“Why not? He’s half right, you know. Half of art is marketing, creating a demand.”

  “Yes, but the other half’s talent.”

  “Well, talent. We’ll see. What’s that stupid thing you say? ‘Keep giving them you until you is what they want.’ ”

  “No, that’s a stupid thing you say.”

  “I knew I heard it somewhere. Anyway, I want to see his studio.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe I’ll buy something.” She shot me a grin. “Original Mirplos could be worth a ton one day.”

  On the walk over, I found myself checking out the passing traffic with more than passing interest, as if Woody’s cruising pursuers might somehow turn their attention to me. It didn’t seem likely, for Woody was no doubt adept at shaking a tail, and his costumes were, well, vigorous. Still, it’s kind of a chance to take, potentially bringing collateral damage down on your estranged son just while you’re getting unestranged and all. Why would a would-be doting dad do that, even if he needed your help?

  And what if he didn’t need your help after all?

  “Allie,” I said, “I think we may have a problem.”

  “With what?”

  “Woody. What if it’s all smoke? All this being on the lam, the disguises, everything. What if it’s just a setup for something?”

  Allie stopped. She let her head sag down on her chest for a moment, then lifted it and looked at me. “Do you actually think that?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to at least consider the possibility. I mean, that’s only prudent.”

  “If by prudent you mean paranoid.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first grifter to mook one of his own.”

  Allie sighed. “Look, Radar, I don’t suck at judging people, do I? I mean, I picked you out of the bad-apple barrel.”

  “Granted.”

  “Well, your father seems okay to me. I like him. And if he’s working to make me like him, let’s call that good old-fashioned charm, and just move on, huh? For once, just take things at face value. See how that works out.”

  “Innocent until proven guilty?”

  “If you can stand it.”

  “And if it turns out he really needs my help?”

  “Well, that’s a different story.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Operation Citizen, remember? Done with that life is done with that life.”

  We walked on. It seemed that Allie was trying to have it both ways, but it took me a moment to put the thought into words. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said at last. “I’m supposed to have a good, honest, wholesome relationship with my father. Give him the benefit of the doubt, take him at face value. In other words, be a loving son.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Only, I can’t lend the hand he might need.”

  “Not if it means straying from our path.”

  “Those two ideas kind of clash, you know. How do you hold them both in your head at the same time?”

  “I’m a complex person,” she conceded. “We’re here.”

  Here was Vic’s Quonset hut, a half cylinder of ancient corrugated steel set back from a narrow street between an auto-body shop and a storefront psychic. The loud drone of something obnoxiously approximating music blared from within. We knocked loudly, but when it became clear that we’d never be heard over the din, we let ourselves in.

  The air was thick with a resinous scent I didn’t recognize, though I identified its source as a small, shiny brazier, like a pimped-out hibachi, spewing gray-green smoke that swirled and spread throughout the hut, driven by a fan the size of a jet engine. Vic stood nearby in Bermuda shorts, attacking a painted piece of Sheetrock with a compressed-air nail gun. Peering through the smoke, I could see impaled on the Sheetrock various means of killing rats (traps, snares, poison) and, I believe, a smattering of actual dead rats. On the modeling stand stood Zoe, Vic’s new best friend, naked, posing. At intervals, Vic would pause, stare at her intently, then unleash a frenzied new burst of nail-gun carnage.

  “Vic!” I shouted over the oliated din, but he didn’t respond, so I reached forward and tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled, still firing, and I felt a rush of air as a nail whizzed past my ear and clanged off the far curve of the Quonset hut.

  “Christ! Be careful!”

  “Sorry, man. I was in the zone.” Noticing Allie, he said cheerily, “Hi, Allie,” then repeated, “I was in the zone.” He reached down to a boom box and turned off the audio waterboarding. “Good to see you guys.”

  I waved a hand at the brazier. “What’s with the smoke?” I asked.

  “It’s sage,” he said. “I’m smudging.”

  “Smudging?” asked Allie.

  “Ritually cleansing my environment to make my art more potent.” He hooked a thumb in Zoe’s direction. “It was Zoe’s idea. She’s a very intricate thinker.” Then he indicated the boom box. “The music helps.”

  “Is that what you call that?”

  “Ha-ha, Radar. I composed it myself, you know. A true artist masters all arts. I’ve started taking flying lessons.”

  “How is that art?”

  “Everything’s art, my friend,” said Vic. “I’m surprised you don’t know that.” He stepped back from the Sheetrock and offered it for our inspection. “Well,” he said, “what do you think?”

  “Are those real rats?” I asked.

  “Taxidermed,” he said. “Got ’em at a yard sale.”

  Allie examined the piece with a critical eye. “What do you call it?” she asked.

  “Nailed You Good, You Rat.”

  “A little on the nose, don’t you think?” I asked.

  “So far,” he said. “But watch.” He rummaged in a nearby bin of flotsam, pulled out an empty Pop-Tarts box, and crucified it to the Sheetrock. Then he sprayed the whole thing with aerosol cheese. “See? Now it’s a comment on consumerist society.”

  “Conceptual,” I granted. “But kinda grotesque.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Art’s not meant to be pleasant. It’s meant to make you think.”

  My eye caught the lifeless eye of a rat. “I think I want to puke.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  “Really?”

  “Radar, dude, how many artists you think there are in Santa Fe?”

  “I don’t know. Thousands?”

  “And how many better than me?”

  “Pretty much all of them.”

  “In terms of painting shit that looks like shit, yeah. Flowers, buttes, butts, whatever. I can’t compete with that.” He drew himself up to his full five-foot-seven skinny magnificence. “Therefore, instead, I shall outrage.”

  “With dead rats?”

  “Dead rats,” said Vic imperiously, “is only the beginning.”

  By this time, Zoe had thrown on shorts and a crop top and walked over to join us. We exchanged greetings and names, and then Zoe headed out.

  “She seems nice, Vic,” said Allie.

  “She poses nude for free.”

  “Do you think she might be hinting at something?”

  “Hinting at …?” The thought filtered down through Vic’s brain stem and spinal cord, arriving at last at his joint. “Oh!” he said, genuinely surprised. “Son of a gun. I’ll have to look into that.” He turned to me abruptly. “Hey, did you talk to your dad?”

  “Just all night. Turns out he was in the bar.”

  “Yeah, no, I mean now, today. He stopped by earlier.”

  “Here? Why?”

  “Search me. Guess he wanted to see the genius at work. He seemed kind of rattled, though.”

  “Rattled?” I looked at Allie. I could see her suspicion eyeing mine. “Vic, let me ask you a question. Did he seem rattled or was he rattled?” Allie opened her mouth to speak, but, “Face value,” I said. “I’m just confirming it.” Back to Vic. “You know, was he stuffing?” I used the grifter’s descriptive for representing a hope or fear you do not feel.

  “Why would he stuff?”

  “No reason. Was he?”

  “Gut? No. He’s chased. After all, he was in disguise.”

  “What disguise?”

  “Santa Fe Trails bus driver’s uniform.” Vic chuckled. “Wonder where he got his hands on that.”

  “I think he’s got good hands,” I said.

  “Well, whatever. He said to meet him at Cross of the Martyrs if he didn’t catch up with you first.”

  “What time?”

  “When does anyone go to the Cross? Sunset.”

  “Gotcha. Wanna roll with?”

  “No,” said Vic contemplatively, “I think I’ll visit Zoe, investigate that whole nudity thing.”

  Allie and I left shortly thereafter, and walked back to our cottage. I was distressed on a couple of levels. The one I could most easily finger was concern for my dad—and concern that I felt concern for someone who, let’s face it, hadn’t earned it by his track record. The other was the constraint I felt on my freedom, like all of a sudden I had to justify my choices. A guy says meet me in a place, I don’t care who he is, your father, the pope, whoever, I’m going into that meeting eyes open, not slackjaw like a rube. Only now that’s not an option, ’cause it’s not the straight play. But this is a potentially hazardous situation, so which is more important, playing straight or staying safe? I voiced this to Allie. She said the two were not mutually exclusive.

  “Of course we have to be careful, Radar. We just don’t get sucked up into any schemes.”

  “You think that’s what he wants?”

  “I think it’s what you want.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You tell me,” she said. She didn’t say it aggro or anything, more like flattery, like You’re smart enough to know your own mind. It felt again like Woody quizzing me on plays against Vegas or, deep in my past, that telephone snadoodle. Like everyone wants me to figure out everything for myself.

  So, okay …

  “A grifter going straight,” I said, “is like an addict in recovery. He’s looking for an excuse to go out. Any one will do, so long as it’s, you know, acceptable to interested parties. A valid exception, like saving Sophie and Boy. By that math, I’m actually hoping Woody’s jammed up. I want to play hero again, just to keep playing.” I could feel Allie mentally awarding me a gold star. “But if that’s all true,” I continued, “then it serves my interest if his jeopardy’s for real. So then, why do I doubt?”

  “Because you’re a complex person, too.”

  “Screwed up, you mean.”

  Allie kissed my cheek. “So aren’t we all, honey. So aren’t we all.”

  At a quarter to sunset we hiked up the short set of paved switchbacks that led from Paseo de Peralta to the bluff above, where a twenty-five-foot steel cross presided over the plain of Santa Fe, memorializing the death of some people at the hands of some others. For cover (and on this I insisted) we tricked out as tourists, with cameras, water bottles, guidebooks, and new Santa Fe souvenir T-shirts. At the summit, we joined a handful of fellow travelers taking in the view, 270 degrees of pueblo panorama. The setting sun lit low clouds from beneath, energizing the pink of the adobes below. There wasn’t much else to look at up here, just brick paths with handrails circling up to the concrete apron where the cross stood, two unadorned steel girders painted white. Dirt paths ran off east, toward the remains of Fort Marcy, another monument on another bald hill. “Not a lot of cover,” said Allie. I knew what she was thinking. If Woody was traveling dark, it made no sense to meet in so open a place.

  But sometimes you bring your own cover. We heard the wheeze of air brakes and looked down to see a luxury motor coach disgorging a tour group.

  “Bet you anything …,” I said.

  “No bet,” said Allie. We watched the tour group climb the hill. When it reached us, we melted into it and made our way to Woody, whose professor-on-holiday drag included wire-rimmed glasses, trekking hat, chukka boots, and a realistically natty white trim beard.

  “You go to lengths,” said Allie, her voice pitched low to blend in with the tourists aahing at the sunset.

  “Sometimes you have to,” Woody murmured. “I spent a whole year once masquerading as a Sandinista.”

  “In that context,” I asked, “what’s the difference between masquerading and being?” Woody gave me a look like the stories I could tell, but the tale went untold for now. As the tour group fragmented, we three took up station on the railing in front of the cross. It offered a clear view of the street below and, if one turned around and leaned against the rail as I did, an unobstructed look across to Fort Marcy, as well. “So what’s going on?” I asked.

  “I’m leaving,” he said. “I’ve worn this town out. I should never have come here in the first place.”

  “What about help with your goons?”

  “No. That was a bad idea. Sentimental and self-indulgent. It puts you at risk.”

  “You know, I decide about that.”

  “Anyway, it’s really just a matter of returning some money.”

  “That’s not what you said last night.”

  “I exaggerated. I … milked the drama.”

  “And the disguises?”

  “More of same. Anyway, it’s no big deal. After I get it sorted, I’ll come back. Maybe we can hang out.” He paused, self-conscious. “Radar, I am sorry about the years. What do you say to take two?”

  Before I could answer, Woody froze. “You don’t know me,” he whispered fiercely, and glided away from us. I heard two car doors slam and looked downhill to see a freshly parked sedan and a pair of men in jeans and Western shirts hustling up the path. Woody buried himself in the clot of tourists and listened with rapt attention to the guide’s description of the dead friars and others that the cross commemorates. He produced a notebook from somewhere and hunched low over it, taking fervid notes. Allie and I drifted apart—no set play, just good grift hygiene. She took pictures. I pretended to be bored.

  The men ran up and scanned the crowd like men adept at scanning a crowd. They spotted Woody, silently flanked him, and eased him out of the group. As they led him down around a bend in the ramp, Allie and I observed as well as we could without giving ourselves away. I wondered what I’d do if things turned violent. I’m not big on violence; I prefer moves. We think of people as machines, especially in threat situations, but they’re still just people, and a bit of unexpected confusion can still put them off their game.

  Meanwhile, all of Woody’s body language said surrender. He held his hands out, palms down, in a gesture of pure placation. Reading his lips, I could see him saying, “I don’t have the money. I don’t know where it went.” The goons seemed not to believe him; they moved in tandem, one using his bulk to block the scene from casual eyes, while the other loaded up a kidney punch. They were about to administer a very quiet, very private beat-down to my old man.

  Just then Allie moved in, thrusting her camera in their midst. “Could one of you guys take my picture, please?” She rolled her eyes and added in a goofy, girly voice, “I promised my boyfriend.” They looked at her like she was daft—daft being the look she was going for, I’m sure—and distanced themselves from Woody. See? Moves. And this one was a beauty. It let them know there were witnesses. Sure enough, they broke off the beat-down and, after another moment’s rough rhetoric to Woody, headed back down the hill.

  They even took her picture.

  We waited till they were well away, then reconvened. “Thank you, Allie,” said Woody. “At my age, things take forever to heal.” She nodded acknowledgment, but I could tell by the flush on her cheeks and her bright eyes that she’d gotten off on the move. What do you know? I thought. I’m not the only one chasing the buzz.

  “So much for milking the drama,” I said.

  “It’s not so bad,” said Woody. “I’ve been summoned, that’s all. Got two days to get twenty-three grand back to Vegas.”

  “So, not a problem,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t be,” said Woody, “if I had the twenty-three grand.”

  *Really just scrambled eggs, of course, but it sounds much fancier in Spanish.

  9

  4king Awsum

  Woody was gone. He’d taken his stiff upper lip and the $23,000 hole in his pocket and put Santa Fe in the rearview. It wasn’t clear to me whether he was heading back to face the music or further out on the lam. I didn’t care. When something rings as loudly false as that AWOL money, it tends to drown out everything else, including sympathy, empathy, and any father-son football fantasies I may have entertained.

  In other circumstances, and against a lesser mark, I’d have expected the play to go something like this: Woody explains that he made a dumb move with the 23K, lost it, got robbed, whatever. Then, and with great reluctance, he asks the mook for a bridge loan, just enough to buy him out of the bad guys’ grip while he waits for some sure (but slow-developing) windfall to get everyone well. But Woody knew I’d never fall for that, so he gave no reason for the missing money nor the slightest hint of wanting a bailout from Radar National Bank. I wonder what he’d have said if I’d offered. Probably be offended that I’d put him on so naked a play. Either that or be disappointed that I bought in. But I kept stumm and so did he. We bid our adieus, and he got his stoic ass in the wind. I expected I’d get a postcard of a jackalope someday.

  As for Allie’s and my postmortem, we didn’t see eye to eye at all. She, still taking things at face value, thought Woody just thought better of dragging me into his mess and beat a hasty, one might even say noble, retreat. I said he made the whole thing up: Wolfredian, the phantom whale, all of it.

  “Why would he do that, Radar?”

  Sensible question. I had no sensible answer, so I offered the one of a hurt little boy. “Just to screw with me,” I said. “Just to watch me dance.”

  “Come on, lover, even you don’t believe that.”

  “Okay, I don’t. So then I don’t know why he did it. I do know this, though: We haven’t heard the last of him.”

  “But he left. He left without asking for help.”