Simple Grifts

by Max Cossack

  He was nowhere near any of his goals. In fact, measured against where he thought he should be at this point in his life, he was nowhere at all.

  Sure, viewed on a petty scale of ordinary ambition, his life was okay. Thanks to his smart move marrying Sylvia, he had decent wealth and comfort, while he also had local recognition and, among his local followers, a variety of young, willing and acrobatic sexual partners to choose from. And he always got his way on the many faculty committees he chaired or ran from behind the scenes. Nobody messed with him.

  But his efforts to rise to national DCA leadership had stalled. There was always some inferior individual standing in his way, someone with more clout or better credentials or connections, someone who took the national post and the recognition Soren deserved.

  The realization was sinking in. He was stuck running a local podunk DCA chapter at an irrelevant college on the edge of nowhere. And there was no sign anything in his life was going to change. This was it. Forever.

  Until he met Abarca.

  Abarca was an actual revolutionary who’d helped lead an actual revolution. He’d been shot at. And he’d shot back; he had even killed counterrevolutionaries.

  Abarca had his own Wall.

  He was the real deal. Naturally, it took a man like Abarca finally to recognize and appreciate Soren. If Soren handled things right, soon he’d be the one with credentials. He’d have the franchise from a genuine Venezuelan revolutionary leader. Abarca would transform Soren’s status and his power and his authority within the Movement. Abarca could give Soren access to Abarca’s money and connections and legitimacy. As Abarca’s American confidant, Soren could direct Abarca’s money and influence to preferred projects, movements, and people. Everyone would be coming to Soren.

  Let all those national DCA bigshots suck on that.

  Abarca was his ticket.

  24 Mattie Wants A Lead Role

  “Handing Cali that iPad was fun,” Mattie said, looking at Gus. “But why can’t I have a speaking part?”

  Cali said, “Your part was essential. And you did it very professionally.”

  “But it was a walk-on. Or a walk-in. I mean literally; I walked in and handed Cali an iPad to look at and then took it back and walked out again.” She looked to Gloria for support.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Gloria decided to stay out of it. Maybe Mattie was a fighter for female equality, but maybe she was just another actor conniving at a bigger role. And what did Gloria know about con games and grifting?

  Cali said. “There are no small parts, my dear. There are only small grifters.”

  Gus leaned back in a big easy chair, his big knuckles spread over his knees. Hack and Mattie leaned together on the sofa. From his station standing back against the wall, Humberto glowered at everyone with uniformly distributed contempt.

  From his own easy chair, Cali said, “But Mattie, my dear, grifting takes experience.”

  “I have experience,” Mattie said.

  “You’ve got no experience lying,” Hack said.

  Mattie glanced at Hack. “How do you know? Maybe I’m such a good liar you never caught on. Anyway, you’ve got a big speaking part. If you got so much experience, maybe you should give me the lowdown on just what you’ve been lying about all this time.”

  Hack raised his palms in a gesture of surrender.

  Cali said, “My dear, there are differences between lying and acting.”

  Gloria wasn’t sure. All the actors she knew always claimed they were doing the opposite of lying. They argued that they were looking for the “truth” of the characters they portrayed. But what if those characters were liars themselves? How could you act the “truth” of a liar? By lying badly?

  Gus said, “Cali, I’ve got to stick up for Mattie. I’ve known Mattie since grade school. I’ve heard her come up with some bigtime whoppers. She’s a great liar.”

  Mattie said, “Thank you, Gus.”

  Gus said, “But I’ve also got to add, she’s not really a pro. More a gifted amateur.”

  Cali said to Gus, “Meaning no disrespect, You and Humberto and I are the professionals here. Our other fellow team members are all amateurs. I need to learn if any of them has applicable experience.”

  Cali turned to Mattie, “Do you have any experience acting?”

  “I had the lead in my high school play,” she said.

  “Second lead,” Hack said. “Best friend of the star.”

  “That’s a lead,” she countered.

  Cali said, “And it’s a start.”

  Mattie said, “And don’t forget I act when I sing.”

  “You sing?” Gloria asked.

  Mattie said, “Professionally, as a matter of fact. My whole life. And singing is a kind of acting. Each song tells a story, and when I sing, I act a character in that song. And I change character with every song.”

  Cali said, “Now that is interesting. Some marvelous actors started out as singers. Frank Sinatra comes to mind.”

  Hack muttered, “So does Elvis.”

  “I heard that,” Mattie glared at Hack.

  “You aren’t famous yet,” he told her. “It’s too early in your career to go all Elvis on us.”

  Gloria enjoyed watching Hack and Mattie needle each other. Reminded her of her Italian grandparents.

  Gus said, “Not fair. Elvis wasn’t a bad actor. He just had bad scripts. I blame his manager Colonel Tom Parker. He stuck Elvis in these bad movies. Parker just wanted to grab all the bucks he could while he could.”

  “Unlike you,” Hack said to Gus. “Anyway, I didn’t know you’re an Elvis fan.”

  “I’m just being fair, Partner,” Gus said. “That’s what I’m all about.”

  Mattie said, “The role requires a woman. And Rivelle already knows Gloria. Who else you got?”

  25 Fate Walks In

  Claude Rivelle was sitting in his office one afternoon, absorbed in the Grundl Hypothesis, unaware of the soft polyrhythms his fingers beat as they danced to the soca reggae from his boombox. The music was almost inaudible. Complaints from neighboring offices had forced him to lower the volume.

  He was scribbling sample equations in a spiral notebook when he heard a light knock on the closed door. He looked up to see that the door had cracked open. A woman peered in. She said, “Professor Claude Rivelle?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I come in?”

  Claude jumped to his feet. “Of course. Please.”

  She stepped inside his office and put her left hand on the doorknob behind her. She asked, “May I close the door? It’s a confidential matter.”

  Claude felt a little nervous about being alone in his office with an attractive woman he didn’t know, especially the way things had been going, but she gave no immediate sign she was loopy or dangerous. He said, “If you feel the need.”

  “It is very confidential.” She closed the door and slipped into his visitor’s chair and pulled her short black skirt down and smoothed it over her knees and laid a small black attaché case across her lap. She might have been a bit nervous, because she dropped the case off her lap and had to bend down to pick it up from the floor, so that he got a good look at her.

  She sat upright and smoothed her skirt again. Long brown hair framed her lightly freckled face. Her strong nose gave her face more character than conventional Hollywood prettiness. She was very slender, though her short-sleeved top exposed strong looking upper arms.

  She opened the briefcase and pulled out a manila folder and handed it to him.

  He accepted it and sat down but didn’t open it or even look down at it. He said, “Who exactly are you?”

  “Please call me Ms. Smith. Please look at what’s inside the folder.”

  “And what will I find there?”

  “A new life.”

  “What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”

  She repeated, “Please look.”

  He opened the folder and began to rifle though the papers he found.
A passport with Claude’s real photo and a fake name under it: “Claude Riviera.” Fake driver’s license, credit card, AAA card and others, all under the same fake name Claude Riviera.

  She said, “You’ll also find a round trip ticket to Barbados as well as vouchers for three weeks lodging. That’s all you’ll receive right now, but there could be more, depending on your progress.”

  “Progress towards what?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t. “

  She smiled a serene smile.

  He said, “What is this about?”

  “I told you. An all-expense-paid trip to Barbados.”

  Claude said, “One final time before I insist you leave my office, who are you? Why would you give this to me? And why would I accept it?”

  “Again, my name is Smith.” Her accent was a bit rough, like she was trying to show more sophistication than she could quite manage. “I represent some interests. They have a stake in a proof of the Grundl Hypothesis. You are working on a solution to the Grundl problem, right?”

  Had Boogaard violated his confidence? “What makes you think such a thing?”

  She said, “It doesn’t matter, Professor Rivelle. All you need to know is that there are people who think your solution would make them a lot of money.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Certain technical, I mean, technological advances.” She almost stumbled over the word “technological.”

  She went on. “So naturally we have our eye out. We’re offering a helping hand to anyone we believe might have a good shot at a solution. Like you.”

  “And you want to send me to Barbados?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why there?”

  She spread her arms out. “Time and privacy, Professor. To do this hard thing, you need to get away from the pressures of ordinary life. To focus. We simply want to help.”

  He said, “I have responsibilities here.” But even as he spoke he was leafing through more items in the folder: an itinerary for Claude Riviera, tickets, and vouchers. Lots of vouchers.

  She handed him the attaché case. She said, “This too.”

  He spread it out on his lap and opened it. Cash.

  “There’s five thousand dollars there,” she said. “For a start.”

  He repeated, but this time more feebly, “I have responsibilities here.”

  “You have responsibilities to the world at large as well, Professor.”

  “What about my students?”

  Ms. Smith said, “What about them?”

  “Suppose I do this crazy thing you’re suggesting? Then what?”

  “Well, there are conditions, of course.”

  Here it came. He folded his arms. “I suppose you’re after a share of the prize money for this thing you imagine I’m trying to do?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that. If you succeed, the five million dollars is all yours to keep. But more than anything else, we need absolute discretion. In fact, we must demand total secrecy while you work. And you must share your discovery with the world. That’s all we ask.”

  If she were who she claimed to be, that actually made sense.

  She went on, “So if you accept, you must leave right now. You can’t tell anyone where you’re going or why. And then no contact with anyone here at all. And we must be able to rely on your guarantee as an honorable man that while you enjoy the wonders of Barbados, you will work on solving the Grundl Hypothesis. That must be your single-minded quest. Nothing else.”

  “Assuming for the sake of argument I am trying to prove Grundl, what if I fail?”

  She said, “That’s a risk we take. I can tell you we have others working on the problem too. Sooner or later someone will break through. To us, it doesn’t matter who. We will make much more money from any solution than we spend on all the costs of all the trips.”

  “There are others?”

  “Of course, Professor. And, honestly, we don’t care who does it.”

  Others. He felt that fear again, of being beaten to the finish line. “What happens if I say yes?”

  “You get up from your chair right now. I drive you to the airport. You use your ticket and get on the plane.”

  She glanced at his fingers on the page. He did too. He realized his fingers had been dancing along to the soft reggae music through the entire conversation. He stopped them.

  She said in a soft voice, “There’s no need to stop dancing, Claude. That’s why I’m here.”

  He opened his right desk drawer and took out three more spiral notebooks and stuck them into the briefcase she had given him. He folded up his laptop and put it in with the notebooks. He took her manila folder and the cash and stuck them in with the notebooks and computer.

  She stood. “Shall we go?”

  He stood up too. She walked out the door. Claude glanced at the windbreaker hanging on a hook. He was afraid even to pause for fear he would make the miracle disappear. He recalled that where he was going he wouldn’t need any jacket. In a kind of lethargic daze, he followed Ms. Smith out his office door and down the hall.

  As they passed Elinor’s cubicle, he saw Ms. Smith and Elinor exchange quick glances. Elinor gave Claude a warm sympathetic smile. He smiled back. He was headed for Barbados.

  26 Gloria Spots A Snag

  When Gloria came into her office and flicked on her light and happened to glance at “L’Amination” still hanging on her wall, something about it seemed not quite right. Was it tilted at a different angle? Had someone moved it, a cleaning person, maybe?

  She laid her purse on her desk and hung her coat on the hook. She examined the painting. Something was definitely different from before. Less shimmer maybe. Not quite as shiny. But seeing it by morning light instead of afternoon light probably accounted for the differences. Light plays tricks, especially on shiny things.

  She turned it around and confirmed that the expected signature on the back:

  ILiANIUS

  She shrugged and turned the painting to face the room again and sat down at her desk and began working on her next essay for The Boston Review of Book Reviews, assuming they were still willing to publish her. She’d find out.

  Gloria had decided to write about the Madhouse. A kind of sociological examination of male-female dynamics in rural America and how they played out. She had some fun ideas about Dionysian music and Bacchanalian revelry. That way she could work in a little Nietzsche. And she could easily fit the Madhouse and the Nietzsche in with larger themes she had been developing over the years.

  Something was bugging her. She didn’t know what. A doubt tugging for attention.

  After about an hour, the doubt snapped into focus. She stood and turned the painting face to the wall again:

  ILiANIUS

  “Uh oh,” she said aloud. She grabbed her cell phone out of her purse and called Gus.

  27 A Wrinkle In The Plan

  “So he already swapped out the painting? In one night?” Gus asked Gloria. “You got to credit the dude for efficiency.”

  After Gloria phoned him with her news, Gus had called an emergency team meeting. That afternoon, Gloria, Hack, Mattie, Cali and Humberto gathered in his living room. They stood in a bunch staring at the painting on the floor leaning upright against a chair.

  Mattie asked, “Gloria, it looks like the same painting to me. What makes you sure it’s not?”

  “I have to ask the same question,” Hack said.

  Gus said to Gloria. “It looks the same to me.”

  Gloria stepped forward and turned the painting around to show its back to everyone in the room. “I know it’s not the same painting.” Gloria said, “Because the original I hung on my office wall said ‘ILIANiUS on the back, with the third ‘i’ in lower case. The one hanging on my wall now says ‘ILiANIUS,” with the second ‘i’ in lower case. Someone did a decent job copying the actual painting, but they missed that detail.

  “There are other really minor differences very hard to detect for anyone not
an expert, but that’s the kicker. There is exactly zero chance this painting is the original L’Amination I had hanging in my office yesterday afternoon.”

  Hack said, “I see it now. She’s right. When I looked at it in Soren Pafko’s house, it was the third ‘i’ that was lower-case.

  “Good catch,” Gus said. The others all nodded. Gloria felt so proud she was almost embarrassed for herself. Like back in grade school dazzling the teachers and the other kids with her smarts. But unlike those kids back in grade school, this bunch didn’t seem to resent her. In fact, Mattie strolled over to her and hugged her and said, “You’re amazing.”

  “And we’re sure it was Soren who switched them?” Gus asked.

  “Who else?” Hack said.

  Gus said, “Gloria turned him down, so he must have snuck it out and had a copy made and snuck the copy back in. All in one night. Resourceful.”

  “Does this mess up our plan?” Gloria asked.

  “Maybe,” Gus said. “Or maybe it works to our advantage.” He looked at Gloria. “Any idea where he’d hide the original?”

  Gloria said, “He won’t leave it in his office. Too many people constantly coming and going in that building. Someone would notice the similarity between his and mine.”

  Gus said, “It’s probably in his house. Which makes the next step easy.”

  “You have a plan?” Gloria asked.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Gus said. “Always.”

  28 A Disgruntled Roper

  Soren’s iPhone rang. He rolled over and picked it up off the end table next to his bed. Two AM Unidentified caller. He clicked the button to forward the call to voice mail. He placed the phone back on the table as quietly as he could.

  He felt Sylvia stir next to him.

  The phone rang again.

  Soren picked it up and this time pressed the “Answer” button. He put the phone up against his ear and pulled his pillow over his head.

  The voice said, “This is Roper.”

  That idiot. Soren whispered, “What do you want?”

  “We need to talk.”