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Tricks, Cons and Bamboozles | Tuesday | Period 4

Neal was thrilled he wasn’t a pony anymore. Seriously. So thrilled. He didn’t know if he could manage walking into a class and trying to teach while he had hooves and a tail. Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

When the students filed into the classroom, they would find the desks set up in rows of two, the chairs facing each other. On every desk was a small compact mirror. Don’t ask Neal where he got the mirrors. On the board in the front of the room was written in big blue letters:

“So,” he said once everyone was seated. “Last week we did fake introductions and practiced lying. This week we’re going to talk about the mechanics of it. More specifically, we’re going to talk about tells.”

“A tell,” he continued, “is something that gives you away when you’re lying. There are some that are pretty common, like blinking or stuttering. Some, you’ll only ever find on one person and hope you never, ever see it again.” He grinned. “Funny story, I once knew a guy named Billy who got really, really itchy when he lied.” A downward glance revealed just where, in fact, Billy had itched. Of course, that would be inappropriate to discuss in class, so he just implied it and left it at that.

“Today, I want you all to pair off in groups of two and start talking. You guys heard of the game Two Truths and a Lie? That’s basically what I’m talking about. Your partner’s job is to try to identify the lie by picking up on any tells that you might have. Then, once you learn what your tells are, I want you to watch yourselves in the mirrors I put on your desks and try to spot them.”

He hopped up onto the desk at the front of the room. “Ready? Pair off and get going. If you have any questions, you can come find me or Kenzi, the new TA.” He gestured to point her out. “Say hello, Kenzi."

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Kenzi snickered. She could always ask around. Or maybe bribe those squirrels with booze! It was going to be interesting when she found out about podcasts.

Catalogging his face for 'this is what he looks like when he's maybe denying shit' was probably a good idea. Kenzi peered at him, not too closely. "My friend Bo turned into one, and she's not a student. Her boots changed with her, which was weird."

"Your friend Bo, the head of security?" Neal asked, to confirm. "Seems like a weird sort of alliance."

"She's cool." Weirdly, Kenzi feels like she has to protect Bo, somehow. At least from ordinary adults finding out she's not normal, now that she's asked Kenzi to keep it quiet. "She saved me from a bad sitch before I came here. We were both weirded out when I got here last week."

Interesting, interesting.

"Huh," he said, mulling that over. "So she turned into a pony, huh? Too bad for her. Probably makes it hard to mix drinks and... do whatever it is she does."

"She wasn't working last night, but she was at the bar," Kenzi said, slurping her own coffee again, eyes innocent. "And she wouldn't go along on the perfect heist, can you believe it?"

"Oh?" A perfect heist, huh? Hey, it was a chance to get into this girl's head a little. "What heist would that be?"

Kenzi's finger stabbed roughly in the direction of the Causeway, and her eyes lit up with glee. "The National Gallery from 1814 is right over there! And they don't have motion detectors or alarms or any of that shit! I broke into a side door during business hours with a hairpin, can you believe it? It would be easy to stroll in and take something off the wall and it wouldn't even be fake and I'd even be telling the truth about it being a real Turner or something!"

Breathe, Kenzi!

...Wow. That was actually pretty impressive.

Except --

"Yeah, but," Neal said, "over time, paint decays just slightly -- just enough to tell if it's aged or if it's some kind of new forgery. If you nabbed something like that, you'd have to age it in order for anyone to believe it's really from 1814."

"I know I know, so, we could age it! You said you knew how! Or, or, I had a second idea, but it's a little trickier and someone might find it first, so I dunno," Kenzi inhaled. "We stash it in a bank and leave it to ourselves in 2011!"

Ha! Beat that! ... pity the different worlds things meant it might not be the same 2011, but Kenzi didn't have a good grasp on that yet.

Neal laughed. "I'm not going to age a painting for you," he told Kenzi, amused. "And even if I did think it was a good idea, you know I could just go ahead and do it myself now."

Kenzi stared at him a moment.

"Shit!"

Neal smirked.

"Sorry. Rule #2 for your apprenticeship, or whatever this is: everything is on a need-to-know basis. If you hire someone for something, you might not even want to tell them until you've already paid."

"Damn. That's... Nobody?" Well, clearly not Neal, now. Competition! "Everybody needs someone to watch their back, though. Some of the time." Most of the time she'd just had herself, she had to admit. Kenzi grumbled into her coffee. "It was a good plan, too, you said so."

Neal shrugged. "Yeah, well, so was building a bank and hiding the debt it accumulated from failed deals with creative accounting," he pointed out. "Didn't mean it wouldn't get audited eventually."

...Feel free to not understand that, Kenzi.

That got him another look of ?!?!?

"Dude, you did not build a bank. No way."

Neal snorted. "No, it wasn't my bank," he corrected her. "Ever heard of Enron?"

Totally not his bank. He would've done a way better job at hiding the debt.

"Oh, those f--suckers," Kenzi said. Ancient history! "You know, I'm all for redistribution of wealth, but those guys were just mean. I don't root for the Feds mostly but I'm glad someone took 'em down." Rob from the middle-class and poor and keep it? Assholes.

Huh.

"Interesting perspective," Neal said thoughtfully. "So -- you've got a code of ethics."

That was news to him.

"Just good sense. Don't get too greedy. Or mean. What goes around, comes around, you know?" And okay, maybe she had some sneaking sympathy for people in the same boat; and had to depend on other people's good will enough not to exploit it in those who didn't have jack to spare. "Ethics, schmethics. You can look out for number one without screwing over people who don't deserve it."

Neal privately agreed with her, at least to an extent, though he wasn't going to say as much.

"Interesting," was his only response, nodding with a faint smile on his face. "So you don't, say, pick pockets or anything, then."

...Just a hunch.

Kenzi's eyes grew wide in exaggerated innocence. "Me? Whyever would you say that?"

Somewhere, Wes was facepalming. Probably.

Facepalming in the midst of Trying Not To Die, yup. He was a multi-tasker, that Wes.

"Kenzi," he said flatly. "I'm a professional."

"I am not admitting to being a collector of fine wallets," Kenzi said, holding up her hands in a shrug. "... 'cause some people even get them back."

As he'd suspected. Neal sat back in his seat, satisfied.

"So how's that fit into the not-screwing-people-over thing?"

"Some of them get them back," Kenzi reminded him. "And dude, credit cards have protection. They don't make you pay more than fifty bucks dollars worth of phony charges, and they don't go looking for the perp, either, if it's less than two thou. It's inconvenient, but an object lesson in being careful." She shrugged. "If I got my wallet picked, I'd feel stupid but I'd know it was 'cause I wasn't careful."

Which was why she didn't carry one, duh. And most people didn't have the imagination to know to rob someone's ankle stash.

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