The Texas Twist Read online

“It’s a memoir?”

  “Maybe. Maybe a how-to. Maybe a novel. I haven’t made up my mind.”

  “Uh-huh. And when did you decide to write this book?” asked Allie.

  “Just now,” said Vic. “When I said that aphormism about witnesses. I thought, ‘That’s good. Someone should write that down.’ So I did.”

  “And the notebook?” asked Radar.

  “Oh, I started carrying it.”

  “What for?”

  “In case I decide to write a book. Come on, Radar, keep up.” Radar didn’t keep up; he gave up. At a certain point, Mirplovian logic becomes so circular that there’s no sense in following it. You’re much better off just staying in one place and waiting for it to swing back around. He and Allie exchanged the looks of indulgent parents as, unbidden, Radar’s hand went scurrying back up Allie’s thigh. That was one happy hand. Fatherhood, it seemed to be saying, would suit it fine. Allie was happy with the happy hand, but she wondered how it would feel when the giddy wore off. The truth is revealed under pressure, Allie knew, and this would be a new kind of pressure for the man she loved, a man whose own childhood—dead mom, disconnected dad—left lots to be desired in the department of love. Not that hers didn’t—all those foster homes, all those mauling foster fathers—so it was new ground for them both. It didn’t feel like shaky ground right now, but of course that could change.

  “So maybe that’s a hole in his docket,” said Radar, returning his brain’s, if not his hand’s, attention to the apparent inconsistency in Adam’s story, “and maybe we can dig there. But whatever we find, we don’t make a big deal about it. We just help Sarah disengage. If this guy’s on the snuke that’s fine, his affair. We just want him to snuke elsewhere. He doesn’t need to know anything about us.” Radar indicated Vic’s notebook. “He can read about us later when we’re a bestseller.”

  “Anyway,” said Allie, “widowed or divorced, how does he present to the world?”

  Radar woke up his tablet computer, the latest generation Grape with its distinctive purple synthetic rubber frame and ergonomic teardrop form. He started off by showing them Adam’s handmade website, a static offering of financial services, evidently created many years ago and barely updated since. Next came a Facebook page, a tribute to the departed Dylan with hopes of heaven and statements of Adam’s dream to give back. Surfing on, Radar pointed out a couple of online medical-discussion forums where Adam’s name had popped up; someone wondered if Ames was on the level, a question to which no one had replied. The website didn’t strike Allie or Vic as particularly fishy, but that didn’t mean much. It could easily have been an artifact of an earlier snuke, or for that matter something recently created and anchored to an heirloom URL in order to backpredict a credible narrative. All three of them could do that sort of work before breakfast. As for the tribute to the son, there was nothing in the language that definitively linked Dylan’s tale to any particular hospital or medical institution. To the casual eye, it seemed to be the heartfelt and intimate grief of a bereaved dad, long on emotion and therefore plausibly short on detail. To a more jaundiced eye (of which this particular table seated six), it conveniently blocked any tangible avenue for further investigation. And the discussion boards? Either dead ends or misleads designed to look like dead ends. You couldn’t tell. These days, any decent grifter could create a solid, internally consistent online reality. It meant nothing and proved nothing, any more than a bogus badge proved you were a cop.

  After they’d run through all the links, Mirplo went back and lingered over the Facebook page, with its slide-show display of photos of Dylan. He furrowed his brow in concentration, and Radar feared he might birth another aphormism, but instead he said, “Interesting thing about these photos, they’re all park shots.” He pointed out how all the pictures in the slide show showed Dylan skateboarding or rollerblading, kicking a soccer ball, or just hanging out, all at fall foliage time, presumably somewhere in New England, which Ames had told Sarah was home. Vic zoomed the display to maximum resolution, whereupon the grainy quality of the images became evident.

  “Telephoto,” said Radar.

  “That’s how I see it,” said Vic.

  “But a good job,” added Allie. “You could easily mistake them for natural close-ups.” She winked at Vic. “Unless you had a suspicious mind.” Mirplo graced her comment with a minimal nod of his head, as if she had bestowed upon him great praise. As with his knack for barbarous malaprops, Vic had a gift for missing meaning—or perhaps he just convened reality at a location more to his liking.

  “The boy’s wearing different outfits,” noted Radar.

  “Shots taken on different days,” postulated Vic. “Ames photo-stalks for a week, maybe, builds up a decent portfolio of snaps.”

  “That’s going the extra mile,” said Allie.

  “You’d have to,” said Radar. “You can’t filch pictures like this from Flickr, not when people like us can do reverse-lookup match searches on your images. You’d have to use originals, nothing that could be tracked.”

  “It’s still not dispositive,” said Allie. “Maybe he just liked shooting telephoto of his son.”

  “And maybe my great-grandfather invented PEZ candy,” said Radar. “In fact, I’m sure he did. I inherited a piece of the patent. Want to buy out my share?”

  She smacked him for teasing her, which quickly led to some tickly monkey business and kissy-face, whereupon Mirplo declared, “Bored,” and buried himself in Radar’s Grape.

  Radar suddenly pulled back from Allie and said, “Triton!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “For a name. Boy or girl, doesn’t matter. Cool either way.”

  “Too soon,” said Allie, kissing his nose. “Way too soon.”

  “Triton Hoverlander,” said Mirplo, reaching for his notebook. “I’d better write that down.”

  We Smell a Rat

  You called him?”

  “You said you wanted to meet him,” said Sarah.

  Radar leaned against the door frame of his flat, regarding Sarah, who stood before him in the taut jeans and tight sweater that comprised her standard winter outfit. He didn’t quite know what to make of this. “No, I said if he contacts you.” Radar had assumed Sarah would understand that her default move was to take no action, but he looked into her guileless eyes and realized that this wasn’t the case. Spell everything out, he told himself. With this one you have to spell it all out. Radar sighed. “Come on in,” he said. “Where’s Jonah?”

  “Fishing.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Sarah self-consciously mimed donning a helmet, and Radar understood her to mean the new class of virtual-reality video game controllers, the ones where you do everything with your eyes. A glimpse here, a blink there, and, apparently, you’ve landed a bass. “I can’t get him off it,” she said. “I know it’s not good for him, but when he’s there, he’s not.…” She rubbed her arm in a way that conveyed her grasp of the agony her son’s own skin brought him. “He’s better when he’s distracted.”

  Radar nodded. He took her into the kitchen and sat opposite her at the long, narrow farmwood breakfast table that had come with the place. “Okay,” he said, “tell me what you told him. Don’t leave anything out.”

  He must have sounded brusque, for Sarah suddenly, defensively, asked, “Where’s Allie?”

  “Hot yoga. A last going-away sweat before she gives it up for the duration.”

  “Duration?”

  “Of the pregnancy. She’ll be taking, I don’t know, cold yoga instead.”

  “Pregnancy?” Sarah’s wide blue eyes poked soft holes in the air.

  “Oh, God, she didn’t tell you? I would’ve thought—”

  Sarah’s arms shot across the table to wrap around his neck and she dragged them both half to their feet. “Oh, Radar, that’s wonderful!” She hugged him as hard as their awkward embrace allowed, and mashed her cheek against his. Then she withdrew, but not before, Radar had to think, nuzzling for a beat.
“Well,” she said sternly, “I’ll have words with Allie later. The things a friend has to hear from her friend’s boyfriend. Are you going to make an honest woman out of her?”

  “That might be harder than it looks,” said Radar, deflecting the question, as he did most personal ones, with a joke. Sarah, though, didn’t quite get it. She laughed self-consciously, cued more by his tone than his words.

  “Well, congratulations either way,” she said as she sat back down. She clasped her hands and placed them on the table. “Okay, what I told Mr. Ames…Adam. I told him that you were like me: excited to know there was hope for Jonah.” She lowered her eyes, “Only maybe not so inclined as me to believe. I just asked him to have a word with you, tell you what he told me and answer all your questions. He was completely agreeable. He offered to meet right away. Surely that’s not the sort of thing a scoundrel would do.”

  Radar asked, “Did he think it was odd, having the neighbors look in?”

  “Not particularly. I told him we were friends. I confessed I’m not very good with money, which is true, and that you’re really good with numbers, which is probably true, huh?”

  “Probably.”

  “I did tell one little lie.”

  “What’s that?”

  She spun her answer into a timorous question. “That you helped me rent my condo?”

  “Helped how?”

  “With the paperwork.” She paused, then added, “And the security deposit.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Well, to give you say-so. Didn’t you want that? I thought you would want that. So that if we smell a rat, then you can be the one to tell him no thanks.”

  “Oh, man. Oh, Sarah.” Radar pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and first finger.

  “What? What did I do wrong?”

  Christ, thought Radar, where to begin? With overselling the goods? Building unnecessary backstory? Abdicating authority. And binding me to you with debt. Hell, that alone would wave a red flag. Said Radar, “Unfortunately, you told him we smell a rat.”

  “No. I said it’s only fair to include you in my decisions.”

  “He won’t take it that way. He’ll see right through it.” Radar reflected for a moment, then added, “Which actually might not be so bad. Now that he knows you’re backstopped, maybe he’ll bail, go after softer marks. Maybe he’ll just never set up a meeting.”

  “Oh, but he already did.”

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow at noon, at the Hyatt downtown. Honestly, Radar, maybe you’re just too suspicious. I mean, if he were a con man, would he be staying at the Hyatt?” Radar couldn’t begin to answer. Where did she think con men stayed? In tents? She continued. “Radar, listen to me: I told him we were friends. Are we friends?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then as my friend, I have to ask you a favor: Keep an open mind. If you’re right about Adam, then okay, he was just a straw I had to grasp. But if you’re wrong…if this is real…Radar, I can’t afford to not know.” She braced him with her soulful blue eyes, conveying all her vulnerability and need. “Will you meet him?”

  Radar nodded. What else could he do? “I’ll meet him.”

  Sarah rose from the table, came around to his side and gave him a proper hug. “Oh, Radar, thank you so much!” She lingered there with her arms around him. “You know, I know I’m no genius or anything, but you have to admit I’m at least a little bit smart.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, I picked you for a friend, didn’t I?” She pecked his cheek and, as with the nuzzle, held the kiss a beat too long.

  You’d Think It’s a Scram

  Radar Hoverlander had a saying, which Vic Mirplo had perhaps recorded in Hello Kitty by now: “Make the latest possible decision based on the best available information.” You don’t win in the grift, Radar knew, with sloppy, untested assumptions, even when the play seemed obvious, as this one did. You find things out. You keep an open mind (whether Sarah asks you to or not). The internet evidence was inconclusive, but one would expect that. So he’d just have to look this Ames in the eye and take his true measure. That said, he had to admit that he expected to find what he expected to find: a paltry grifter on the make. It might be some creative variation of that, but it certainly wouldn’t be a miracle cure. In the narrow world of Radar’s cool logic, miracles did not exist. He figured to size up Ames, confirm his suspicions, and then make him see he was drilling a dry hole.

  Which Mirplo didn’t quite get. “Why not just put the fear on the guy?” asked Vic as he barreled the big Song Staccato down Lake Austin Boulevard toward downtown. “Lean on him. Make him melt. I’ll do it if you like.”

  “I don’t want to confront him,” said Radar. “I just want to ease him down the road. Besides, thug docket?” He theatrically eyed Vic’s sticklike build. “You really think you could pull that off?”

  “Oh, very nice,” said Vic. “Very supportive.” He mimed writing in his notebook. “Radar disrespected me as muscle. I swore I would have my revenge.”

  “Dark,” said Radar. “Brooding. I like it.” They drove on until they reached the north end of the 1st Street Bridge, where Radar got out. As a matter of standard grift hygiene, Radar arrived at most meetings on foot, for why expose your vehicle, its contents, or its license plate to potentially prying eyes?

  He thought about Mirplo as he headed over the bridge. When they’d met, Vic had been a bottom feeder, selling bogus tickets or even public parking places to unsuspecting tourists at concerts and sporting events in Los Angeles. Radar liked to think that he’d taught Vic a thing or two, imparted some wisdom, but mostly he’d just watched him evolve. Gone was the scared street mook from the days of the California Roll, their plot to rob China one penny-skim at a time. Gone too was the pretentious artist manqué of the Albuquerque Turkey. Now he was just Mirplo, a man who was, in Vic’s own words, “uniquely one of a kind.”

  The 1st Street Bridge crossed one of the world’s few bodies of water that’s both a river and a lake: a dammed segment of the Colorado River, here known as Lady Bird Lake. At the far end of the bridge Radar dropped down a flight of steps and made his way along a well-groomed path to the Hyatt’s lakefront grounds. There he hopped a fence, skirted the swimming pool, and found a rear entrance to the hotel. Thus he came upon the lobby from behind and stood in the shadow of a service corridor, watching Adam Ames. The latter sat near the reception desk in one of two buckety, burnt-orange leather chairs. He had a slender leather briefcase by his side, and occupied his time with a copy of the Austin American-Statesman, glancing up just often enough to keep tabs on lobby traffic. To Radar, Ames seemed intense, engaged, maybe a tad apprehensive, but this told Radar nothing: Either Ames was who he was, or else he knew better than to act otherwise just because probably no one was watching. This disappointed Radar, for he had expected, and half hoped, to catch a fellow grifter with his guard down. After a few moments’ quiet observation, Radar retreated back through the hotel, retraced his steps past the pool, and entered the hotel through the main front entrance.

  Sarah must have described Radar’s appearance—his wiry frame, boyish round face, and unruly mop of brown hair—for Ames seemed to recognize him at once. He stood with a self-conscious smile and extended his hand as Radar approached. They introduced themselves and made a bit of small talk, and then Adam said, “If you’re wondering, it’s miles.”

  “Miles?”

  “Airline miles. How I’m able to stay here.” Ames’s wave indicated the Hyatt, its pink marble and ash concierge desk, and the entrance to the Marker 10 expense-account restaurant. “I used to travel a lot, racked up a ton of miles. Finally have something useful to spend them on. Do you want to sit down?” Ames started to sit, then paused, waiting for Radar to take the lead, as if he were not quite sure what was the proper protocol here.

  Radar, reading Ames’s agitation, asked, “Mr. Ames, am I making you nervous?”

  “Adam. Of course you are. I…from the way
Sarah talked about you, I was half expecting a hit man.”

  “Not seriously.”

  “Well, I didn’t really think so, but still.…” Ames took a breath. “I gather you think I’m some sort of flimflammer. I’ve never…no one’s ever thought of me like that before. I’m having some trouble dealing with it.”

  “Then let’s slow down,” said Radar. “Are you okay here in the lobby or would you rather we talked in your room?” He asked the question just to see how Ames would react, for con artists had a long tradition of burnishing their scams with appropriately swanky surroundings. It was well within the realm of possibility that this lobby was no more than Adam’s office, and that he was no more overnighting at the Hyatt than Radar.

  But Ames’s reaction was unremarkable. “No, this is fine,” he said, settling back into his chair. “They haven’t made up my room yet.” Which, again, told Radar nothing: It was either preplanned bafflegab or a genuine response. Adam gestured Radar into the opposite chair, then picked up his briefcase and set it on the low glass coffee table between them. “So, ‘Radar,’” he said, “that’s an unusual name.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “As in O’Reilly?”

  “As in airborne threat detector, but I get that a lot, too.”

  “So what would you name your own kids? Sonar? Loran?” Ames smiled weakly as he essayed the joke, but the fact that Radar had been talking baby names, joke names, with Vic and Allie somehow brought Adam’s comment to him at an odd angle and temporarily locked his reaction. It was a tiny stumble on Radar’s part and had the effect of leaving Ames floating, momentarily, in a conversational void. After an awkward pause, Ames carried on. “Well, anyway,” he said, “I guess I have some explaining to do.” He opened the briefcase. “Now, I have some reports here, lab findings.…” Ames rummaged inside and withdrew a binder-clipped sheaf. “It’s not much. I don’t…I’m not great at presentations. You’ll get the gist of what Dr. Gauch is driving at. It’s pretty straightforward. I really can’t add anything to it.”