The California Roll: A Novel Read online

  He had to get religion.

  So I had to turn prophet.

  The first order of business was to manufacture some convincing cover for Hines. He couldn’t just start throwing my name around like some swami-come-lately. People get recommendations for investment counselors all the time. Sometimes they take the bait and sometimes they don’t, but in any case, that’s a labor-intensive enterprise, the specific labors being abundant one-on-one wooing. For what I had in mind, I needed to pitch the Merlin Game to at least a hundred thousand qualified leads all at once, without anyone looking too closely over anyone else’s shoulder. Why? Obviously, if someone on the heads side of the coin flips compared notes with someone on the tails side, it wouldn’t take too long for the musky scent of rodent to emerge. Fortunately, there’s a time-tested method for accomplishing this sort of information isolation: It’s called proprietary knowledge. You just convince the mark that he has a secret line on a huge score—but only if he can be trusted to keep the secret. Scare him with the heavy money penalty for leaving a trail of spilled beans, and his own greed will bind his silence.

  Even at that, though, we’d have to move fast, because Merlin Games inevitably break down—quicker than ever in this little Information Age of ours. Between the first herd cull and the final cash call, I needed the whole thing to run no more than three weeks. That takes some tight timing and some serious buzz. With the web both an enemy and an ally to the con, I needed the right internet presence and the right viral marketing. It so happens that I’m pretty good at site design. I’ve also been known to launch a self-propelled fad or two. I was confident I could handle the technical end of the Merlin Game. But I’d also have my hands full with other things—for example, shape-shifting into a reasonable simulacrum of a financial wunderkind and cooking up all the imaginative coin flips upon which the game depends. That was the fun part.

  Though you know what? Come to think of it, it was all the fun part.

  * * *

  *Though in a broader sense there’s no real difference between a client and a mark. Just ask anyone who thought he got a great deal on a new car.

  * * *

  9.

  cooking the frog

  N ames, as we know, are key to the grift. They really delimit what you can get away with. While Nat Sherman could reasonably be the roofing contractor who turns a home into a money pit, it takes something on the order of a Dunhill Davidoff to sell LLC shares in a movie called Pigs Aloft, which has just about that much chance of ever getting made. For the Merlin Game, though, I needed more than a name. I needed an image, backed by a set of bona fides that would organically reinforce everyone’s feeling of Hey, this guy really knows his shit!

  To build such an identity, you’ve got to strike a balance between believability and cliché. You have to sound credible, but not so credible as to be incredible. Plus, you need a good, solid electronic paper trail, so that anyone who opts to do some serious investigating—where “serious” is defined by most people as five minutes or less of Google-hopping—will discover that you are, indeed, who you claim to be. This strikes me as one of the more enchanting forms of human gullibility—the unstinting willingness to buy into a grifter’s self-validation. Say you’re a “classy dame,” working that fine line between believable and cliché. You’re running a sham dating service and you meet a rich mook at an upscale bar, the kind of bar you frequent because, hey, that’s where the rich mooks are. What’s the first thing you do? Give him your card. It’s a nice one, too, with those raised letters that look so impressive and a typeface that just reeks of understated elegance. Later he goes home and decides to check out your website, LiaisonsIntimes.fr. (And isn’t the French URL an elegant touch?) He remembers how you promised “the prettiest, most sophisticated, most eligible girls in the world.” And son of a gun if there they aren’t, in all their pretty, sophisticated, and highly eligible glory. A clutch of stock photos later and, voilà, you’ve got yourself a money tree. Now all you have to do is shake it at intervals. Understand: This tree wants to be shaken. Therefore, in his eyes, the pixel never lies. If it were otherwise, he wouldn’t bother with your website in the first place. That’s what we call a self-qualifying lead. In the grift, they’re gold, just gold.

  I thought long and hard about who I wanted to be for this snuke. The perfect profile would be something like: Beijing genius with MIT econometrics, an HBS MBA, McKinsey or BCG consulting experience, a massively successful private-equity track record, and maybe an area of esoteric high-tech expertise like deep packet inspection and carrier-grade security. If little of that means much to you, trust me, it won’t mean anything to the marks. But they won’t care. Once the results start rolling in, my background is merely the platform on which I stand to survey the movement of wealth over which I seem to have such effortless mastery. It’s like jobs on your résumé. After the second or third, no one cares what the first one was. (Which is why I say feel free to make that shit up.)

  There were, however, several parts of this front I couldn’t back, the Beijing genius part being the most ethnographically notable. Maybe Allie could pass for Tokyo Pop in an orange plastic wig, but not me—my European roots show through. Plus, you never want to make your lie package too complex, or too far from plausible, for every now and then you run into someone who knows what he’s talking about—and therefore knows that you don’t. Not good for the gaff. Sometimes not good for your health.

  Also, I had to be someone who could have reasonably entered Milval’s orbit by serendipity, not by suspicious design. Where was Hines likely to have crossed paths with someone with my intended credentials? In church? It could happen. * But a mere shared acceptance of Jesus Christ as our personal lord and savior would neither validate my capability nor open enough of the right kind of doors. No, I needed both a nice, organic link to Milval Hines and a clean, simple explanation for the talent I planned to tout.

  I solved the latter problem first, birthing one Ryan Reed, a geek with a strong spiritual bent who found pure art in the science of computer modeling. At first, according to his résumé (available online, of course), he (I) worked in fractal abstracts. Gorgeous shit—you could swear you saw the face of God. Next he turned his attention to financial prognostication, divining those computer models like tea leaves. Rumor has it that both the NSA and NOAA put the full-court press on his services, but he couldn’t be bothered, because the challenge just wasn’t there. Predicting wars and weather was nothing compared to guessing which way the win blows. Zen finance, that was his game. And (to hear him tell it) there was simply no one better at it in the world.

  As for the organic link to Hines, it hit me with the force of revelation: I could be his granddaughter’s boyfriend.

  To pitch Allie the idea, I arranged for us to meet over steak and eggs at Rudi’s Eatateria, a Hollenbeck dive short on atmosphere but long on excellent steak and eggs. We slid into opposite sides of a red leatherette booth and ordered some food. She listened quietly as I outlined my plan to insinuate myself into the Hines sphere of influence.

  I expected at least a little resistance, something about establishing appropriate boundaries, or not confusing a sham romance with a real one, or “Don’t go thinking this is a backdoor route to sex, mister!” Instead, all she said was, “I don’t think boyfriend is strong enough.” She paused. “I think we should be engaged.”

  Really?

  She made a good case. It’s one thing, she noted, to bring a boy genius home for supper sometime, but if it’s the fella you’re planning on building a life with, why, who could blame a doting grandfather for doing everything in his power to give the lad a leg up?

  So we got engaged.

  Then came the cavalcade of backstory questions. How long had we known each other? Were we living together? Had we set a date for the wedding? Big one or small? Where did we want to settle? Did we see kids in the picture? Strictly speaking, scant aspects of this false narrative were necessary, for Hines wouldn’t be doing much more th
an providing introductions for “my granddaughter’s fiancé, a kid with some very bright ideas.” But once we started spinning the yarn, we found it hard to stop. It seemed like we had a great relationship. For one that didn’t exist, I mean.

  We explored our first fictive encounter: where and how we had met. I proposed a bar, but Allie vetoed that. “I’d never meet the man of my dreams in a bar,” she said. “We met in a bookstore.”

  “What was I reading?”

  “Zarathustra. You have a spiritual bent, remember? And you were fascinated by the idea that good words and good deeds can keep chaos at bay.”

  “Is that what I told you?”

  “No, that came later. You were more interested in what I was doing.”

  “Which was …?”

  “Well, you tell me.”

  I thought for a moment. “Researching green fashion. You want to make a career in recycled clothes.”

  Allie laughed. “That’s so bogus,” she said. “I love it.”

  I loved it, too. I loved the whole damn moment, in fact. Which stretched effortlessly into whole damn hours. It’s funny when you start backpredicting a relationship. You get all the good stuff without any of the crap. We talked at length about our first date: the movie we saw, how we agreed that it sucked, where we went for tea after, and how cute I was about not being sure if I was going to get lucky. I tried to convince Allie that the first time we made love I rocked her world. “Not so much,” she said with disarming candor of the abstract. “But it got better.”

  She gave me a middle name: Paradox.

  “Paradox?”

  “Your parents were hippies. And scientists. Where do you think you got your gift?”

  Of course, no relationship is perfect, so we worked up a list of mutual pet peeves. She hated how I never picked up my clothes. I hated her damn scented candles.

  “Oh, I suppose you’d rather have the place smell like old socks.”

  “Anything’s better than … what?” I groped for a scent. “Key lime sandalwood.”

  “There’s no such thing as key lime sandalwood.”

  “There is now.”

  We discussed whether we were dog people or cat people. “Dog,” proclaimed Allie. “The only good cat is a doorstop.” I found the image florid but didn’t disagree with the sentiment.

  By the time we got down to giving each other pet names, we figured we’d about milked the subject dry. Allie put her hands on the table with a satisfied smack. “This is good,” she said. “I think we’ve made some good progress.” Then her eyes clouded over, and I got one of those flashes of insight: She’s about to say something she doesn’t want to. “One last thing.” She paused to draw a breath, then soldiered on. “I suppose you’ve figured out by now that we’ve met before.”

  I acknowledged that I had. “Orange isn’t your color,” I said.

  “I really wasn’t trying to mess with you. I was just having some fun.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Fun is good.”

  “Then you forgive me? For dragging you into this?”

  “Provisionally.”

  “Good.” Big sigh. “I’m so glad I got that off my chest. Because when Grandpa came up with this craziness, I remembered you from the car show and I knew right away you were perfect for the job, but only if you could be, like, not hating me.”

  “How could I hate my Pookie-pie?”

  “I told you,” she growled, “I hate that name.”

  “I know. That’s what makes it so cute.”

  We walked outside and stood between our respective cars.

  “Okay, there’s just one last thing we have to do,” she said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Kiss.” I suppose I looked a little shocked, because her face rounded into a smirk. “Come on, you think my bridesmaids aren’t going to ask if you’re a good kisser?”

  “Your bridesmaids don’t exist,” I said. “This is fiction, remember.”

  “Well, fiction schmiction, it’s still good to know.” So we kissed for a while, and it didn’t seem the least bit fictive. Eventually, she broke the clinch and said, “Yeah, you’ll do. I’ll go tell Grandpa the good news.”

  And who was I going to tell? Mirplo?

  As it turned out, yeah, Mirplo.

  Which didn’t work out at all like I thought it would.

  We met up at midnight to shoot baskets under the sodium vapour lights of a pocket park near my house. You’ve seen this kind of basketball court before: perforated steel backboards, iron ring hoops with no nets, cracked and faded line paint, maybe the odd hump in the asphalt where a nearby tree threw a root. Check out the shadows, you can see junkies on the nod or robotrippers jitzed on a cough-syrup high. Actually, best not to check out the shadows too closely.

  I told Vic what I’d cooked up for Hines, and how I’d fabricated this relationship with Allie to hook myself into the game. I expected him to (a) admire my moves and (2) try to deal himself in. Instead he hit me with (!) logical negation.

  “You’re such a fucking tool,” he said, with more honest contempt than I thought a Mirplo could muster.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I told you this chicklet was trouble. Went out of my way to warn you.” (Conveniently forgetting, of course, that it was he who led her to me in the first place.) “Now here you’re playing house with her? Can’t you see? She’s easing you in.”

  I fired the basketball at him, hard, a two-handed rocket pass that he caught in his gut with a cartoon-sounding ooooff. “She is not,” I said truculently, “easing me in.” In the slang of the grift, to ease someone in is to draw them so artfully into a snuke that they never see it coming. It’s also known as the grease and fleece, and if you can ease them back out again without tipping the gaff, then you know you’re really on your game. For Vic to accuse Allie of easing me in was half an insult to her and an insult and a half to me. “You’re full of shit,” I said. “This whole gag’s been my idea.”

  “Oh, which part?” he sneered. “The part where you get kissy-face with the babe who’s been playing you since the minute you met? Or the part where you go mentor to an old fart who’s supposed to be a straight but seems to know enough about the grift to pitch you both wishing wells and leveraged metals?”

  “That was just research.”

  “That’s what he told you. But have you even done diligence on the dude? Do you have anyone’s word but his that he’s legit?” I had to admit that I had not. “Jesus fucking Christ on a bicycle, Radar. I thought I was the stupid one. Next thing you know, she’s gonna to be cooking the frog.”

  Now this was really insulting. Everyone knows you can cook a frog by putting it in cool water and turning up the heat so unnoticeably slowly that it’ll boil to death without a fight. A grifter who can cook the frog is regarded as a master of the trade.

  The frog is held in somewhat lower esteem.

  “You don’t watch out, you’re gonna end up in love, and then your ass’ll really be grass.”

  “No way,” I said. “There is no way I’m falling in love with—”

  “With who?” he taunted. “Your Pookie-pie?”

  Poor Mirplo. I had to beat him up for a while.

  * * *

  *It does happen. It’s called affinity fraud. Shockingly easy to shear sheep of your same flock.

  * * *

  10.

  tequila 1, idiot 0

  I don’t have a lot of experience with tequila, but I know you’ve had too much when you go to brush something off your shoulder and it’s the floor.

  I passed out sometime before dawn with Mirplo’s critique still turning circles in my brain and the world spinning a good deal faster—according to my subjective reality—than its normal thousand or so miles per hour. They say that alcohol cannot solve your problems, and in this they are right … unless the specific problem you’re trying to solve is to temporarily stop feeling like an idiot, in which case alcohol works as effectively on bra
in cells as Windex works on windows. Better, in fact, because when you’re done cleaning the windows, you still have windows, but when you’re done washing your brain with high-test agave, you have appreciably less brain. So: tequila 1, idiot 0.

  Some unconscious hours later, I opened one crusted eye, and there close at hand was my empty enemy, a bottle of El Blanqueo, the finest tequila that money can buy in the sort of all-night liquor store where a sad Hmong employee holes up inside a bulletproof booth reading what can only be presumed to be Lao porn. I’d like to say that getting loaded was Mirplo’s idea, something on the order of, “Come on, buddy, let’s drink it off. Tomorrow you can tell that skirt to take a hike.” But Mirplo had long since issued his last “fuck you,” put Shirley Temple into grindy gear, and driven off into the night. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t listen to reason, and I kept trying to kill the messenger, or at least do it grievous bodily harm. Mirplo was right, undeniably: I was being eased in. But who wants to hear that from a Mirplo? So I abandoned all common sense (and ten dollars and ninety-five cents) and drank away the shank of the night.

  When you drink as infrequently as I do, you almost don’t know what a hangover is, but a rotgut tequila hangover has a way of expounding itself in terms of terminal thirst, mortal headache, pained sensitivity to any sound louder than the batting of butterflies’ eyelids, a vampire’s aversion to sunshine, and a mental state the dictionary describes as dysphoria, which really means, as if you didn’t know, that you feel like seventeen different kinds of shit. I rolled over where I lay on the living room rug and stared up at the ceiling, noticing for the first time a series of termite tubes hanging down from the exposed beams. Great, I thought, first dry mouth, now dry rot.