Woody next turned his attention to Vic’s tattoo, which he appeared to be noticing for the first time, but that seemed unlikely, since one of the cards in our common deck was: Check shit out. “Nice ink,” said Woody, then—give the guy credit for knowing how to score a point—“What’s that, a yin?” Vic beamed, and I thought, Man, he better not come after Boy like that. But I decided to play the civilized son.

  “What are you …?” I started. “Um, I mean, I guess I’m supposed to ask, What’ve you been up to?”

  “Now there’s a subject that could fill a book.”

  “Which you’d probably pay someone to write and then pike his fee.” So much for the civilized son.

  Woody reacted with stiff dignity.

  “Sorry,” I said. “That was uncalled for.”

  “Not entirely,” said Woody. “You’ve got a right to hold some grudge. Absentee dad, totally in the wind. Let’s call a spade a spade, Radar, I was a jerk.”

  “Pretty mild dysphemism,” I said. “So long as we’re calling spades spades, I think something like ‘bastard’ would be in line.”

  “You want more mea culpa?” asked Woody, letting a sliver of sarcasm show. “I got a whole big bucket of it right over here.”

  “So you didn’t come to apologize?”

  “For what, Radar? You’ve lived your life, I’ve lived mine. I don’t owe you an apology. I don’t owe you anything. I got you born. Everything after that’s just gravy.”

  “Nurturing? Training?”

  “Nurturing? What I see here is a friend who’s dog loyal and a woman who probably loves you. Seems like you’ve landed on your feet as far as nurturing goes. As for training, you tell me.”

  “So you got out of my way to make me a self-made man?”

  “If that’s how you want to put it.”

  “Wow, I had it wrong. I’m in your debt.”

  “No one’s in anyone’s—” He stopped short. “You know what? Forget it.” Woody stood up. “I’m sorry I opened old wounds.” He wriggled into his red dress and slapped his wig on his head. Glanced at himself in the mirror. “No makeup.” He tsked. “It’ll have to do.” He went to the door.

  “Hey, Mr. Hoverlander—Woody,” Vic called after him. “What’s up with the dress?”

  But he was gone. I shut the door behind him and turned to see Allie standing there, eyeing me closely. “You want to tell me what that was all about?”

  “Best to chase him off,” I said, truculently. “He’s bad mojo.”

  “You can’t know that. Your data’s out of date.”

  “A leopard—”

  “Don’t say it,” she said. “Don’t say anything about leopards and spots. Because if people can’t change, then you and I, we’re never gonna make it.”

  “But that’s all him,” I protested. “It’s got nothing to do with us.”

  “He’s your father, Radar. I’d say he’s got at least a little to do with us.” She took Boy and retreated to the bedroom.

  “Man, Radar,” said Vic, “you’ve got people walking on you all over the place.”

  I looked at Vic. “You want to be next?”

  “Naw, man. I want you to buy me a drink.”

  *Except perhaps as part of a plot to defraud the former of the latter.

  7

  Hey, Aqualung

  We went to a bar called Frosty’s Home of the Infinite Agave. Bit of a mouthful, but when you’re promoting all-you-can-drink margaritas, it pays to put the pitch up front. There was plenty of elbow room at the bar, for the night was getting on. Vic started to seat himself on my right, then abruptly reversed his field and sat left, rolling up his sleeve as he moved. “Might as well air this bad boy out,” he said, then ordered something called a Steel-Toed Boot, a silver tequila margarita laced with blackberry Sabroso. I passed. I had enough idiot in my bloodstream already. We watched sports highlights till the bartender brought Vic his drink.

  “To dads,” said Vic. I clinked an imaginary glass against his.

  “What’s up with yours?” I asked.

  “Dull normal,” said Vic. “Glad I didn’t take after him.” Vic took a sip, and aahed theatrically on the exhale. “But you took after yours, though, didn’t you? Big-time.”

  “I think I had to,” I said. “He was such a force. And I don’t care what anybody says, he was training me. The first time we worked the Pigeon Drop”*—I looked past Vic, which is to say, over his left shoulder. At the end of the bar sat a girl in a self-consciously crinoline dress, spangly earrings and bracelets, thrift-store fishnets, and streaky blue hair. Even using only my background brain, I found her pretty easy to analyze. Single girl, party flavor. Ghost of Cyndi Lauper, trying to sell the “She’s So Unusual” tip. And …

  She was checking Vic out.

  “That girl down the bar,” I said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, Vic, but I think she likes your tattoo.”

  “Of course she does,” he said. “I told you: conceptual.”

  “You gonna chat her up?”

  “When the time is ripe. Keep talking.”

  So I kept talking. I talked about my first Pigeon Drop, how I played the betrayed little boy who knew he saw that wallet first, and how Woody played the self-righteous dad, damned if he was going to see his son get cheated out of what he’d found. We whipsawed that poor mark; he never had a chance. Afterward, we had waffles. Not that I needed rewards, either sugar or Dad’s company. I carried his same gene and started chasing his same buzz the second I knew what it was. Got good at it right away. Like some kids can surf or play tennis. I was a natural.

  “Maybe that’s why he thought he could leave you,” offered Vic. “He knew you were in your own good hands.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “He doesn’t get off that easy. You think he was thinking about me? You think he was devoted? I was cheap labor, that’s all. A partner he didn’t have to pay. And then just Mini-Me, his whole narcissist’s dream come true.”

  “Wow, be a little bitter, why don’t you?”

  “What, I don’t have a right to be?”

  “ ’Course you do.” He lapsed into Uncle Joe and boomed, loud enough to be heard down the bar, “You have the right to remain stupid! Anything you say can and will be used against you!”

  “That’s ripening the time?” I asked.

  “It’s a start,” he said, bringing his voice back to normal. “Meantime, remind me, what’s Radar’s First Law of Emotion?” If I was needling Vic over the girl, he was needling me right back over my historic insistence on dispassion in the grift.

  “Okay,” I said, “I get your point.”

  “No, no, I forget how it goes. Tell me.”

  So I did. “Effectiveness and emotion are inversely proportional.”

  “In other words?”

  “Anger makes you dumb.”

  “Okay, then, have all the anger you want. But you decide what to do with it. I put it to you that barfing it all over your old man is probably not your best play.”

  “Wow, Vic, when did you get so smart?”

  “I’ve been smart all along. You just haven’t been paying attention. Now watch this.”

  Vic rolled off the barstool and, hand to God, literally sauntered down to the pretty poser at the end of the bar. He leaned in close and whispered an extensive something in her ear. She seemed rapt, and whispered back. They conversed for a few moments, then he left her and walked back to me.

  “Her name’s Zoe,” he said. “She writes software, but get this: Her dad owns an art gallery.”

  “In Santa Fe?” I asked. “What are the odds?”

  Vic just helped himself to a satisfied swig of his drink.

  “That looked like a good play,” I said. “What’d you tell her?”

  “That it’s a typo. Should’ve been a yang.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “I don’t know, Radar. What do you care? You’re off the market.”

  “For good, you think?” My voice betrayed my hope.

  Vic looked at me. “You want it, don’t you? The whole cohabitation trip. Pair bondage. Maybe even marriage?”

  “Let’s not get crazy here.”

  “Then don’t you get crazy here. Allie’s a good girl. Better than you deserve. Don’t piss her off. Show her you can be normal with your old man. It’ll make her think you can be normal with her. That’s all she wants, Radar. Haven’t you figured that out?”

  “Damn, Vic, you have been smart all along.”

  “Told you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to walk a lady home.” Quietly adding, “He shoots, he scores!” Vic started away, then paused and looked back. “Your dad,” he said. “Don’t you even want to know why he’s here?”

  He left with Zoe on his arm. Vic Mirplo a smooth operator? That was going to take some getting used to.

  Vic’s question echoed in my mind.

  Then in my ear, “Well, don’t you?”

  I looked to my right, and there, hunched over the bar, was the most child-molesting-looking ancient perv I’d ever seen. With his ratty coat, venous nose, lank greasy hair, and mad-eye stare, he looked like the creep on the cover of Jethro Tull’s Aqualung. More to the point, he looked like someone you’d rather not look at at all. Thus, of course, Woody.

  “You’ve got a lot of wigs,” I said. “What happened to your dress?”

  “I had to make a change,” he said. “That cover was blown.”

  “Someone’s following that hard?” He just nodded. “You haven’t had any trouble following me.”

  “At first you didn’t know. Since you’ve found out, you’ve made no effort to shake me. I’m thinking you want me around.”

  “Well, I don’t think I do, but let’s let that go for now. So why are you here?”

  “What? I saw you in the paper. You dusted that guy good. I came to say, ‘Nice job.’ ”

  I turned to face him. “Hey, Aqualung,” I said. “I know what noise sounds like. If you want the benefit of my doubt, you’re going to have to do better than that. Let’s start with who’s following hard, and why.”

  Woody paused to gauge the seriousness of my intent. At last he spoke. “There’s two teams of two. They know I’m in Santa Fe, but they don’t know where. One’s been checking the hotels, representing as health officials on the trail of a Typhoid Mary.”

  “I’ve worked that gaff.”

  “Be surprised if you hadn’t. The other two just cruise. They saw me outside that restaurant today, but they didn’t know it was me.”

  “So that’s why you turned tail. I thought you looked scared.”

  “Did I? Hmm. I’m surprised I gave that away. Anyway, they’re just thugs. You know: knee breakers.”

  “Working for …?”

  “This guy in Las Vegas, Jay Wolfredian. He’s sort of a casino boss.”

  “Who you mooked?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “And now he wants his money back?” Woody nodded, doleful. “What, you didn’t give him a VPM?”*

  “You don’t think I tried for the reacharound? I just couldn’t reach, that’s all.”

  This made me laugh. Not because it was funny, particularly, but because it so resonated on my frequency. We spoke the same language. I mean, Allie and Vic voiced my slang, but they got it from me. Suddenly I was drinking from the source. It felt good. Like part of me had been missing. And at least one layer of resentment sloughed off and fell away.

  We stayed at it all night, at Frosty’s till closing and then on a bench in the Plaza till the sun came up, exchanging memories, grift techniques, and cell phone numbers. I brought him up to speed on some of my doings, including Allie’s and my plan to parlay the get from the California Roll into a shot at the level life. I thought the Plaza was a pretty exposed location, but to Woody it was more hiding in plain sight. “They rate me as pretty devious,” he said. “They’ll be looking for me under rocks.”

  “And how devious are you?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, Radar. Used to be, I could get in and out of this kind of guy’s wallet without stirring a breeze.” He shook his head. “But I made such a hash of this one. I think I’m losing my edge.”

  “What game were you running?”

  “You tell me.” How could you make someone send you fifty bucks, son?

  “Past-post team?” I asked, naming a scam of (as Vic would put it) yesteryore, when groups used distraction and sleight of hand to place bets on, say, roulette after the ball dropped into the slot.

  “No way,” said Woody. “Too many cameras, too much heat. Besides”—and here I thought I heard a glimmer of criticism in his voice—“that’s a gambling gaff, not a boss gaff.”

  I quickly mentally rifled through other possibilities, ghosting Woody—seeing things from his point of view—and at the same time realizing that I really wanted to get the answer right. So okay, I thought, if he’s going after a casino boss, he has to be bringing what bosses want: action, money. “Huh,” I grunted. “You high-rolled him.”

  “You got it!” he said. “I knew you would.” He beamed with pride, and I have to admit that I basked a little in that bright light.

  High rollers, or whales, as they’re commonly known, don’t abound in Las Vegas, but when it comes to a casino’s bottom line, they’re difference makers. Sure, you can survive on the steady earn of small-time slot machine play and the vigorish on sports book bets, but to thrive you need whales, and you land them with all manner of krill: luxury suites, show tickets, five-star wines, ten-star escorts, drugs, obsequity, and generous lending policies. Competition for whales is fierce, but it’s considered bad form to poach other casinos’ high rollers outright, so when one makes a change, you have to make it look like the whale’s idea. Think about trying to seduce a married woman with her husband in the next room: You gain no traction till the lady says yes. As a consequence, there are all these go-betweens, independent operators constantly sweeping the sea lanes for migrating whales. Sometimes they bird-dog pretty aggressively, sweetening the pot with their own resources or whatever the destination casino slips them under the Chinese wall.

  That’s what Woody said he was doing: bird-dogging, but with a difference.

  “I promised Wolfredian a Saudi prince,” said Woody. “Very proper, very circumspect. Deep, deep pockets, but he can’t be seen on the casino floor until the moment is absolutely right. And absolutely can’t be seen going to the cage for cash.”

  “So Wolfredian advanced you a stake.”

  “Against an unimpeachable line of credit.”

  “Which didn’t exist.”

  “No more than the Saudi prince. Now I’ve got twenty-three thousand out of Wolfredian’s change purse, and he’s all bent out of shape.”

  “Over only twenty-three grand?”

  “I know, huh? It’s more ego than anything. He hates that I mooked him.”

  “How’d it go wrong?”

  “Excellent question. Do you mind if we save it for another time? I’m beat. I’m not used to these all-nighters.” He got up to go, effortlessly affecting the leering, drooling look and demeanor of a man you would not want little Jimmy or Nancy anywhere near.

  “Where are you staying?” I asked.

  “Elsewhere,” he said airily, which I took to mean anything from a bed-and-breakfast under an assumed name to a blanket beneath the stars. “But don’t worry, I’ll be around. Maybe you can help me figure out what to do with these goons.” He paused, then: “Hey, Radar, are we all right?”

  “We’re better,” I said. “I still don’t know how I feel about you.”

  “If it means anything, I know how I feel about you. I love you, son.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to reply in kind, couldn’t even guess if it was true, so all I said was, “Take it easy, Aqualung,” as he shuffled off into the dawn.

  *AKA Wallet Drop, wherein a found cache of cash squeezes good-faith money from the unsuspecting.

  *Verbal prostate massage: endgame bafflegab to leave the mark smiling when you go.

  8

  Face Value

  Half an hour later, setting aside thoughts of goons and stray dads, I slipped into bed beside Allie, who stirred and said, “Boy? Is that you? Remember, we mustn’t let Radar find out.” Hearing the smile in her voice, I determined that the peeved girlfriend stance had been set aside. It made me glad.

  I responded by licking her face.

  And I don’t care what Vic Mirplo has to say about randy rabbits, this is the woman I want to make love to for the rest of my life. It’s not just the body parts—the tight, taut, terrific body parts that have a knack for being so familiar but all the time every time brand-new, too. I’m told the new wears off eventually. It hasn’t happened yet, but if so, so what? You love a body from the inside out. When you want someone, really want them, you want to wear them like a coat. And every time we had sex, I got this incredible sense of wonder, like I get to do this again? I get to be with her? How great is that?

  It was just carnal at first. It had to be. We were both a big mess, completely accreted like the bottom of an old water heater. Like grifters will get. The only way past all that accumulated emotional inertia was brute force, the fierce urgency of pheromone whores. We could screw, but we didn’t know the first thing about intimacy. Or rather, we did, and it scared us both to death. But after the sex came talk. Hours spent dissecting old lovers, techniques, good ideas, bad ideas, good-bad ideas, hidden treasures, unrequited fantasies. We became open to each other in a whole different way. And that was a terrible terra incognita to us both. We felt brave going there. Felt brave ever since. God knows it’s tricky when grifters make love. But Allie and I managed somehow.

  And we managed pretty well right then.

  Later, over huevos revueltos,* a Hoverlander specialty, I filled Allie in on the night’s events. She seemed pleased that things were better with Woody. Pleased also, and this surprised me, that Mirplo’d hooked up. “That’s good,” she said. “He needs someone. Artists shouldn’t spend too much time alone.”

  “Wait. Artists? Allie, you’re not buying into that, are you?”