Part 12 (1/2)

”Do you know if she went any place tropical? Africa, say, or South America.”

”No. Australia, I think. Didn't even bring me back a boomerang.”

”If I may say, ma-” I caught myself, ”miss, it doesn't seem as though there's much love lost between you two.”

”Allie Quinn is a liar and a cheat. She lived here for six months and never paid a cent of rent. It was always, 'The money's coming in,' or she had an emergency or something.” Kyoko made a moue. ”She said she could get my screenplay produced, but that was bulls.h.i.+t, too.”

There it is, I thought. h.e.l.l hath no fury like a writer scorned h.e.l.l hath no fury like a writer scorned.

We talked awhile longer. Kyoko was generous with information, the way people will be when they feel needed or important. From what she said, I was able to construct a picture of Allie as a transplant from somewhere, working solo grifts and just trying to get by. Though Kyoko occasionally joined Allie on bizarre adventures, like her masquerade at the car show, they never were close. They started to fall out over rent, but before that could come to a head, Allie simply disappeared. ”I think she got in trouble,” said Kyoko. ”Some men came and took all her things away.”

”Men?”

”Policemen.”

”And when was that?”

”Summer sometime. Before Labor Day.”

”I see.” I tucked my clipboard under my arm. ”Well, if you see her, please tell her to contact County Health immediately.” I handed Kyoko a bogus business card. ”And if I were you, I would avoid close contact.”

”Trust me,” she said, ”I won't be kissing her anytime soon.”

I cleared out. When I got back to my car, the Chad Thurston phone was ringing. I let it go to voice mail. I wasn't ready to talk to Yuan yet. I had some new information to process.

So Allie came and went. In the country, out of the country, with no real job and not a lot of cash. Thanks to Kyoko, I could reasonably place her in Australia, and though I couldn't place her exactly next to Billy Yuan, it didn't seem that far a fetch. But what was she doing down under? Sightseeing? Or setting something up? Suppose Hines had caught her with her fingers in the honeypot and flipped her like he flipped Mirplo. Unlike Mirplo, she'd be light enough on her feet to feed Hines a consistent false narrative. Maybe that narrative was one of feminine weakness-unlikely, given Allie, but still-and inability to help Hines catch Yuan without outside agency, said agency being moi moi. She'd met Mirplo and me last year at the car show. Let's say she'd intuited (or researched-I wouldn't put anything past her) that I was a good enough grifter to be represented as world cla.s.s. Then she led Hines to Mirplo, and through him to me. In that case, I wasn't the source of some extravagant, sought-after skill package, but just an elaborate stall.

That explained a lot, but it didn't explain everything.

Like: why did she sleep with me?

I drove around for a while, mulling my hypothesis, testing it from different angles, seeing how other pieces fit. Could Scovil have picked up Allie's scent in Australia, either before or after Scovil made Hines for bent? Was Allie secretly (or additionally) working for Scovil? Did Hines thus feel a certain noose tightening around his neck? He wanted me to b.u.t.ton up the Merlin Game, with himself as offsh.o.r.e beneficiary. Was that money intended to grease his getaway? If so, when was getaway day?

Once again, I had too many questions and not enough answers, which was really starting to get on my nerves.

Or was it?

I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. If I didn't know me better, I'd say I looked happy. This puzzle was proving satisfyingly difficult to solve. I felt alive in my mind. Apart from the risk of getting dead in my body, I was having a high old time.

But that risk of getting dead was not negligible. I couldn't overlook it.

Now my own phone rang. I ignored it, but a moment later pulled into the parking lot of a mini-mart to check both phones and play back my messages.

Mirplo had called. ”Hey, Blue Leader,” he chirped, in what I suppose he supposed to be code, ”Big Bird is getting testy. Wants to know if you've forgotten about the thing with the thing. I played dumb.” (A Mirplovian gift, that.) ”But you'd better do the thing with the thing today, or Big Bird's gonna s.h.i.+t on you.” Threats aside, the thing with the thing-the Merlin Game-needed triggering soon, or it would lose the heat of its momentum and fall apart. This thought filled me with a strange indifference, and it felt weird to think of a $300,000 snadoodle as a distracting aside, but that's what it had become. I sent Mirplo a text telling him to a.s.sure Hines it would be done today.

Not, perhaps, the way he antic.i.p.ated, but h.e.l.l, you can't have everything.

I played back the message on the other phone. ”Hey, Chad,” Billy Yuan began, ”how's that ol' universe treating you?” Man, you didn't need a subtext detector to hear the busted! busted! in Billy's voice. He was on to me, and letting me know it. ”Listen, mate,” he continued, ”two questions for you: Why did w.i.l.l.y Sutton rob banks? And where is the money now? Call me when you know. I fancy we can do business.” in Billy's voice. He was on to me, and letting me know it. ”Listen, mate,” he continued, ”two questions for you: Why did w.i.l.l.y Sutton rob banks? And where is the money now? Call me when you know. I fancy we can do business.”

So I'd been made. Made by an arrogant p.r.i.c.k who wouldn't even let me play his reindeer games till I pa.s.sed a little test first. It put me in mind of Allie and the whole Cinderf.u.c.kingella thing. Sometimes we grifters are too cute for our own good. Anyway, the first question was easy. Willie Sutton robbed banks because, as he famously (though apocryphally) put it, ”That's where the money is.” But where was the money now? Was Yuan referring to the Merlin Game, trying to get me to out myself about that? I didn't think so. He might know about it, of course, from several different sources, but I didn't think that was the money he was referring to. Why? Hard to say. A gut feeling. Something from his tone of voice that said the question was more about him than about me. Like an SAT a.n.a.logy, almost: Willie Sutton is to banks as Billy Yuan is to what? Willie Sutton is to banks as Billy Yuan is to what?

Well, what?

I cast my mind back to Willie Sutton's days. The Great Depression. When what money there was was in banks and almost nowhere else. Okay, if Yuan was using a.n.a.logy, maybe I could, too. Great Depression is to banks as today is to ...

Is to ...

Nothing. My gears ground on the question, and I got nowhere.

Broaden the search, Radar, I thought. Forget about ”where is money?” Think ”what is money?” Forget about ”where is money?” Think ”what is money?” And what is money, really, but an a.s.signment of value, a promise to pay? Wait, And what is money, really, but an a.s.signment of value, a promise to pay? Wait, promise to pay promise to pay. That tickled something in my brain. If you think of it, money stored in a bank, say, is just a representation of debt. Someone owes someone something, and the sum of that something is a bank's bottom line.

Okay, then. Who holds all the debt right now?

Got it!

I scrolled to Billy's phone number and hit dial dial. After two rings, Billy answered, ”G'day, Radar.”

Not even any Chadouflage. I decided to go s.h.i.+elds-down, too. ”h.e.l.lo, Billy,” I said. ”I know where the money is.”

”And that would be?”

”China.”

”Excellent,” said Yuan. ”You got it in one.”

”So I did,” I said. ”So now what?”

”Now we meet and discuss our plan.”

”What plan is that?”

”You already know it,” he said. ”We're going to rob China.”

the california roll.

I t took us a little while to work out where to meet: someplace public but cloistered, where two grifters could size each other up with appropriate discretion and wary circ.u.mspection. We settled on the Brentwood Country Mart, an open-air warren of shops on the eastern edge of Santa Monica. There was a fake-wood fire pit in the center of the mart, surrounded by fast-food joints, but originals, not franchise. It was the sort of place where people sat around tete-a-tete in conversations covering everything from real estate deals to demands for divorce. It met our needs; plus, if we got hungry, the chimichangas there were dandy. t took us a little while to work out where to meet: someplace public but cloistered, where two grifters could size each other up with appropriate discretion and wary circ.u.mspection. We settled on the Brentwood Country Mart, an open-air warren of shops on the eastern edge of Santa Monica. There was a fake-wood fire pit in the center of the mart, surrounded by fast-food joints, but originals, not franchise. It was the sort of place where people sat around tete-a-tete in conversations covering everything from real estate deals to demands for divorce. It met our needs; plus, if we got hungry, the chimichangas there were dandy.

I arrived first, and killed some time studying the window display of a specialty food store where a pyramid of elegantly labeled wine bottles p.r.o.nounced themselves AcquaViva, which as near as I could tell was not wine but a fortified fruit drink that retailed for an incredible fifty bucks a bottle. A shopgirl noticed me and came out to hand me a brochure. I read it with, I guess you'd say, professional interest, as it touted the benefits of AcquaViva's ”proprietary blend of 23 fruit juices and extracts, including the life-giving acai berry, one of Mother Nature's greatest gifts.”

Really?

Reading on, I learned that AcquaViva was a bona fide superfood, packed to the rafters with flavonoids, phytonutrients, antioxidants, esterified fatty acids, and just a splash, it would seem, of Ponce de Leon's original fountain of youth. It promised to boost energy, reduce muscle fatigue, arm the immune system, and bind free radicals. While the studies that backed these claims were suspiciously vague in provenance and methodology, they did have impressive-sounding names, such as ”Double Blind Matrix Match of Antioxidant Versus Placebo Benefit-Vectors.” Better still, for the professionally athletically inclined, AcquaViva had been certified by the Global Anti-Doping a.s.sociation as 100 percent free of all banned substances-though in fairness, the same could be said of an empty bottle. More good news: Lucrative distributors.h.i.+ps were available now. I marveled at the sheer chutzpah of selling, basically, grape juice at half a yard a pop. It tickled me to think that snake oil, yet another venerable and storied snuke, was still alive and well in this modern world. Truly, nothing beautiful dies.

”Why didn't we we think of that, eh?” I turned to see Billy Yuan standing beside me. ”Low overhead, high markup, s.e.xy product.” He shot me a wink. ”Bit too much like real work, though, yeh?” In the light of day, outside the smoky confines of the Blue Magoon, I was able to get a better look at him. He was rather shorter than me, with a thin, wiry frame that suggested agility. I put him on yoga, or perhaps qigong. His features were so purely Chinese that it kicked up puffs of cognitive dissonance every time he opened his mouth and that flat Aussie accent poured out. I'm sure it made him good in the grift, for he was a walking cloud of deception, just by being who he was. think of that, eh?” I turned to see Billy Yuan standing beside me. ”Low overhead, high markup, s.e.xy product.” He shot me a wink. ”Bit too much like real work, though, yeh?” In the light of day, outside the smoky confines of the Blue Magoon, I was able to get a better look at him. He was rather shorter than me, with a thin, wiry frame that suggested agility. I put him on yoga, or perhaps qigong. His features were so purely Chinese that it kicked up puffs of cognitive dissonance every time he opened his mouth and that flat Aussie accent poured out. I'm sure it made him good in the grift, for he was a walking cloud of deception, just by being who he was.

”Ever work an MLM?” he asked.

I gave him my best blank look. ”MLM?” I don't know why I prevaricated, since we'd both already shed our fabricat ident.i.ties. I guess lying has its own inertia.