Page 52 of Capo

“I deleted my files.”

My mouth almost falls open. We do that shit all the time, but that’s not something the regular dude on the street knows how to do. “How the fuck did that happen? Tell me everything.”

“I don’t know where to start.” She puts the spoon in the jar and hands David the bread. “Here you go,” she says, her voice soft, soothing.

“Start from the beginning. You grew up in a middle-class family in the suburbs. What the fuck turned the little blonde, pig-tailed girl with braces into a slick forger of identities, and apparently a hacker.”

“Oh, I’m not a hacker. I had help.”

“Who?”

“It was supposed to keep my brothers out of jail. This old dude needed a front, a cute girl by his side. He couldn’t show his face anymore in the business, so he taught me to run his errands and manage his contacts. People underestimate a girl. I got in where no one else could, struck deals they barely knew they were signing while they were busy staring at my tits. Most of the time I ripped them off and they never noticed. Meanwhile I had him teach me everything he knew.”

“How’d you find him? How did the two of you meet up? How old were you?”

“I was going on eighteen. He… caught me with my hand in the cookie jar.”

David twitches and taps the table. We both look at him as he gestures at his mouth.

“You want cookies?” I ask and my son nods. He fucking nods! “I’ll get you cookies after breakfast. Okay?” He keeps nodding and looks at his plate again, going back to pushing around the bread. I stare at him in wonder, then I turn back to Chloe. “Elaborate.”

Her eyes dart between me and David, her teeth digging into her lower lip. Wincing, she takes a deep breath. “He caught me trying to steal from him. I thought he had cash. He did, but… it was all fake.”

“Fake? What was his business?”

“New identities, obviously, money, any document you could think of, diplomas, grades. Anything as long as you could pay.”

“He forged money? Dollar bills?”

She nods.

“Was he good?”

Chloe nods again.

Well fuck me sideways. “And you know how to do all this?” She cocks her head and half-shrugs. I raise my eyebrows. “Are you even an accountant?”

“Fuck yes!” She cringes and shrinks back, glancing at David who opens his mouth as if to speak, then snaps it closed again. Chloe blushes profusely. “Sorry. Yeah, I studied. But… I might have made up my high school diploma.”

I bark out a laugh that makes both David and Chloe jump. “Fuck me. I’m liking this.”

The blush on Chloe’s cheeks deepens and her eyes glitter briefly, then she averts her gaze.

“What made you quit? Have you quit? Or do you still keep this up?”

“I… may have hurt him a little…” She chews on her bottom lip and makes a face.

“Did he come on to you?”

Chloe scoffs. “Not everything is about sex. He was like a hundred fucking years old. He had promised to get my brothers out of the pile of crap they were in, but he never kept up his part of the deal.”

“You killed him?”

She cocks her head and her gaze becomes distant, as if she’s reliving it. “I punched him. He fell. But he was alive when I left him. A few days later he had a heart attack. I don’t know if it was on me, but I didn’t stick around to find out.”

“So Christine turned into Chloe and Atlanta was history?”

She shrugs.