The Albuquerque Turkey: A Novel (26 page)

“Wherever he is,” said Louise.

“Isn’t …” I essayed a certain helpless confusion. “Isn’t this his deal?”

“Now, where’d you get an idea like that?” asked someone who wasn’t Louise or Miriam or me. And out of the gloom stepped little Martybeth Crandall. She clomped over on tall wooden sandals and flounced into the empty seat across from me with an air of breezy confidence. I heard her sandals hit the floor.

Ever had your Johnson toe-frisked? Me neither, but there’s a first time for everything.

I introduced Martybeth to Miriam. It seemed like the thing to do. Meanwhile, I processed her presence, trying to determine what it meant that Martybeth and Louise were jointly rendering Jay’s whales. Martybeth must have read this on my face, for she said, “Poor Radar, you’re confused.”

“I am a bit, yes.”

“That’s because you believed me,
Dim,
” said Martybeth. “It’s not Jay who’s running this show, it’s us. We.” She indicated herself and Louise.

Without even looking at Louise, I could tell that Martybeth’s line
of chat irked her, for the chirpy muffin top seemed to be giving away too much too soon. Sure enough, Louise applied the brakes. “We’ll get to that later,” she said, by which she meant never.

“Come on,” said Martybeth. “He already knows—”

“I said later.”

Martybeth clammed up. This told me where the power lay between them. Also, to have open conflict in front of the mark was not the slickest play in the playbook, which reinforced my assessment of amateur hour. I started to feel slightly more comfortable in the situation. Granted, Red Louise could kick my ass six ways from Sabbath, and that’s not counting any hurtful hardware she might be packing. Yet, hard as she liked to come across, she seemed out of her depth.

Martybeth’s agitated attitude confirmed this. She cranked her gaze from face to face, checking everyone out, just dead avid to be in the middle of this … scene. I’d seen this response before in many a mook: Give them the sense that they’re on the edge of outlaw activity and they get all jangly. But Martybeth was doing it to herself. Her chest rose and fell in rapid heaves. She drummed her fingers on the quilted vinyl tabletop, returning an echoey tattoo. That was the adrenaline talking. And it was saying,
Wow, wow, wow!

Allie did what Allie does: she stayed cool, sitting with clasped hands, waiting for Louise and Martybeth to sort themselves out. In normal grifter circumstances, this would be called letting the game come to you. Here, it was a Plowright gloss applied atop Allie’s natural crystal poise. Perhaps she’d resumed recalling her state capitals:
Olympia, Phoenix, Pierre
. But one thing about this Plowright character, she didn’t suffer fools, and if these ladies didn’t pretty quickly (as Mirplo would put it) cut to the cheese, Miriam would start to do a slow burn.

The moment opened. Louise and Miriam found each other’s eyes and locked on. This was interesting combat, a battle of wills between two women with strong ones. And while this was Louise’s meeting—she’d called it and should be expected to run it—she seemed to be
waiting, and wanting very much, for Miriam to speak first. Like that would score another status point. But I knew it wouldn’t happen. Allie was immune to status, and she could win a staring contest with a rock.

Which put things back on Louise. Having squeezed Martybeth into silence, it now fell to her to make the pitch. She had much to overcome: this setting; the manifest ill will of Miriam Plowright; and her own partner’s edgy impatience. Of course, she thought she held the ultimate trump card in Woody. I wondered how she’d see fit to play it.

I waited.

Sometimes waiting is all you can do.

I
t was warm in the dead club, the day’s heat penetrating the ceiling to cook the dusty air and boil the smell of old smoke out of the carpet and walls. The sound of a car radio blared in through the plywood windows, rising and then falling as a driver sped past on the street outside. A fly landed on Allie’s arm. She did not twitch it away.

At last, Louise gave up and started talking. “These are unusual circumstances,” she said. She opened a space where Miriam could insert agreement, but Allie left that space blank. Louise stumbled over the silence and carried on. “Normally, we only offer this opportunity to certain casino guests.” She waved a hand to indicate the surroundings. “And normally not here, of course.”

“What, this place?” I said. “It’s all ambience.” Louise favored me with a glower that seemed to say my editorial input would not be necessary, and Martybeth rather more strongly made the point by scrunching my junk with her surprisingly prehensile toes.

Louise returned her attention to Allie. “Miriam,” she said. “May I call you Miriam?”

“No.”

Louise was taken aback. “Very well … Ms. Plowright. Since you apparently control Vic Mirplo’s—”

“Just Mirplo,” I interjected.

“What?” snapped Louise, a crack in her cool.

“It’s just Mirplo. He doesn’t use his first name anymore.”

Louise smiled sweetly. “Radar, I’m not going to say this again. Shut the fuck up.” And with that she got into her pitch. Despite the vulgar preamble, I thought she did rather well. Better than I’d have expected: smooth and textured, with just a few verbal fumbles where she momentarily lost her place in the patter, which I quickly recognized as a customized version of the old Pump and Dump, a boiler-room scam wherein you artificially inflate the price of a stock or other financial instrument, create an investment frenzy, and then get out before the bubble bursts. Such snaggles inevitably rely on claims of proprietary knowledge—“company’s perpetual-motion prototype to win patent”—dressed up in financial humbo gumbo, and this was no exception. The Gaia, Louise told us, was the target of a covert hostile takeover. This was common knowledge within the organization but not so common that one could exploit it without being popped for insider trading. An informed outsider, however, could make a short-term investment and a big killing. Martybeth here mentioned the Gaia’s current share price and the proposed buyout price, a tantalizingly large differential. This seemed to be her only contribution to the pitch, and I could see her working hard to get it right.

Louise then delved into the particulars: How much she and Martybeth would invest, how much they’d want from Miriam, and how they’d split the take. In classic con fashion, they were prepared to trust Miriam with their money, provided only that she show them some earnest money—a million dollars was the standard ask—to justify their faith. Red further sweetened the pot by proposing a generous “finder’s fee” for every one of Miriam’s clients that she steered their way.

“Whose end would that come out of?” Allie asked.

“The clients’ of course,” said Louise. “They’re going to make so much money, they won’t even notice.”

Louise applied several more coats of bafflegab, filling in the procedural blanks and fielding Miriam’s questions. I listened to all of this with half an ear, relaxing my perception to let my radar do its work. Of course I knew it was all lies, but I wondered which level of lie, and why.

After all, Jay knew me to be in the game. Surely I’d see through the Pump and Dump. Therefore, either he didn’t know or didn’t care about this pitch. Trouble was, based on available information, I couldn’t tell which. My mind wandered to a reconsideration of these greasy surroundings. The burned-out bar, I realized, actually helped legitimize the play, for where better to propose criminal conspiracy than in such a sneaky redoubt? It got those outlaw juices flowing. Made the deal seem more real. Well, it would to the casual mark. Even without the hidden stake raiser, a little card called the Ace of Hostage.

I tried to imagine how a normal mark would react. Would he be taken in by this well-below-board opportunity? Maybe. It certainly sounded enticing, the way Louise spun it out. Yet the more I listened, the more convinced I became that this was her debutante spiel. She pitched well enough, but there was an element of rote she couldn’t hide. Add a few missteps, her less-than-instant answers to Miriam’s questions, and Martybeth’s stilted contribution, and the whole thing screamed opening-night jitters on someone’s borrowed script. Would that matter to the mark? That person would be a high roller, a gambler by nature. The promise of a nosebleed ROI could easily suck him in, especially if he had a big gambling jones to support, and if he’d been eased in here in the first place by a casino host he trusted.

But none of this applied to Miriam Plowright. She was no whale. She was a tight-ass professional, financial advisor to a respected (albeit vaporware) list of clients. She had a fiscal responsibility to them—a responsibility that didn’t extend to cutting sketchy deals in wretched ex-bars with newbie confidence tricksters. There was nothing at all in her character, credentials, or backstory to suggest that she’d shade the law for the right price, and not much in Louise’s pitch, no matter how prettily presented, to persuade Miriam otherwise. So she couldn’t possibly say yes.

But, alas, she also couldn’t say no.

Louise knew this. She deduced it from the pure fact of Miriam’s presence. Red knew that the pitch, whether right down the middle,
high and outside, or all the way to the backstop, was largely irrelevant, just a layer of words spread over a ransom play, with her and Martybeth in tacit conspiracy with their third partner.

Me.

My mind went back to Kingman, and the words I so flippantly flashed while I was getting Woody’s bailout cash.
“I suppose you think I’m just throwing good money after black sheep,”
I’d told Louise.
“I promised Mom I’d look after him.”
I was just horsing around, but suppose she took my horseplay to heart? She saw how much cash I had, saw how easily I let it go. Then, when Jay ordered her to nab Woody, she saw her chance to go freelance. Put the right words in Martybeth’s ears, who put them in mine (and here I thought Dim Ysmygu had been so clever). Then arranged our late-night light-heavyweight brawl, and softened me up with blows. After that, all that remained was for a properly motivated Hoverlander to put Plowright in an investing mood. Red knew I’d do my best, for she held the aforementioned trump card, the Ace of Hostage.

I was ghosting her now, seeing things from her side of the table. She’d ordered me to produce Plowright, and produce I did. But Plowright was only there to listen, yes? Consider an investment opportunity. She had the right to say no, yes? Maybe. But I’m a demonstrably persuasive guy. Presumably I’d persuaded her in advance that the deal was kosher, North Vegas hellhole assignation aside. Why had I done this? To get Daddy dear in the clear. And how had I done it? Hoverlander magic—who cares? From that side of the table, the seats on this side of the table didn’t even get filled unless I had Miriam’s cooperation locked up going in.

So what happens next? People shake hands and all agree to meet at the appointed place and time with the called-for bag of cash. There some ad hoc sleight of hand will transpire, and the next thing Miriam knows, she’s holding a great big bag of nothing. What can she do? Go to the law she’d just put herself on the wrong side of? Nope, she’ll just have to swallow the loss (maybe spread it painlessly among her clients, disguised as fee increases). And in the aftermath, all she will do is regret
falling in with Vic Mirplo and his cunning, charming con-man comrade, who, she will ultimately conclude, must’ve been working with these two Gaia
chavalas
all along.

All that left was the shaking of hands and making of plans. Before we could get there, though, Uncle Joe bawled from my pants pocket, “He shoots, he scores!” Everyone jumped, and I told myself it was really past time to change that ringtone. A glance at the phone revealed a text from Mirplo:
Dragonfly flys. 4king awsum!
Well, I’m glad someone was having a good day.

Because mine was about to slide sideways.

Allie leaned back from the table, arms above her head. I could hear her vertebrae pop as she stretched. “It’s a very interesting proposal,” she began. “For the record, you do know it’s illegal, right?”

Martybeth started to speak, but Louise cut her off. “We’ve spoken to lawyers,” she said. “It’s a gray area.”

Allie nodded dubiously. “A gray area.”

“In any case, you’d have deniability.”

“Uh-huh.” Allie rubbed her chin. This, of course, was a sign of introspection, and it landed on Louise with the intended effect. She started to doubt.

“We could increase your fee, you know.”

“Yes, I imagine you have some give in that department. But still … bags of cash delivered to undisclosed locations. Good-faith money. This isn’t how I’m used to working.”

“Well …,” grasped Louise, “be flexible.”

Said Allie, “I’d love to be flexible. You’re practically offering me free money.”

“Yes!” said Louise, a little too loudly. She backed it down a notch. “Yes.”

“And even two months ago, I’d have jumped on it. But now, with Mirplo …”

“What about Mirplo?” asked Louise, warily. I think she was starting to recognize that name as the ongoing fly in her ointment.

“You know, he’s about to get big. Really big. And then he’ll be in the public eye.”

“So?”

“He’ll be scrutinized.
I’ll
be scrutinized.”

“Your other clients—”

“I’m letting them go. Mirplo has asked me to lead his management team.” Allie allowed Miriam an uncharacteristic smile. “I’m putting all my eggs in that bountiful basket. So you see”—she gave a commiserating shrug, the kind you give when you’re delivering your definitive no—“much as I like free money, I really don’t need it now. And I definitely don’t need the risk.” She essayed another smile. “Deniability aside.”

By now I could see the
rookie
written all over Louise’s face, as it cycled through a predictable set of expressions, mostly of the surprise and dismay variety, and none anywhere near the neighborhood of happy. She’d been so certain of this deal—it was a lock, right?—and now she was falling fast, scrabbling at thin air like a cartoon animal going over a cliff. She shot me a cold look and said, “Mr. Hoverlander …”—Oh, now suddenly I’m Mr. Hoverlander? See, that’s a stumble. That’s a broken play—“did we not discuss the hidden benefits of this deal?”