by John Vorhaus
“Now that Jason’s okay?”
“Huh?”
“Your son. You called him Jason.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you kind of did.”
“Really?” Sarah rolled her eyes comically. “Woo-hoo, guess who else better get her prions checked, huh?” A cloud passed over Sarah’s eyes, and to Allie it registered as a glimpse of some other level of her. Sarah must have noticed it, too, for she said, “To tell you the truth, I’m actually feeling a little lightheaded. Would you mind going now? I think I’d like to lie down.”
“Of course not. Feel better.”
Later that day, Allie and the boys bundled Boy into the back of the Staccato and headed out to a local dog park, privately sponsored by Paws That Refreshes brand dog water. The trip may have been unnecessary in terms of grift hygiene, since a sweep of their flat had turned up no hidden ears, but the day was warm and it felt good to be outside, especially for Allie, who lifted her shirt to expose her belly to the sun. Radar, still spouting the derived wisdom of his baby books, had predicted that at this point in her pregnancy she would start to become flighty and distracted. She supposed that thinking of her belly as a solar panel might qualify as that. Boy didn’t care. He had butts to sniff and exotic balls to chomp. Humans never quite recognize it, but dog parks are an orgy of almost unbearable sensation to most dogs.
The three of them sat on a concrete bench, dissecting Sarah’s gaffe. Allie thought that since Sarah changed her son’s name from time to time and scam to scam, on this occasion she might have conflated her Jason and Jonah. Vic took it as a sign that Sarah was losing what limited cheese she had. Radar was more interested in Adam’s new foundation. “He must know,” said Radar, “that a 501(c) will be of interest to people like us.”
“‘People like us,’” agreed Vic, “would see it as a license to print money.”
“Is it bait?” asked Allie. “Or are we just intended to see it as such?”
Before Radar could speculate, Mirplo’s Rabota made a sound like a Chinese gong. “This might shed a light,” said Vic. I programmed the YvesDropp app to voice activate.”
“You can do that?” asked Allie.
“Dr. Mirplo can do anything,” said Radar.
“And don’t you forget it.” Vic touched the tablet screen twice and put it on speaker, though what they heard from the apartment was primarily TV, some reality show, probably that new one, Nudity Island, that’s getting all the talk. Adam and Sarah had mild words about it, but this was just couple stuff; if you were listening in on anyone else, you’d think it was cute.
Eventually, Radar said, “This is starting to creep me out. Can you refine the voice activation on that thing?”
“What, like, train it with keywords?”
“Exactly. So we don’t have to be bored and…creepy.”
“I wouldn’t have expected this reaction from you, Radar.”
“I wouldn’t have expected it from me, either. But, God, they sound so normal.”
“So boring,” said Vic.
“So maybe they’re wary like we’re wary,” said Radar, “and they only speak freely outside the home.”
“Or he’s still gaming her.”
“Or she’s gaming him.”
“Gosh,” said Allie drily, “who’d have ever thought that a bug would clarify things so much?” Radar gave her the benefit of a grin, but they all knew that in any case Vic’s trip to the surveillance supermarket had not been in vain, for his hundo had bought the information that Ames now owned a blank-firing Walther P22. Radar cast a glance at Allie sunning her belly and loved his unborn child with all his goofy heart. The thought of a gun in the picture, even a blank gun, made his cortisol jump. Meanwhile, infuriatingly, Radar still felt the need to keep letting Ames call the shots. This was Adam’s script, his scam, and Radar wouldn’t know how to break it until further pieces of the puzzle were revealed. But it galled him just the same. No grifter likes to ride another man’s script, especially when he doesn’t know where it’s headed.
Not that he wasn’t devising scripts of his own.
The next day Ames texted Radar and Vic and asked them to meet him at the Yoghurt Yurt on Guadalupe Street across from the UT campus. Yogurt and niceties later, he led them down Guadalupe to a door between two stores, where a flight of stairs rose to a small second-floor business suite overlooking the street and the UT campus beyond. The suite had a tiny reception area, an open administrative/work space, and one private office. Exposed brick walls and weary secondhand furniture gave the place an austere feel.
“Well?” asked Ames after they’d looked around. “What do you think? Not too lavish, right?”
“No,” said Radar, “I wouldn’t call it lavish.”
“Because this is one foundation that’s going to be run lean and mean, and Radar, that means I’m counting on you for your…what shall I call it?…gift of gab. I don’t want you going out and all wining and dining potential donors. If you can’t sell the Wilson Center on its merits, then I don’t want you selling it at all.”
There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in Adam’s words that put him anywhere but on the level; yet, at the same time, not a single word rang true. Radar sorted through appropriate replies and settled on, “Well, I’m your man, man.”
“Good. Excellent.” Ames turned to Vic. “Now, Dr. Mirplo—”
“Oh, I’m not really a doctor,” said Vic.
“What?”
“I was just jerking your chin the other night.”
“Jerking my…?”
“Chin. You know, pulling your log.”
Ames stared at him blankly for a moment, then laughed in a broad, theatrical way. “Of course,” he said. “I knew that. I knew that.” His tone perfectly conveyed the inner tension of a man caught on the wrong side of a joke trying desperately to demonstrate otherwise. “So you’re not a doctor?”
“No, yeah, I am,” said Vic.
“What?”
“A doctor. See, and now I’m pulling it back.”
This elicited damn near a sneer from Adam, who realized that Vic was now simply dissing him—and may have been doing so just to see how he would react. Ames quickly bottled his reaction and played what his script demanded that he play: the good sport. He threw a convivial arm around Vic. “And that’s just the kind of whimsy I’m looking for. So, Doctor or Mister or Doctor Mirplo, how are we coming with special projects?”
“We have something in mind,” said Vic. “A party.”
“Party?”
“A launch event for the foundation. A fundraiser. Can’t ever raise too many funds.”
Radar held his breath. Looking down the length of the snuke toward what he imagined would be its endgame, it seemed necessary for Vic to lay this particular section of pipe. But would Ames go for it?
Ames templed his fingers and nodded, “Sounds good. Sounds real good. But nothing too pricey, okay? Please. I hate those charities where most of the money just goes to attract more money.”
“Me too,” said Vic. He paused, then said, “I can book Willie Nelson for free.”
“Can you really?” For just a moment, Adam was keen as a kid in a candy shop, but then he read Vic’s face. He wagged his finger in admonishment. “This is more whimsy, isn’t it?”
“Whimsy it is,” said Vic. “Don’t worry, I’ll whomp up something.”
“There you go,” said Ames. “The chief cook in charge of whomping things up.” He turned away from Vic, and seemed greatly relieved to do so. “Now Radar,” he said, “as you know, I’ve made friends with some influential people.…”
“On the allocation board.”
“Yes, exactly. And they’re very enthusiastic about my plan. But as I explained, they don’t feel that they can take on the whole risk of the project by themselves.”
“Hence,” said Radar, “the need for matching funds.”
“Yes, that’s right. Now Radar, my question to you is, do you think you can attract t
he kind of investments we need?”
Radar swallowed the urge to play this moment for the farce it was, a farce based on the fiction that Ames was interested in any money other than Radar’s. He said, “I could make some calls. To philanthropists, like.”
“No, no, no, I don’t want that,” said Ames with a vehemence that took Radar and Vic by surprise. “That’s that same old money. Guys, I don’t know if you know it, but there are people in this world whom you might think of as professional givers.” Radar and Vic played sufficiently dumb to create space for Ames to continue. “Yes, they get involved with all sorts of organizations, organizations like ours. But they want things. Authority. Privilege. Next thing you know, your good work has been completely diluted, and the only people getting any benefit at all are the professional givers, through the projects and the budgets they control.”
“You sound like you know a lot about this,” said Mirplo.
“I know a bit,” dissimulated Ames. Then he shook his head and said, “No, that’s not true. I know a fair deal. Radar, Mirplo, I want to be entirely honest with you.”
Oh, please do, thought Radar.
“The truth is, this isn’t my first charitable foundation. Well, attempt. The last one didn’t go so well. But I learned a lot from my mistakes, and the main thing I learned was to keep those professional givers at bay. You have to find folks who are genuinely committed to the same goals as you are. Radar, that’s the kind of person I want you to find.”
“A true believer?” asked Radar.
“Exactly,” said Ames. A knowing light flared and died in his eyes, and Radar mentally kicked himself for waving such an obvious semaphore.
“Well,” said Radar, “I’ll throw it out the window and see if it lands.”
He knew the words rang lame, but Vic helped him out with a quick misdirectomy; he looked around the empty office and said, “It’s a little lonely in here, dude. When are you going to start staffing up?”
Ames smiled like a seigneur. “Oh, no, no, I’m not going to start handing out salaries until the need is really there,” he said. “For now, we’ll manage well enough on our own. Like I said, ‘lean and mean.’ Shoestring budgets all the way around.”
“Are you serious?” asked Vic, seemingly massively affronted.
“What do you mean?” asked Ames.
Mirplo said, “Look out your window, man. What do you see?”
Ames glanced down at the throng of college kids on Guadalupe.
“Students,” said Ames, uncertain. “So what?”
“Mr. Ames,” said Vic, “I’m sure no one would call you stupid to your face, but why did you rent space across the street from a college campus if you weren’t thinking about interns?”
“Interns?”
“Interns,” repeated Vic, his eyes aglow. “Of the hard-working, unpaid type.”
Ames smiled. “You see?” he said to no one in particular. “That’s why we put up with the whimsy.”
Sure it is, thought Vic. But in his head he was already running his bogus recruitment campaign.
Bogus because he already knew who the intern would be.
And so it was that when Radar returned the following week, the sparky young cowpunk at the reception desk quite professionally identified herself as Kadyn, welcomed him to the offices of the Scuggs Wilson Foundation, and informed Mr. Ames that Mr. Hoverlander was here to see him. In his office, out of her earshot, Ames proclaimed himself well pleased with the girl who’d answered the ad Vic never placed, and who had so far proven so eager and capable in her work. Thus did Vic put eyes and ears inside Ames’s operation, and no additional bugs need apply.
That they started keeping company after-hours was a happy accident.
Meanwhile, in certain oncology intake clinics around town, a quirky hypochondriac was making his presence known to a series of receptionists, insisting in resolute and unreasonable terms that tumors in his brain were blowing up like balloons and deranging him by the day. Had these receptionists compared notes, they would have agreed that he certainly appeared deranged, but their credit checks on him passed rigorous muster, so they passed him along to doctors who could schedule the extensive, expensive tests that his condition seemed to demand.
One obliging soul passed word of him to Adam Ames.
Leave Wellinov Alone
Thanks for coming in, Radar,” said Ames. “I know it’s a nicer day to stay home.”
Radar looked out the window of Adam’s office into the heart of a cold March rain and found that, for once, he agreed with Adam Ames. After a run of balmy days, winter had closed in again, like an aging diva taking extended bows, unwilling to surrender the stage. First came the icy blast of an arctic front, then a ground fog that ate hills whole, then measurable snow, rare for around here and cataclysmic to traffic. He wondered what the weather would be like when the baby was born. Autumnal. She would be born in autumn.
Autumn? Autumn Hoverlander?
Allie had started to show. Not a bulge, exactly, but measurably a mound. Just getting started. But Radar already could hardly remember a time when she hadn’t been knocked up.
Nor, frankly, could he remember a time when she’d been more randy. She jumped him at bedtime, commandeered his morning wood, and grabbed any afternoon delight that offered itself when Vic was off working with Kadyn, which these days was almost all the time. Vic had decided that the specific whimsy called for was an April Fool’s spectacular. At first Adam had been skeptical; just a month to get the word out, it didn’t seem like enough time. But Vic had reassured him, saying, “These things land hardest when they come out of nowhere.” Actually, the telescoped time frame suited Radar’s evolving script; he wanted Adam focused on an event in the future, though not too distant.
In the meantime, he had a baby mama to serve.
Just now, back home, he had found her at the bedroom mirror, naked to the waist, gawking at her own breasts.
“Look at these monsters,” she said. “I’ve never seen them so big. You should take pictures.”
“Okay.”
“Later,” she said as she backed him up against a wall. “I want you now.” Though it was of course the hormones talking, he knew better than to talk back. Nor did it take much time, for these days Allie put the “quick” in “quickie.” Radar easily got to his meeting with Ames on time. Though his mind was still very much not in the room.
“Radar? Hello? Anybody home?”
Radar turned away from the window. He flopped into one of the cheap-chic folding chairs that Ames had procured from some down-market source of prefab furniture. Ames sat behind a similarly flimsy desk, one that looked like it had been quickly thrown together for the express purpose of slowly falling apart. Surely anyone visiting the office would see the pains taken to maintain austerity, and surely that was the idea.
“I’m here,” said Radar. “What’s up?”
“How’s it going? With the investors and such?”
“Not so good,” Radar confessed. “Since I can’t reach out to my usual guys, I’ve had to develop leads from scratch.”
“I see. Well, not to say I’m doing your job for you, but I’ve heard about a lead you might develop.”
“Really?”
“Yes, through a friend. He could be just the sort of benefactor we’re looking for.” Ames gave Radar a smarmy smile. “Buddy, I think it’s time you put that ol’ Hoverlander charm to work.” It took pretty much all of that ol’ Hoverlander charm to keep Radar’s bile down, for the more time they spent together, the more Adam’s smug self-assurance and loudly proclaimed do-gooder’s zeal scraped across him like fingernails on a blackboard. Just the same, Radar couldn’t help admiring how Ames had repackaged himself as as good a good ol’ boy as ever graced the Lone Star State. He oozed Don’t mess with Texas and no doubt remembered the Alamo. Though Radar was a gifted chameleon who could dissimulate across a stunningly wide range of identities, he knew he’d never master Texan. He just couldn’t channel his inner bl
owhard, not like Ames, whose dress had drifted westward to boots and big-buckle belts. But that was just protective coloration; what Ames really had going for him, Radar realized, was fabricat bonhomie, a talent for counterfeit charm that rivaled Radar’s own.
Ames now had ample time to devote to that task for, as surprised exactly no one, it had been arranged for Jonah to stay on indefinitely at Grandma’s, where he had cousins to play with, kids his own age, a salutary school district, and many other most likely imaginary advantages. Radar wondered if Jonah wasn’t already back out on the razzle, playing brain-broken kid for another allegedly desperate mom on the medical-scam circuit. The idea may have seemed outlandish to a normal person—who farms out their own son to road hustlers?—but was not foreign to Radar’s own experience. He’d spent his ninth summer as the waiflike “adoptee” of a man selling fictive cemetery plots to the religiously devout, for everyone knows how a kid dolls up that act.
Ames handed Radar a business card, raised black ink on weathered white stock. “Here’s the man I want you to meet. These are his details.” Radar fingered the frayed card. That it looked like it had been sitting in someone’s wallet for years was a tribute to the skills of a certain printer who specialized in making new things seem old.
When he read the name printed on the card, he snorted an explosive laugh.
“What?” asked Ames, taken aback.
“This is a great one,” said Radar, continuing to chuckle. “I haven’t seen this one before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you read the name?”
Ames took the card back and looked at it. “Henry Wellinov. So?”
“Well, it’s a fake name,” said Radar. “A goof.”
“Okay, now you’ve really lost me.”
Radar said, “Let’s say for the sake of argument that I’m at least a bit of what you think I am.”
“Comfortable among those who play fast and loose with the rules?”
“As you put it. Then wouldn’t you think I know something about that world? Its language? Its codes?” He retrieved the card and tapped it with his fingertip. “This name here, ‘Wellinov’? Don’t you get it? ‘Leave Wellinov alone’?”