"I love it when you say penetration penetration," I said, again yielding to the urge to provoke her. Some people you just don't like. Her eyes clouded over in anger, but she swiftly regained her dark poise. It was clear that she wouldn't let herself be baited by the likes of little me. Which, of course, just made the likes of little me want to bait her all the more.

And don't think I wasn't mentally looking over my shoulder at Allie during all this. I had no idea what I was to her just then, although the word tool tool, in all its manifestations, sprang to mind. In any case, I wanted her to know that as far as I was concerned, she wasn't the only woman in the room, and I hoped that p.i.s.sed her off. I also wanted very much to know what her role was here, but that wasn't the sort of question I could just come right out and ask. I'd have to nibble away at its edges, just like Billy Yuan had, seemingly, nibbled away at the bank.

"How did he get so good?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Hines.

"You're telling me he's a top-flight grifter and and a world-cla.s.s hacker? That's a rare combination." a world-cla.s.s hacker? That's a rare combination."

"He's a man of many talents, Radar. Just like you."

"Not like me. I can guess a pa.s.sword in a pinch, but I couldn't hack bank security. h.e.l.l, I can't hack a piggy bank without a hammer. So I ask again: How did he get so good?"

Scovil looked unhappy. "We trained him," she said at last.

I laughed. "You what?"

"After he got out of prison, we, ah, persuaded him that there was more benefit in working with us than against us."

"So you taught him everything he needed to know to go after your own national bank. That is rich." No one else seemed to find it particularly rich. Mirplo had gone all mopey, perhaps feeling overlooked, his ego underfed. Hines seemed worried that I wasn't buying all of this. Allie was where Allie was. And Scovil had just made an embarra.s.sing admission. So, yeah, everyone in the room was unhappy but me. In the spirit of Schadenfreude, I decided to turn the screw. "So what's his real name?" I asked.

"What do you mean 'real name'?" asked Scovil. "It's William Yuan." I snickered. "What's so funny?" she demanded.

"The yuan is the currency of China, yeah?"

"So? It's also a very common name."

"Yes, it is. And how does it translate into English?"

"I don't know. 'Dollar,' I suppose."

"There you go," I said. "Billy Yuan. Dollar Bill. A grifter's inside joke to himself if ever there was one. He might as well have called himself Billy the Kid."

Hines looked altogether too pleased with this. "You see?" he told the others. "This is why we need Radar. He thinks just like Yuan, or whatever his name is. They're going to get along great."

"Yeah, we will," I said. "Once I find him. Anyone know how I should go about that?"

"Oh, we know where he is," said Hines. "That is, Allie does."

"Well, if she knows," I couldn't help asking, "why doesn't just she go after him? I'm sure they'll get along famously, too."

"Not so much," said Allie, and I thought I heard a piece of her past in her voice. What was there? Wistfulness? Regret?

"Oh, my G.o.d," I said. "You dated him." I didn't know if this was true or not, but looking at Allie, I could see that she didn't much like being the object of my inspection. Okay Okay, I thought, that's a card I can probably play again. But save it. Don't overuse it that's a card I can probably play again. But save it. Don't overuse it.

They told me where I could find Yuan and gave me a generous forty-eight hours to make contact. With that, the meeting started to wind down. I could tell that from Hines's and Scovil's point of view, it was all mission accomplished. Allie looked less smug-in fact, it seemed to me that her smug was at its lowest ebb since the moment we'd met. Clearly the notion of me hooking up with Billy Yuan was stirring some ambivalence in her. And that only left ...

"Mirplo," I said. "How do you figure in?"

"Mr. Mirplo," said Hines, "has worked for our organization on a ... contract basis for some time."

"In other words, he's a snitch."

"Eyes and ears, Radar," protested Vic. "Come on."

"Why is he here now?" I asked. "Haven't you sort of blown his cover?"

"We don't need him undercover anymore. As of today, he's your partner."

"My what, now?"

"Radar," said Hines, "I know how much you love puzzles, and I have every confidence that you'll help us unravel this one. However, having confidence in a confidence man is a bit like ... well, the metaphor escapes me. The point is, we need to make sure you don't wander off the path. With Vic at your side," he said with a smile, "you'll never walk alone."

"Great," I muttered. "The world's greatest f.u.c.kwit is my chaperone."

So the meeting broke up. Vic was now my appendage, like a prehensile tail I could neither hang from a tree with nor wag at pretty girls. I had been co-opted into law enforcement. It wasn't the first time, but still it was a suit that didn't hang well on my frame. Some people don't look good in plaid; I don't look good in narc.

A question nagged at me like a sore tooth, and that was one of motivation. If these good citizens were just out to bust Dollar Bill, then fine. Let them have their bust, and I'll be on my way. But why all the levels of subterfuge? Why not just use the same tools on him that they'd used on me: surveillance and bugs, tracks, hacks, and pa.s.sword cracks? Certainly that would produce enough hard evidence to present in a court of law. But perhaps a court of law was not to be the final disposition of this case. After all, they'd manipulated me to serve certain ends. Who's to say they wouldn't manipulate him the same way, once I'd helped them catch and compromise him? Even with all the what and where of things being handed out like Easter treats, I still didn't have a firm handle on the why. And without the why, I was just as lost as I'd been going in. I was, I suddenly realized, still playing the same game, just at a different level. And in order to figure out what was really going on, I'd have to keep playing, keep riding the levels, adapting to circ.u.mstances as circ.u.mstances demanded or allowed. I'm here to tell you that this is no way to run a respectable snuke. A grifter likes to be holding all the cards-or at least marking the ones he's not holding. Here my hand was limited to, well, my skill set and my healthy skepticism. I really didn't have anything else going for me: no insight, no hidden tricks, no trustworthy chums, no exit strategy.

I was, in short, in s.h.i.t.

Still, not inextricably. After all, once I agreed to work the gaff, they had to give me some kind of room to move. They couldn't crowd me too close, or what I was working on wouldn't work. And with only the vaunted (which is to say nonexistent) guardian skills of a Mirplo standing between me and freedom, there was no reason to believe I couldn't shade and fade whenever I wanted. No doubt they knew this, and it distressed me that they didn't work visibly hard to prevent it. Were there invisible strings attached? Perhaps all my aliases were compromised, even the virgin ones. This meant that someone would have worked over my apartment, my storage unit, and my safe deposit boxes, and certainly that was within the realm of possibility. Still, it didn't seem like enough to glue me to the grift. If I really wanted to get gone, I could get gone. So why did they think I'd stay?

It's what Hines said: "I know how much you like puzzles."

In this, alas, he was right. Unknown people for unknown reasons had decided to f.u.c.k up my life. I was determined not to quit until I had not only unupf.u.c.ked it, but gotten to the bottom of why. What can I tell you? Sometimes your pride will take you places your common sense wouldn't go.

Like, for example, to the Blue Magoon.

the blue magoon.

I met a Swede once on a flight from London to Los Angeles, a two-pack-a-day man, jonesing hard for a cigarette almost before we went wheels up. At one point, he asked me, "When we land in Los Angeles, where is the soonest I can smoke? Do they have special areas, or will I have to wait till I get outside?" met a Swede once on a flight from London to Los Angeles, a two-pack-a-day man, jonesing hard for a cigarette almost before we went wheels up. At one point, he asked me, "When we land in Los Angeles, where is the soonest I can smoke? Do they have special areas, or will I have to wait till I get outside?"

"Oh, you can't smoke in California," I said.

"In the terminal in general, yes, I understand."

"No, no, anywhere; from border to border, it's been banned. They pa.s.sed a law." You should have seen the color drain from his face. "I'm just messing with you, man. You can smoke outside."

But as the saying goes, "Your jokes will become your reality." Over the years, California's smoke-free airs.p.a.ce expanded to encompa.s.s beaches, parks, playgrounds, stadiums, even sidewalks in certain cities. It reached the point that about the only place you could could smoke was in the privacy of your own home. Or at the Blue Magoon. smoke was in the privacy of your own home. Or at the Blue Magoon.

The Blue Magoon was a dive bar on Santa Monica Boulevard in the borderland between Hollywood and West Hollywood, with an oliated clientele of gay, straight, biker, junkie, and pure Monday morning drunk. The place reeked perpetually of vomit and stale beer. Also of cigarette smoke, for the Blue Magoon, its own little outlaw corner of the world, was one spot in L.A. where you could still spark up with impunity. The owner of the Magoon had been fined 267 times for violating state smoking bans. He'd been threatened with loss of license, even sued. He didn't give a rat's a.s.s. With the ferocity of a mama lion defending her cubs, he fought every fine, every suit, every attempt to shut him down. The funny thing is, the guy didn't even smoke. He just had this libertarian streak in him-his daddy had run the bar before him and had died from secondhand smoke, and by d.a.m.n, he was gonna do the same.

With its off-the-reservation reputation, the Magoon attracted just a raft of slackers, spivs, angle shooters, hucksters, mooks, art fraudists, pill pushers, franchise capitalists, and sundry other denizens of the demimonde. People would meet there to arrange alliances, pimp their sisters, sell contraband, buy counterfeits and chemicals, trade illegal aliens, and make record deals. I myself had only been there once. Walked in, turned up my nose and walked back out. Decided if that's what it took to hook up with L.A. hustlers, I'd just as soon fly solo. I'm not a sn.o.b, but honestly, to call the place a s.h.i.thole makes s.h.i.tholes shine.

Mirplo, of course, loved it, and when Allie told us that Billy Yuan had become a habitue, Vic nearly wet his pants. I think he thought it was some kind of Disneyland for people like us: "The crookedest place on Earth." Still, it was an iffy proposition. Here was a known grifter in a known grifters' lair. Anyone walking in the door was a.s.sumed to be on the razzle, and who extends the hand of trust to someone on the razzle? No intelligent grifter, that's for sure, and you had to believe that Yuan was molto intelligente molto intelligente, else he wouldn't have made it this far nor strewn such heat in his wake. So how do I penetrate the Magoon without looking like a guy in the game? Like I said, iffy proposition. Oddly, it was Hines who pointed me toward the angle to shoot, for it occurred to me that just as he had sold himself to me as a citizen, I might could vend myself to Yuan the same way. Of course, for a citizen to wander unsuspectingly into a place like the Magoon would be a bad mistake.

But hey, people make mistakes every day.

For what I had in mind, it wouldn't do for me to be there waiting, so I sent Vic in to loiter and let me know when Yuan showed up. He whined a little about his a.s.signment. "What I'm gonna do all day just sitting there?"

"Do a crossword," I said. "It's good for you. It'll stretch your brain." I gave him a copy of People People magazine (home of the world's most cretinous crossword), opened to the puzzle page. "Here," I said, "I'll get you started. One across: five-letter word for Academy Award." magazine (home of the world's most cretinous crossword), opened to the puzzle page. "Here," I said, "I'll get you started. One across: five-letter word for Academy Award."

He thought long and hard before barfing out, "Statue?"

"How many letters in statue?"

He counted them on his fingers and concluded, "Oh."

"Yeah, oh. Try again."

"Ah ... award?"

"Oscar, you nimrod. Look, just go in there, stay cool, lay low, and text me when Yuan rolls in."

"What if he doesn't?"

"Then we'll come back tomorrow."

"That could get old real fast."

"You should've thought about that before you sold me out to the fibbies."

Oddly, this got Mirplo's back up. "Man, Radar," he said, "you're just gonna hafta get over that, you know? I didn't sell you out, I hooked you up, at least that's how it looked to me at the time. And if you want to kick my a.s.s, I wish you'd just kick it and get the kicking over with, but this pa.s.sive-aggressive resentment bulls.h.i.t is p.i.s.sing me off, so just take it, and your c.r.a.ppy crossword puzzle"-he slapped the magazine against my chest-"and shove 'em up your a.s.s. Okay?" He spun on his heel and, with the hauteur of a dowager aunt, sailed off toward the Magoon.

"You sure you don't want the magazine?" I called after him.

Vic bellowed back in the third person as Uncle Joe. "He'll watch Judge Judy!"

I sure as h.e.l.l wasn't going to watch Judge Judy. I killed my idle hours at a nearby bookstore, one of those giant ones with seventeen different histories of the Peloponnesian Wars and whole shelves devoted to the art of cooking with cheese. The bookstore is the library of the modern age, which you can tell just by looking around at the earnest students sitting cross-legged on the floor of the test prep section or the stinky homeless leafing through magazines and trying desperately not to fall asleep and, therefore, down.

I looked around for something to read up on, but I really couldn't concentrate. I kept thinking about how Allie and my alter ego Ryan Reed had supposedly met in a bookstore. I imagined it was one of those cute meets, where you stalk each other flirtily through the stacks, eventually simultaneously confronting each other with, "Why are you following me?" and "I wasn't following you, you were following me," prelude to an exchange of random banter, then coffee, a leisurely stroll, and a good-night kiss.

I'm not that old. Actuarially speaking, I've got like three quarters of a century to go. But as I wandered around that bookstore, waxing nostalgic for a love affair that never existed except as a fleeting figment of Allie's and my coagent imagination, I felt prohibitively removed from the snowiness you need to just plunge yourself into another person's life. Had I ever been that unguarded, that free? I didn't think so, and in that moment I felt the loss, like if you had a major league fastball but never yanked yourself away from your studies long enough to try out for a team. That was me: so caught in the grift net that I let the best of my youth pa.s.s by. You could argue that I wasn't all that innocent to begin with, but I would argue back that even if you've never had innocence, you can lose it just the same. Let's call it the potential for innocence-in my case squandered on commerce. What was I doing when I should have been picking up girls in bookstores? Selling artificial gold. Lots of it, yay me. I typically had all the money I needed to take a nice lady out to lunch but, alas, no lady, no lunch.

I buried myself in a copy of Guns and Ammo Guns and Ammo magazine, read up on Finland's new Sako rifles, and tried to forget all about it, the Allie and the innocence and all. magazine, read up on Finland's new Sako rifles, and tried to forget all about it, the Allie and the innocence and all.

Some indeterminate time later, my cell phone alerted me to an incoming text message: the pigeon p.o.o.p is on the windshield What pa.s.sed for Mirplovian wit informing me that Yuan had arrived. It was time for me to get into character. I quick-scanned the shelves for the right props and found what I was looking for in A Guide to American Graduate Schools A Guide to American Graduate Schools and a laminated map of Los Angeles. I paid for these things, broke the spine of the book and riffled its pages to give it a thumbed feel, and headed out. and a laminated map of Los Angeles. I paid for these things, broke the spine of the book and riffled its pages to give it a thumbed feel, and headed out.

I was making much of this up as I went along, for I have found that my own gift for the grift is largely improvisational. When I grab a good idea and run with it, things usually work out, but when I try to over-solve the problem ... well, we've already seen how well that's that's gone. Anyway, in Yuan's case, I really didn't want to know too much, for when you "meet" a well-researched mark, there's always the chance that some of your research will accidentally dribble out. gone. Anyway, in Yuan's case, I really didn't want to know too much, for when you "meet" a well-researched mark, there's always the chance that some of your research will accidentally dribble out.

Twenty minutes later, I stood in the doorway of the Blue Magoon letting my eyes adjust to the gloom and my lungs to oxygen debt. The bartender squinted at me and gave the barest grunt of greeting. Mirplo had cleared out. Of the half-dozen people drinking their day away, the only Asian in the bar was not hard to spot. He occupied the last booth before the bathrooms, where he sat hunched over a newspaper. His lank black hair fell down over his eyes and he pushed it away at intervals, only to have it fall back down and occlude his vision once again.

I walked to the bar, spread out my laminated map, and asked the bartender, "If I were UCLA, where would I be?"

"Nowhere near here," he said.

"That's what I was afraid of," I said. "Did I make a wrong turn off Cahuenga?" I p.r.o.nounced it ka-HUN-guh.

"Man, that's the least of your wrong turns," said the bartender. He took my map and traced a route with his finger. "Go down to Holloway, shoot up to Sunset, and take that out to Westwood. UCLA's on your left."

"Thanks," I said. "Mind if I use your can?"

"Knock yourself out." I walked toward the bathroom. As I drew abreast of Yuan's booth, my cell phone rang. I broke stride to answer it.

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

"It's me calling you," said Mirplo. "How's my timing?"

"Hi, Dad," I said with an edge of irritation in my voice.

"Blee blee blah blah bloo bloo," said Mirplo, carrying on his part of the conversation as he saw fit.

Now I really sounded irked. "Dad, I told you, nothing's been decided yet. I'm just having a look around."

"Ape ledger legions toothy flak offer hew knighted snakes over marigolds."

"Yeah, well it's my money, isn't it?"

"Money schmoney, honey bunny."

"Dad," I said severely, "I'm not having this conversation. That's why it's called a trust, remember? Because people trust you with it."

"There once was a girl from Cadiz, whose hooters hung down to her knees. She spread her v.a.g.i.n.a from here to Regina ..."

"Nothing's been decided! I'll call you later."

"... and b.u.t.tered her b.u.t.t crack with cheese."

I closed the phone with an angry snap.

"Trouble?" asked Yuan, not looking up from the paper. I heard the flattened vowels of his Australian accent.

"Family," I said with a shrug, and went into the can.

When I came back out, Yuan had changed position. He now leaned casually against the wall of the booth, his pipe-stem legs stretched out across the red vinyl bench. "So," he asked as I pa.s.sed, "what do you want to study?"

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you're scouting schools."

"I am." I let my voice betray my surprise. "How did you know?"

He c.o.c.ked a slender finger at my book. "Between that and ... 'Dad, it's my money,' I'd say ... gonna take a lark here ..." He furrowed his brow in ponder. "Something impractical. Art?"