"Vic, use your head. They couldn't possibly pay, even if they wanted to, which, trust me, they don't. Hines has a theoretical half million from the Merlin Game, but, what? He's gonna pry it out of me to give it back to me? And Scovil, what's she going to do? Hit an ATM for a million-dollar advance on her credit card?"

"Well, if they're not gonna pay," he asked, "what are are they gonna do?" they gonna do?"

"Probably try to kill me."

Allie flinched at this but recovered quickly, realizing, "That's part of the snuke, too?"

"Of course. First they'll make a separate peace with Billy, and once they've got him tucked in, they'll finish the unfinished business of me."

"That would satisfy Scovil," said Billy, "but Hines still needs a payday, yeh?"

"That he does," I said. "Likely before he endgames my a.s.s, he'll try to strong-arm Allie into romancing away the Merlin stash."

"He already has," said Allie. I blinked. I had figured that my little confab with Hines and Scovil would stimulate action, but I didn't think it would come on so fast. "Though it wasn't exactly a strong-arm situation."

"What do you mean?"

"He said if I managed to get the money, he'd cleanse all my records, and I could go stroll."

"Anything else?"

"Well ... he kind of made a pa.s.s."

"What kind of pa.s.s?"

"Oh, lifetime. He told me how great I'd look in something s.e.xy-like a Moroccan villa."

"What did you tell him?"

Allie fixed me with a level grin. "What do you think I told him? That I can't wait to be his burka baby."

Vic snorked a laugh, but then his primeval brain returned to the subject at hand. "Still, what about me? You think I want to take the fall for this?"

"Of course not," I said. "No more than I want to get dead."

"Then why are you poking sticks in wasps' nests?"

"That's what happens at the event horizon, Vic. You've got to stir s.h.i.t up. Make people make mistakes."

"So they're not going to arrest me?"

"No, yeah, they probably will."

"What?!"

"They have to arrest you, Vic. And flip you so you go Judas on me. Hines'll probably offer you immunity, witness protection, maybe a new car."

This elicited a laugh from Billy. "Take the deal, mate."

Vic glared at Billy, and in that glare I detected Vic's true love for his rattletrap. What can I tell you? The heart wants what the heart wants. He turned his attention back to me. "Dude," he said, "why would Hines think I need flipping?"

"Well ... I might've told him."

Vic opened and closed his mouth. "Why would you do that?" he burbled. "And don't say it's part of the snuke."

"Okay, I won't. But it is. Look, Vic, Hines is a suspicious guy. I've made him more suspicious, that's all. But it's all good. This way, when he brings you in to get religion, he can feel like your conversion is legit."

"Oh, I get to get religion, do I?"

"Yeah. He might feel like he has to beat it into you, but I'm sure you'll cave before that happens."

"f.u.c.king Radar Hoverlander," muttered Vic. "How do you know all everything about everything? Does it ever occur to you you might be wrong?"

"Of course it does. Why do you think I'm generating so much heat? Vic, look, I don't know all everything about everything, but I do know I want the other side thinking less clearly. So I'm pushing their panic b.u.t.tons. It's standard endgame s.h.i.t. You know that."

"But why me?" he asked, plaintively. "Why does it have to look like you're selling me me out?" out?"

I templed my fingers. "Vic," I said, "this is gonna sound harsh, but ... look around." I nodded toward Billy and Allie. "Who else would would I sell out?" I sell out?"

Vic didn't take that too badly. I guess when you think you're the bottom of the food chain, there's comfort in knowing that everyone else thinks so, too. All he said was, "It better be f.u.c.king worth my while. Especially if I get beat."

"Don't worry, it will be." I turned to Billy. "Speaking of which, Billy, how's plan B shaping up?"

"Oh, it's working a treat, mate."

"Good deal. ETA?"

"Basically whenever."

"Great," said Vic, "now there's a plan B. And what might plan B be?"

"Never mind about that, Vic. You can't tell Hines what you don't know."

"So just what exactly am I supposed to tell him?"

"Anything you like. It doesn't matter. He won't believe you anyhow."

"Well, if he won't believe me, then-"

"Distortion, Vic. Misdirection. We're tearing holes in his fabric of s.p.a.ce."

"For the 'event horizon'?" he mocked.

"If you like." I threw an arm around Vic. Viewed through a certain filter, I suppose this was a patronizing gesture, but what the h.e.l.l. "Things are speeding up now, acquiring their own momentum. At this point in the snuke, almost n.o.body knows how it's going to turn out."

"But you do."

"I have a good idea."

"An idea that involves throwing poor Mirplo to the wolves," said Vic.

"It has to be done."

"You know, Radar," he muttered, "sometimes you can be a real cheesed.i.c.k." He shrugged out from under my arm. "Well, guess I'll go get me arrested now."

After he left, Allie gently suggested that I might have taken a different approach. Actually, not so gently. "He's right, you know. Sometimes you can be a real cheesed.i.c.k."

"I don't even know what that means."

"Really? Radar Hoverlander, master of the neologism, at a loss for definition?"

"I ..."

"That kid's loyal to you, Radar. Loyal like a dog. And because he's loyal, you can kick him all you want. But just because you can can kick him doesn't mean you have to." kick him doesn't mean you have to."

"It's part of the scam," I said lamely. "He knows I don't mean it."

"No, I think you do mean it. I think it makes you feel good to prove how smart you are. But why you feel like you need to prove you're smarter than a Mirplo, I do not know."

"No, I don't. I mean, why would I?"

"Well, why would you? Why don't you think about it and see if you can figure it out?"

Allie left. Billy and I went back to my place, where Billy applied the skim's finishing touches. There was little left for me to do, just wait for the event horizon to arrive. Usually I loved this part of a snuke. It's a ballet, kind of an orderly chaos, where all the setups get paid off, and if everything goes according to plan-but no, everything never goes quite according to plan, so you have to stay light on your feet, ready for anything. It's very adrenalating. It's the part that gets me high. But I didn't feel high just then. I felt ... betrayed ... and betraying. I took it up with Billy, leading with a "Women, huh?" point of view that gained no traction whatsoever.

All he said was, "I think you're missing the point, mate."

"Which is?"

But he offered no insight, merely put his head back down over his work. I watched him hammer away at code for a while. Soon he was lost in it, sunk down in the never-ending if/then stew, his total consciousness dedicated to solving a problem that was at once exacting in detail and overwhelming in scope. He chewed on his lower lip, brushed hair from his eyes, and cricked his neck from side to side, all utterly unself-aware. I marveled at the brain that could get so lost, and yet stay found, in the halls of such elegant abstracts. It occurred to me that if I ever wanted to get off the snuke and into something legit, that'd be a place to go: somewhere that made your whole mind bind.

I went out on the deck. The night had turned overcast and damp. Winter was coming to Los Angeles, cla.s.sically defined as two months of rain between the smog season and the smog season. I loved this time of year around here. Big storms rolled in off the Pacific, arctic tempest moderated by the long trip south, resulting in daylong cleansing soaks. Just then, as if my thoughts invoked it, the rain began, first gentle, soon hard enough to kick up the pungent mix of wet asphalt, oil, and rubber smells from the boulevard below.

Was I missing the point? Was I really?

A long time later, I went back inside. Billy was crashed out on the couch, one half-curled hand still on the keyboard of his computer, the other covering his eyes against the glare of the overhead light. I switched it off, the old-fashioned pushb.u.t.ton switch yielding a satisfying ponk ponk as the room went dark. as the room went dark.

Billy and Allie had mostly worked solo. They didn't get that things break down at the end of a snuke. Pressure mounts. Tempers fray. People don't act their best. Me, I'd run enough grift gangs to know that if you get through the event horizon without someone going completely off their gimbals, you're working with zombies, not humans.

Vic, though, Vic understood this. At least I hoped he did. He was going to have to sell real outrage to Hines. So maybe I helped him along by making his outrage feel real. So what? It was a move as old as any sh.e.l.l game, where part of getting the mark to gamble is riling his righteous ire to the point where nothing matters but s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the devious weasel who's running the game. You've seen it on the street, maybe: Some blameless granny loses her pin money to a three-card monte man, while you stand there just knowing that the lady got cheated. Now here comes a casual third party, saying he has a surefire system for spotting the red queen or picking the pea or whatever, and you go hard for it because the three-card monte man just deserves deserves to lose, for granny's sake. Then your money goes away, and you wonder how the surefire system went wrong. to lose, for granny's sake. Then your money goes away, and you wonder how the surefire system went wrong.

What you don't see is granny and the monte man and the casual third party all meeting later to carve up your dough.

The key, the linchpin, is p.i.s.sing people off, to the point where anger trumps judgment. Beneath that, though, is the hidden a.s.sumption that you have the power to p.i.s.s people off ... or charm them ... confuse them ... manipulate them as you see fit. Truly, if you don't rate yourself a puppet master, you don't win in the grift.

But if you're the puppet master, then everyone else is a puppet, and that can get old.

I think it was getting old for me. At a time when I should have been reveling in the snuke, delightedly planning the last cascade of dominos, all I could think about was Vic's feelings, and Allie's, even Billy's. It's one thing to objectify the mark; it's a whole other thing to objectify your friends.

Still, Vic was right in one sense: I was poking sticks in wasps' nests. Now it was just a question of how the wasps responded.

As it turned out, like wasps.

I fell asleep around dawn, though with the rain, dawn wasn't much more than a whisper of light in the sky. A couple of hours later, the phone rang. I couldn't rouse myself to answer it, but Billy did, and a moment later stuck his head in my room.

"Mirplo called," he said. "He needs a lift."

"Hines done with him already?" I mumbled into my pillow.

"So it would seem." Billy threw a piece of paper down on my bed. "Here's where."

I left Billy to b.u.t.ton up the last of the skim code and headed out. The rain was still pouring down, turning the roads of my hillside neighborhood into rivers of water and mud. Out on the main streets it was even worse, as L.A. drivers underwent their predictable first-storm-of-the-season freakout. Some sped up, as if by driving fast they could dodge the raindrops. Others slowed down, fearful that eight months of acc.u.mulated c.r.a.p on the road surface would turn to glare ice beneath their tires. In the ensuing mismatch of fast and slow, accidents broke out like acne, and getting from point A to point B became an obnoxious waiting game. Worse, point B for me was the FBI resident agency at LAX. It made sense that Vic would be there, for it was a federal hold, likely the same one Vic had visited on his return from Louisiana last year.

But it was h.e.l.l to get to, a slow grind through gridlocked surface streets and up onto a freeway that was just a joke. Honest to G.o.d, L.A. learn to drive in the d.a.m.n rain, will you? Honest to G.o.d, L.A. learn to drive in the d.a.m.n rain, will you? I tried to stay patient, but it was hard. I felt I was losing control. I tried to stay patient, but it was hard. I felt I was losing control.

Then I did did lose control, and slammed into an SUV. lose control, and slammed into an SUV.

slickery when wet.

T here's nothing like a car accident to knock the arrogance out of you. One minute you're driving along, listening to some radio traffic guy describing road surfaces as "slickery," and wondering whether it's a portmanteau word or a mistake-admirable if the former, laughable if the latter-and the next thing you know, you're looking out your front windshield at the astonished face of the driver in the next lane, and you here's nothing like a car accident to knock the arrogance out of you. One minute you're driving along, listening to some radio traffic guy describing road surfaces as "slickery," and wondering whether it's a portmanteau word or a mistake-admirable if the former, laughable if the latter-and the next thing you know, you're looking out your front windshield at the astonished face of the driver in the next lane, and you know know that can't be right, so you crank hard on the wheel, but the harder you crank on the wheel, the more you seem to spin. You recall advice you once heard, that can't be right, so you crank hard on the wheel, but the harder you crank on the wheel, the more you seem to spin. You recall advice you once heard, when you go into a skid, turn in the direction of the skid when you go into a skid, turn in the direction of the skid, but it was counterintuitive then, and it's counterintuitive now, so you continue with your stupid panic response of crank the wheel, stomp the brakes crank the wheel, stomp the brakes, while your car resembles nothing so much as a whirling teacup on that ride at that place. Then you're sailing exactly backward down the freeway, and you look in your rearview (now your frontview) mirror, and see this great black wall of a Ford Destroyer or something, stopped dead ahead, and there's just no way you're not going to hit it, so you close your eyes and brace yourself and wait for the sound that everyone always describes as a sickening crunch, but it's not sickening, really, you know, it's just annoying. Because the minute your car slid sideways, your day slid sideways, too.

Bang! My car a.s.s-ended into the SUV. My neck snapped back, then forward, and I hit my head on something, I don't know what. I immediately felt a welt rising, and my first thought was, if there's blood, I'm screwed, because they're going to want me to get treatment, and I do if there's blood, I'm screwed, because they're going to want me to get treatment, and I do not not have time for that right now have time for that right now. I glanced at myself in the mirror and saw an angry red third eye already rising in the middle of my forehead, but no break in the skin, thank G.o.d. I groped around in the s.p.a.ce between the seats and found a baseball cap bearing the logo and slogan for Dog's Nose Beer ("When I want something cold and wet, I reach for a Dog's Nose"). Jamming it down low on my head, I stumbled out of the car and stood blinking in the downpour. I figured that the best role for me to play right now was befuddled, wet L.A. driver. It seemed like the right choice, since I was, in fact, both befuddled and wet.

I did an adequate job of holding it together as I and the other driver waited for the cops. She was a soccer momlooking gal, with a fresh Shroud of Turin coffee stain down the front of her white cable-knit. I gave her a full blast of Hoverlander bijou, and she seemed to like it, but there was a ringing in my ears, and this silent soundtrack kept repeating over and over again the words soccer mom, soccer mom, soccer mom, soccer mom soccer mom, soccer mom, soccer mom, soccer mom. It made it hard to concentrate.

A CHP cruiser arrived and ran a traffic break. We got our rigs off to the side, then stood in the rain some more, exchanging insurance information while the highway patrolman did the license and registration thing. Of course my doc.u.ments came back pristine-I keep a clean set for just such occasions-but when the chipper handed me back my paperwork he looked into my eyes and asked, "Are you okay, Mr ..." he glanced again at my license, "... Roykfritt?"

"Fine," I said. "A little shook up."

"Are you sure you're not hurt?"

"Not a scratch. Lucky, huh?"

He gave me a hard look, and I figured I was about fifteen seconds away from a field sobriety test. Which I'd pa.s.s, of course, but that wasn't really the point. I already realized that I probably had a concussion, but I also knew that I had to get to the airport. No way I was going to the hospital. Not if I could drive away.

I took a quick, officious walk around my Volvo, inspecting the damage with the practiced eye of an insurance adjuster (which I've been-or played anyway-on more than one occasion). The damage wasn't too bad. The trunk was somewhat crumpled, and a craze of cracked gla.s.s ran though the rear window, but the wheel wells were clear. The only real issue was the rear b.u.mper, which clung to the car by a single bolt. There didn't seem much point in trying to refasten it, nor did I have the rope, tools, or even duct tape for the job. Opting just to set the b.u.mper free, I grabbed the loose end with both hands and gave it a good yank, but it was so slickery that I lost my grip and fell down.

The officer helped me to my feet and asked me once again if I was all right. I simply nodded, afraid my voice would give me away. Then I grabbed the b.u.mper again, this time cradling it like a fat toddler, and heaved with all my might. It came away in my hands. Acting as if that were the most natural, everyday occurrence for me, I opened a rear door and threw the b.u.mper across the backseat. I climbed behind the wheel. The chipper leaned in. He looked like he was going to say something, but I offered him my biggest, glowiest smile, and I guess he bought it, because he waved me on my way.

I made it to LAX without further mishap-apart from getting lost and stopping twice at the same mini-mart to get directions. And throwing up several times, which I should have taken as clear evidence that I was in no shape to drive; however, I was also in no shape to think clearly, and when something impairs your judgment, your judgment of your judgment is the first to go. So I thought I was fine.

I parked in a short-term airport lot and made my way to 600 World Way, the United Airlines terminal, where the FBI has their resident agency. It was a surprisingly low-rent presence for a major anti-crime agency: half a dozen nondescript rooms behind a blank steel door marked FBI. I had to pa.s.s through a metal detector to reach the administration desk, and it was only the vestiges of self-preservation that kept concussed me from making some dumb gun joke. Even so, by the time I got to the desk, I was dizzy and sweating, and it took pretty much everything in my power to stay upright, and also not puke on the desk officer's desk. I may have had a cogent conversation with that man, but for the life of me, I can't remember it now.

I was made to wait on a hard plastic chair the color of burnt melon. I know there's no such color as burnt melon, but that's the way it struck me at the time. It further struck me that though that color didn't exist, it should should exist, as should ministry, gestation, and especially oxymoron, which, to my addled mind, seemed the sort of mint-magenta color of coleus leaves. Eventually I was taken to a windowless room in back, where I waited some more, eschewing more melon chairs for the floor-bolted steel table that, for some reason, looked comfy as a feather bed. I stretched out on it and had a little snooze. exist, as should ministry, gestation, and especially oxymoron, which, to my addled mind, seemed the sort of mint-magenta color of coleus leaves. Eventually I was taken to a windowless room in back, where I waited some more, eschewing more melon chairs for the floor-bolted steel table that, for some reason, looked comfy as a feather bed. I stretched out on it and had a little snooze.