“Obviously,” I said, “he wants me to take the bait without his having to ask. He knows he can’t ease me in. I have to do it myself.”

  “So he’s going to seduce you by not seducing you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then it was all an act? The disguises, the goons …”

  “Alleged goons,” I amended.

  “You’re saying he hired them?”

  “I’m saying it’s possible.”

  (All of this, by the way, is taking place in the back room at Shabookadook, a wine bar around three corners from the Plaza, where every Wednesday night is Performance Art Night, and for which Vic and Zoe, we’ve been tweeted, have cooked up something, and I quote, “4king awsum.” The mind boggles at the prospect.)

  “You should be happy in any case,” I said. “Now there’s nothing interfering with our merry little citizens’ band.”

  Well, I knew that was trouble as soon as I said it, but Allie, to her credit, let it slide, electing to stick to the logic of the situation and not get sucked into the dangerous undertow of emotion. “Look, Radar, you’re the big fan of Occam’s razor”—where the simplest explanation that fits the facts is likeliest to be true—“so you tell me, which is simpler? (a) a known grifter gets into the sort of trouble that grifters are known for getting into, or (b) your father goes ten different kinds of devious just so he can not ask you for help.”

  “You don’t know my old man.”

  “Neither do you!” She raised her voice on this, drawing shushes and dark looks from the reverent fans of stand-up art seated nearby. I chided myself for being a dickweed. Loyalty, Radar. It’s Allie who’s important, not Woody. So he got in the wind. So what? Maybe he won’t come back around. If he does, that’ll just prove you’re right and she’s wrong. And if he doesn’t? Then getting to know him is a missed opportunity you never knew you had. Now shut up and watch the show.

  (A frail, pale woman stands onstage, arms outstretched. From her arms hang various lengths of hollow bamboo, which clack somewhat musically as she sways to her inner rhythm. She is a human wind chime. The crowd loves it.)

  “Know what I think it is?” said Allie. “I think it’s subject-object confusion. You’re so used to playing everything three levels deep, you assume everyone else is, too.” I started to protest, but Allie overrode me. “I’m not saying he’s not capable of it. I’m just saying Occam’s razor.” She took my hands. “I’m sorry he left a bad taste in your mouth, sweetie. But he left. Let it go if you can.” And with her hands in mine, I found that I could. I took a deep breath and banished Woody from my mental map. Farewell, jackalope. So long, Aqualung.

  (Vic and Zoe take the stage, each mummified in tulle of striped bright crimson and green, a disharmonic color combination that vibrates sickly, very hard to look at. They stand in silence for a moment, then Zoe opens her mouth and drones an ugly, warbly, flat monotone, “Waaahhh,” until her breath runs out and the sound dies in broken, croaking syllables. Vic, meanwhile, is spraying two different types of air freshener, bayberry and piña colada, and their clashing syrupy smells fill the room. To add a grace note, I suppose, he takes out a urinal cake and smashes it to smithereens with his fist. Zoe repeats her afflicted-cat wail twice more, and in the welcome silence that follows, Vic makes an armpit fart, which inspires weak, uncertain laughter in the audience. He glares at the laughers, making clear the seriousness of his intent. Then he and Zoe start coughing at each other, drawing closer and closer until they’re virtually coughing into each other’s mouth, and this goes on for some time. It’s pretty uncomfortable to watch, which, knowing Vic and his commitment to outrageon, is the whole idea. Next he takes off his shoes and clips his toenails. Then Zoe flosses her teeth, and Vic licks the floss clean. For a grand finale, they make some deformed balloon animals, like the zoo at Chernobyl, and squeak them horribly. Then Vic intones, “Domestic Violence,” and they leave the stage to unabashed applause.)

  (Emperor’s nudity goes unremarked.)

  We joined Vic and Zoe later in the front room of the bar, where I shouted a round of Red Man Ale* and congratulated them on a job, well, done.

  “This is just the beginning, Radar,” Vic said, his eyes bright with excitement. “We have a space!”

  “A space?” asked Allie. Was she thinking of the one between his ears? Probably that was just me.

  Vic put his arm around Zoe. “It’s her father’s. He was mounting a show for these artists who got arrested.”

  “Selling Jimson weed,” said Zoe, as if that explained everything. “They couldn’t make bail.”

  “So now it’s empty and we get to use it. We’re going to blow minds. I’ve got half a yard of concrete, a crate of paintballs, some old neon signs, this giant-ass block of obsidian, a spool of copper wire, an acetylene torch, and a lateen sail from a dhow.” I was wondering how these things could possibly permute into anything even vaguely approximating art when Vic added, “Plus, I’ve got a line on a crocodile.”

  “The art community in this town has gotten way too stuffy,” said Zoe. “Vic’s really gonna shake them up.”

  “A crocodile will do that,” I offered.

  I suppose Vic heard the snark in my voice, and he jumped on it. “Man, Radar, why don’t you just shut down once and reboot. You’re like Mr. Mockery over there every chance you get, you know that?”

  I’ll tell you what I knew: Vic had gotten laid. You could see it in his proprietary arm around Zoe’s shoulder, and hear it in his truculent assertion of competence. Well, I couldn’t knock him for that. Let the man have his moment. Plus, maybe he was right. Maybe I did need to update my file. He’d come a long way from the rookie mook I first saw running dumb-ass baseball ticket hustles back in L.A. And, really, who’s to say where the con leaves off and art begins? Like Allie said, half of it’s marketing, and no one markets harder than a true believer. Therefore, even if I thought Vic was running a scam, I could help him most by buying in. It was the least I could do for a friend. Or even a Mirplo.

  “Okay, Vic, I’ll dial it down. Does this installation have a name?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “It’s still forming in my mind. I’ve got components, but no controlling idea yet, you know? No g-salt.”

  “G-salt?” asked Allie.

  “He means gestalt,” whispered Zoe.

  I stifled a chuckle. Okay, I thought to myself, baby steps here. Baby steps.

  Vic had also gotten his hands on a pallet of deformed Barbie dolls. “Someone screwed up the molds,” he said. “They’ve all got, like, three arms and shit.” How this particular treasure came to be at the product liquidators outside of town where Vic found it, he couldn’t say, but he was terribly excited about it. “Twelve hundred fucked-up Barbies,” he said. “There’s no telling what you can do with something like that.” He invited us back to the Quonset hut to see them. At minimum, he said, we could shoot at some with his nail gun, and that was as good a Wednesday entertainment as anything anyone could think of, so off we went.

  The day had been warm, but the desert night sky wicked off the heat, making for a temperate walk. The click of crickets mixed with the not-too-distant wail of sirens. Vic and I ambled along, trading evil things to do to a Barbie. Allie and Zoe followed a few yards back, discussing whatever it is women discuss when men are out of earshot. Not, I’ll bet, evil things to do to a Barbie. For a moment, I saw us four from the outside: folks out for a stroll together just like any other people in any other town. Normal people. This was new.

  Look at us, I thought. We’re couples. Next thing you know, we’ll be having movie dates.

  As we neared Vic’s street, he paused and turned back to say something to Zoe. I reached the corner first and stopped. “Vic,” I called back over my shoulder, “any chance your Barbies were combustible?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like maybe smoldering within or something? Composting?”

  “No, man, they’re cool.”

  I beckoned him forward and pointed down the block, where three fire trucks stood before what had been Vic’s art studio, and was now a blazing shell. Vic gaped.

  Then he shouted, “He shoots, he scores!”—from my pocket, which I found strange until I recalled how, in a fit of whimsy, I’d lately sampled Uncle Joe for my ringtone. I took out my phone, looked at the caller ID, and saw that it was Woody. I passed briefly through How did he? before remembering that we’d exchanged digits that night at the Plaza.

  “Radar,” said Woody when I answered, “son, I’m sorry. It seems I’ll need your help after all.” I heard the fear-quake in his voice, but that could’ve been fake-quake, who knew?

  At the Quonset hut, firemen on mechanized ladders poured water from high-pressure hoses down through a ragged blast hole in the roof, beating back a plume of acrid black smoke that rose from within. That’ll be the Barbies, I thought. But burning plastic doesn’t put that kind of hole in that kind of roof. Not without help. Like, explosive help. “Where are you?” I asked.

  “The Gaia Casino in Las Vegas. And I need you here by Friday.”

  “How ’bout that,” I said. I scanned the rapidly swelling crowd of gawkers. So Woody was in Vegas, huh? Either that or here among the crowd in masquerade. “What’s up with this fire?” I asked.

  “What fire?”

  “What fire? This fire.”

  “Radar, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Can you tell if someone’s lying? Over the phone? When he’s a master of deception and your brain is addled by fumes from burning polyvinyl chloride? Me neither.

  “Fine,” I said, not really meaning it. “What do you need?”

  “You know what I need.”

  “Uh-huh. And what’s the ‘or else’?”

  “ ‘Or else’?”

  “There’s always an ‘or else’ in this script, isn’t there? What are they going to do if I don’t pony up the princely sum of twenty-three grand? Kill you?”

  “Yes,” said Woody simply. “Probably they will.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Friday in Vegas, Radar. There’s no other way.”

  I crossed to Allie. “Babe,” I said, “you gotta hear this.” I handed her the phone.

  But the line was already dead.

  *Original slogan: Drink Like an Indian Drinks—true fact or bar fact?

  10

  Humbo Gumbo

  “Of course they’re related!” I shouted. “You think it’s a coincidence that Vic’s studio blows up at the very moment Woody calls with this ridiculous bibble about getting kacked over chump change?” I paced the floor of our adobe cottage, completely freaked out. Boy paced with me, sympathetically freaked. I hated for him to see me like this. I knew it was bad for his psychic wounds.

  “It didn’t blow up, Radar. It burned down.” Allie sat on the couch. Her voice had a dulcifying quality to it that I was unused to. The kind of voice you use for talking a jumper down from a ledge.

  “We don’t know that! The fire department …”

  “The fire department found enough flammable paints and solvents to torch a forest.” She shot Vic a gentle look. “Not very well stored.”

  Vic didn’t respond. He sat beside Zoe on the sill of the flagstone fireplace, looking shell-shocked. That studio had housed possibly the first genuinely—albeit perversely—productive thing he’d done in his life, and now it was gone, all up in flames, along with a heavy emotional investment. My heart went out to him. Which may have been why I was so determined to prove it wasn’t his fault.

  “They’ll find out,” I said. “If this two-bit town has any kind of decent arson squad, they’ll find out the fire was set.”

  “By Woody?”

  “Him or someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know! Someone trying to scare Vic. Me. You. Us. All of us.”

  Allie got up and came to me. She put her arms around me and forcibly stopped me from pacing. “Honey,” she said, “you’re not making any sense. Come on now, do what you do: Break it down. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  So much of the time on the grift you get caught up in incompatible story lines. Part of this is because grifters lie, and lies and truth tend to diverge over time, confounding a coherent picture of reality. Mostly I think it’s just our (my?) helical nature and damn habit of trying to solve the same problem six different ways at once. What Allie was saying was Untangle the strands. So I took a deep breath and let my experience and training take over.

  A building incinerates at the same instant Woody outs himself for help. He plays dumb on the coincident nature of this, but if it’s a coincidence, it’s one hell of a one, and someone—no doubt Woody himself—long ago taught me not to believe in those. So then what? Woody’s gone back to stalking me, this time with phone in hand, waiting for the opportune moment to place his panicked call? If so, then he’s also playing firebug, or paying goons—thus confirmed as confederates—to do it for him. And why? Just to convince me in a highly roundabout and fully convoluted way that he’s facing death over a sum so insignificant I could put it on my credit card?

  Man, that’s a lot of far to fetch.

  But if not that, then the Quonset fire is an unhappy accident, the result of Mirplovian carelessness. And the damning hole in the roof is—what?—an oxyacetylene tank gone blooey? Could be. Betting on Mirplovian carelessness is never a bad gamble. So then Woody’s phone call is just bad timing, a coincidence I’ll have to accept. Which takes me back to the original questions of whether Woody is gaming me and why. Before I can chase that stupid tail, another thought crosses my mind. What if Vic set the fire himself, to enhance his reputation as a tragic figure in the art community?

  Did you hear about the guy and the fire? Twelve hundred Barbies up in smoke.

  Ooh, conceptual.

  Oh, come on, Radar. If that’s possible, then why not let’s say you set the blaze, just to keep the pot of intrigue boiling in your life? You could be that scared of straightness.

  But I’m not. And I didn’t. And neither did Vic. I knew it in my gut. But I didn’t know about Woody. His story was absurd. He must know that I knew that. He wanted me to make a decision, not about his veracity but about whether I’d help even without knowing all the cards. So my choice would eventually come down to this: Harden my heart or get in my car.

  All the time I was thinking this through, Allie was still holding me. I didn’t see her. I was looking past her, to that place in open space where my mind goes to figure things out. At last I brought her back into focus. I’d never seen her looking so soft, her face showing nothing but concern. Where’d she get all that empathy? It didn’t come from her experience, as tough and embittered as mine. Must have been in her nature all the time, dormant as a catclaw seed, just waiting for favorable conditions and a chance to grow.

  “Allie,” I said, “do you believe he called?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t actually hear him on the phone. Do you think I made it up?”

  “Why would you?”

  “Serendipity,” I said. “Big fire, big drama. Throw in a desperate phone call, it’s the perfect excuse to get in the wind.”

  “Are you looking for one?”

  “No.”

  “Then no.”

  “Good.”

  “So what do you want to do?” she asked.

  “Good question. I don’t believe him, but what if I’m wrong?” I could see in Allie’s face that she knew this was coming, expected it, approved on some level, and yet didn’t entirely like it. It was weird. The part of her enamored of Woody couldn’t dismiss a death threat out of hand. Other parts of her no doubt feared buying into his play, for that’s a move no grifter loves, running someone else’s script. Plus, there was the elephant in the living room of whether I was merely looking for an excuse to go off the reservation.

  How did I know she had these thoughts? Because I had them, too, exactly. I’ve always said that the trick of reading people’s minds is just reading your own. Ninety percent of everything everybody thinks is the same stuff. Which means if I was worried, Allie was worried, not just about Woody but also about me. About us. “Look,” I said, “I honestly don’t know if Woody’s in trouble or just dragging me into something ugly, but I can’t find out from here. So I just need to know that you believe I’m doing all this for the right reasons, and not because I can’t hang straight.”

  Allie wrapped her arms around my neck. “Radar Hoverlander,” she said, “you’ve never hung straight in your life.” Was that an endorsement? I couldn’t tell.

  Vic and Zoe left a few minutes later. She was taking him home. I felt good about that. A loss is a loss, even the loss of something so bogus as your bogus artistic career, and you like to have someone sit shivah with you.

  While Allie walked Boy, I spent some time online, investigating both Woody Hoverlander and Jay Wolfredian. Most of the hits on Woody revealed the expected courtroom detritus of dropped charges and bargained pleas. Reading between the lines of court records, I could see the general outline of snaggles he preferred: investment schemes that walked the line between wild speculations and pure pyramids. I particularly admired one called Celebrity Holdings, LLC, which promised to ghost the moneymaking strategies of the Hollywood elite but had no more congruence with reality than Maps to the Stars’ Homes.

  One oddball datum surprised me greatly, for it contained my picture. Following a link to the scanned newsletter archives of Southern California Keglers, a bowling affinity group, I found a 1986 blurb congratulating Woody on rolling a perfect game. There was a photo of him high-fiving five-year-old me, and a caption that read, “Woody Hoverlander celebrates twelfth strike with son, Randy.” I didn’t know if “Randy” was a typo or the work of some affronted editor trying to impose normalcy on my name. But in any case, You bowled, Woody? Where was the percentage in that?

  Wolfredian, meanwhile, came across as a power executive on a steep trajectory. With just ten years in the industry, he’d already held positions of importance in casino security and strategic planning, and had lately joined Gaia Gaming, Las Vegas’s first carbon-neutral casino, as vice president of special projects. Gaia’s investor relations webpage lauded his achievements—all the right MBA and consulting tickets punched—and occluded in a cloud of PR bafflegab his chief responsibility: keeping Gaia whales happily swimming in Gaia seas. His photo showed him to be shirted, suited, and tied just like the rest of the white-bread Gaia management team. He didn’t read heinous or threatening. He read kind of dull.