“Excellent!” Elle whooped. “You’ll thank me for it. And please get your ass out of L.A. as fast as possible. You and Bea in the same city? That worries me.”

I laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m nearly done with her. I’ll go over again tomorrow, then that’ll be enough. By the weekend, I’ll be home. I’m curious to get to know her better, and she isn’t screaming or yelling at me, so that’s a good start.”

Elle blew out a long groan. “Girl, you’ve been conned. That woman will never make peace with you. Trust me, she wants payback. Don’t forget who Bea is.”

“I know! But she sounded so desperate when she called me that I couldn’t refuse. And now that I’m here and done with her tricks, I figure I can get to know her better. Get some closure.”

“You want closure? Go meet your birth parents. And in the meantime, please watch your ass around the F.M.” We said our goodbyes and I resolved to be careful when I went back to see Bea tomorrow. Then I got back on the road to continue the tour of my former neighborhood.

I rounded a corner and realized I was at the old pizza place. When we were teenagers, we spent many hours there. At the time, there were six of us in the crew: Bea’s three foster kids, plus Hale, Scott, and Yuki, friends from school who also did con games. The old pizza place was our hangout.

The first time we went there was after a good day playing card tricks. Back then, Bea would search us when we got back from swindling, so whatever we had on us got confiscated. But since we’d scored some money that day, and Bea didn’t know exactly how much, we could spend it before we got home, and she wouldn’t notice. We couldn’t buy things for ourselves because then she’d see the new items. But pizza worked perfectly. Soon we were meeting there all the time.

The old pizza place was a significant landmark on my tour of Los Angeles, so I parked and got out of my car. Still there and open for business, it looked smaller than I remembered it.

Years ago, we always sat at the booth in the back corner. The middle seat was the power seat because you had the best view of the table and anyone coming our way. Hale sat there because he was the oldest, although my brother Jay was only a month younger.




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