Part 15 (1/2)

”Too right. You don't want your training to go to waste.”

”So much for having your measure,” said Allie.

Billy smiled. ”Anyway, that night there was a bit of a p.i.s.s-up down the road. We shouted rounds back and forth till closing. At which time she confided in me that her parents had been ruined by a grifter. Picked clean. They lost their home, savings, everything. That's what brought her into anti-fraud.”

”Righteous indignation?” asked Allie.

”f.u.c.kin' rage.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. I had an awful premonition about what I'd hear next. ”Did she say how they got snuked?”

”Mortgage fraud. They thought they were leveraging their land to buy more land. Exotic s.h.i.+t, too.”

”A tropical island?”

Yuan's eyes widened. ”How did you-?” He bit off the end of the sentence. ”Oh, no. Oh, mate, you didn't.”

”What?” asked Vic. ”Didn't what?”

”I'm afraid I did.” (Through a dummy corporation called Vala Island Holdings. Look up the lat.i.tude and longitude and you'll find it's blue water.) ”How?” asked Allie. ”They were half a world away.”

I shrugged. ”The internet,” I said. ”It extends your reach.”

”Wow,” said Billy, reverently. ”Well now, that's a coincidence.”

”What's a coincidence?” asked Vic, still not catching on.

”I don't believe in coincidences,” I said, and with that began to ponder the possibility that I, not Hines, had been Scovil's target all along. If so, I would now have to percolate everything through the filter of new information. Say Scovil was after me on a revenge tip and Hines was after me for pure go-to-h.e.l.l. Were they after me together? Was their mutual enmity so much smoke? If yes, it meant they thought they could hustle a hustler. This outraged me some, as it showed disrespect. Then again, they had managed to get me up to my elbows in a big, muddy grift, the kind of grift that could put poor Radar in an orange jumpsuit for the rest of his natural borns.

Somehow I didn't think that was enough for them. Who goes to all the trouble-comes halfway around the world, in Scovil's case-just to make life h.e.l.l for one nonviolent perp? It's not like busting me was going to bring world peace. Anyway, I knew what Hines's play was: money. Maybe that was Scovil's real play, too, and all her righteous spew was just another wheel within the endless wheels. Hmm. So now I had to ask myself whether Scovil was capable of thinking that many levels deep. Could I picture her in an Aussie public house planting the seeds of phony baloney on the outside chance of organizing a payback party for me at some point in the indeterminate future? Could she really be that devious?

”Billy,” I asked, ”apart from her 'f.u.c.kin' rage,' do you think Scovil's an honest cop?”

”Oh, lilywhite, mate.”

”Any chance you're wrong?”

This gave Billy pause. I saw his eyes go up and to the left, which is where the eyes go when the memory files open. I imagined he was reviewing every interaction he'd ever had with Scovil, measuring them against this new possibility. Like all great grifters, he would have the ability to recall those conversations not just word for word but nuance for nuance. He would now be rethinking those nuances, looking for the telltale ”rift in the fabric of s.p.a.ce” that augers a lie. ”It's possible,” he said at last.

”Possible,” I repeated. Possible that for Scovil, revenge meant not just getting back at the bad guys but getting her taste, too. After all, the world hadn't been fair to her family. Some people react to such circ.u.mstances by investing that much more heavily in fair. Others just say, ”Screw fair.” Well, if Scovil was on the ”screw fair” side of things, it meant not only that she could be bought but also that ultimately she would name her price.

So: Was she giving me enough line to land a whale or enough rope to hang myself? Both, my gut told me. Really, she probably wanted both.

The evening waned. Mirplo played heads-up poker with Yuan and ended up losing everything, even the pink slip to his s.h.i.+tbox Song Serenade, which Billy took one look at and immediately gave back. In grat.i.tude, Vic invited Billy out to the Broadview. I hoped Billy had money, because going to strip clubs with Mirplo is like dating the homecoming queen: Mate, you're gonna pay.

Later, Allie and I were in bed together and the subject of money came up. ”Radar,” she asked, ”how much cash do you have?”

I thought about the steel ammo box buried in the hillside below my flat. ”Maybe ten grand,” I said. ”It's my dash cash.”

”I have about the same.” She twirled an idle finger in my minimal chest hair. ”You think we should?”

”What? Dash?”

”We have a bankroll. It's not a lot, but enough to get started. We could rebuild.”

”And Vic and Billy?”

”They could come, too. We could be a road gang.”

I had dismissed the thought of jetting before, but the metric had now s.h.i.+fted again, for if Scovil was as bent as Hines, then who in the picture would want to see us stand trial for our heinous crimes? The likeliest endgame any of us could antic.i.p.ate involved guns and shallow graves.

If we did dash, of course, we'd have to go off the grid, which meant cash cons only-old school stings like the Texas Twist, Candle Shop, and Block Hustle. This had a certain romantic appeal. We could be like those 1930s flim-flam men, selling personalized Bibles to loved ones of the newly departed. But when you start to examine it in the cold light of reality, it quickly loses its charm, for life on the cash con is a life of small towns, hick marks, truck stops, fat cops, and grotty motels. Nor was I confident that there was any such place as ”off the grid” in modern America. If we bailed on Hines, he wasn't likely to forgive or forget, not unless we left the keys to the Penny Skim just lying on the table when we ran.

And you know what? I wasn't prepared to do that. I was kind of surprised that Allie was. So I asked her about it.

”I don't want to tell you,” she said in an oddly vulnerable voice. I didn't force the issue. I figured she'd tell me or not tell me as she saw fit. We pa.s.sed a quiet moment together, she still worrying my chest hairs and I happily tracing the line of her cheekbone with a fingernail. At last I heard a tiny intake of breath, the kind people make before they speak. Still the words didn't come. Another moment pa.s.sed. Then she murmured, ”It's you, you know.”

”What's me?”

”Something I've never had before.” I could feel her heart beating. ”Something to lose.”

I blinked. ”I'm something to lose?”

She buried her head in my chest. ”I can't believe I said that out loud.”

I stroked her cinnamon hair. ”You're something to lose, too.”

Allie lifted her head and looked at me with wide eyes. ”Am I? Am I really?”

Listen, if you grift long enough, you're going to work every game there is, and for me that had included enough sweetheart scams to know how to sell love. But I never uttered any ”I love you” with anywhere near the honesty I invested just then in a single, silent nod. I thought Allie was going to cry. Or maybe that was me. ”I'll run if you want,” I said. ”We can be like Bonnie and Clyde, only hopefully not getting ventilated in the last reel. But I refuse to believe we can't outplay these mayonnaise motherf.u.c.kers.”

Allie laughed. ”Mayonnaise what-what kind of motherf.u.c.kers?”

”Mayonnaise motherf.u.c.kers. White bread, you know? Easy marks.”

Allie took my arm and put it around her shoulder. She cuddled in close. ”You're a strange, strange man, Radar Hoverlander. What's your real name?”

I waited a long time before I answered. ”Radar Hoverlander,” I said. But Allie was already asleep. I could smell General Tso's Chicken on the gingery exhalation of her breath.

dead man's switch.

W e already know why Willie Sutton robbed banks-'cause that's where the money was. And we know why George Mallory climbed Mount Everest-because it was there. Of more interest to me is why Pica.s.so kept painting or d.i.c.kens kept writing long after they got so rich that they could bathe in champagne every day and still endow a trust. I'm guessing they got hooked-not on the money but on the buzz of doing what they did so well. Maybe they just wanted to prove they could still do it; unless you're Mallory, there's always a higher mountain to climb. And some people climb even though they know they're going to fall. Just ask Mallory, who vanished on Everest in 1924, or ask any air force test pilot who ends his last flight as a smudge on the desert floor. e already know why Willie Sutton robbed banks-'cause that's where the money was. And we know why George Mallory climbed Mount Everest-because it was there. Of more interest to me is why Pica.s.so kept painting or d.i.c.kens kept writing long after they got so rich that they could bathe in champagne every day and still endow a trust. I'm guessing they got hooked-not on the money but on the buzz of doing what they did so well. Maybe they just wanted to prove they could still do it; unless you're Mallory, there's always a higher mountain to climb. And some people climb even though they know they're going to fall. Just ask Mallory, who vanished on Everest in 1924, or ask any air force test pilot who ends his last flight as a smudge on the desert floor.

Or maybe just ask Billy and me as we zeroed in on our California Roll. It's not like there's a hall of fame for people like us, but if there were, then pulling off this snuke would make us lock admits. I only mention this because I don't want it thought that financial edacity alone kept me in the game. The money was beside the point. I wasn't robbing China to get rich. I was robbing China because it was there.