The picture, in any case, was starting to come clear. "So you think I ripped somebody off, and tracked me down to exact your revenge." I decided to play the bravado card. "So what's the riff now? One of you holds me down while the other beats me up?"

Allie laughed, trumping the bravado card with the formidable Ace of Ridicule. "Radar," she said, "does this look like a revenge tip? Honestly, if I wanted revenge on someone I'd be thinking more along the lines of available fuels, incendiary triggers, and a good benzene accelerant." Huh? Huh? I gotta tell you, it's not every day a dead-bang cute girl of unknown provenance sits across from you on your own couch and spins out the practical aspects of an arson fire. "Plus, pay attention," she said. "I already told you we need you for work." I gotta tell you, it's not every day a dead-bang cute girl of unknown provenance sits across from you on your own couch and spins out the practical aspects of an arson fire. "Plus, pay attention," she said. "I already told you we need you for work."

"What kind of work?" I asked.

Said Milval, "I want you to teach me to grift."

Sure, that's a good idea. Right up there with teaching the art of medieval trebuchet construction to a blind amputee with Bell's palsy. Grifters are a breed apart. To be good at it, you have to have a taste for danger, a heightened sense of self-preservation, and, at the end of the day, a certain dishonest honesty, the unsentimental knowledge that you fly through life solo. Sometimes, in my dark moments, I feel a little like a remora, clinging to the tiger shark of humanity, feeding on its crumbs or, as the case may be, feces. Other times, I feel like the shark. At no time do I feel like the things I know could be authentically conveyed to someone not born and bred in the grift. It's in the blood, like peanut allergy.

So my first reaction was to reject the proposal out of hand, send these two packing, and go on about my business-top of the to-do list being to track down Vic Mirplo and kick his flat white a.s.s for telling tales out of school. But the grift isn't about first reactions, it's about measured responses. And the fact that Allie had been clever enough to climb into my life and chill enough to talk about arson made me think that my disengagement, however I chose to effect it, should be gracefully staged. No sense in leaving a trail of tears. So I just nodded and said, "Go on."

Allie looked me up and down. I got the icy feeling that she had accurately registered both my mental rejection of the proposition and my decision to play cozy with that choice. Nevertheless, she appeared to take my answer at face value. "It's kind of a Make-A-Wish Foundation thing."

"Oh, G.o.d," I said, looking at Milval, "don't tell me I'm on your daisy chain." (Where daisy chain is the sum of things you want to do before you push up those eponymous perennials.) "Nothing so dramatic," he said. "So far as I know, my health is as good as the next man's, provided the next man is sixty-three with no history of smoking or excessive drink. Why, just last month, a doctor shoved his finger up my a.s.s and p.r.o.nounced-"

"You know," I said, "I'm almost positive I don't need to know about the state of your prostate, no matter how robust. Why don't we keep this on the bare-bones track if we can?" Milval nodded his acquiescence, and looked to Allie to continue.

"My grandfather," she said, "is what in his day they called a square. All his life he's played by the rules, and while he can't say that this strategy hasn't borne certain fruits-"

"-By which she means I'm rich."

"-he now feels that the time has come to let loose a little. You know, try something new."

Milval felt constrained to amplify. "My wife dragged me to church every Sunday from the day we wed to the day she died. And do you know what I thought about every d.a.m.n Sunday?"

I couldn't begin to guess. Were I in church, I'd be pining for an iPod.

"Mostly, I thought. If this is the only life I have, why am I wasting it here? If this is the only life I have, why am I wasting it here? Lately, that question has come to a.s.sume a somewhat greater state of urgency." Lately, that question has come to a.s.sume a somewhat greater state of urgency."

"Healthy prostate notwithstanding?"

"Healthy prostate notwithstanding. Mr. Hoverlander-may I call you Radar?" I shrugged a nod. "I've been good all my life. Textbook good. Ticket to heaven good. Good to my friends, good to my wife, good to my kids, ..." a nod toward Allie, "... my grandkids. I never cheated on my taxes; h.e.l.l, I don't even cheat at golf. Can you imagine?" He paused-for effect, I felt-and then continued. "I'm not sick, and I'm not that old, but I am tired. Tired of all those rules, you know? What were they for? What good did they do me? What good do they do me now? All my life, I've never been bad. Just for once and just for real, I want to know what that's like."

"I understand the impulse," I said, "but why the grift? I can think of lots of ways to be bad. Have you considered shoplifting? Buying pharmaceuticals from Canada? Or how about this: Find yourself an adventuress about Allie's age and pursue that prostate investigation on a more, you know, recreational basis."

"Radar, don't be gross," said Allie tartly. It was absolutely the first crack in her cool and I wondered whether it represented a deeper emotional fault line. I made a mental note to explore the fissure later. One thing you always need in the grift is to know where someone's b.u.t.tons are and how they can be pushed.

"The issue is not s.e.x," added Milval. "I've lived a long time. I've had all the s.e.x I need." I tried to wrap my brain around that concept and failed by a fairly wide margin. "It's a matter of the life of the mind. I want a problem I can sink my teeth into, one that carries real risk and real reward." He rose to his feet and strode around my apartment in a state of unsuspended animation. "You're young," he continued. "You can't imagine what it's like to be my age. To see the end of the line lurking, if not exactly around the corner then somewhere down the street or in the next block. And from what Allie tells me, your life hasn't been burdened by an excess of conventionality. However, mine has. And I don't want to die saying, 'Mine was.' was.' Do you understand?" Do you understand?"

"Why don't you let Allie be your guide?" I asked. "She seems to have a natural bent for this sort of thing." Yeah, she did. Tracking techniques. Contrived encounters. Cryptic e-mails. Cinderf.u.c.kingella shoes. Allie was no more innocent of the grift than I was. Which meant that her gift of me to gramps was just an attempt to hold him at arm's length from her own true nature, or agenda.

"But you're the, er, professional," said Hines.

I know what you're thinking. I was thinking the same thing. This whole setup had, well, setup written all over it. But what was I going to do? Bust Allie for trying to play me? Then hope she'd lose interest and go find some other mook to mook? I couldn't see that happening. But nor could I see me willingly drinking the Kool-Aid of the first chick slick enough to squeeze a Mirplo till he popped.

So: Let's a.s.sume that Milval Hines saw his clever granddaughter as nothing more than someone who could track down other clever people like me. Let's also a.s.sume that Allie's gift of a bad-boy adventure for her beloved grandpa was so much smoke concealing ... well, whatever lay behind the smoke. And while we're at it, let's further a.s.sume that Allie's smart enough to know I'm smart enough to know all this, so that if I say, "Okay, sure, I'll train the dude," I'm really saying, "Okay, sure, I'll see the next card." And the peculiar nature of this thing is that each of us knows the absolute truth about the other and absolutely can't speak it. Grifters are many things, but frank and open and honest do not head the list. They don't even crack the top ten.

So what you end up with is wheels within wheels, right? Wheels within wheels within wheels. An "I know that she knows that I know that she she knows" Ouroboran serpent that eventually swallows its own tale. I don't know about you, but I find this s.h.i.t interesting. knows" Ouroboran serpent that eventually swallows its own tale. I don't know about you, but I find this s.h.i.t interesting.

Still, I could have walked away, either with sufficiently face-saving "my dance card is full right now" excuses or just the common grifter's vanishing act, no explanation, no forwarding address. But it was a measure of Allie's skill of a.s.sessment that she either intuited or deduced two irresistible fixatives gluing me in.

One was a puzzle. We know I'm a dog with a bone with those.

The other was Allie herself, coming off like a b.a.l.l.sy, no-s.h.i.t schoolmarm who treated me with all the respect due a slow learner in the back of the cla.s.s. I'm a huge sucker for that.

Or just a sucker, full stop.

So now we're reading from a mutually arrived-upon script, and it's my line, and what I come up with comes out in my huskiest tough-guy voice of concern. "The grift's not easy," I say, running my fingers theatrically through my hair. "And it's sure as h.e.l.l not cheap."

"I spent ten thousand dollars once," said Hines, "learning to appraise heirloom jewelry. I know the price of a quality education."

"Fine," I said. "Where would you like to begin? Maybe a few pointers on how to make the pigeon drop less lame?"

"If that's what you suggest, but don't you even want to discuss your fee?"

I thought about this for a moment. Of course, one cla.s.sic way of moving the mark in your direction is just to push him away. The more you pay, the more it's worth The more you pay, the more it's worth, right? And someone who went ten dimes into jewelry appraisal was likely to go very deep pocket indeed. But that didn't feel like the right angle here. After all, if Hines was prepared to pay for the mystery, it seemed like the mystery should start right here at the price tag. Besides, any good negotiator will tell you that naming the first price is the first step to getting screwed. "Don't worry about that," I said. "I'll get my taste. If I'm good at what I do, it won't even come out of your end."

I looked over at Allie. She was beaming. Like she knew exactly how good I was at what I do, and what a fun little Disneyland ride this would be for gramps. But what about her ride? Where was it it headed, and who was the pa.s.senger? That needed thinking about, so I decided to bring this little conclave to a close, take some distance, and start sorting the players from the scorecard. "Okay," I said, "I'll need some time to map out a snuke. You cool with that?" Allie hit me with her best doe-eyed look, a look so convincing that at that point she seemed not a mistress of the grift but, indeed, the last true innocent. headed, and who was the pa.s.senger? That needed thinking about, so I decided to bring this little conclave to a close, take some distance, and start sorting the players from the scorecard. "Okay," I said, "I'll need some time to map out a snuke. You cool with that?" Allie hit me with her best doe-eyed look, a look so convincing that at that point she seemed not a mistress of the grift but, indeed, the last true innocent.

Have you played much poker? A certain situation occurs in the game where you get so confused that you don't know whether to raise, fold, or screw the waitress. It's called getting lost in the hand, and that's where I was just then. I honestly didn't know whether Allie was on the straight or so pretzeled out that I couldn't tell where the ingenue left off and the femme fatale began.

I decided to track down Vic Mirplo and get his input.

While also, of course, not neglecting to kick his flat white a.s.s.

twenty-five cents a t.i.t.

L ike a comet leaves a trail of stardust across the night sky, Mirplo inevitably leaves a clumsy mess in his wake. Set out to track him down and you'll hear comments like, "Oh, yeah, he was in here last night bowling for beers. He stank out the joint." Or, "Tried to run a sh.e.l.l game in front of an LAPD substation. Can you imagine?" Or-and this one I love-"He was selling parking places outside the Hollywood Bowl." This last gag was a Mirplo favorite, possibly the lowest low-rent snadoodle the human mind has yet devised. What he does, he finds a parking place near a crowded sports or cultural event, pulls his s.h.i.tbox Song Serenade half out of it and waits there till someone comes along and asks, "Are you leaving?" "Sure am," he says, "for five bucks." Then he and Shirley Temple go troll for another open s.p.a.ce and start the gaff all over. He's been known to net literally tens of dollars an evening. Seriously, what a mook, huh? ike a comet leaves a trail of stardust across the night sky, Mirplo inevitably leaves a clumsy mess in his wake. Set out to track him down and you'll hear comments like, "Oh, yeah, he was in here last night bowling for beers. He stank out the joint." Or, "Tried to run a sh.e.l.l game in front of an LAPD substation. Can you imagine?" Or-and this one I love-"He was selling parking places outside the Hollywood Bowl." This last gag was a Mirplo favorite, possibly the lowest low-rent snadoodle the human mind has yet devised. What he does, he finds a parking place near a crowded sports or cultural event, pulls his s.h.i.tbox Song Serenade half out of it and waits there till someone comes along and asks, "Are you leaving?" "Sure am," he says, "for five bucks." Then he and Shirley Temple go troll for another open s.p.a.ce and start the gaff all over. He's been known to net literally tens of dollars an evening. Seriously, what a mook, huh?

In this case, of course, I didn't have to track him down. All I had to do was text him: biz prop big $$ RU n?

This brought him running faster than a cat to a can opener.

We met at Broadview, a topless joint in At.w.a.ter Village that I love for its name and Mirplo loves for its liberal no-cover, one-drink-minimum policy. The girls in Broadview are s.k.a.n.ky in the extreme-their needle tracks practically glow in the blacklight. But if you sit in back and look like you don't have any money, no stretch for Vic, they never ha.s.sle you and you never have to tip anybody anything. And they have the requisite body parts to meet all your ogling needs, at a price anyone can afford. According to Vic's twisted math, since he could nurse a single watery beer through roughly a dozen floor shows, this works out to something on the order of twenty-five cents per nipple, not at all bad value if you're h.o.r.n.y, borderline broke, and unlikely to get laid in any circ.u.mstance short of lying on your back with a hard-on when a nymphomaniac alien drops out of the sky, legs spread.

I was sitting at the bar drinking tonic water when Vic shambled in looking like the drop-off bag at a Salvation Army thrift store. Happy to see me, he extended his hand for a manly fist b.u.mp. I took my tonic and tonic and dumped it on his head. He barely had time to sputter, "What the f.u.c.k?" before a bouncer was among us, a hyperinflated poster child for Winstrol with the word killre killre tattooed on his thigh-size biceps. I wondered if tattooed on his thigh-size biceps. I wondered if killre killre was intended as the British spelling, like was intended as the British spelling, like theatre theatre, or just a dermal typo.

"Is there a problem here?" asked the bouncer in a voice that cut through the lowest registers of the Broadview's PA system, just then cranking Boston's "More Than a Feeling," stripper Kimi's signature tune for your viewing pleasure.

"I'll leave that up to him," I said, fixing Vic with a stare so clearly hard and meaningful that it actually managed to penetrate to the deeper recesses of his brain.

"We're fine," Vic decided at last. "I could use a towel." The bouncer reached over the bar and brought out a limp, brown rag rank with mildew. Vic wanly thanked the bouncer, who went off to look large somewhere else. Then, tossing the rag back behind the bar, Vic ran the sleeve of his ratty sweatshirt over his head and asked, "Okay, how did I f.u.c.k up?" Say this for a Mirplo: They never think the indignities they suffer are undeserved.

I told him about my run-in with Allie Quinn, and tore him a metaphorical new one for leading her to me.

"That bothered you?" he said, genuinely surprised. "But why? You already know her. You've met her before."

"The f.u.c.k I have."

"Yeah, you did. Last time, though, she had orange plastic hair."

As Vic Mirplo is the clumsiest liar who ever drew breath, I had to believe that he at least thought thought he was telling the truth. So I had him run it down. he was telling the truth. So I had him run it down.

"It was the car show," he said. "Don't you remember? Last year at the convention center. We were working the test-drive scam."

"You were working the test-drive scam," I corrected. This was another low-rent Mirplo venture, where he set up a booth (okay, a box on a card table) outside the convention center, offering car fans a free shot at test driving the hot new whatever out of Tokyo or Detroit. His "display" consisted of crudely cut photos from magazines, and his entry forms were a stack of bad Xeroxes, but n.o.body seemed to mind too much; nor did they balk, terribly, at giving up their e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other useful digits. The promised drawing, of course, never took place, but Vic banked a dollar per entry form from data consolidators who would later phish contest entrants with the chance to learn race-car driving from blissfully unaware NASCAR pros. All were working the test-drive scam," I corrected. This was another low-rent Mirplo venture, where he set up a booth (okay, a box on a card table) outside the convention center, offering car fans a free shot at test driving the hot new whatever out of Tokyo or Detroit. His "display" consisted of crudely cut photos from magazines, and his entry forms were a stack of bad Xeroxes, but n.o.body seemed to mind too much; nor did they balk, terribly, at giving up their e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other useful digits. The promised drawing, of course, never took place, but Vic banked a dollar per entry form from data consolidators who would later phish contest entrants with the chance to learn race-car driving from blissfully unaware NASCAR pros. All that that took was valid plastic and, well, the rest was garden-variety credit rape. Meanwhile, back at the car show, Vic was more bird dog than scam artist, but among his limited gifts is that of gab-he had no trouble getting the punters to fill out a form. To sweeten the deal, he gave out free Dodge Stealth pens to everyone who filled out a form. And where did he get the pens? By the handful from the Dodge Stealth booth when the booth babes were otherwise occupied. Swear to G.o.d, plunk a Mirplo down on a desert island without food or shelter, and his native resourcefulness could easily keep him alive till the end of the day. took was valid plastic and, well, the rest was garden-variety credit rape. Meanwhile, back at the car show, Vic was more bird dog than scam artist, but among his limited gifts is that of gab-he had no trouble getting the punters to fill out a form. To sweeten the deal, he gave out free Dodge Stealth pens to everyone who filled out a form. And where did he get the pens? By the handful from the Dodge Stealth booth when the booth babes were otherwise occupied. Swear to G.o.d, plunk a Mirplo down on a desert island without food or shelter, and his native resourcefulness could easily keep him alive till the end of the day.

I, meanwhile, had been stalking somewhat weightier game, from actual leased s.p.a.ce on the convention floor, where my fabricat high-end import enterprise discreetly offered gray-market luxury sedans to quote-unquote discerning individuals who didn't mind skirting California's clean-air or safety standards. The cars in question, I claimed, had been manufactured overseas to bullet- and kidnapping-proof standards, for sale to African dictators or South American drug lords. Geopolitical flux being what it was, some of these cars now needed backup buyers, the intended customers having apparently been deposed or murdered, but it's an ill wind that blows no good, right?

I faced some hard questions. If such a car wasn't imported through normal channels, they asked, how could it possibly be street legal in California, or indeed anywhere in the United States? And if it were imported through normal channels, how could it be so cheap?

Skeptics, huh? Honestly.

I explained at painstaking length that there are two ways to bring cars into the United States without bothering with the niceties of smog, safety, and so forth. First, you can call them museum pieces, and show paperwork intending them for either private collection or public display. The other approach is to call them movie props. Thus they come into the country as art or tools, not cars, so you're home free. Once the vehicles are on American soil, it's no problem and (relatively) minimal cost to street-legal them through certain bureaucratic backdoors. Backdoors which, naturally, I knew how to pry open-else why would I offer such cars for sale in the first place? So I took some down payments, generated ironclad escrows, and told the buyers to see me next week in my Long Beach showroom. I "warned" them that the showroom was none too elegant-more like a warehouse, really-which seemed to feed both their something-for-nothing avarice and their vicarious sense of outlaw adventure. Arriving at the address in question, they would find only a Church's Fried Chicken, but oh well. The wings there can be quite tasty.

The thing is, did I not vaguely recall meeting some Shibuya cutie at my booth? Was she not tricked out in the latest Tokyo toygirl fashion: teeter-tower platform boots, pleated go-go skirt, virginal blouse in irony white, and, yes, a wig of orange plastic hair? Did she not question me at surprisingly knowledgeable length about the chances of acquiring a fully armored CLS55 AMG Mercedes for her (doubtlessly fictive) Yakuza benefactor, while her friend, another geisha bonbon, stood by, fending off Mirplovian advances? Could it really have been Allie in Ginza drag?

Mirplo seemed to think so. "Trust me," he said. "I have a p.o.r.nographic memory." To drive home the point, he called my attention to a dancer just coming onstage as the DJ said, "Let's give a big hand for Chast.i.ty," with all the enthusiasm of a grocery store clerk announcing, "Clean up on aisle four."

"Wait'll she thongs down," said Vic. "You'll see: She's got a tattoo of a Krugerrand on her left b.u.t.t cheek. I guess she thinks her a.s.s is gold." He paused to chuckle in antic.i.p.ation of his own lame joke. "And if gold is cellulite, I guess she's right."

I realized I couldn't blame Vic after all for giving me up to Allie. He probably thought she and I were old chums by now.

As for Allie, this seemed to prove she was in the game, if not as a full-time player then at least a weekend warrior. But why was she subcontracting out such a cushy gig as this? Did she so not want to look fallen in Grandpa's eyes? Why would he care? He was a Ready Teddy, too.

Sometimes when there's a problem I'm trying to solve, I find it helps to talk it through out loud. Mirplo's not the best interlocutor for this because his observations are either off-point or just flat inane. But he had helped me put Allie in context, so I thought I owed him a glimpse of the big picture. Which I gave him. When I was done, all he said was, "Dude, you should beat cheeks."

"What?"

"Get out of town. Dislocate. Go to Vegas. That town's easy. I used to rip it up."

"Really?" I couldn't help asking. "Then why are you here?"

He didn't miss a beat. "Sinusitis," he said. "That desert air kills."

"Yeah, well, I'm not blowing town. So far all I've got is an innocent offer to turn teacher. Why should I say no?"

"Orange hair," said Vic, simply.

"What do you mean?"

"A girl capable of orange plastic hair is capable of anything. Besides, you like her."

"Oh, bulls.h.i.t."

"Then you just want to get your wick wet. Those are the only two choices."

"You're nuts," I said.

But was he really? I couldn't be sure. And the thing you have to remember in the grift is that money is money and s.e.x is s.e.x, and many a deal slides sideways when the line between the two gets blurred. Which gave me all the more reason to make the smart play and just disappear into the distance. It wouldn't be that hard. I'm a master of the fast transition. In a week's time, I could be Aghvan Aghajanian of Glendale, Arizona, unlicensed trader in desperation gold, priced low because bought from motivated sellers (and also because mostly tin).

But d.a.m.n if I'd give her the satisfaction! Here she'd been in my life less than a week and she already had me jumping through all sorts of unintended and unantic.i.p.ated hoops. What did she have over me?

Why did I want more?

In the end, then, the smart play and the play you make are not necessarily the same. Out of sheer cussed-mindedness, I decided to see the thing at least to the next level. After all, I'd told Hines that I'd cook up a con for him, and it's a function of my restless mind that even while I was thinking of a dozen different reasons to pull the rip cord, I also happened to think of one cool way to work Milval's former profession into a reasonably tasty snuke.

I could, if I worked it right, even make a nice chunk of change.

Maybe I'd take Allie to Cabo.

the merlin game.

P icture this: You've got a shiny quarter in your hand, and 160 people are watching you flip it, via webcam. On the screens of half the 160, you flash a prediction: This coin will land heads. The other half gets the other prediction: This coin will land tails. If the coin lands heads, you disconnect the 80 people who saw you guess tails, and with the remaining 80 you run the same drill. Half see you call heads, half see you call tails. Once again, you boot the ones who see you guess wrong. The remaining 40, notice, have now seen you guess right twice in a row. No big deal, right? But then you do it again and again and again, culling the numbers as you go, from 40 down to 20 to 10 to 5. Now you have 5 people who have seen you make correct predictions not once or twice but five times in a row. Still not that impressive, right? After all, it's only a coin flip, and the odds of nailing five straight coin flips are a mere 31 to 1 against. Hardly a number from the Nostradamosphere. So even if a guy has seen you guess right a few times in a row, he's not a believer, and even if he's a believer, with how much hard cash would he be likely to back his belief? icture this: You've got a shiny quarter in your hand, and 160 people are watching you flip it, via webcam. On the screens of half the 160, you flash a prediction: This coin will land heads. The other half gets the other prediction: This coin will land tails. If the coin lands heads, you disconnect the 80 people who saw you guess tails, and with the remaining 80 you run the same drill. Half see you call heads, half see you call tails. Once again, you boot the ones who see you guess wrong. The remaining 40, notice, have now seen you guess right twice in a row. No big deal, right? But then you do it again and again and again, culling the numbers as you go, from 40 down to 20 to 10 to 5. Now you have 5 people who have seen you make correct predictions not once or twice but five times in a row. Still not that impressive, right? After all, it's only a coin flip, and the odds of nailing five straight coin flips are a mere 31 to 1 against. Hardly a number from the Nostradamosphere. So even if a guy has seen you guess right a few times in a row, he's not a believer, and even if he's a believer, with how much hard cash would he be likely to back his belief?

Coin flips. It's hard to get rich one quarter at a time. And let's not forget that some people will consider that the quarter was gaffed all along, and, hey, they might not even be wrong.

But what if instead of a hundred-and-a-half initial observers you had thousands? And what if instead of five trials you had a dozen? And instead of a cheesy (potentially two-headed) quarter, suppose you had something much, much harder to gaff, at least in most people's minds. Let's say your declared area of predictive expertise was the hoodoo voodoo of the stock market. Or not even the stock market. Maybe something more exotic. Derivatives. Hedges. Futures. Commodities. Exchange-traded funds. Mutual discount accruals. Or perhaps investment vehicles that no one's ever heard of, for the simple reason that no one has crawled around inside the part of your brain where your lies are born. Suppose you found yourself trumpeting your knack at forecasting market movement in highly volatile CCAs (currency core aggregates) (the latest thing) (which you just made up). If you started with 200,000 onlookers, you'd have roughly 199,999 doubters (and one drunk). Enough correct predictions later, by the reverse mitosis of reducing the cell body by half, and half again, and again, you'd have only a couple dozen observers left, but each and every one would swear on a stack of prospectus disclosures that you, my friend, have the true gift for picking winners. Their pumps thus primed, they're now ready to put their money where your mouth is. Pig widgets. Silicon communion wafers. Asteroid shields. And why not? If you can be religiously right in the notoriously fickle CCA market, whatever that is, you're bound to bank big wherever you decide to invest next. And since you're the kind of guy who likes to share the wealth, you invite those whose trust you've absolutely earned to come along for the ride. And who wants to be left off that gravy train? It's leaving the station now, folks. All aboard. Woo-wooo! Woo-wooo!

This scam has been known by many names in many times. Choose Not to Lose. Magic Mirror. Orders of Magnitude. I call it the Merlin Game, since that legendary necromancer was said to have aged backward, and who couldn't pick winners if all he had to do was watch them flash past in his rearview mirror?

The Merlin Game's limitation has always been just getting your initial guesses in front of enough eyes so that by the time you've sliced the sucker cake in halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and thirty-seconds, a large enough pond of confidence remains to be profitably drained. Thanks to the internet, that problem has vanished: Leads abound.

Qualified leads, though, those are another matter. leads, though, those are another matter.

Which brings us to Milval Hines and his preretirement career as an investment counselor. He probably knew thousands of people who had faith in him. These are what the straight world calls "clients." * * They didn't trust him implicitly, mind you. They listened to what he had to say and then made their own judgments. He likely never represented himself to be anything other than someone who a.n.a.lyzed trends and pa.s.sed along what he learned. He flimmed no flams, in other words, but simply did his homework and demonstrated through diligence that he could turn modest risk into reasonable gain. They didn't trust him implicitly, mind you. They listened to what he had to say and then made their own judgments. He likely never represented himself to be anything other than someone who a.n.a.lyzed trends and pa.s.sed along what he learned. He flimmed no flams, in other words, but simply did his homework and demonstrated through diligence that he could turn modest risk into reasonable gain.

Now Hines has a problem. In the midst of his existential meltdown, he wants to start having fun, the kind of fun that violates federal law. But it's not so easy. The inertia of his reputation holds him back. His former clients all know him to be a straight shooter with an adequate market sense and a respectable ROI, so how can he suddenly reinvent himself in their eyes as an investment savant who's gone from pretty good trend spotter to lock-solid win picker? Can't. Obviously. In the words of the grift (Texas branch), "That dog don't hunt."

Bottom line, he couldn't be a Merlin.

But he might have just met met one. one.

This was the pitch I laid out for him a few days later in his Pasadena office-park office. The place was about what you'd expect for a semiretired investment counselor: a pretty-but-not-too-pretty receptionist, comfortable but not ostentatious leather couches, copies of Inc Inc. and Forbes Forbes in the lobby. The mahogany walls of his inner sanctum, heavily punctuated with degrees and diplomas, had built-in shelves laden with what we call "appreciation hardware," trophies for everything from serving as your organization's treasurer to donating uniforms to the local Little League team. To me it all just looked like credit for time served and reminded me that if the one thing I had to do every day was the same thing every day, my career would likely be cut short by the precipitous slitting of my own wrists. But that's just me. Some people crave boredom. in the lobby. The mahogany walls of his inner sanctum, heavily punctuated with degrees and diplomas, had built-in shelves laden with what we call "appreciation hardware," trophies for everything from serving as your organization's treasurer to donating uniforms to the local Little League team. To me it all just looked like credit for time served and reminded me that if the one thing I had to do every day was the same thing every day, my career would likely be cut short by the precipitous slitting of my own wrists. But that's just me. Some people crave boredom.

Hines did not seem to be one of them just then. His eyes shone with delight when I walked in, and he welcomed me like a lodge brother. I half expected a secret grifters' handshake, and if he had found one on the internet, I'm sure he would have laid it on me. As it was, he'd clearly been registering hits on websites like fraudreka.com and hoaxandjokes.org, for his mind was alive with the possibilities of the grift.

"Wishing wells," said Hines after we'd batted a few pleasantries back and forth like shuttlec.o.c.ks. "Did you know you can invest in wishing wells? I've been in finance all my life and I've never even imagined such a thing!"

Of course I knew all about wishing well franchises. They come in a spectrum of snadoodles, from relatively clean charity funnels to outright skim machines. After all, practically every shopping mall, amus.e.m.e.nt park, and roadside attraction in the land has some sort of standing body of water into which people feel a gut compulsion to throw their loose change. Who collects that coin?-some street b.u.m scrounging for the price of paint thinner? Don't kid yourself. Small change is big business, and if the shopping mall isn't gleaning the take itself, it's subcontracting the work to some brothers with an Italian (or in this modern world, Serbian) surname, who may hire the b.u.m and equip him with hip waders but are definitely keeping the fat end for themselves.