“Are you sure you can rule out revenge?” I asked.

  “One can’t entirely ignore that scenario,” he said. “However, in my experience”—he quickly swept his doubt back under the rug of his confidence—“greed trumps revenge every time. Go sort out Louise. Best case, she’s not even around for the endgame.”

  “Worst case?”

  Woody smiled. “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

  Just then a text message arrived, including a street address and a cold warning concerning Woody’s fate—well, someone thought he was still on ice—if Miriam and I didn’t show. I turned to show Woody the text.

  But all I saw was a hole where he’d been.

  The jackalope had bounded off again.

  *Catgut is 100 percent not cat. True fact or bar fact?

  27

  New ow Taver sino

  Half an hour later, Allie and I were plunging past desolation row houses into the near North Las Vegas neighborhood known as the Alphabet Streets, an arid wasteland of vacant lots and dirt parks sequestered by freeways and railroad tracks from the downtown casinos (themselves a big step down from the glitz of the Strip). This was the part of Vegas the happy gamblers never see, bar those unlucky enough to be led astray by their onboard navigation systems or the need for crack at two A.M. Bulletproof mini-marts and sad window-barred Pentecostal churches bookended blocks of aging immobile homes and apartment buildings gone to demon seed. Permabums littered the sidewalks, pushing shopping carts of hoarded jetsam, or sprawled on bus benches swilling King Cobra from forty-ounce cans in paper bags.

  If you’re ever wondering where down and out hits rock bottom, visit the intersection of F Street and Jackson Avenue in North Las Vegas. It’s there. Right there.

  We stopped at a stoplight. A Metro PD car pulled up beside us, and the cop riding shotgun looked us over with a smug, How lost are you? look. The cruiser turned left and rolled on, its occupants confident that if we were here by accident, we were too stupid to be helped, and if we’d come by design, then we deserved whatever evil fate we found.

  I looked at Allie, trying to get a shared laugh off the cop vibe, but she’d changed into her Miriam Plowright daywear—stiff white blouse with matching taupe jacket, skirt, and shoes—and her Plowright mood had come along for the ride. Where her sunny smile should’ve been, a scowl had seized her face.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “ ’Course I’m not okay. I’m Plowright. I hate me like this.”

  “I’m no fan myself.”

  “Plus, Radar, what are we even doing here? This whole play is so ragged. I gotta tell you, I’m pretty lost right now.”

  “Confusion is the soul of understanding.”

  “What’s that, a fortune cookie?”

  “No, I’m just saying, we’re trying to solve a puzzle, right? Make all the pieces fit.”

  “But the pieces don’t fit.”

  “Exactly. And the fact that they don’t fit is, in itself, a puzzle piece.”

  “You lost me.”

  “I kind of lost me, too. So let’s boil it down. What does Wolfredian want?”

  “Mirplopalooza.”

  “Which he sees as what?”

  “A solid investment and a collector’s wet dream.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe that’s Woody’s bafflegab. He keeps dealing us out while saying he’s dealing us in. Does that say reliable partner to you? Does that say square deal? Comes the moment of truth, we’ll find out, but precedent says, Look out. We’ve been nothing but his yo-yo since day one.”

  “The kind of toy you eventually toss away.”

  “Yep.”

  Confusion is the soul of understanding.

  Whatever the hell that means.

  Yet despite all the confusion, I felt pretty damn good. I was out on the edge again. If nothing else, the air here was fresh. Maybe the edge was where I belonged.

  Couldn’t think about that now. We’d arrived at the front range of urban blight, a wall of dead businesses all along the west side of F Street. Defabricated franchises. Gas stations with the tanks removed. Warehouses storing nothing. And at the end of the line, our destination, a derelict rectangle of tired stucco called the New Town Tavern Casino.

  This sort of “casino” once proliferated in the lesser neighborhoods of Las Vegas. They were never much more than dive bars with short banks of slot machines, back-to-back blackjack spreads comprising the pit, a one-TV sports book, and a frayed-felt Texas hold’em table in a musty alcove tarted up with chipper signage: WELCOME TO R FRIENDLY POKER ROOM—CAN WE DEAL U IN? Such clubs stood or fell on the trade of shot-and-a-beer regulars for whom the first drink of Monday morning was just the last drink of Saturday night, and when these drunks and nickel-slot compulsives go south, as they will in a down economy, they take the clubs with them. Shells remain, like this shell here, boarded up and powered down, sunk into the sort of seed dormancy that the deserts know quite well. One good flash flood of prosperity would bring them back again, but who knows when the rains will come? Maybe never. Maybe this town turns into a ghost town covered up with sand and neglect for a thousand years, until some bright-boy archaeologists stumble across it and try to figure out what it all meant at the time. Meantime, in this time, the dives stay dark.

  This one had failed worse than most. Evidence of fire could be seen on the soot-streaked exterior walls. Someone had used the club’s sign for target practice, so that a casual glance would place you at the NEW OW TAVER SINO. “Are you sure this is the right address?” asked Allie. By way of answer, I showed her the text message on my phone. She compared it against the faded numbers over the padlocked front door and said, “Let’s check around back.”

  We rolled into the parking lot behind the joint, where I saw a familiar black Segue parked in the shade of a tired acacia. On the rear wall of the club, a cinder block propped open an emergency exit door. Allie and I exchanged looks. “You ready?” I asked.

  “Bite me,” she barked.

  “Yeah, that’s the Miriam Plowright I know and love.”

  She jerked open the car door, stepped out, and slammed it behind her. I got out, too, squinting into the shadowed back entrance to the club. The thought crossed my mind that if Wolfredian were on a revenge tip, what could be more complete payback than erasing Woody’s flesh and blood? And where easier than inside this busted fun house, far from prying eyes? But I didn’t feel Jay’s presence here, and not just for not seeing his big-ass Buick. The more I mulled it, the more this seemed to be Louise’s off-the-reservation presentation, and the prying eyes we were away from, I suspected, were as much Jay’s as anyone’s.

  Miriam Plowright, meanwhile, had taken her icy mien and strode it over the threshold into the club’s dark interior. I skittered after, manifesting the nervousness of the guy who’d brought the meat to market and was hoping, for the sake of getting Dad out of Dutch, that the deal would go down clean.

  Red Louise met me at the entrance, fronting me and patting me down. Was she looking for weapons? Bugs? Both? She’d find neither, of course, and what did she expect? For the several times she’d already hit me, could she not assume that I was committed to being a good boy? Yet she went about the enterprise fully ungently. I think she smacked my Johnson on purpose.

  Then she turned to frisk Miriam, who bristled at the prospect and shot me a look like, Really? I have to put up with this bullshit? My eyes replied with a silent plea for her cooperation. Louise intercepted the transmission—I’d made no effort to hide it—and her eyebrows arched. She seemed to think that somehow this scored a point for her. Miriam relented and allowed herself to be searched.

  As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I started to get a sense of the space we were in. It was bigger than it looked from the outside, with plenty of room for slot consoles and table games. These were long gone, of course, but you could still see their footprints etched into the tired carpet, a gacky brown affair strategically patterned to hide the beer, barf, and blood stains endemic to a disaster area like this.

  Satisfied that we were packing no no-no’s, Louise led us to a card table and four folding chairs in the middle of the room, presided over by a thrift-store floor lamp with a long extension cord running off into the dark. As we sat, my mind flashed back to IKEA, and I silently christened the products: Messa, Seet, Brīt. At the same time, I recognized this as the completely wrong setting for a money pitch. Usually, you’d set up shop in a suite of offices and lay on the glass and chrome, the spreadsheet projections, expert opinions, and glossy brochures. This place, with its whiff of mold and mouse droppings, was hardly likely to inspire investor confidence. So either we’re looking at total amateur hour or something altogether else.

  I was thinking amateur hour. I decided to ping the target a little. “Where’s Jay?” I asked.

  “Wherever he is,” said Louise.

  “Isn’t …” I essayed a certain helpless confusion. “Isn’t this his deal?”

  “Now, where’d you get an idea like that?” asked someone who wasn’t Louise or Miriam or me. And out of the gloom stepped little Martybeth Crandall. She clomped over on tall wooden sandals and flounced into the empty seat across from me with an air of breezy confidence. I heard her sandals hit the floor.

  Ever had your Johnson toe-frisked? Me neither, but there’s a first time for everything.

  I introduced Martybeth to Miriam. It seemed like the thing to do. Meanwhile, I processed her presence, trying to determine what it meant that Martybeth and Louise were jointly rendering Jay’s whales. Martybeth must have read this on my face, for she said, “Poor Radar, you’re confused.”

  “I am a bit, yes.”

  “That’s because you believed me, Dim,” said Martybeth. “It’s not Jay who’s running this show, it’s us. We.” She indicated herself and Louise.

  Without even looking at Louise, I could tell that Martybeth’s line of chat irked her, for the chirpy muffin top seemed to be giving away too much too soon. Sure enough, Louise applied the brakes. “We’ll get to that later,” she said, by which she meant never.

  “Come on,” said Martybeth. “He already knows—”

  “I said later.”

  Martybeth clammed up. This told me where the power lay between them. Also, to have open conflict in front of the mark was not the slickest play in the playbook, which reinforced my assessment of amateur hour. I started to feel slightly more comfortable in the situation. Granted, Red Louise could kick my ass six ways from Sabbath, and that’s not counting any hurtful hardware she might be packing. Yet, hard as she liked to come across, she seemed out of her depth.

  Martybeth’s agitated attitude confirmed this. She cranked her gaze from face to face, checking everyone out, just dead avid to be in the middle of this … scene. I’d seen this response before in many a mook: Give them the sense that they’re on the edge of outlaw activity and they get all jangly. But Martybeth was doing it to herself. Her chest rose and fell in rapid heaves. She drummed her fingers on the quilted vinyl tabletop, returning an echoey tattoo. That was the adrenaline talking. And it was saying, Wow, wow, wow!

  Allie did what Allie does: she stayed cool, sitting with clasped hands, waiting for Louise and Martybeth to sort themselves out. In normal grifter circumstances, this would be called letting the game come to you. Here, it was a Plowright gloss applied atop Allie’s natural crystal poise. Perhaps she’d resumed recalling her state capitals: Olympia, Phoenix, Pierre. But one thing about this Plowright character, she didn’t suffer fools, and if these ladies didn’t pretty quickly (as Mirplo would put it) cut to the cheese, Miriam would start to do a slow burn.

  The moment opened. Louise and Miriam found each other’s eyes and locked on. This was interesting combat, a battle of wills between two women with strong ones. And while this was Louise’s meeting—she’d called it and should be expected to run it—she seemed to be waiting, and wanting very much, for Miriam to speak first. Like that would score another status point. But I knew it wouldn’t happen. Allie was immune to status, and she could win a staring contest with a rock.

  Which put things back on Louise. Having squeezed Martybeth into silence, it now fell to her to make the pitch. She had much to overcome: this setting; the manifest ill will of Miriam Plowright; and her own partner’s edgy impatience. Of course, she thought she held the ultimate trump card in Woody. I wondered how she’d see fit to play it.

  I waited.

  Sometimes waiting is all you can do.

  28

  The Ace of Hostage

  It was warm in the dead club, the day’s heat penetrating the ceiling to cook the dusty air and boil the smell of old smoke out of the carpet and walls. The sound of a car radio blared in through the plywood windows, rising and then falling as a driver sped past on the street outside. A fly landed on Allie’s arm. She did not twitch it away.

  At last, Louise gave up and started talking. “These are unusual circumstances,” she said. She opened a space where Miriam could insert agreement, but Allie left that space blank. Louise stumbled over the silence and carried on. “Normally, we only offer this opportunity to certain casino guests.” She waved a hand to indicate the surroundings. “And normally not here, of course.”

  “What, this place?” I said. “It’s all ambience.” Louise favored me with a glower that seemed to say my editorial input would not be necessary, and Martybeth rather more strongly made the point by scrunching my junk with her surprisingly prehensile toes.

  Louise returned her attention to Allie. “Miriam,” she said. “May I call you Miriam?”

  “No.”

  Louise was taken aback. “Very well … Ms. Plowright. Since you apparently control Vic Mirplo’s—”

  “Just Mirplo,” I interjected.

  “What?” snapped Louise, a crack in her cool.

  “It’s just Mirplo. He doesn’t use his first name anymore.”

  Louise smiled sweetly. “Radar, I’m not going to say this again. Shut the fuck up.” And with that she got into her pitch. Despite the vulgar preamble, I thought she did rather well. Better than I’d have expected: smooth and textured, with just a few verbal fumbles where she momentarily lost her place in the patter, which I quickly recognized as a customized version of the old Pump and Dump, a boiler-room scam wherein you artificially inflate the price of a stock or other financial instrument, create an investment frenzy, and then get out before the bubble bursts. Such snaggles inevitably rely on claims of proprietary knowledge—“company’s perpetual-motion prototype to win patent”—dressed up in financial humbo gumbo, and this was no exception. The Gaia, Louise told us, was the target of a covert hostile takeover. This was common knowledge within the organization but not so common that one could exploit it without being popped for insider trading. An informed outsider, however, could make a short-term investment and a big killing. Martybeth here mentioned the Gaia’s current share price and the proposed buyout price, a tantalizingly large differential. This seemed to be her only contribution to the pitch, and I could see her working hard to get it right.

  Louise then delved into the particulars: How much she and Martybeth would invest, how much they’d want from Miriam, and how they’d split the take. In classic con fashion, they were prepared to trust Miriam with their money, provided only that she show them some earnest money—a million dollars was the standard ask—to justify their faith. Red further sweetened the pot by proposing a generous “finder’s fee” for every one of Miriam’s clients that she steered their way.

  “Whose end would that come out of?” Allie asked.

  “The clients’ of course,” said Louise. “They’re going to make so much money, they won’t even notice.”

  Louise applied several more coats of bafflegab, filling in the procedural blanks and fielding Miriam’s questions. I listened to all of this with half an ear, relaxing my perception to let my radar do its work. Of course I knew it was all lies, but I wondered which level of lie, and why.

  After all, Jay knew me to be in the game. Surely I’d see through the Pump and Dump. Therefore, either he didn’t know or didn’t care about this pitch. Trouble was, based on available information, I couldn’t tell which. My mind wandered to a reconsideration of these greasy surroundings. The burned-out bar, I realized, actually helped legitimize the play, for where better to propose criminal conspiracy than in such a sneaky redoubt? It got those outlaw juices flowing. Made the deal seem more real. Well, it would to the casual mark. Even without the hidden stake raiser, a little card called the Ace of Hostage.

  I tried to imagine how a normal mark would react. Would he be taken in by this well-below-board opportunity? Maybe. It certainly sounded enticing, the way Louise spun it out. Yet the more I listened, the more convinced I became that this was her debutante spiel. She pitched well enough, but there was an element of rote she couldn’t hide. Add a few missteps, her less-than-instant answers to Miriam’s questions, and Martybeth’s stilted contribution, and the whole thing screamed opening-night jitters on someone’s borrowed script. Would that matter to the mark? That person would be a high roller, a gambler by nature. The promise of a nosebleed ROI could easily suck him in, especially if he had a big gambling jones to support, and if he’d been eased in here in the first place by a casino host he trusted.

  But none of this applied to Miriam Plowright. She was no whale. She was a tight-ass professional, financial advisor to a respected (albeit vaporware) list of clients. She had a fiscal responsibility to them—a responsibility that didn’t extend to cutting sketchy deals in wretched ex-bars with newbie confidence tricksters. There was nothing at all in her character, credentials, or backstory to suggest that she’d shade the law for the right price, and not much in Louise’s pitch, no matter how prettily presented, to persuade Miriam otherwise. So she couldn’t possibly say yes.