Read Online Con Academy by Joe Schreiber - Free Book Online

highly unlikely.”
    â€œWhy’s that?”
    â€œLet’s just say that when Brandt’s running the tables, the odds are forever in his favor.”
    â€œWell,” I say, “I appreciate the heads-up, but I’m going to take my chances.”
    â€œI figured.” Gatsby looks at me from between towers of books with a combination of fascination and pity. “But when you walk back in here tomorrow wearing nothing but a barrel and suspenders, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
    â€œWell, my barrel’s out for dry cleaning, so . . .”
    Gatsby taps a few keys on the computer, scribbles a note on a scrap of paper, then stands up and comes around from behind the desk. “Stay here.” And before I can say anything, she disappears into the stacks, moving through the deep jungle of the Dewey decimal system with all the confidence and authority of a lioness.
    While I wait, I find myself looking down at her workspace, at the half-finished cup of coffee and the cracked first-generation iPhone abandoned so trustingly next to the keyboard. I can hear music playing through the ear buds—it sounds like either punk or techno, with some twangy guitar mixed in—and for a moment I’m tempted to pick them up, just to see what she’s been listening to. But I’m glad I don’t, because when I turn around, Gatsby’s already back with an armload of books.
    â€œWhat’s all this?” I look down at the one on top, an old hardcover that looks like nobody’s checked it out in decades, and read the title stamped in gold across the spine:
Tips for Winning Poker
. It’s resting on two even dustier tomes—
The Mental Game of Poker
and
How to Win at Cards
.
    â€œLook, I appreciate all this, but—”
    â€œHere.” She’s already checking out the three books, sweeping them under the bar-code reader along with
A Beginner’s Guide to Self-Defense.
    â€œWhat’s this one for?”
    â€œJust take it,” she says, and checks out the last title, which I realize is an ancient edition of Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason.
    â€œAnd this one?”
    â€œTranscendental logic.” She smiles. “You never know when you’ll need it.”
    â€œThanks,” I say, shoving all the books into my backpack. “But I think what I really need is a bigger bag.”
    â€œHappy reading,” she says, then goes back around to the other side of the desk, placing the buds in her ears and checking in books again.

Ten
    B Y THE TIME I GET BACK TO MY DORM ROOM, I’ VE ALREADY forgotten about the books that Gatsby gave me. Mentally, I’m prepping for tonight, and my mind is so preoccupied that when the dinner hour comes, I have to force myself to eat. Voices around me are excited and laughing, discussing weekend plans. I don’t talk to anybody. I keep my head down.
    After dinner I go back to my room alone, where I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the wall, running through hypotheticals in my mind, trying to think of everything that could go wrong tonight and how I’d respond. Making sure I’m ready. Figuring the angles. This is the hardest time for me: the waiting.
    Outside in the darkness, the hours drag by, doled out by the occasional distant chime of the bell tower. Sometime around ten o’clock, I remember the library books and get them out. Gatsby’s choice of the self-defense book and the Kant don’t make any sense at all, but I glance over the poker books, more to satisfy my own curiosity than anything else. As I expected, the strategies are fundamental, most of them so simple and outmoded that they’re totally useless. Opening the third book, I find a yellow Post-it stuck inside the front cover. It reads:
    Â 
Will:
If you’re reading this, it means you haven’t written me off as a total whack job. If you still decide to go tonight, good luck. And be careful around