Part 3 (1/2)

The picture, in any case, was starting to come clear. ”So you think I ripped somebody off, and tracked me down to exact your revenge.” I decided to play the bravado card. ”So what's the riff now? One of you holds me down while the other beats me up?”

Allie laughed, trumping the bravado card with the formidable Ace of Ridicule. ”Radar,” she said, ”does this look like a revenge tip? Honestly, if I wanted revenge on someone I'd be thinking more along the lines of available fuels, incendiary triggers, and a good benzene accelerant.” Huh? Huh? I gotta tell you, it's not every day a dead-bang cute girl of unknown provenance sits across from you on your own couch and spins out the practical aspects of an arson fire. ”Plus, pay attention,” she said. ”I already told you we need you for work.” I gotta tell you, it's not every day a dead-bang cute girl of unknown provenance sits across from you on your own couch and spins out the practical aspects of an arson fire. ”Plus, pay attention,” she said. ”I already told you we need you for work.”

”What kind of work?” I asked.

Said Milval, ”I want you to teach me to grift.”

Sure, that's a good idea. Right up there with teaching the art of medieval trebuchet construction to a blind amputee with Bell's palsy. Grifters are a breed apart. To be good at it, you have to have a taste for danger, a heightened sense of self-preservation, and, at the end of the day, a certain dishonest honesty, the unsentimental knowledge that you fly through life solo. Sometimes, in my dark moments, I feel a little like a remora, clinging to the tiger shark of humanity, feeding on its crumbs or, as the case may be, feces. Other times, I feel like the shark. At no time do I feel like the things I know could be authentically conveyed to someone not born and bred in the grift. It's in the blood, like peanut allergy.

So my first reaction was to reject the proposal out of hand, send these two packing, and go on about my business-top of the to-do list being to track down Vic Mirplo and kick his flat white a.s.s for telling tales out of school. But the grift isn't about first reactions, it's about measured responses. And the fact that Allie had been clever enough to climb into my life and chill enough to talk about arson made me think that my disengagement, however I chose to effect it, should be gracefully staged. No sense in leaving a trail of tears. So I just nodded and said, ”Go on.”

Allie looked me up and down. I got the icy feeling that she had accurately registered both my mental rejection of the proposition and my decision to play cozy with that choice. Nevertheless, she appeared to take my answer at face value. ”It's kind of a Make-A-Wish Foundation thing.”

”Oh, G.o.d,” I said, looking at Milval, ”don't tell me I'm on your daisy chain.” (Where daisy chain is the sum of things you want to do before you push up those eponymous perennials.) ”Nothing so dramatic,” he said. ”So far as I know, my health is as good as the next man's, provided the next man is sixty-three with no history of smoking or excessive drink. Why, just last month, a doctor shoved his finger up my a.s.s and p.r.o.nounced-”

”You know,” I said, ”I'm almost positive I don't need to know about the state of your prostate, no matter how robust. Why don't we keep this on the bare-bones track if we can?” Milval nodded his acquiescence, and looked to Allie to continue.

”My grandfather,” she said, ”is what in his day they called a square. All his life he's played by the rules, and while he can't say that this strategy hasn't borne certain fruits-”

”-By which she means I'm rich.”

”-he now feels that the time has come to let loose a little. You know, try something new.”

Milval felt constrained to amplify. ”My wife dragged me to church every Sunday from the day we wed to the day she died. And do you know what I thought about every d.a.m.n Sunday?”

I couldn't begin to guess. Were I in church, I'd be pining for an iPod.

”Mostly, I thought. If this is the only life I have, why am I wasting it here? If this is the only life I have, why am I wasting it here? Lately, that question has come to a.s.sume a somewhat greater state of urgency.” Lately, that question has come to a.s.sume a somewhat greater state of urgency.”

”Healthy prostate notwithstanding?”

”Healthy prostate notwithstanding. Mr. Hoverlander-may I call you Radar?” I shrugged a nod. ”I've been good all my life. Textbook good. Ticket to heaven good. Good to my friends, good to my wife, good to my kids, ...” a nod toward Allie, ”... my grandkids. I never cheated on my taxes; h.e.l.l, I don't even cheat at golf. Can you imagine?” He paused-for effect, I felt-and then continued. ”I'm not sick, and I'm not that old, but I am tired. Tired of all those rules, you know? What were they for? What good did they do me? What good do they do me now? All my life, I've never been bad. Just for once and just for real, I want to know what that's like.”

”I understand the impulse,” I said, ”but why the grift? I can think of lots of ways to be bad. Have you considered shoplifting? Buying pharmaceuticals from Canada? Or how about this: Find yourself an adventuress about Allie's age and pursue that prostate investigation on a more, you know, recreational basis.”

”Radar, don't be gross,” said Allie tartly. It was absolutely the first crack in her cool and I wondered whether it represented a deeper emotional fault line. I made a mental note to explore the fissure later. One thing you always need in the grift is to know where someone's b.u.t.tons are and how they can be pushed.

”The issue is not s.e.x,” added Milval. ”I've lived a long time. I've had all the s.e.x I need.” I tried to wrap my brain around that concept and failed by a fairly wide margin. ”It's a matter of the life of the mind. I want a problem I can sink my teeth into, one that carries real risk and real reward.” He rose to his feet and strode around my apartment in a state of unsuspended animation. ”You're young,” he continued. ”You can't imagine what it's like to be my age. To see the end of the line lurking, if not exactly around the corner then somewhere down the street or in the next block. And from what Allie tells me, your life hasn't been burdened by an excess of conventionality. However, mine has. And I don't want to die saying, 'Mine was.' was.' Do you understand?” Do you understand?”

”Why don't you let Allie be your guide?” I asked. ”She seems to have a natural bent for this sort of thing.” Yeah, she did. Tracking techniques. Contrived encounters. Cryptic e-mails. Cinderf.u.c.kingella shoes. Allie was no more innocent of the grift than I was. Which meant that her gift of me to gramps was just an attempt to hold him at arm's length from her own true nature, or agenda.

”But you're the, er, professional,” said Hines.

I know what you're thinking. I was thinking the same thing. This whole setup had, well, setup written all over it. But what was I going to do? Bust Allie for trying to play me? Then hope she'd lose interest and go find some other mook to mook? I couldn't see that happening. But nor could I see me willingly drinking the Kool-Aid of the first chick slick enough to squeeze a Mirplo till he popped.

So: Let's a.s.sume that Milval Hines saw his clever granddaughter as nothing more than someone who could track down other clever people like me. Let's also a.s.sume that Allie's gift of a bad-boy adventure for her beloved grandpa was so much smoke concealing ... well, whatever lay behind the smoke. And while we're at it, let's further a.s.sume that Allie's smart enough to know I'm smart enough to know all this, so that if I say, ”Okay, sure, I'll train the dude,” I'm really saying, ”Okay, sure, I'll see the next card.” And the peculiar nature of this thing is that each of us knows the absolute truth about the other and absolutely can't speak it. Grifters are many things, but frank and open and honest do not head the list. They don't even crack the top ten.

So what you end up with is wheels within wheels, right? Wheels within wheels within wheels. An ”I know that she knows that I know that she she knows” Ouroboran serpent that eventually swallows its own tale. I don't know about you, but I find this s.h.i.+t interesting. knows” Ouroboran serpent that eventually swallows its own tale. I don't know about you, but I find this s.h.i.+t interesting.

Still, I could have walked away, either with sufficiently face-saving ”my dance card is full right now” excuses or just the common grifter's vanis.h.i.+ng act, no explanation, no forwarding address. But it was a measure of Allie's skill of a.s.sessment that she either intuited or deduced two irresistible fixatives gluing me in.

One was a puzzle. We know I'm a dog with a bone with those.

The other was Allie herself, coming off like a b.a.l.l.sy, no-s.h.i.+t schoolmarm who treated me with all the respect due a slow learner in the back of the cla.s.s. I'm a huge sucker for that.

Or just a sucker, full stop.

So now we're reading from a mutually arrived-upon script, and it's my line, and what I come up with comes out in my huskiest tough-guy voice of concern. ”The grift's not easy,” I say, running my fingers theatrically through my hair. ”And it's sure as h.e.l.l not cheap.”

”I spent ten thousand dollars once,” said Hines, ”learning to appraise heirloom jewelry. I know the price of a quality education.”

”Fine,” I said. ”Where would you like to begin? Maybe a few pointers on how to make the pigeon drop less lame?”

”If that's what you suggest, but don't you even want to discuss your fee?”

I thought about this for a moment. Of course, one cla.s.sic way of moving the mark in your direction is just to push him away. The more you pay, the more it's worth The more you pay, the more it's worth, right? And someone who went ten dimes into jewelry appraisal was likely to go very deep pocket indeed. But that didn't feel like the right angle here. After all, if Hines was prepared to pay for the mystery, it seemed like the mystery should start right here at the price tag. Besides, any good negotiator will tell you that naming the first price is the first step to getting screwed. ”Don't worry about that,” I said. ”I'll get my taste. If I'm good at what I do, it won't even come out of your end.”

I looked over at Allie. She was beaming. Like she knew exactly how good I was at what I do, and what a fun little Disneyland ride this would be for gramps. But what about her ride? Where was it it headed, and who was the pa.s.senger? That needed thinking about, so I decided to bring this little conclave to a close, take some distance, and start sorting the players from the scorecard. ”Okay,” I said, ”I'll need some time to map out a snuke. You cool with that?” Allie hit me with her best doe-eyed look, a look so convincing that at that point she seemed not a mistress of the grift but, indeed, the last true innocent. headed, and who was the pa.s.senger? That needed thinking about, so I decided to bring this little conclave to a close, take some distance, and start sorting the players from the scorecard. ”Okay,” I said, ”I'll need some time to map out a snuke. You cool with that?” Allie hit me with her best doe-eyed look, a look so convincing that at that point she seemed not a mistress of the grift but, indeed, the last true innocent.

Have you played much poker? A certain situation occurs in the game where you get so confused that you don't know whether to raise, fold, or screw the waitress. It's called getting lost in the hand, and that's where I was just then. I honestly didn't know whether Allie was on the straight or so pretzeled out that I couldn't tell where the ingenue left off and the femme fatale began.

I decided to track down Vic Mirplo and get his input.

While also, of course, not neglecting to kick his flat white a.s.s.

twenty-five cents a t.i.t.

L ike a comet leaves a trail of stardust across the night sky, Mirplo inevitably leaves a clumsy mess in his wake. Set out to track him down and you'll hear comments like, ”Oh, yeah, he was in here last night bowling for beers. He stank out the joint.” Or, ”Tried to run a sh.e.l.l game in front of an LAPD substation. Can you imagine?” Or-and this one I love-”He was selling parking places outside the Hollywood Bowl.” This last gag was a Mirplo favorite, possibly the lowest low-rent snadoodle the human mind has yet devised. What he does, he finds a parking place near a crowded sports or cultural event, pulls his s.h.i.+tbox Song Serenade half out of it and waits there till someone comes along and asks, ”Are you leaving?” ”Sure am,” he says, ”for five bucks.” Then he and s.h.i.+rley Temple go troll for another open s.p.a.ce and start the gaff all over. He's been known to net literally tens of dollars an evening. Seriously, what a mook, huh? ike a comet leaves a trail of stardust across the night sky, Mirplo inevitably leaves a clumsy mess in his wake. Set out to track him down and you'll hear comments like, ”Oh, yeah, he was in here last night bowling for beers. He stank out the joint.” Or, ”Tried to run a sh.e.l.l game in front of an LAPD substation. Can you imagine?” Or-and this one I love-”He was selling parking places outside the Hollywood Bowl.” This last gag was a Mirplo favorite, possibly the lowest low-rent snadoodle the human mind has yet devised. What he does, he finds a parking place near a crowded sports or cultural event, pulls his s.h.i.+tbox Song Serenade half out of it and waits there till someone comes along and asks, ”Are you leaving?” ”Sure am,” he says, ”for five bucks.” Then he and s.h.i.+rley Temple go troll for another open s.p.a.ce and start the gaff all over. He's been known to net literally tens of dollars an evening. Seriously, what a mook, huh?

In this case, of course, I didn't have to track him down. All I had to do was text him: biz prop big $$ RU n?

This brought him running faster than a cat to a can opener.

We met at Broadview, a topless joint in At.w.a.ter Village that I love for its name and Mirplo loves for its liberal no-cover, one-drink-minimum policy. The girls in Broadview are s.k.a.n.ky in the extreme-their needle tracks practically glow in the blacklight. But if you sit in back and look like you don't have any money, no stretch for Vic, they never ha.s.sle you and you never have to tip anybody anything. And they have the requisite body parts to meet all your ogling needs, at a price anyone can afford. According to Vic's twisted math, since he could nurse a single watery beer through roughly a dozen floor shows, this works out to something on the order of twenty-five cents per nipple, not at all bad value if you're h.o.r.n.y, borderline broke, and unlikely to get laid in any circ.u.mstance short of lying on your back with a hard-on when a nymphomaniac alien drops out of the sky, legs spread.

I was sitting at the bar drinking tonic water when Vic shambled in looking like the drop-off bag at a Salvation Army thrift store. Happy to see me, he extended his hand for a manly fist b.u.mp. I took my tonic and tonic and dumped it on his head. He barely had time to sputter, ”What the f.u.c.k?” before a bouncer was among us, a hyperinflated poster child for Winstrol with the word killre killre tattooed on his thigh-size biceps. I wondered if tattooed on his thigh-size biceps. I wondered if killre killre was intended as the British spelling, like was intended as the British spelling, like theatre theatre, or just a dermal typo.

”Is there a problem here?” asked the bouncer in a voice that cut through the lowest registers of the Broadview's PA system, just then cranking Boston's ”More Than a Feeling,” stripper Kimi's signature tune for your viewing pleasure.

”I'll leave that up to him,” I said, fixing Vic with a stare so clearly hard and meaningful that it actually managed to penetrate to the deeper recesses of his brain.

”We're fine,” Vic decided at last. ”I could use a towel.” The bouncer reached over the bar and brought out a limp, brown rag rank with mildew. Vic wanly thanked the bouncer, who went off to look large somewhere else. Then, tossing the rag back behind the bar, Vic ran the sleeve of his ratty sweats.h.i.+rt over his head and asked, ”Okay, how did I f.u.c.k up?” Say this for a Mirplo: They never think the indignities they suffer are undeserved.

I told him about my run-in with Allie Quinn, and tore him a metaphorical new one for leading her to me.

”That bothered you?” he said, genuinely surprised. ”But why? You already know her. You've met her before.”