Part 3 (2/2)

”The f.u.c.k I have.”

”Yeah, you did. Last time, though, she had orange plastic hair.”

As Vic Mirplo is the clumsiest liar who ever drew breath, I had to believe that he at least thought thought he was telling the truth. So I had him run it down. he was telling the truth. So I had him run it down.

”It was the car show,” he said. ”Don't you remember? Last year at the convention center. We were working the test-drive scam.”

”You were working the test-drive scam,” I corrected. This was another low-rent Mirplo venture, where he set up a booth (okay, a box on a card table) outside the convention center, offering car fans a free shot at test driving the hot new whatever out of Tokyo or Detroit. His ”display” consisted of crudely cut photos from magazines, and his entry forms were a stack of bad Xeroxes, but n.o.body seemed to mind too much; nor did they balk, terribly, at giving up their e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other useful digits. The promised drawing, of course, never took place, but Vic banked a dollar per entry form from data consolidators who would later phish contest entrants with the chance to learn race-car driving from blissfully unaware NASCAR pros. All were working the test-drive scam,” I corrected. This was another low-rent Mirplo venture, where he set up a booth (okay, a box on a card table) outside the convention center, offering car fans a free shot at test driving the hot new whatever out of Tokyo or Detroit. His ”display” consisted of crudely cut photos from magazines, and his entry forms were a stack of bad Xeroxes, but n.o.body seemed to mind too much; nor did they balk, terribly, at giving up their e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other useful digits. The promised drawing, of course, never took place, but Vic banked a dollar per entry form from data consolidators who would later phish contest entrants with the chance to learn race-car driving from blissfully unaware NASCAR pros. All that that took was valid plastic and, well, the rest was garden-variety credit rape. Meanwhile, back at the car show, Vic was more bird dog than scam artist, but among his limited gifts is that of gab-he had no trouble getting the punters to fill out a form. To sweeten the deal, he gave out free Dodge Stealth pens to everyone who filled out a form. And where did he get the pens? By the handful from the Dodge Stealth booth when the booth babes were otherwise occupied. Swear to G.o.d, plunk a Mirplo down on a desert island without food or shelter, and his native resourcefulness could easily keep him alive till the end of the day. took was valid plastic and, well, the rest was garden-variety credit rape. Meanwhile, back at the car show, Vic was more bird dog than scam artist, but among his limited gifts is that of gab-he had no trouble getting the punters to fill out a form. To sweeten the deal, he gave out free Dodge Stealth pens to everyone who filled out a form. And where did he get the pens? By the handful from the Dodge Stealth booth when the booth babes were otherwise occupied. Swear to G.o.d, plunk a Mirplo down on a desert island without food or shelter, and his native resourcefulness could easily keep him alive till the end of the day.

I, meanwhile, had been stalking somewhat weightier game, from actual leased s.p.a.ce on the convention floor, where my fabricat high-end import enterprise discreetly offered gray-market luxury sedans to quote-unquote discerning individuals who didn't mind skirting California's clean-air or safety standards. The cars in question, I claimed, had been manufactured overseas to bullet- and kidnapping-proof standards, for sale to African dictators or South American drug lords. Geopolitical flux being what it was, some of these cars now needed backup buyers, the intended customers having apparently been deposed or murdered, but it's an ill wind that blows no good, right?

I faced some hard questions. If such a car wasn't imported through normal channels, they asked, how could it possibly be street legal in California, or indeed anywhere in the United States? And if it were imported through normal channels, how could it be so cheap?

Skeptics, huh? Honestly.

I explained at painstaking length that there are two ways to bring cars into the United States without bothering with the niceties of smog, safety, and so forth. First, you can call them museum pieces, and show paperwork intending them for either private collection or public display. The other approach is to call them movie props. Thus they come into the country as art or tools, not cars, so you're home free. Once the vehicles are on American soil, it's no problem and (relatively) minimal cost to street-legal them through certain bureaucratic backdoors. Backdoors which, naturally, I knew how to pry open-else why would I offer such cars for sale in the first place? So I took some down payments, generated ironclad escrows, and told the buyers to see me next week in my Long Beach showroom. I ”warned” them that the showroom was none too elegant-more like a warehouse, really-which seemed to feed both their something-for-nothing avarice and their vicarious sense of outlaw adventure. Arriving at the address in question, they would find only a Church's Fried Chicken, but oh well. The wings there can be quite tasty.

The thing is, did I not vaguely recall meeting some s.h.i.+buya cutie at my booth? Was she not tricked out in the latest Tokyo toygirl fas.h.i.+on: teeter-tower platform boots, pleated go-go skirt, virginal blouse in irony white, and, yes, a wig of orange plastic hair? Did she not question me at surprisingly knowledgeable length about the chances of acquiring a fully armored CLS55 AMG Mercedes for her (doubtlessly fictive) Yakuza benefactor, while her friend, another geisha bonbon, stood by, fending off Mirplovian advances? Could it really have been Allie in Ginza drag?

Mirplo seemed to think so. ”Trust me,” he said. ”I have a p.o.r.nographic memory.” To drive home the point, he called my attention to a dancer just coming onstage as the DJ said, ”Let's give a big hand for Chast.i.ty,” with all the enthusiasm of a grocery store clerk announcing, ”Clean up on aisle four.”

”Wait'll she thongs down,” said Vic. ”You'll see: She's got a tattoo of a Krugerrand on her left b.u.t.t cheek. I guess she thinks her a.s.s is gold.” He paused to chuckle in antic.i.p.ation of his own lame joke. ”And if gold is cellulite, I guess she's right.”

I realized I couldn't blame Vic after all for giving me up to Allie. He probably thought she and I were old chums by now.

As for Allie, this seemed to prove she was in the game, if not as a full-time player then at least a weekend warrior. But why was she subcontracting out such a cushy gig as this? Did she so not want to look fallen in Grandpa's eyes? Why would he care? He was a Ready Teddy, too.

Sometimes when there's a problem I'm trying to solve, I find it helps to talk it through out loud. Mirplo's not the best interlocutor for this because his observations are either off-point or just flat inane. But he had helped me put Allie in context, so I thought I owed him a glimpse of the big picture. Which I gave him. When I was done, all he said was, ”Dude, you should beat cheeks.”

”What?”

”Get out of town. Dislocate. Go to Vegas. That town's easy. I used to rip it up.”

”Really?” I couldn't help asking. ”Then why are you here?”

He didn't miss a beat. ”Sinusitis,” he said. ”That desert air kills.”

”Yeah, well, I'm not blowing town. So far all I've got is an innocent offer to turn teacher. Why should I say no?”

”Orange hair,” said Vic, simply.

”What do you mean?”

”A girl capable of orange plastic hair is capable of anything. Besides, you like her.”

”Oh, bulls.h.i.+t.”

”Then you just want to get your wick wet. Those are the only two choices.”

”You're nuts,” I said.

But was he really? I couldn't be sure. And the thing you have to remember in the grift is that money is money and s.e.x is s.e.x, and many a deal slides sideways when the line between the two gets blurred. Which gave me all the more reason to make the smart play and just disappear into the distance. It wouldn't be that hard. I'm a master of the fast transition. In a week's time, I could be Aghvan Aghajanian of Glendale, Arizona, unlicensed trader in desperation gold, priced low because bought from motivated sellers (and also because mostly tin).

But d.a.m.n if I'd give her the satisfaction! Here she'd been in my life less than a week and she already had me jumping through all sorts of unintended and unantic.i.p.ated hoops. What did she have over me?

Why did I want more?

In the end, then, the smart play and the play you make are not necessarily the same. Out of sheer cussed-mindedness, I decided to see the thing at least to the next level. After all, I'd told Hines that I'd cook up a con for him, and it's a function of my restless mind that even while I was thinking of a dozen different reasons to pull the rip cord, I also happened to think of one cool way to work Milval's former profession into a reasonably tasty snuke.

I could, if I worked it right, even make a nice chunk of change.

Maybe I'd take Allie to Cabo.

the merlin game.

P icture this: You've got a s.h.i.+ny quarter in your hand, and 160 people are watching you flip it, via webcam. On the screens of half the 160, you flash a prediction: This coin will land heads. The other half gets the other prediction: This coin will land tails. If the coin lands heads, you disconnect the 80 people who saw you guess tails, and with the remaining 80 you run the same drill. Half see you call heads, half see you call tails. Once again, you boot the ones who see you guess wrong. The remaining 40, notice, have now seen you guess right twice in a row. No big deal, right? But then you do it again and again and again, culling the numbers as you go, from 40 down to 20 to 10 to 5. Now you have 5 people who have seen you make correct predictions not once or twice but five times in a row. Still not that impressive, right? After all, it's only a coin flip, and the odds of nailing five straight coin flips are a mere 31 to 1 against. Hardly a number from the Nostradamosphere. So even if a guy has seen you guess right a few times in a row, he's not a believer, and even if he's a believer, with how much hard cash would he be likely to back his belief? icture this: You've got a s.h.i.+ny quarter in your hand, and 160 people are watching you flip it, via webcam. On the screens of half the 160, you flash a prediction: This coin will land heads. The other half gets the other prediction: This coin will land tails. If the coin lands heads, you disconnect the 80 people who saw you guess tails, and with the remaining 80 you run the same drill. Half see you call heads, half see you call tails. Once again, you boot the ones who see you guess wrong. The remaining 40, notice, have now seen you guess right twice in a row. No big deal, right? But then you do it again and again and again, culling the numbers as you go, from 40 down to 20 to 10 to 5. Now you have 5 people who have seen you make correct predictions not once or twice but five times in a row. Still not that impressive, right? After all, it's only a coin flip, and the odds of nailing five straight coin flips are a mere 31 to 1 against. Hardly a number from the Nostradamosphere. So even if a guy has seen you guess right a few times in a row, he's not a believer, and even if he's a believer, with how much hard cash would he be likely to back his belief?

Coin flips. It's hard to get rich one quarter at a time. And let's not forget that some people will consider that the quarter was gaffed all along, and, hey, they might not even be wrong.

But what if instead of a hundred-and-a-half initial observers you had thousands? And what if instead of five trials you had a dozen? And instead of a cheesy (potentially two-headed) quarter, suppose you had something much, much harder to gaff, at least in most people's minds. Let's say your declared area of predictive expertise was the hoodoo voodoo of the stock market. Or not even the stock market. Maybe something more exotic. Derivatives. Hedges. Futures. Commodities. Exchange-traded funds. Mutual discount accruals. Or perhaps investment vehicles that no one's ever heard of, for the simple reason that no one has crawled around inside the part of your brain where your lies are born. Suppose you found yourself trumpeting your knack at forecasting market movement in highly volatile CCAs (currency core aggregates) (the latest thing) (which you just made up). If you started with 200,000 onlookers, you'd have roughly 199,999 doubters (and one drunk). Enough correct predictions later, by the reverse mitosis of reducing the cell body by half, and half again, and again, you'd have only a couple dozen observers left, but each and every one would swear on a stack of prospectus disclosures that you, my friend, have the true gift for picking winners. Their pumps thus primed, they're now ready to put their money where your mouth is. Pig widgets. Silicon communion wafers. Asteroid s.h.i.+elds. And why not? If you can be religiously right in the notoriously fickle CCA market, whatever that is, you're bound to bank big wherever you decide to invest next. And since you're the kind of guy who likes to share the wealth, you invite those whose trust you've absolutely earned to come along for the ride. And who wants to be left off that gravy train? It's leaving the station now, folks. All aboard. Woo-wooo! Woo-wooo!

This scam has been known by many names in many times. Choose Not to Lose. Magic Mirror. Orders of Magnitude. I call it the Merlin Game, since that legendary necromancer was said to have aged backward, and who couldn't pick winners if all he had to do was watch them flash past in his rearview mirror?

The Merlin Game's limitation has always been just getting your initial guesses in front of enough eyes so that by the time you've sliced the sucker cake in halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and thirty-seconds, a large enough pond of confidence remains to be profitably drained. Thanks to the internet, that problem has vanished: Leads abound.

Qualified leads, though, those are another matter. leads, though, those are another matter.

Which brings us to Milval Hines and his preretirement career as an investment counselor. He probably knew thousands of people who had faith in him. These are what the straight world calls ”clients.” * * They didn't trust him implicitly, mind you. They listened to what he had to say and then made their own judgments. He likely never represented himself to be anything other than someone who a.n.a.lyzed trends and pa.s.sed along what he learned. He flimmed no flams, in other words, but simply did his homework and demonstrated through diligence that he could turn modest risk into reasonable gain. They didn't trust him implicitly, mind you. They listened to what he had to say and then made their own judgments. He likely never represented himself to be anything other than someone who a.n.a.lyzed trends and pa.s.sed along what he learned. He flimmed no flams, in other words, but simply did his homework and demonstrated through diligence that he could turn modest risk into reasonable gain.

Now Hines has a problem. In the midst of his existential meltdown, he wants to start having fun, the kind of fun that violates federal law. But it's not so easy. The inertia of his reputation holds him back. His former clients all know him to be a straight shooter with an adequate market sense and a respectable ROI, so how can he suddenly reinvent himself in their eyes as an investment savant who's gone from pretty good trend spotter to lock-solid win picker? Can't. Obviously. In the words of the grift (Texas branch), ”That dog don't hunt.”

Bottom line, he couldn't be a Merlin.

But he might have just met met one. one.

This was the pitch I laid out for him a few days later in his Pasadena office-park office. The place was about what you'd expect for a semiretired investment counselor: a pretty-but-not-too-pretty receptionist, comfortable but not ostentatious leather couches, copies of Inc Inc. and Forbes Forbes in the lobby. The mahogany walls of his inner sanctum, heavily punctuated with degrees and diplomas, had built-in shelves laden with what we call ”appreciation hardware,” trophies for everything from serving as your organization's treasurer to donating uniforms to the local Little League team. To me it all just looked like credit for time served and reminded me that if the one thing I had to do every day was the same thing every day, my career would likely be cut short by the precipitous slitting of my own wrists. But that's just me. Some people crave boredom. in the lobby. The mahogany walls of his inner sanctum, heavily punctuated with degrees and diplomas, had built-in shelves laden with what we call ”appreciation hardware,” trophies for everything from serving as your organization's treasurer to donating uniforms to the local Little League team. To me it all just looked like credit for time served and reminded me that if the one thing I had to do every day was the same thing every day, my career would likely be cut short by the precipitous slitting of my own wrists. But that's just me. Some people crave boredom.

Hines did not seem to be one of them just then. His eyes shone with delight when I walked in, and he welcomed me like a lodge brother. I half expected a secret grifters' handshake, and if he had found one on the internet, I'm sure he would have laid it on me. As it was, he'd clearly been registering hits on websites like fraudreka.com and hoaxandjokes.org, for his mind was alive with the possibilities of the grift.

”Wis.h.i.+ng wells,” said Hines after we'd batted a few pleasantries back and forth like shuttlec.o.c.ks. ”Did you know you can invest in wis.h.i.+ng wells? I've been in finance all my life and I've never even imagined such a thing!”

Of course I knew all about wis.h.i.+ng well franchises. They come in a spectrum of snadoodles, from relatively clean charity funnels to outright skim machines. After all, practically every shopping mall, amus.e.m.e.nt park, and roadside attraction in the land has some sort of standing body of water into which people feel a gut compulsion to throw their loose change. Who collects that coin?-some street b.u.m scrounging for the price of paint thinner? Don't kid yourself. Small change is big business, and if the shopping mall isn't gleaning the take itself, it's subcontracting the work to some brothers with an Italian (or in this modern world, Serbian) surname, who may hire the b.u.m and equip him with hip waders but are definitely keeping the fat end for themselves.

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