows. Dad always pauses at the wrought iron gates to drink in the panorama of old New England prep school charm. To the outside world, he looks like a parent who is puffed up with pride that he can send his son to this storied place of learning. In reality, he’s breaking his arm patting himself on the back that he has an “in” with a place where practically everybody is rolling in money. As a Spealman parent, my father is like a fox with an all-access backstage pass to the henhouse. And that access is me.

We pull up to the Ralph Waldo Emerson Dormitory, where I share a room with Rudy.

“Home sweet home,” Dad announces cheerily.

I’m not so happy. The only downside of boarding school is I don’t get to spend that much time with my family. I miss Dad, and it’s never a bad idea to keep an eye on my kid sister. She has kind of a wild streak.

“I guess I won’t be seeing you for a while,” I say ruefully.

He seems surprised. “What are you talking about? I’m picking you up at three o’clock tomorrow. Stuart Attwell’s father wants to buy in. I’ve got him on the hook for sixty percent of Lord Gladstone.”

“But didn’t you just sell fifty percent to Mr. McAvoy?” I ask.

He grins at me. “If I play my cards right, I’m pretty sure I can sell about five hundred percent of the mutt.”

“But isn’t one hundred percent—you know—the whole dog?”

He shakes his head. “There’s what the marks believe and then there’s what’s really happening. You have to keep those things separate in your mind. The marks think they’re buying a piece of a show dog, but what they’re really buying is a piece of nothing. And the beauty of nothing is you can sell as much of it as you want. Five hundred percent of nothing is still nothing.”

“But is that—” I almost say legal, but I catch myself. That’s not a word we use in my family. Obviously, none of this is legal. “Fair?” I finish.

“Of course it’s fair. The investors want to make money. I want to make money. We’re all in this for the same thing. What could be fairer than that? But to make it happen, you have to be smart.”

I regard him in admiration. He is smart. That’s how he puts food on the table for his family and can pay for expensive schools like Spealman. In my opinion, the life lessons I’ve learned from Dad are a more important education than anything I’ve learned in even the fanciest academies.

I get out of the car and shut the passenger door behind me. “Got it. Thanks, Dad.”

He does offer one piece of advice before he drives off. “If any of your friends start talking about a certain Great Dane around the dorm, do me a favor and change the subject. The last thing we need is these rich kids comparing notes about Daddy’s latest plaything.”

 

Chapter Two

Dad’s been teaching me the family business since I was pretty young.

It even has its own vocabulary words. Like extraction, which he taught me in kindergarten.

It was during our big play. I honestly can’t remember the name of the school anymore, but it was the same kind of snooty place as Spealman. I earned the part of the Gingerbread Man by being the fastest in my class. Even in the bulky felt cookie costume, I could really move, running circles around the other kindergartners, who were dressed as various fairy tale characters, like Hansel and Gretel and the Big Bad Wolf.

“Run, run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me—I’m the Gingerbread Man!”

As I darted around the stage, who did I spy but Dad, crouched in the wings, beckoning wildly? Five-year-old me assumed he was so proud of my performance that he’d left his seat in the auditorium to urge me on to even greater feats of speed.  But as I wheeled around for another lap, Dad grabbed me under the arms, lifted me up, and pulled me back into the wings. He carried me out of the auditorium, out of the building, moving with long, loping strides.

So help me, I thought this was an extension of the play—an interactive section, maybe. In a few seconds, the audience would burst out the fire doors and chase the Gingerbread Man across the parking lot. Staying in character, I threw back my head and bellowed, “Run, run, as fast as you[LD13] —”

“Pipe down, Trey!” Dad hissed urgently. “You want the cops on our necks?”

When we got to the SUV, Arianna—age three at the time—was already strapped into her carseat, wailing like a banshee at being left alone.

“Pipe down!” I snapped at her. “You want the cops on our necks?” I turned to my father. “What’s a cop?” Another vocabulary word.

At that age, I wasn’t even old enough to sit in the front. I had a booster seat next to my sister. That’s where I rode out my very first police chase, still half-buried in my Gingerbread Man costume. We could hear the howling of the siren. At one point, the squad car was so close that the flashers reflected off the ceiling of our SUV.

“In school, Miss Asher said the policeman is our friend,” I reminded Dad.

“Looks like we got the only unfriendly one,” he replied tersely, squealing around a corner on two wheels.

It should have been scary, but believe it or not, Dad made it fun, like the whole thing was a thrill ride at Disney World. I remember thinking: My father is the greatest driver in the world. I was really proud of that. It was enough to make me forget the fact that I wasn’t going to get to finish my role as the Gingerbread Man. In fact, I never saw that school again, or the really nice rented house we lived in while I went there.

We drove for a pretty long time—long enough for Arianna to fall asleep. I might have dozed off too. It was dark when we stopped. We got out and watched three men push our SUV over a cliff and into a ravine. Arianna threw a fit because she wanted to help and Dad wouldn’t let her. Then we got into a different car, drove to the airport, and went on vacation. Never mind that we didn’t have our stuff—not even our clothes. We bought everything new, even toys. We went to the beach, rode waterslides, played mini-golf. It was the greatest adventure we’d ever had.

I was only able to fill in some of the details as I got older. For example, Dad chose that resort because it was located on an island where US law wasn’t in effect. Also, the reason the police were chasing us was that my friend Bruce’s father found out that the Mickey Mantle rookie card Dad sold him for three hundred thousand dollars was actually a fake worth about thirtycents.

Don’t get me wrong. I mourned the life I had and the friends I lost. I was really looking forward to Bruce’s laser-tag birthday party.

“Don’t be surprised if your invitation gets lost in the mail,” my father consoled me. “Delivery service is lousy down here in the Caribbean.”

Dad never tried to tell us that the life we were leading was the same as everybody else’s. As we got older, he was honest about my role in the family business. He needed me to gain access to my friends’ wealthy parents, who would become our marks. But even though he was using me, I never felt used. I was important. I was part of this.

“You can always find new friends,” he would tell us. “But family is forever.”

That’s always been his message—that we do the things we do so that we can stay together. With our mother out of the picture, “we three,” as Dad calls us, are all we have in the world.

Missing out on one laser-tag birthday party is a small price to pay for that.

 

The back stairs of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Dormitory squeak like the door to a haunted house.

“Not so loud!” I hiss at Rudy. “You want the dorm monitor on our necks?”

“I can’t help it,” he complains in a voice almost as squeaky as the stairs. “It’s not my fault this building has been here since 1886!”

That’s another thing about schools like Spealman. If the place isn’t falling-down ancient, there’s not enough tradition. This is where your great-great-great-grandfather got educated—and the place hasn’t had a paint job since then. We’re lucky they added electricity.

It’s over a week since the last of the show dog visits with Dad and Rudy and I are sneaking down to raid the basement kitchen. It’s our turn to host midnight snack—which is being catered by Spealman, even though they don’t know about it. If we get caught, we’ll be up at five a.m. peeling potatoes for the rest of the semester, but that doesn’t bother Rudy. There’s a kind of confidence that comes from being rich.. It’s not that he doesn’t get caught. He’s peeled more potatoes than anybody at Spealman. But he doesn’t let little details like that slow him down in his pursuit of a good time. The stairs are too loud? No problem—there’s another way to get to the bottom.

I watch as he climbs onto the polished mahogany banister.

“Hey,” I whisper, “watch out for the—”

Too late. He rockets down, smashing into the heavy wooden newel post at the bottom, knocking it off the rail. Considering what he hit—and more important, where he hit it—it must hurt like crazy. He opens his mouth to scream, but somehow, he swallows the howl of agony. It’s one of the many reasons my roommate is a legend at Spealman.

Not only that, but he reaches out his hand and manages to catch the carved newel post just before it would have hit the floor and rat-a-tatted all the way to the basement.

I race down to join him. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he croaks, getting to his feet in a doubled-over pose.

I cast tragic eyes on the broken newel post in his hand. “We are so dead!”

“Maybe not.” Rudy spits a wad of chewing gum into his free hand, slaps it onto the stump of the post, and sticks the carved top back into place. “See? Good as new.”

“Like that’s going to hold!”

He shrugs. “It might. And if it doesn’t, we’ll just act twice as amazed as everybody else when we find it broken.”

Even though I’m pretty shaken up, that strikes me as funny—especially coming from a guy who just sacrificed a pretty important body part to avoid squeaking on the stairs. Pretty soon I’m laughing into my fist, chirping like a chipmunk in my effort to stay silent. That sets off Rudy, which is even more hilarious because he has to hold on to bits and pieces that must hurt like crazy. By the time we make it to the kitchen—me tiptoeing and him limping—the threat of potato peeling is the last thing on our minds.

As we stumble between the pantries and fridges, stuffing snacks, cookies, and sandwich meats into our canvas bags, I remind myself that one day I’m going to have to move on from Rudy like I’ve moved on so many times before. The way things work, I won’t even be able to say goodbye. Who would have thought that goofy Rudy—out of all the friends at all the schools—would be the one to make it so tough?

There are twelve people packed into our room when we get back upstairs with our haul.

“No ice for the drinks, you guys,” Rudy announces.

“Why not?” challenges Stuart Attwell.

“Because I’ll be sitting on it.”

When he explains his trip down the banister, the laughing in our room threatens to bring the 1886 walls down on us.

“Pipe down!” I hiss. “The dorm monitor’s just at the end of the hall!”

In reality, we don’t have much to fear from Patrick, our monitor. He’s a scholarship kid, and they like to avoid drama. He pretty much ignores us unless we’re taking the place apart brick by brick. That’s important because, for me, getting caught means more than just getting up early to peel potatoes. At private schools, if they think you’re a troublemaker and your wealthy family doesn’t have a long history there, you can be expelled. And me being a Spealman student is a big part of how my family makes a living.

Midnight snack is a huge success. The cooks made lava cake for tomorrow’s dessert and we warm it up on Rudy’s video game console, which is so old that it overheats every time you run something invented after 2011. It’s a pretty fun party. Even Rudy seems to be loosening up a bit, so I assume icing his undercarriage did the trick.

We got our math tests back earlier today, so we have paper airplane races in the corridor. Peanut butter makes an amazing nose cone, which keeps the craft flying straight instead of catching a draft and turning up into the ceiling. Dev Parham teaches us that. His dad is the head of aerodynamics at MIT. At a school like Spealman, the parents are not only rich but also super successful.

I’m having a great time until I overhear Rudy saying to Dev, “Your dad owns a show dog? My dad owns a show dog!”

It jolts through me like ten thousand volts straight to the gut: Mr. McAvoy and Mr. Parham are both part of the Lord Gladstone scheme. The show dogs they “own” are the same show dog, who isn’t a show dog at all.

I look around the room. Rudy has a lot of friends at Spealman, but I’m a newbie. I could only invite the few guys I know. As it turns out, every single kid on my list is someone Dad targeted because he wanted to sell their parents a piece of his fake show dog. And even though Dad changed the name of the dog for each investor—Lord Gladstone, Lord Tweedsmuir, Lord Churchill, Lord Cavendish, etc.—there was one name he couldn’t change: Parker Whitfield III, a.k.a. Trey, i.e., me.

My father’s words come back to me: The last thing we need is these rich kids comparing notes about Daddy’s latest plaything.

And I’ve brought the whole lot of them together in one little dorm room. If I don’t find a way to change the subject, these guys are going to figure out that their families all own five hundred percent of the same dog.

I do the first thing that comes to mind: I yank the straw out of my chocolate milk container, aim at Rudy, and give the carton a mighty squeeze.

A jet of brown liquid sails across the room and scores a direct hit on my roommate’s face. Rudy lets out the scream he’s been holding ever since he made contact with the newel post. In mere seconds, a dozen or more plastic straws are flying through the air as kids prepare to turn their drinks into weapons of mass destruction. The atmosphere crackles with hilarious anticipation of a battle that will leave everything and everybody dripping milky slime.

A sharp rap at the door freezes the combatants into place.

“Is everything okay in there?” comes the voice of Patrick, the dorm monitor. “What’s all the screaming about?”

I couldn’t answer even if I wanted to. I’m turned to stone.

“We’re good!” Rudy calls. “Just a bad dream!”

“All right. Well, settle down. It’s one o’clock in the morning.”

We listen to the sound of Patrick’s bare feet padding down the hall back to his room.

We’re still armed and dangerous, but suddenly, no one is in the mood for a food fight and Rudy and I are definitely not in the mood for cleaning up after one. We give Patrick ten minutes to get back to sleep and then break up our party.

As we say good night, I think of each of the guys by the name of the dog their dads think they’ve bought into. Lord Coventry  . . . Lord Worcester  . . .

When I’m brushing my teeth that night, Rudy comes out of nowhere and empties his chocolate milk over my head.

“I owed you that,” he declares happily. And when I nod my reluctant agreement, he adds, “Best roomie I ever had.”

For bombarding him with chocolate milk. Unbelievable.

I have to shower again, but it’s all worth it to keep Dad’s operation from falling apart.

 

Rudy’s one of those people who drop into a deep sleep the instant their head touches the pillow, but I toss and turn.

Best roomie I ever had. I don’t think I’ve ever known a friendship like this before. In the end, I’m always moving on.

And sooner or later, that’s what will have to happen with Rudy.