Page 45 of A Long Con

Oh gee, thanks. I imagined I could smell burning flesh emanating from the manhole.

It was another half an hour ‘til they hauled Split from the manhole. Against my better judgment, I raced over and kneeled at his side. His arms were still above his head, the fingers crooked and straining, he still screamed, and his skin had the consistency of a mechanical bull. When I tried to stroke his forehead kindly, layers of skin stuck to my hand. He’d been steamed like a salmon.

When the EMT took his temperature, it was a hundred and twenty-five.

“I hope he’s dead,” I said in a monotone.

“Yes,” agreed the EMT, “but only very recently. See how his knees are bent and his hips rotated inward? That’s known as the pugilistic pose. The long muscles shrink from the heat.”

“Sometimes it can break bones,” said another medical guy. I was sure they’d never seen anything like this before. And neither had I. “It’s like how your steak shrinks when you cook it.”

No one stopped me from sliding his phone out of its cradle, although the phone was probably cooked too.

“His nerves weren’t damaged,” one orderly said to the others as I walked off, “so he must’ve suffered hugely from his organs cooking inside.”

That was when I finally broke down in a cascade of tears. My stomach shook, my lungs were wrenched, and I clutched the stupid phone to my chest. It was one of those intense sobs that wrack your entire body. You cry silently like a two-year-old. But when you finally draw in that ragged breath, you think someone stabbed a sword through you.

God fucking knows how long I leaned against that storefront and bawled. Royal must’ve had the respect to keep away until it subsided. He dried my face with the back of his hand.

He said softly, “If it’s any consolation, I found this stuck under the steering column.”

I didn’t know what “this” was. A tiny black box with wires in all the primary colors.

Royal snorted. “It’s a teenager coaching device. You put it in your kid’s car and can tell where they are, if they arrived safely. Hogshead must’ve done it earlier, before we hooked up with Split. Split led him right to Chip’s antique store.”

A lightning bolt cleaved my brain. “And the painting? Nude?”

He had to look away. “Gone.”