Chapter Text
“He would have to keep a distance from people, always. He was alone, and it was a lonely game he was playing.”–The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
Part 1:
Telling all the rich folks anything they want to hear
Like it could be love
Eddie
Con artist is such an ugly term.
There is a lot of artistry to doing it well, but Eddie hates the negative associations—the idea that he’s doing something wrong, that the truly, horrendously rich don't deserve to be swindled from time to time.
He's made a life of taking them down a peg.
Knows how to find the worst of them; how to woo them, seduce them, and take just enough to get away with it. He studies them, carefully gathering tales of who they use, exploit, destroy, all in the name of money.
Eddie takes his time picking his targets—the worst of the worst—finds out what they want, what they have to prove, and how best to convince them he’s the only one who can make their dreams come true.
It is an art.
Eddie’s been doing it a long time. He’s good at telling stories, honed the skill in high school theater and DM’ing dnd, and now he uses honeyed words to spin golden promises for people with net-worth’s more than the GDPs of most countries.
It's probably morbid to have Google alerts for the obituaries of members of a select class of people, but Eddie’s made his peace with it. He’s always been a freak anyway.
Between jobs and back home—his real home in Hawkins, Indiana—he works on repairing the trailer where he grew up with his uncle and fixes up the man’s old beater of a truck. He’s doing the latter when his phone pings with a notification he’s been waiting half his life for.
It’s the obituary for Richard Stephen Harrington IV, husband of Miriam and father of Stephen.
He knows the Harrington’s. Not personally. But they’re from Indianapolis, only about an hour away, so Eddie’s gathered intel on them for years. He knows that Richard Harrington was a Wall Street finance guy who struck it big and then got into real estate development. He knows that his company’s numbers don’t quite add up, that he came through the 2008 crash suspiciously unscathed. Probably the most important thing he knows about Richard Harrington, though, is that it was his company that put Eddie’s uncle out of a job during his freshman year of high school.
Harrington Holdings LLC bought the factory where Wayne worked with all kinds of pretty promises of making improvements and keeping it open. Within six months it was closed, and half a year later converted to a pharmaceutical research and production facility.
The Munsons weren’t doing great before Wayne was laid off, and after. Well, they could only afford the lot rent at Forest Hills with Eddie working part-time flipping burgers at the Burger Chef, and—when that wasn’t enough—supplementing by selling drugs to his classmates. Really takes a toll on the GPA when you work every weeknight and spend your weekends at parties peddling weed.
Anyway, fuck the Harringtons, is what he’s saying. He hasn’t been waiting for Richard to die, exactly, but it does present an opportunity. The Harringtons are rich enough, powerful enough, that you can’t find easy evidence of their misdeeds. So, Richard Harrington is dead, and a door opens for Eddie to walk right into his widow’s life.
Miriam will be an easy target, he’s sure of it. Most widows of men like Richard Stephen Harrington IV are. After all, they’ve been locked in loveless marriages for most of their adulthood.
He knows what widows like Miriam need. They're looking for someone to pay them attention, sweep them off their feet after years of, at best, benign neglect.
Eddie loves being that someone.
It doesn’t matter that he knows local gossip and has vague personal connections, he buries himself in the investigation. He needs to know Miriam Harrington better than she knows herself.
Miriam Harrington, nee Ballinger, was from the kind of East Coast family that could trace their American lineage back to the Mayflower, where every female relative belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution. She was the first girl in the family to go to a college that didn’t belong to the Seven Sisters, even if she didn’t end up actually graduating from Yale.
She met Richard Harrington at the beginning of her sophomore year. They were seen at events around New Haven and New York, were photographed at the Harrington Hamptons estate over the summer. Miriam dropped out before the winter semester of her junior year, and married Richard that June.
Through archived newspaper society pages and some really bleak blogs, he has access to years of pictures, spanning the length of the Harrington’s marriage. In her wedding photos Miriam has thick chestnut-colored hair and wide hazel eyes, sweet and kind of wistful. She was beautiful as a young woman—still gorgeous now—but as Eddie clicks through years of pictures, he watches a brittleness grow. Her body gets thinner, her eyes harder, the hopeful shine diminishing to nothing. She looks less, unappreciated, like she’s never had a kind word or an orgasm over the 35 years of her marriage.
The women Eddie usually encounters don’t quite have the pedigree or education of Mariam Harrington, but that’s far from a deterrent. Even if the degree she had in mind by going to college was more along the lines of a MRS, Miriam seems genuinely intelligent, not someone to be underestimated, even if she was a trophy wife.
These days, she spends the majority of her time at Tor Ridge Country Club, lunching, socializing, playing tennis, attending club meetings, chairing committees.
Her son doesn’t exist. His parents sent him off to boarding school in Europe at sixteen. No indication he ever came back to the states, and he didn’t show at his father’s funeral. No social media footprint whatsoever. A weird nonentity for someone Eddie’s age, but it works just fine for his purposes.
He gets a car from his buddy, Gareth. A Tesla. Eddie hates everything about it, but he needs it to sell his identity as a West Coast, new-money tech bro. Gains access to the Tor Ridge membership roster, finds an elderly member with sporadic attendance over the last decade, deceased within the last six months. Has a guy at the Hideout make him the necessary ID. Airbnbs a loft downtown.
By the end of the week, he’s Edwin Dooly; senior software engineer at Google, the closest living relative of Ingrid Dooly, come to settle her affairs.
The staff are reluctant, at best, to allow Eddie access to the country club. Though, that’s not a surprise. He’s here with no contacts or references, just a fake ID and a sob story about a long-lost, and now dead, aunt.
It also may be because Eddie cuts an imposing figure to this circle. In real life, he has tattoos, swirling black ink all over his pale skin; piercings in his ears, his nose, his lip; loops of chains around his neck; big silver rings on almost every finger; long hair, falling in dark, unruly curls to his shoulders. Things he does his best to hide while on a job. Wears almost exclusively long sleeves, and always has a jacket when he wears a tee; removes the piercings and wears his two smallest rings; only necklace his guitar pick; hair pulled back in a bun or braid.
It’s not always enough.
The Tor Ridge staff is right to be suspicious, they’re paid to be, but he’s been around long enough to know the quickest, subtlest ways to show wealth.
He removes his jacket, as he explains to the concierge, for the fifth time, who he is. Folds it over his arm so the Vuitton branding is clearly visible. This has the added benefit of showing off his (stolen from a mark five years ago) Rolex. Eddie watches the man’s eyes widen slightly, before an accommodating smile stretches across his face.
Things move quickly then, and before the day is over, he’s the newest member of Tor Ridge Country Club.
He eases into being a presence at the club. Doesn’t make waves with the staff when he appears, stays on the premises for short amounts of time, is excessively polite to everyone he meets. When he is there, though, he listens, watches. Quickly finds Miriam and her circle of friends (though, maybe ‘friend’ is too strong a word for what these women are to each other). They have tea together every weekday. There’s a brunch on Saturday. Book club is Wednesday afternoons. The Tor Ridge Woman’s Club meets one Tuesday evening a month. Tennis on Monday and Thursday. Aqua-robics Friday morning.
It takes a relatively short amount of time, all things considered, to meet Miriam’s best friend, Constance Hagan. Based on Eddie’s research, she’s the most likely of their group to be gullible and trusting. She was in the IndyStar, not even eight months ago, for investing in what turned out to be a crypto scam. She’d been brought in by her son, Tommy, a guy around Eddie’s age who made a lot of money (too much) doing something vague but impressive sounding in marketing.
He’s passing by the ladies’ lounge on his way to the bar when he hears a posh voice exclaim, “dammit all to hell!” He sees a tiny woman in some kind of lace tea dress, struggling to grasp at something along her back.
There’s a burst of annoyance at her helplessness, at the knowledge that she’s probably never done anything on her own in her life, before he reigns it in and asks, “Something I can do to help?”
She turns, shrewd brown eyes glinting hard. “Deliveries are made at the loading dock in the back.”
He’s used to it by now, but it still rankles that, even at his very best, he’s mistaken for the help.
“Oh, but I’m not here for deliveries.” He gives her a wink. “Busted zipper?’
She makes an affirmative sound which he takes as enough of an invitation to continue.
He examines the lilac painted metal, spotting the issue in an instant. “Looks like a couple of the teeth are bent. I can fix that in a jiff, if that’s okay with you?”
“I don’t think those jeans have enough room in them to fit a pair of pliers.”
“Astute observation,” he deadpans. “They do, however, have ample space for one of these babies.” He pulls out his Swiss Army knife, dancing it between his knuckles.
She humphs but turns so that he can reach the zipper.
Fixing the problem is quick, but he lets his fingers linger against her back a little longer than necessary.
“Good as new,” he says. He makes sure to pitch his voice a little low.
She turns to give him an assessing look. “Despite appearances, you are handy in a pinch.”
“Always want to help a beautiful lady in need. Plus, good hands.”
“I don’t doubt that.” She gives him the faintest hint of a lascivious smirk. “Constance Hagan. You may call me Constance.”
“A true pleasure to meet you, Constance. Edwin Dooly. Friends call me Eddie.”
“What brings you to Tor Ridge, Edwin?” He almost laughs. Point taken.
“Ah, sad business, I’m afraid. My great-aunt Ingrid passed and I’m here to settler her affairs.”
“Ingrid? Dooly? I wasn’t aware she had a great-nephew.”
Eddie stifles his smile. He loves this dance. “Wanna know a secret?” He leans in a little close and Constance nods. “I wasn’t aware I had a great-aunt.”
“Ah.”
“An attorney contacted me a month ago about settling her estate. So, here I am.”
Constance starts walking, so he falls in step, knows he hasn’t yet been dismissed. “And where are you visiting from?”
“Palo Alto. California.”
“That area is known for tech—isn’t that correct?”
“It sure is.
“And what is it that you do there, Edwin?”
“Software engineer,” and he gives her a little smile; just a small one, one that says he’s one of them, has money too, that he’s safe.
“Oh,” and she returns the little smile. “You must do very well for yourself.”
“I can’t complain.”
“I believe I may have some friends who’d want to meet you.”
He doesn’t expect it to be quite this easy, getting the invite to the inner circle, but gift horses and mouths and all that.
“If they’re all as beautiful as you, I’d be honored.”
She gives a real smile at that. “None as beautiful as me.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Thank you, Edwin. I’ll arrange a luncheon with the front desk. They’ll let you know.”
“See you then, Constance.”