The California Roll Part 15

"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 shifted 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.

I know, right? I'm a stupid, stubborn son of a b.i.t.c.h. That said, I wasn't going to give Detective Constable Claire Scovil, or Special Agent (or whatever) Milval Hines the satisfaction of moving me off my snuke. Especially when it occurred to me that being a stupid, stubborn son of a b.i.t.c.h was actually the perfect card to play.

So Monday morning I took a chance. I needed to know if Scovil or Hines or both were traveling dark with respect to their bosses and betters. I hoped so; I didn't think that what I had in mind would work with headquarters peering over their shoulders. I figured that Hines was well and truly off the reservation since, as Allie put it, he was getting his beak wet at every opportunity, and that's not a gag you can pull off without a lot of earned autonomy. Of Scovil I wouldn't have suspected it up till now, but after last night's conversation with Billy, and my own tranquil reflection on all my interactions with her, I became more and more convinced that she had likewise gone rogue. It wouldn't take much-a leave of absence from work and the next flight to L.A. But I needed to know for sure, so I turned to the Hackmaster, not forgetting what Chuck said about the trail of electronic breadcrumbs it could leave.

Conundrum! I had to shine a light in dark places without anyone tracing the beam back to me. So I settled down with the Hackmaster's instruction manual to see if I could find a way. Hours later, apart from some grins at crimes against syntax-"for avioding of crinminal charge use a nony mouse relay protical"-I had nothing to show for my work. The device could do what it promised, but it couldn't promise not to be seen. Okay Okay, I thought, if I'm going to be seen, let's make being seen not a problem if I'm going to be seen, let's make being seen not a problem.

I first cooked up a new ident.i.ty, that of a teenage hack hobbyist from-I picked an Eastern European country at random-Romania. I gave myself a name, Luca Durbaca, and a screen ident.i.ty, Jokerman23. Then I established a loud presence on the kind of underground discussion boards routinely monitored by interested government officials. (Taking care first, of course, to launder my posts through three or four "a nony mouse relays.") What I had in mind was to hide my efforts in plain sight. Posturing like a teenage hacker high on testosterone, I boasted that I had written slam code to breach law-enforcement databases all over the world and would post results of my work within twenty-four hours. Naturally, I had written no such code, but if the Hackmaster was everything it awkwardly expressed itself to be, that wouldn't be a problem.

I picked an international array of police departments, army intelligence bureaus, and national security agencies, including the German Bundespolizei, Tatmadaw (Burmese military), the defense intelligence services of Uruguay and Paraguay-and the Australian High Tech Crime Centre and Hines's fraud task force. See what I was getting at? If anyone in those places noticed me snooping around, they'd trace me back to these discussion boards and decide that I was on a self-indulgent because-it's-there teenage jag. They might worry about Luca Durbaca selling access to their secrets, but they wouldn't worry about Radar Hoverlander looking for the goods on Scovil and Hines.

I spent the better part of the day happily crashing the inner sancta of the world's law-enforcement agencies-and wittingly laying a breadcrumb trail back to the fictive Jokerman. I have to say that the Hackmaster worked a pip, and if I ever wanted to run, say, a friendly little blackmail game, I now knew that the finance minister for the government of Iceland favors s.e.x-tourism excursions to Nicaragua. Merely out of hacker curiosity (or so it would appear to subsequent keystroke a.n.a.lysts), I checked out the operations files of both the Aussie crime center and the Fibbie task force, and found not a whisper in either place of Billy Yuan or yours most humbly truly. This indicated that Scovil and Hines were indeed running dark, so mission accomplished.

Or maybe not. Unfortunately, absence of proof is not proof. I might have been looking in the wrong place, or they might be working with wink sanction. Ah, well. I'd done the best I could to establish that their activities didn't officially exist. If I was wrong, I was wrong. I'd just have to improvise a new solution if it came to that.

There was one last search I wanted to run, to get Hines's real name, which of course I didn't have, else his FBI affiliation would've surfaced back when I first searched Grandpa's bona fides. I thought I might be able to flip that rock by running Allie through a general cross-reference matrix. I might also get independent evidence that Allie was, indeed, on board as a protected informant, which corroboration would certainly be a balm to my suspicious soul. In the end, though, I abjured the search, for going after so specific a target might belie my hacker holiday masquerade, and I couldn't take that chance. I'd just have to keep calling Hines Hines, and keep taking Allie on faith.

I had had faith. Weirdly, I did. Confidence, too, steadying up again after its earlier wobble. After all, I held many interesting cards to play. I had half a million dirty dollars, with the prospect of a whole lot more on the way. I had friends-rare in this game. Most important, I had uncovered my adversaries' hidden agendas, which is just huge in the grift. Knowing what the other guy wants is key to getting what faith. Weirdly, I did. Confidence, too, steadying up again after its earlier wobble. After all, I held many interesting cards to play. I had half a million dirty dollars, with the prospect of a whole lot more on the way. I had friends-rare in this game. Most important, I had uncovered my adversaries' hidden agendas, which is just huge in the grift. Knowing what the other guy wants is key to getting what you you want, and that's true whether you're talking about negotiation, poker, or the rarefied art of the con. want, and that's true whether you're talking about negotiation, poker, or the rarefied art of the con.

Also key is keeping the other guy off balance, which is why I arranged a meeting with Hines-and invited Scovil, too. This was in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel for no other reason than that I'd always wanted to check it out.

You should have seen the look on each of their faces when the other arrived.

I saw. I was watching from a service alcove by the kitchen, while the Salvadoran busboys looked at me like I was some kind of eccentric, though no shortage of those in Beverly Hills, right? Hines walked in first, went straight to the bar and ordered a big double something, straight up. He snarled when the bartender asked if he wanted a menu. Scovil entered a moment later, dressed as she thought a woman going to the Polo Lounge should dress-in a black c.o.c.ktail thing that she absolutely couldn't sell. When they caught sight of each other, they looked like televangelists look when the news crews are waiting outside the p.o.r.no store. In this sense, I was pinging them: By their unvarnished surprise I knew that, at least, they weren't updating each other's Day Runner. In another sense, I was pinging myself, for in that instant, they both knew they'd been snuked in a minor way-two dates to the same dance, as it were. I imagine they were both quite p.i.s.sed off at me, but neither could show it without raising the larger question of why each hadn't bothered to fill the other in. So they both clamped down on their expressions with, to my practiced eye, only modest success, and started looking around for me. I ducked into the kitchen, went all the way around through the back-of-house, emerged in the lobby, and sailed into the lounge like the happiest little Radar on earth.

Let's pause and review for the folks in the back row. Scovil had told me she was chasing Hines as a bent cop, though I now believed her real target was moi. Meanwhile, my story for Scovil was that Billy Yuan had made me as a grifter and wouldn't let me into his confidence, though we all know that wasn't true. Hines, on the other hand, knew that Billy and I were working the Penny Skim and therefore saw the firm of Yuan and Hoverlander as his Super Lotto Jackpot. Was he worried about Scovil? Probably not. He figured he could take the money and give her us to hang on her Sydney gibbet.

All other things being equal, I preferred to remain unhung.

In the five seconds before I made my presence known, I could see it occur to both of them that I might not show up at all-that I'd just called this meeting as a goof. While I'm certainly capable of such random acts of whimsy, that wasn't what I was about here. I was working a variation of a con called the Dead Man's Switch, which is basically just taking the other guy's opportunity and turning it into his problem.

I sauntered over, all smiles, handshakes and pats on backs. "I suppose you're both wondering why I asked you here," I said. I knew I couldn't sound more cliched-exactly the tone I was going for. "I think it's time we cleared the air.

"Milval ... Claire ..." I said. "Do you mind if I call you Claire?" Scovil glared at me like I'd asked to sniff her panties. "You two haven't been entirely honest with each other." Both of their faces contorted as they essayed the impossible task of conveying devil-may-care calm and shut-your-mouth menace at the same time.

I addressed Hines first. "Milval," I said, "Claire told you she came here after Billy Yuan, right?" Hines nodded warily, wondering just how liturgically loose this canon was going to get. "She didn't. She's after ..." Scovil took the extraordinary step of grabbing my arm. I don't think Hines saw, for he was pretty well steeped in his own dread just then. "... me," I finished, with a broad, c.o.c.ky smile. Scovil relaxed her grip. This was interesting, because if Hines wasn't on Scovil's agenda, then why would she hate to have him think he was? I filed that contemplation for later. Time to put the fear on Hines, too.

"And Claire," I said, "Milval's not really interested in Billy either. He just wants to take ..." the money and run? Was that what I was about to say?

Nah. "... me down, too." I saw Hines clench, then unclench. "I think you two are going to have a jurisdictional issue."

"You think we care about that?" growled Hines.

"No, probably not," I said. "But the fact remains that the two of you, in your ardor, have given the fox the key to the henhouse, and you'd better start figuring out what you're going to do about that, because Billy and I are about to do something that could ..." I paused for effect "... kinda wreck the world's economy. And if that happens and all you have to show for it is one busted Hoverlander, * * I don't think your bosses are going to be too d.a.m.n pleased." I don't think your bosses are going to be too d.a.m.n pleased."

"What do you mean you and Billy?" asked Scovil. "I thought he didn't trust you."

"This may come as a shock to you, Constable, but people don't always tell the truth." Here was a new problem for Scovil, for she'd threatened me with death if I lied to her and must now be wondering why that threat had lost its clout.

That was just part of her emerging emotional stew which, like Hines's, was reaching a stage of redolent roil. In the few minutes since they'd arrived, they'd experienced the shock of each other's presence, the fear of being outed, and the relief of me pulling back from that brink. Now they were tied up in a snarl of feelings, including resentment, confusion, anxiety and, considering the way Hines knocked back his drink and ordered another, the first stage of spifflication. Judging them sufficiently softened up, I pushed ahead.

I gave them a full brief on the Penny Skim, noting with some amus.e.m.e.nt how hard Hines tried to make it all look like news to him. I told them it was a done deal, with confederates already in place all over the People's Bank's IT structure. For a price-a percentage of the skim-these worthies were already providing Billy and me with pa.s.sword hacks to their own security systems. I told them that Billy had written, and was ready to release, the go commands that would automate the process of clipping virtually every transaction into, out of, or through the Chinese banking system. What's more, the thing was designed to spread virally, so that every skim opened the door to another, geometrically. By my (admittedly impromptu) math, it would take about six hours for the bank's watchdog software to catch on, and who knows how long after that before someone in the chain of command had sufficient spine to call all engines stop. By the time China slammed the door, the skim would have spread to other hubs of national finance, including the Bank of England, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, and of course the Reserve Bank of Australia and the U.S. Federal Reserve.

You may be thinking that there's no way a skim can "spread" magically past the pa.s.swords and firewalls of other nations' banking systems. Know what? You're right. But you're not under the sort of pressure that Scovil and Hines were under, and when it comes to selling bafflegab, pressure is a grifter's best friend.

"Can you see where I'm going with this?" I asked. "In the s.p.a.ce of a day, the global economy will come up short to the tune of ..." I paused to pull a number out of my a.s.s "... some one and a half trillion dollars. And that's not all, because every bank in the world will have to lock down to stop the process. Know what happens then? Panic. Runs on banks. Chaos. Riots. Total economic collapse."

"Bulls.h.i.t," spat Hines.

"Is it?" I asked, utterly rhetorically. I then gave them a quick primer on coin clipping, how it had repeatedly devalued and destroyed strong economies down through history. Byzantium. Persia's Safavid Dynasty. I even laid the fall of the Roman Empire at the feet of unscrupulous solidus solidus shavers. This was more than bafflegab; it was pure whole cloth invention. But they bought it completely. shavers. This was more than bafflegab; it was pure whole cloth invention. But they bought it completely.

I guess I was just on my game.

"And," I added, "that's back when they measured economic change in centuries. You know how it is these days: Someone pets a monkey in Uganda, flies to Chicago, you have Marburg all over the Midwest by midweek. Same thing with public monetary confidence. By the time it hits CNN, it'll be too late to stop.

"Like I said, your bosses aren't going to like that. Especially since your bosses have no idea what you're up to, do they?"

Hines and Scovil exchanged unhappy looks. Now to administer a tincture of panic and beat a hasty retreat. "Here's the deal," I said, "Two million dollars in twenty-four hours stops this thing in its tracks. And gives you Billy Yuan as a kind of a consolation prize."

"You'd sell out your partner?" asked Scovil.

"What partner? I've known the dude two weeks." I turned to Hines. "But Allie's mine. She walks."

"Why?" asked Scovil, which suggested that Hines hadn't clued her in on the latest state of l'affaire Allie l'affaire Allie.

So I jerked a thumb at Hines. "Ask him."

Hines opened and closed his mouth. More for cover than anything else, he said, "What about Mirplo?"

I smirked. "If you think you can put this all on his scrawny shoulders, be my guest. For the record, he's not as loyal a servant as you think he is." I turned to walk away, then paused, as if something very important had just occurred to me. "By the way," I said, "if you're considering some sort of preemptive strike, either legal or ..." I fixed them both with meaningful looks "... extralegal, I suggest you look up 'Dead Man's Switch' on Wikipedia." Then I walked out, leaving the Polo Lounge to its standard olio of dealmakers, heartbreakers, and, I predicted, two morose cops who would run up a hefty bar tab before they stumbled out into perfect Beverly Hills.

I stopped by the Blue Magoon on the way home. The place was creepy, but somebody there had something I thought I might need.

*"The Sky Crane will fly off and crash-land a short distance away."

event horizon.

"Y ou what?!" shouted Vic. "You f.u.c.king sold me out?" ou what?!" shouted Vic. "You f.u.c.king sold me out?"

Unable to stomach yet another Java Man, we were hanging at one of its one-off compet.i.tors, Sheik of Arabica, located way down Slauson and situated, we hoped, well off Hines and Scovil's map. Allie, Billy, and I were quaffing cappuccinos. Vic was throwing a bit of a fit.

"Relax, Vic," I said. "n.o.body sold anybody out. It's all part of the snuke."

"Well, I like your part better than mine. Two million bucks. You'd better f.u.c.king cut me in."