I know what you're thinking: I've got a lot of nerve getting huffed over theft when theft, in a sense, is my line of work. To which I say: Yes, but no. Grifters have honor. We finesse our earn. We use guile and cunning, like wolves, and we take advantage of the weak (-minded) members of the herd, just like any wolf would. But we don't steal. That's just low. We're artists. It's con art art. You take pride in your work. Even a Mirplo knows the difference between sticking someone up and romancing his cash. The latter takes expertise; the former, just a gun. And if Mirplo would know this, then Allie would know it in spades. That's what made me so mad. To stoop to a s.n.a.t.c.h and grab was so far beneath her. Where was her self-respect?

Uhm ...

Right where it always is, Radar. Spang blam in the middle of her self-interest.

For a moment, the fog of my fury lifted and I saw things from Allie's point of view. She had to know that I wouldn't leave the keys to the burn just lying in a temp file on my laptop. Which meant it wasn't the computer she wanted.

Well, what did did she want? she want?

The scrawled address had said it all.

More Radar. More me.

She knew she couldn't burn down the house with my computer, but also that I couldn't burn down the house without it. Therefore, she hadn't stolen it, just taken it hostage. In a weird way, this made me feel better. The suppositive girl of my dreams was duplicitous, yes, but not dumb, and not low. She had me chasing my laptop across town like some ridiculous numpty chasing a gaffed dollar bill down the sidewalk while hidden kids tug it along on a string and just laugh. And she got what she wanted, Radar Hoverlander, utterly sans cool, bamming away on her door like a lunatic.

I stopped in mid-bam. Pulled out a pen. Wrote "I get it" on the back of the address sc.r.a.p and slid it under the door. Then I waited. After a few moments, I heard a m.u.f.fled rustling inside, and the rasp of a security chain being set. Allie opened the door as far as the chain would allow. I guess she a.s.sumed-rightly-that I wasn't the type to try shouldering my way in, and that in any case-again rightly-I didn't have near enough shoulder.

"Do you get it?" she asked. "Do you really?"

I sighed in conscious imitation of the patented Allie Sigh. "I get that this isn't about the Merlin Game," I said. "I get that you wanted me over here for a reason. And I get," I said, pointing past her to the rooms within, "that the reason's in there, not out here."

"Are you calm?" she asked. "Are you cool? Radar, there are people inside. I can't have you going all apes.h.i.t in here."

"I'm cool," I said. "Stable as a table." And in fact I found I was. I think it had something to do with surrender. Allie had proven herself capable of jugging me around like a piece on a chessboard. In a sense, the sooner the poor p.a.w.n admits it's a p.a.w.n, the happier it is. (But did she have to sleep with it? In retrospect, that was just cruel.) "It's your move," I said with a shrug. "Just like always."

Allie closed the door and undid the chain, then opened the door again just wide enough to slip out into the hallway with me. She put her hand on my arm. "You know," she said, "I could've gotten you here other ways. I didn't have to sleep with you. That was by choice."

"Yeah, I'm gonna take cold comfort in that right now."

"Oh, come on, Radar. Was it really that bad?" No, it was really that good. That's the problem No, it was really that good. That's the problem. Still, no use crying over spilt whatever. Time to man up. I mentally straightened my shoulders and slipped into grift mode. At this I felt a certain pride rise. After all, Allie's allies had gone to some lengths to set this all up. That showed they valued my talent. Which gave me some leverage going in. And when you're flying blind through a situation, leverage is handy to have.

"Okay," I said, "let's see what's behind door number three." We went inside.

My first impression of the apartment was: movie set movie set. Everything seemed studied and sterile. Worse, it all matched. The generic abstract art prints on the walls picked up color from the carpet. The plates, cups, and saucers in the china hutch bore mutually complementary floral designs-but no indication that they'd ever been, or ever would be, used for food or drink. More like a set of display dishes at Ikea. A ridiculously overchromed bookcase featured racks of cla.s.sics with rich leather bindings that had likewise clearly never been cracked. Magazines fanned on a teak sideboard bore boring t.i.tles like Coastal Living Coastal Living and and Decor Decor, and like the books, they looked utterly unread. I wondered if they even had text inside; they could be just dummies. The dining table was artfully made up with a fake fruit display, place mats, and neatly rolled cloth napkins in stainless steel holders. Even the view out the window looked fake. Behind the figure sitting on the couch, a set of silk drapes framed a postcard-perfect view of the Capitol Records Building, and the HOLLYWOOD sign beyond.

Wait ... the figure sitting on the couch?

I recognized him in an instant, but he seemed so out of place in this pristine realm that it took me a moment to shake off cognitive dissonance and accept the evidence of my eyes.

Finally I said, "h.e.l.lo, Vic."

Mirplo squirmed. "This isn't what it looks like."

"No? That's good. 'Cause it looks like a sellout."

"It's not that simple," he protested.

"It never is."

"No," agreed a voice from over my shoulder. "It really never is." Out of the bedroom strode the player I'd expected to find here, Milval Hines.

He had changed. Where before he carried himself with the larking naughtiness of a truant schoolboy, he now oozed arrogance and sense of purpose. He seemed to have shed years from his age, but that may have been nothing more than a matter of standing up straight and switching out of retiree drag and into something more of a businessman mode. So radical was his character shift that I knew in an instant what he was-a Jake, a cherry top, practiced at undercover work-and I mentally kicked myself for not seeing it sooner.

Beside him stood a brusque young woman in a stolid polyester suit. She, too, had the look of law enforcement, from the top of her manic-repressive brunette bun, down the front of her department-store blouse and skirt, all the way to the tips of her sensible shoes. In other clothes and circ.u.mstances you'd have judged her as hot. Here, she just came off as academy-graduate gray, but I'm sure that was by design. She had my computer tucked under her arm. Jacked into one of the USB ports was a device I didn't immediately recognize.

"I believe this is yours," she said, handing me the laptop. There was something not exactly American in her English. Kiwi? South Africa? Likely Australia. Or maybe just voice paint. In this crowd, you never can tell.

"It is," I agreed. I tinked the unfamiliar peripheral with a fingernail. "But I can't place this bad boy."

"We'll get to that in a minute," said Hines. "Let's sit down. Get familiar." He gestured toward the dining table, and we all took seats. I glanced at the fake fruit. Did it come with fake fruit flies? I decided to treat the entire conversation as bugged.

"So," I said to Hines, just for s.h.i.ts and giggles, "which branch of law enforcement are you with?" This wasn't necessarily the best opening move, since it demonstrated that I had him pegged. But in the name of grabbing status, I wanted the opening move to be mine.

"No need to show off, Radar," said Hines. "We know you know what you know. Your bona fides are not at issue here."

"You mean I've been vetted." The closet hottie pulled a breath to reply, but I held up my hand. "Wait," I said, "let me answer for you." I put an antipodean gloss on my voice, as close a match to hers as I could manage at first pa.s.s, and said, "'Of course you've been vetted, Mr. Hoverlander. What do you think this whole episode has been about?'" In a sense I was pinging her, trying to determine how she liked me aping her accent and also jumping her lines. To her credit, she maintained a face of utmost poker. I thought I might have to ping a little harder next time.

"Well," asked Hines, "what do do you think it's been about?" you think it's been about?"

"I'll reserve judgment on that." I eyed Mirplo. "Since it's not that simple and all."

"I swear to G.o.d, Radar, I didn't tell them anything they didn't already know."

"Whatever," I whatevered. To Hines I said, "It's your meeting, Gramps. You've got the floor."

"Fine. Let's start with introductions." He gestured toward his colleague. "This is Detective Constable Claire Scovil. She's with the Australian High Tech Crime Centre."

"Really?" I c.o.c.ked a brow. "You're a long way from home."

"It's not so far to Toluca Lake."

"She's on detachment," said Hines.

For the sum of two odd reasons, I decided that this had a better than even chance of being true. First, I happened to know that there was a furnished-apartment complex in Toluca Lake, popular with visitors "on detachment." Second, she said Toluca Lake like it was a toy she liked to play with. Like the way people can't get enough of saying Cahuenga Boulevard once they get that it's ka-WAYNE-guh, not ka-HUN-guh.

"Detached to whom?" I asked. Seemed like the logical next question.

But what happened next was not logical-and just a little bit scary. Hines and Allie exchanged looks. Not long, just a glance. But enough to let me know that they both knew the answer to my logical next question. Which meant-G.o.d, dare I believe it?-that Allie could be a cherry top, too. Trust me, there's nothing a grifter likes less than learning that one of his kind has been flipped. Or not even flipped? Perhaps she'd been law all along. Was there a police department training program somewhere good enough to spit out faux grifters of Allie's skillful ilk? The thought sent a shudder through me. If they had that level of countermeasure, I might as well hang up my fake pa.s.sport and bogus notary stamp, because the grift as I knew it was done.

But that was a contemplation for later. Just then, I was still in the moment, still trying to wrest control. "Look," I said, spreading my hands. "I get that the Merlin Game has been rained out. And I get that you think you have me by the short hairs. Who knows? Maybe you do. I haven't seen all the cards in your deck. But the dramatics. This"-I gestured around the room-"bourgeois safe-house thing you've got going here. It really doesn't work for me. Can we just skip to the Cliffs Notes version of what's what?"

"Short attention span, Radar?" mocked Hines. "That doesn't seem like you."

I just glared at him. "Let's start with your real name."

"Let's start with yours."

"Radar Hoverlander," I said evenly.

"Milval Hines," he replied, even more evenly.

Okay, well, that didn't go anywhere.

I shut my yap. I'd done too much talking anyhow. Mostly when people prattle on, it's a sign of nervousness. I'd been far too chatty for my own good. Plus, I reminded myself, this was Hines's show. He'd tell me at his leisure what he wanted me to know. I could decide at mine what to believe.

Silence took its toll. Mirplo was the first to get fidgety. He plucked a fake apple from the bowl and rolled it back and forth on the tabletop between his hands. Claire Scovil looked at her nails with studied disinterest. Allie and Hines again exchanged looks. I couldn't tell from the exchange which of them had the power to change the talk/don't talk signal from red to green, but it's not uncommon in the grift for a team's real authority to rest with someone who looks like a lackey. I'd played that role many times myself: the n.u.m.b.n.u.t.s in the background who's really pulling the strings. I knew from adversarial experience that undercover law often worked the same way. Therefore, this could very possibly be her show, not his.

Hines spoke. "I'm with a federal fraud task force." Was there a hitch in his I'm I'm, like it wanted to come out we're we're, but caught itself in time? Or was I once again oversolving the problem? Hard to tell.

"But that's not your day job," I said.

"Normally I'm FBI."

"Fibbie," I said. "Okay, well, everyone's got to earn a living." I looked at Allie and Mirplo. "Any other fibbers here?" They didn't respond, and once again I chided myself for talking too much. Like the sign says, "It's better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you're a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Mouth shut, ears peeled, I finally got this gist: that Detective Scovil had followed the trail of some Aussie cyberperp to L.A., where said trail had then gone cold. In concert with the fibbies, and operating under the old takes-a-thief-to-catch-a-thief paradigm, she hoped to have me warm it up again.

"In exchange," said Hines, "we're prepared to forgive your ... transgressions up till now."

"Which transgressions are those? The ones you entrapped me into?"

With a thin smile, Hines got up from the table and went into the bedroom for a moment. When he returned, he had a manila folder. This he slapped like a summons on the table before me. I opened it and skimmed its contents.

Wow.

Holy s.h.i.t.

There, in pleonastic detail, was a greatest hits version of every significant scam I'd run in the past five years. Anything that had had the slightest internet vector-and what didn't these days?-had apparently been cracked like a coconut and stored in some devious database somewhere. Plus bank records, onsh.o.r.e and offsh.o.r.e transactions, and bogus doc.u.mentation of every stripe. A whole d.a.m.n d.a.m.ning (and highly indictable) paper trail wending back through Radar's sordid adventures on what some call the wrong side of the law.

Want to know how I felt? Violated, that's how.

But I didn't let that show. Instead I just whistled a respectful low whistle. "I have to admit," I said, "I didn't think you fibbies had it in you."

"It's easy when you have one of those," said Hines, indicating the device still jacked into my computer. "You'd be surprised what this baby can do." I would be surprised. It looked not much different from a normal data stick.

"Why all the hanky-panky?" I asked. "Why didn't you just call me into your field office or whatever, and make your pitch?"

"As you said, you had to be vetted. People in your line of work talk a good game. They can't always back up their claims."

I turned to Allie. "And you trying to pull the plug?"

"For my benefit," said Claire. "To see how much bottle you had."

"Enough?" I asked.

She nodded. "You seem to have the requisite stick-to-itiveness."

"Do you talk like that at home? Do you compliment your boyfriend on his stick-to-itiveness?" I was pinging her again, on a more personal level. I didn't get much of a hit, just a hint of rising color at her collarbone, but it was enough to know two things-no boyfriend, and she felt the lack.

As for the rest of it, truth to tell, I had no idea. They could be who they said they were, or this could be just the next level of noise. Frankly, I was getting tired of shoveling such smoke. I needed some tangible facts.

Time to ping the whole joint.

I closed the file and placed both hands on the cover. "Look," I said, "this is crackerjack work, really. When I think of all the hours of research, the wiretaps, the pa.s.swords axed, well, it just puts me in awe of my mighty tax dollars at work. Either that or it's not tax dollars. For all I know, you're all on the razzle and just head and shoulders better at it than me." I looked at Vic. "Except you, Mirplo. I'm guessing that you've been played like I've been played." To Allie and Hines I said, "As for you two, you've fed me nothing but horses.h.i.t since the moment we met. Can you forgive me for not wanting to swallow some more?" Next I addressed the notional Aussie. "You I don't know," I said. "But I'm gonna go with 'guilty by a.s.sociation.' You look nice, though. Bet you look great in a wet T-shirt." I don't know why I said that. It was unnecessarily provocative. But something about the woman just rankled me, and I couldn't resist rankling back. I was rewarded with a look sour enough to curdle milk.

I stood up. Grabbed my computer. Popped out their peripheral and dropped it in the bowl of wax fruit. "Now then: If you've got uniformed Jakes downstairs waiting to arrest me, so be it. I've been busted before. It's not the end of the world. But I have a feeling there are no waiting Jakes, just like I've got a feeling there's no Australian High Tech Crime Centre, or federal fraud task force, and the closest you, Hines, have been to the FBI is a true-crime show you saw on the Discovery channel once. This is all just bogus bogosity, and I am out of here."

I can play ball with cops. I can. But you have to know it's cops you're dealing with, and there was just no way I could trust any answer I got from this crew. It was like Mirplo swearing by the authenticity of his Photoshop fakes. How are you going to believe the guy with the manifest reason to lie? So I forced their hand. I had to. If they did have Jakes downstairs, it would at least verify their bona fides, and then we could do business. If they were just a bunch of big lying liars, I figured they'd be so stunned by my declarative exit that I could get in the wind before they had a chance to react. I knew I'd be putting some things behind me, notably one lame friendship and one abortive love affair (and the Merlin Game, but that's just money). Plus also I'd have to vacate L.A., which was a shame, but unavoidable. Part of successfully cutting your losses is knowing when to cut and run. Which you do without ego and without stopping to measure anyone's d.i.c.ks. Considering how well they'd played me so far, I had to tip my hat to their superior skill-a hat I intended to tip from the safe distant bunker of anonymity.

Okay, I was wrong about one thing.

The cops weren't waiting downstairs.

They were right outside the door.

the grifter of oz.

T he Jakes hustled me back inside. They did it right, too: professionally, and with respect. No att.i.tude or guns, just, "We're going to need you to step back into the room, sir." This is how you like your cops to behave. Just because you're doing your job and they're doing theirs, there's no reason for everyone to get all hostile with each other. For the many times I've been busted, I've always admired the Jakes who had the common courtesy to treat me like a human being. All the same, though, I could see the steel in these two. I could tell I was only one gratuitous "Bite me" away from being facedown on the carpet with a knee in my back. he Jakes hustled me back inside. They did it right, too: professionally, and with respect. No att.i.tude or guns, just, "We're going to need you to step back into the room, sir." This is how you like your cops to behave. Just because you're doing your job and they're doing theirs, there's no reason for everyone to get all hostile with each other. For the many times I've been busted, I've always admired the Jakes who had the common courtesy to treat me like a human being. All the same, though, I could see the steel in these two. I could tell I was only one gratuitous "Bite me" away from being facedown on the carpet with a knee in my back.

More to the point, I could tell they were the real deal. Not fabricats, not even rent-a-cops. You can argue chicken and egg about cop att.i.tude-does their hard-a.s.s nature inform their career choice, or do they osmose it on the job?-but either way, true cop mojo is impossible to fake. Grifters can't do it, except in circ.u.mstances like the after-party snuke, where you don't have to be particularly convincing, just snarky and loud, less true cop than cop cartoon. I'm saying: See a man in officer kit, you can tell whether it's a uniform or a costume. While I couldn't completely discount the possibility of above-the-rim role playing, I felt I could trust that these Jakes were were Jakes. On the present shifting sands of bafflegab, that wasn't much, but at least it was something. Jakes. On the present shifting sands of bafflegab, that wasn't much, but at least it was something.

In any case, a moment later, I found myself right back in the chair I'd vacated a moment before. While Hines walked the cops to the door, I picked up a wax apple and feinted it at Mirplo's head. He flinched.

Hines came back and sat down. He leafed through my file, then set it aside. "So far," he said in measured tones, "nothing has happened that can't unhappen. But I need to know you're on board."

I sighed-a real sigh this time. "Appreciate my position," I said. "If you're who you say you are, then of course I'm happy to help the cause of international law and order, homeland security, save the whales, what have you. Not to mention my personal pa.s.sionate cause of staying before bars. But if you're not who you say you are, then I'm just a chump who's getting rechumped. How'm I supposed to know which?"

"The officers didn't convince you?"

"They convinced me a little," I granted. "But you need to convince me a lot."

Hines and Scovil took their time and did it right: a thorough and plausible job of introducing me to the Grifter of Oz and the threat he posed. If they were to be believed, he was quite an extraordinary dude.

If they were to be believed.

William Yuan was born in Sydney of Chinese parents at roughly the same time I was born wherever of whomever. Like me, Yuan was a young achiever who got admitted to, and kicked out of, college at a precociously early age. Also like me, he found it pleasing to work on the fringes of legitimacy. He made much of the internet heyday by launching websites that had great commercial promise-though no particular basis in fact-and then gulling private-equity guys into hefty buys. Really, who wouldn't take a flier on www.unearthme.com, once they learned of Billy Yuan's revolutionary new technique for scanning satellite photos of Earth to locate previously hidden mineral deposits? Gold! Silver! Rhodium! Too good to be true?

Of course!

Any knowledgeable grifter would have instantly recognized the scam as an updated version of dowsing or water witching. But the PE guys weren't that knowledgeable, and Yuan made a killing. Only, he tried to sell his vaporware to the government, and that bought him eighteen months in Mount Gambier, Australia's first privately run prison. By the time he finished his bid, he was consulting to prison management on how to make much more money by selling prisons they had no intent to build. Really, the kid had a cat's knack for landing on his feet.

And what was he up to now? Why did he beat cheeks out of Australia, and why was Australia going to such lengths to hunt him down? Here the story starts to get a little murky. In gist, Yuan had been caught sniffing around the software of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Or not caught, exactly: detected; surprised in the act of the hack. But apparently in pinging him, the authorities had pinged themselves as well. Yuan shut down his operation and hopped the first Qantas out of town.

"Our concern," said Scovil, "is that Yuan has found a way to compromise the bank's security and will, at a later time, attempt penetration."