The Texas Twist Page 5

  “I’ll take a look at it, Adam, and if I see anything that looks like it’ll work for Sarah, we’ll be in touch. But that’s how I want to leave things today, okay? We’ll be in touch with you.”

  “Uh-huh. When?”

  “I’m not sure you understand.”

  “No, I understand, I understand.” Ames leaned back in the round leather chair, frowning. “Guilty until proven innocent.” He interlaced his fingers behind his head. “Wow,” he said. He fell into silence. To Radar it almost seemed as though he was having a conversation with himself. Finally he spoke. “There’s something I learned with Dylan,” said Ames. “Something about acceptance. You face a situation, you say, ‘I can resist this or I can embrace it.’ I don’t mean that I wanted Dylan to die, but I had to participate in his death as an ally, not an adversary. That I was with my son, really with him, while he shed the agony of his broken brain and left this life, well, it’s made lots of things easier for me since. I think it saved my sanity.” Ames took a breath. “So now here we are. I’m trying to help Sarah, and I guess you are, too, in your way. If you have a role to play in this, her sentinel or whatever, then I can either resist that or embrace it. I choose to embrace it, and if I have to climb a mountain of your skepticism to do so, so be it. So let’s start again. Just tell me what I have to do to prove myself to you.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Radar. “I’ve seen situations like this before.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you mean you’ve seen situations like this before. This is a medical situation.”

  “It’s also financial.”

  Ames asked plaintively, “Am I asking for money? Have I asked anyone for money?”

  “Will you?”

  “Well, not me, but the clinic. They have to keep the research going. As I told Sarah, they get no support from official channels.”

  “I see.” Radar rifled through the documentation he’d been given. Nothing immediately jumped out at him as bogus, but he doubted it would stand up to close scrutiny. “Very well,” he said, standing up. “I’ll give these papers all the consideration they deserve.”

  Ames leapt to his feet. “Listen, I appreciate that you think you’re looking out for Sarah and Jonah, but remember one thing: It’s not your son who’s dying.” He raised his voice. “For someone looking out for their interest, I think you’re overlooking the possibility that this might actually save his fucking life!” He looked around, self-conscious at his language, then engaged Radar with pleading eyes. “Radar, I don’t know what makes you such a suspicious person, and I don’t know why Sarah gave you the say-so in this, but at least ask me some questions. At least make me feel like you heard me out. The way things are,” Ames pointed to the printouts, “that might as well be toilet paper. It is in your eyes. And I don’t understand why you’re so prejudiced against me. You don’t even know me. If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re really a closed-minded guy.” That point resonated with Radar, who realized that he was, despite policy, letting himself be guided by untested assumptions. Could he really say, based on what he had seen so far, that the guy was a fake? No, he could not. So he sat back down and gave Ames a chance to tell his tale.

  Adam did a comprehensive job, outlining his hunt for breakthrough research on Karn’s and, having apparently found it, his equally fervent search for someone in need. Radar heard nothing in the narrative that lifted it above the level of a yarn, yet nothing that manifestly unraveled it, either. It had the ring of, if not truth, verisimilitude; Ames sounded like a normal person recounting normal events—if you bought the central premise that the tragic death of a son could turn a man’s life into a crusade, and the secondary premise that a cure for Karn’s was out there, undiscovered or at least unexploited by the medical community at large. Radar could neither buy these premises nor reject them outright. So he shot a couple of questions.

  “Sarah says you’re divorced.”

  “Well, yes. And widowed.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My wife died during the separation.”

  “I see.” Well, that answered that. Or not. “How? Karn’s?”

  “No,” said Ames. “Karn’s is not hereditary, just an unhappy accident. The wiring in your brain goes bad.”

  “Good thing it’s rare.”

  “I wish it weren’t. Then maybe there’d have been a cure for Dylan.”

  “Yes, as you told Sarah. Why did you meet her on the street? Why didn’t you—”

  “What? Email? Text? IM?” Ames looked Radar square in the eye. “What would you do with such correspondence?”

  “Trash it.”

  “Trash it. Right. Because you’d think it’s a scram.”

  “Scram?”

  “You know, a con.”

  “Scam,” corrected Radar.

  “Scam, of course. I’m new to this language. I’m…new to the whole idea. I thought if I showed up here, flew to Austin, made the trip, that would make me seem more legitimate somehow. Show my commitment. Now I see that it just shows my, I hate to say, naïveté. Radar, can I ask you a question?” Radar said nothing, just waited for Ames to continue. “If I were who you…I’m trying to think of the right way to put this…someone who you legitimately had to keep out of Sarah’s life, what kind of man would I be? I don’t mean the question rhetorically. Who did you fear you would meet?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some people prey on weakness. I don’t like them preying on my friends. Which brings us back to…” Radar stood to go, “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

  Which, he well knew, they would not.

  His Pollyanna Docket

  When the short winter days were mild, Radar, Vic, and Allie would sit out on their balcony to read or work or just mark the sun’s march across Lake Austin and over the far hills of Laguna Loma. From here, five floors up in their shoreline condo complex, they could see downriver to the Tom Miller Dam and upriver to nothing in particular. Today they occupied themselves with the paperwork of Adam Ames, looking for what Vic dubbed the smoking gun of hooey. To this point, it remained unfound.

  The documents came across as a hasty potpourri of available information, just the sort of found artifacts an earnest, honest-Abe Ames would pull together to mollify the suspicious friend Radar purported to be. There were photocopied research reports, laboratory data sheets with timelines showing Karn’s in remission, and a couple of web-press fluff jobs: happy journalism about prospects for a cure to this heartbreaking disease. Regarding the latter, Radar had planted enough faux news stories in his time to know how easily it was done. For that matter, these could be legitimate articles about legitimate wins against Karn’s, and yet be completely unconnected to Ames, apart from the fact that they had passed through his printer.

  Ames also provided the mission statement and available financials for the Gauch Institute. The mission statement was a standard medical reacharound about the betterment of mankind, but the financial information gave Radar pause, for it was the practice in scams of this sort to skimp on that, yet here was a deep drill into the clinic’s funding sources, research budget, and revenue projections. Radar handed the report to Vic, who skimmed it and passed it on to Allie.

  “What do you think?” asked Radar.

  “Those are some lily-white numbers,” said Allie.

  Vic’s fingers danced across the surface of his Rabota, the sexy new Russian tablet computer that everyone seemed to want but only able navigators of the international gray market (such as Vic) could get their hands on. He found and opened the Gauch Institute’s own annual report. “And they match the Institute’s,” he said.

  “Why is he selling the financials so hard?” asked Radar.

  “Because he can,” said Allie. “Because they’re there.” She added, referencing her own tablet, a next-generation Geoid, “Just like the medicine is there. Radar, this all looks square.”

&nbs
p; “So it’s a piggyback play,” said Radar. “Ames goes fake middleman between Sarah and them. Leverages their authenticity.”

  “Or,” said Allie, “he’s exactly who he says he is.”

  Radar braked. He looked at Allie. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Why not?” she asked. She waved her hand at the documentation. “Show me anything here that really proves otherwise.”

  “All this could be faked,” said Radar dismissively. “Besides, ‘scram’ instead of ‘scam’? That business about the miles? The lengths he went to to meet her? The guy is way overselling his Pollyanna docket.”

  “You don’t know that. You only feel that.”

  “Allie, we’ve seen this play before. Hell, we’ve run this play before.”

  “What Radar’s saying,” said Vic, “is if it barks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

  “Ducks don’t—” Allie didn’t bother. She merely repeated to Radar, “You don’t know that.”

  “It’s the Samaritan gag, straight out of the playbook. And now that we know it’s a piggyback, we can challenge him to liaise with the Institute. When he can’t do it, we win.”

  “We win? A mother’s hope for her son is destroyed, and we win?”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it. Apart from the money, apart from getting scammed, Sarah needs to focus on Jonah right now.”

  “Don’t you think that’s her choice?” Allie wasn’t sure Radar was wrong, but it irked her how Radar was sure he was right. “At minimum, she could put herself on the Institute’s map, make Jonah a candidate for treatment.”

  “That’s fine if she wants to do that,” said Radar. “Only not through Ames. He’ll dead-end her money and she won’t get on the Institute’s map.”

  Allie grabbed the big water bottle she now felt compelled to carry with her everywhere and downed a significant chug. She felt herself becoming frustrated with Radar. Was it hormones already? The thought made her cheek twitch. Morning sickness. Ridiculous thirst. Food cravings next, she supposed.

  Allie admired and appreciated Radar’s bright and shiny reaction to her pregnancy, for it was unguarded, and in a Hoverlander, unguarded moments are rare. She felt she could trust that Radar wanted a kid, but here in her fifth week, ambivalence was Allie’s middle name. Not about the body stuff. That she could handle. But Allie, as a damaged child of damaged parents, with further damage inflicted by all those fosters, feared she’d be a damaged parent, too. She looked at Radar and knew she could count on some of his courage to carry her. This is a good man, she thought. Against all odds, a good man.

  When they first met, Allie thought Radar was damaged, too. He had to be, or why would he be attracted to someone damaged like her? By now, though, she had met Radar’s long-lost father, the roguish Woody Hoverlander, himself a con artist of the first water, and she understood that her link with Radar was the game, not the pain. He had been trained in the grift, raised in it from birth, prodigiously talented and soon great at it, but he never got a chance to show off for the person who mattered most. Through her he had filled a long unrequited need. So she drew comfort from his comfort and accepted his acceptance of her. That he showed off for her made her something of a surrogate, and she accepted that, too.

  She just worried that he was showing off now.

  “Radar,” she said, “I don’t get you. We’ve done diligence. You met the guy. So he acts too innocent. So he misuses a word.” She shot a look at Vic. “Like that never happens around here.” She leafed through the documents. “I don’t see anything here that barks like a duck, Radar, and if you’re honest, I think you’ll agree. We’ve done our job. We can let Sarah handle this now.”

  “End-around Ames direct to the Institute?”

  “If that’s what she chooses. But Radar: She chooses.”

  “No. She’s not that smart. She’ll screw it up.”

  Something in Radar’s voice shot through Allie to a place deep inside her, for she detected his sense of protectiveness, a protectiveness she’d have sworn he reserved only for her, or possibly for Mirplo at certain particularly clueless points in his past. She said, “Radar, do I have to quote you to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “‘There’s two kinds of problems in this world, my problem and not my problem.’”

  “She’s right, Radar,” said Vic. “I’ve heard you say that.”

  “We can tell Sarah what we’ve found—and what we haven’t found. We can suggest a course of action. Anything beyond that is making not our problem our problem. I don’t understand why you’d want to do that.”

  “And I don’t understand how you can be so cold. Sarah’s in trouble. This Ames is bad news.”

  She pointed to the papers. “You can’t prove it with this. Radar, she’s my friend, too, and I don’t want to see her hurt any more than you do. But you can’t trash the guy and dash her hopes just because you’ve got a hunch—”

  “It’s more than a—”

  “It’s a hunch! And if you sell it as more than that, you’re not telling the truth, and you’re not doing a service to a friend.”

  “I see your point,” he said at last. “But I’m not done digging.”

  “That’s up to you,” said Allie coldly. “The rest is up to her.”

  Vic glanced back and forth between Allie and Radar. He hated it when mom and dad fought.

  Later that night, after Allie had gone to bed, Radar found Vic sitting at the kitchen table, messing with his Rabota, and said, “Let’s have a closer look at those pictures of Dylan. If we knew where that park was, we’d know Adam’s home base.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Likely. Look, if you’re right that he photo-stalked some stranger’s kid, it would have to be someone familiar, someplace familiar.”

  “Where he could exploit a routine, like?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like where the kid plays after school.”

  “Like a park.” Radar tapped open his Grape and navigated to the Dylan Ames tribute page. “This park.”

  “You know what?” said Vic. “Let’s have a closer look at those pictures.”

  “Excellent idea.”

  Vic navigated his tablet to the same page. They clicked through the pictures, scanning for location clues in the backgrounds. Most were leafy frustrations of featureless green, but one showed Dylan grinding a rail in a skate park, with a sign behind that read, Town Ordinance 3.14, No Skating After Dark. Radar called it to Vic’s attention.

  “What?” asked Vic, staring blankly at the photo.

  “What what? All we need is to find the town with this ordinance and we’re home and dry.”

  “How will we ever…?” Vic started, then stopped. “Race you?”

  “Go!”

  And off they sped through a slew of government databases, PDFs of regulations in parks-department manuals, and microfiched municipal statute books. Their fingers hopped and danced across their tablets in a ballet of hacking and cracking that each had internalized through the practice of long years. God, was it getting to be long years already? Well, yeah. They were both pushing thirty and, as Vic would put it, no springing chickens. Through long practice, then, of wielding the internet to find marks, hide tracks, or support short stories, they’d become adept at ferreting information and habituated to the lines of logic (yes, logic, even for Mirplo) that would guide them through their search. Still, Town Ordinance 3.14, that was a bit of a needle in a bytestack.

  It took Vic ninety seconds.

  Radar got there first.

  “Here we go,” he said. “Athol, Massachusetts. ‘Town Ordinance 3.14: There will be no use of skateboards, roller skates, rollerblades, bicycles, or any other human-powered conveyance for any purpose other than point-to-point transportation between the hours of sunset and sunrise.’”

  Vic meanwhile had already located Athol, a town of ten thousand people some two hours’ drive west of Boston. He studied a map of the place. “Skate park might be closed fo
r the winter,” he said, “but there’s a pond right there. If it’s frozen there’ll be hockey. Let’s see.” He accessed a keyhole satellite that offered earth views as current as the last orbital pass. It wasn’t strictly legal for Vic to visit, but nobody seemed to have minded so far, or anyway caught on. “It’s frozen,” he said. “Infrared says sixteen inches.”

  “Plenty enough for hockey. Zoom in.”

  “Zooming.” A moment later, Vic said, “Yep, they’ve cleared a rink.”

  “Then I guess it’s worth a visit,” said Radar. “You want to check it out?”

  “Austin to Boston, baby.” He gave his friend a mischievous smile. “Speaking of babies, what are we calling yours today?”

  “Oh, I stopped doing that. Can’t be obsessing over names for the next nine months.” Mirplo just stared until Radar relented. “Coyote.”

  “Coyote Hoverlander. Not in a million years will Allie go for that.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “But you’re cool with this, aren’t you?”

  “What?”

  “This. You know, daddyness.”

  “Yeah, you know what? I think I am. It’ll be fun. Daddyness. Raise the kid in the business.”

  “Thought you were tired of money.”

  “Not that business.” He tapped his temple. “The thinking business. I’m looking forward to tuning that tool.”

  “Oh, now I get it. You’ve discovered your immortality. Gonna train you up a new model Hoverlander, better than the original.”

  Radar said sternly, “Athol, Vic.”

  Vic left the next morning. Late that afternoon, Sarah ran into Radar in the hall between their apartments and asked about the meeting with Ames. When he told her the jury was still out, she smiled and hugged herself. It made Radar feel strange to see a hope so misplaced, yet so fervent. He wished he could be wrong. He wouldn’t bet that he was.

  I bomb out to Athol (writes Vic Mirplo) in a rented Song Salsa, a ridiculous kiddy compact that fights my every effort to squeeze performance out of her malnourished four-banger, rubber band steering and little red wagon wheels. A Mirplo doesn’t belong in a car like this. A Mirplo belongs in a candy flake Caddy, 1959, convertible, with fins that cause local atmospheric disturbance when they pass.