by John Vorhaus
But she came to see that it would do her no good to dob us in. She’d been tarred with Hines’s brush. It would be a lot simpler for her to pretend that America never happened than to explain what really went on. Especially with the proceeds of the Merlin Game to help grease the skids. That was a high price to pay for our freedom, but Allie paid without a second thought, and I stand by her choice; it’s hard to spend money in jail. Certain that the Penny Skim was bafflegab, Scovil had the satisfaction of taking, she supposed, pretty much everything we had.
So she took the money and ran … where? Back to Australia? Off to a fresh start? Or up some mountain to figure her shit out? I didn’t know and didn’t much care. As I’d told Hines, it’s a big world. No reason why our paths should cross.
She has a quality, that one. Some day she might even make a part of a good grift team. Its muscle at least.
With Scovil sorted, it became much easier for me to deal with my own Jake issues, for now I could leave Allie, Vic, and Billy out of the equation altogether. All I had to do was backpredict a series of events that plausibly led to Hines dead at the hands of a Java Man wall. My story went something like this:
First, I admitted to a certain loose relationship with legal commerce; no secret there, just take a look at my rap sheet. This, according to my narrative, Hines had done, and decided that I’d paid sufficient debt neither to society nor to him. Then comes blackmail, my wet attempt at a payoff, and an unhappy accident at the bottom of a hill. Simple, clean, direct. Pure woffle, as Scovil would put it, but more than adequate to satisfy the LAPD, who could hardly charge me with assault with a deadly Java Man, and were warned off a wider investigation by the FBI.
As for the interrogators the fibbies sent around, I think they didn’t buy my story, but didn’t much care, for by dying, Hines had done them a tremendous administrative favor. Now all they had to do was keep a lid on the scandal. Did they have access to his dossier on me? If they did, they never said. I think you’ll find it under the same rug where the rest of this mess got swept.
Get this: They even paid me. For my trouble? Or my silence? You make the call. They offered ten grand. I negotiated up to twenty-five. Never leave money lying on the table.
Not that twenty-five grand was anything more than a drop in the bucket (and the Merlin Game only a slightly larger drop) compared to the Penny Skim, which (A) was not the woffle Scovil supposed it to be and (2) made us all stupid rich.
The Chinese caught on quicker than I thought they would, but still we netted something like three quarters of a million each before they shut us down. I toyed briefly with the idea of not awarding Mirplo a full share, but then I thought, What the hell. He may not have contributed the most in terms of brains or sweat equity, but he did share the danger.
Billy took his cut and got in the wind. I told him to shout me up if he ever thought of doing something fun, like robbing Fort Knox. Allie and I, meanwhile, gathered what keepsakes we favored and headed south to a suitably banana republic. Vic rolled with; you don’t like to leave the kids at home unsupervised.
The experience had greened our little Mirplo. For the first time in his life, he carried himself with the swaggering confidence of a winner. I had no idea how long the transformation would last, but for the moment at least, you could look at Vic and say, “There goes a grifter.” Not the world’s best, perhaps, but not a complete, well, Mirplo in the end.
As for Allie and me, we were in love, that mushy, kissy-faced ardor that everyone except a grifter knows well, but that hit two new-minted innocents with the force of revelation. And it might even last. Or maybe, like Vic’s confidence, it will waft away one day on a tropical breeze, as our bedrock grifter natures reassert themselves. Well, that’s for tomorrow. Tonight, we’re lolling in a hot tub, beneath the swaying palm trees of a posh resort in San Somethingdor.
Allie turns and looks at me.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says. “It’s just … I have a question to ask.”
“Ask away.”
“Yeah, before I do, I’m designating this here …” She indicates the Jacuzzi, “… the Hot Tub of Truth, okay?”
“Okay,”
“And you understand that when you’re in the Hot Tub of Truth, you absolutely cannot lie.”
“Of course,” I nod. “How else could it be?”
“Okay, then. Now, tell me: What is your real name?”
“Radar Hoverlander.”
“Really?”
“Really, really.”
But it’s not. Not really. Even in the Hot Tub of Truth, you have to hold some things back.
* * *
*For “No Smoking.”
* * *
Acknowledgments
T he author wishes to thank the two new women in his life, Betsy Amster and Sarah Knight. I never got why writers lavish such praise upon their agents and editors, but with the faith these worthies showed in this book and the care they took to make it ever better, I now understand. I also want to thank Maxx Duffy, my wife and inspiration, who tolerates my every “Listen to this” and “What do you think about that?” and keeps me tethered when I’m threatened with wafting away. Thanks to the real Radar Hoverlander. You know who you are. I also want to thank the internet for knowing everything. See you next book, everyone!
About the Author
J ohn Vorhaus has been inventing new words since third grade, when he decided that a frog should be called a flypogger and why not? His romance with language has led to one-night stands and tawdry affairs with songwriting, screenplays, nonfiction, anagrams, limericks, and haiku. He’s proud to say that he’s been a self-supporting writer for a quarter of a century, but this is not entirely true, for he subsidizes his habit by traveling the globe and teaching others what he knows, especially in the area of television scriptwriting. When not off “making the world safe for situation comedy,” he lives in California with his wife and an endless rota of dogs. You can find him online at [http://www.radarenterprizes.com] www.radarenterprizes.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by John Vorhaus
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. [http://www.crownpublishing.com] www.crownpublishing.com
Shaye Areheart Books with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request
eISBN: 978-0-307-46319-7
v3.0
Table of Contents
Other Books by this Author
Dedication
Chapter 1 - On the Snuke
Chapter 2 - The Noochis of this World
Chapter 3 - Dilated In
Chapter 4 - Java Man Closest 2 U
Chapter 5 - The Original Mirplo
Chapter 6 - Dishonest Honesty
Chapter 7 - Twenty-Five Cents a Tit
Chapter 8 - The Merlin Game
Chapter 9 - Cooking the Frog
Chapter 10 - Tequila 1, Idiot 0
Chapter 11 - The Afterparty Snuke
Chapter 12 - It’s Tricky When Grifters Make Love
Chapter 13 - Allie’s Allies
Chapter 14 - The Grifter of Oz
Chapter 15 - The Blue Magoon
Chapter 16 - Open Kimonos
Chapter 17 - Name That Religion
Chapter 18 - The Prisoner’s Whaddyacallit
Chapter 19 - Don’t be Cool
Chapter 20 - The California Roll
Chapter 21 - The Bite and the Bark
Chapter 22 - Queen of the Motel 6
Chapter 23 - Value Town
Chapter 24 - Moiré or Less
Chapter 25 -
Dead Man’s Switch
Chapter 26 - Event Horizon
Chapter 27 - Slickery When Wet
Chapter 28 - Better Luck Next Life
Chapter 29 - Shenanigans
Chapter 30 - The Hot Tub of Truth
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright