T
here comes a time in every snuke when the mark needs to be ignited, whipped into whatever flavor of frenzy the scam demands. When Radar kissed Sarah, he applied accelerant to available fuel and she just combusted. Was she that ready to flip or was it that great a kiss? Hard to say; professional kissers abound, that's not the point. The heat needed turning up. It takes a lot of heat to make a frenzy.
Sarah took a breath and looked up from the kiss. “What will Allie say?”
“That's a conversation for another time,” said Radar.
He kissed her again, and now she was all over him, hands everywhere, as she urgently whispered, “Oh, Radar, I want to wear you like a coat. Can we do that? When can we do that?”
“Soon, Sarah, but first: How did you really meet Adam Ames?”
Sarah stiffened. “Is that what this is about? You giving
me the third degree? I thought you wanted me.”
“My kiss told you what I want. But the you I want is the real you. So tell me: Where did you meet Ames?”
“I was bringing Jonah to see doctors.”
“You knew he wasn't sick?”
She nodded. “But the doctors still wanted to do tests, so we played along. Kind of they paid us to.”
“Kind of ?”
“No, they did. They paid us. They passed us around. Everyone had a fake look at Jonah and then overbilled someone. Radar, I didn't like doing it. I felt dirty. I'd never done anything like that before.”
“Sarah, I know that's not true. You knew what you were doing, working the system.” He placed his hands between their chests, letting his palms rest on her breasts. “If we're going to have a future, you and I, you're going to have to come completely clean about your past.”
Her eyes widened. “We have a future?”
“We might. It depends on you.” He leaned in and whispered, “Tyler, Texas.” He saw her face go white.
“You know about that?”
“I found out.”
She buried her face in his neck. “God, you must hate me.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “Babe, you've got it all wrong.” He kissed her again. “I told you I want the real you. That means the con you. You're a cowboy, too, you know.”
Sarah blinked. “You think I'm a cowboy?”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, you're pretty raw right now. You don't think your moves through. But you could be trained. I
can see us being a team.”
“A real grifter road gang?”
“Mm-hmm. But that's a conversation for another time, too. Right now I need to know where you are with Ames and how you got there. Now you know what I need, Sarah. The rest is up to you.”
She looked at him with doe eyes, measuring the moment. At last she said, “It's like you say, we were working the system. Jonah and me. But I never meant any harm, and Jonah adored the attention.” She searched Radar's face for approval, but he just waited for her to continue. “Adam found us somehow. I suppose through one of those girls that keep a lookout for him, we were in and out of those offices often enough. When we first spoke, it seemed he still took Jonah for sick, but then later I understood otherwise. It was as though he knew the truth about us but wouldn't say it out loud and, if you really thought about it, didn't much mind.
“Anyway, he told me about a condo he rented, this place, here in the Doke, how he wanted to hold onto it but couldn't live in it right now, and if I would move in and sort of house-sit, he'd be grateful for that. That was a good deal for Jonah and me. But then Adam started having me do things.”
“Like what kind of things?”
“Like get a dog. Have it befriend Boy. And me befriend you. Let on about Jonah.”
“And the story you told us? About meeting outside the medical center?”
“Oh, he made that up. He coached me on how to tell it.” She thought for a moment, then said, “He's coached me on pretty much everything I've said to you all along. Radar,
I've been with men. I'm no stranger to men. I don't usually let them boss me, and I didn't even think that was what was happening, but now I see that it was.” A flash of somethingâ¦jealousy?â¦crossed her face. “And all of it about you,” she said. “He's way more interested in you than he is in me.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don't know. He never talks about you, but he thinks hard about you, I can tell. Radar, can I tell you something?”
“Anything.”
“He doesn't like you.”
“I know that.”
“He wants to hurt you. I don't know why.” She hugged him hard. “Oh, Radar, I want our future, too. But Adam, he
could
hurt you. I mean he's capable.”
“Capable?”
“Down deep he's dark. I fear he contemplates evil.”
“Don't worry about it.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“Don't worry about it.”
She pulled back from her hug and looked up into his eyes. “Radar, am I just a pawn to you?”
“No.”
“I don't know if I believe you.”
He kissed her one last time. “Then you'll just have to wait for proof.”
She moaned against his mouth. But he broke off the kiss abruptly and said, “When's Adam getting home?”
“Soon, I suppose,” she said, disappointed.
“Then we'd better go. Not a word of this to him, okay?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. I'll walk you back. I have an errand to run.”
Radar drove into Austin and met up with Vic and Allie at a new Tex-Mex-fusion restaurant, Paco Houston's. When he recounted his encounter with Sarah, Allie said, “Wow, she cracked like an egg.”
“Overwhelmed no doubt,” intoned Vic, “by the power of the Hoverlander lips.”
“Does anyone think it happened too easily?” asked Radar.
“You doubt the power of the Hoverlander lips?”
“We weren't there, hon,” said Allie. “We can't take her measure. Only you can. At least now we know they have history.”
“We just don't know if she's his partner or his patsy,” said Radar. “And the power of the Hoverlander lips notwithstanding, we still don't know where her loyalty will land in the end.”
“In other words,” said Vic, “will she stay flipped?”
“In other words, is she flipped at all?”
By the second week of March, the buzz around Vic's costume ball was impressively deafening. Everyone who was anyone in Austin, from Kadyn's college gal pals all the way up to the heavy cream of Texas aristocracy, had the date circled in red on their calendars (well, entered in red on their digital devices). Vic's talent for making something out of nothing had proven nothing less than epic. Vic Mirplo: the undisputed king of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
“There's no trick to it,” said Vic as he and Radar walked to the office one sunny morning. “You just talk about things you imagine as if they're things that are.”
“That's the trick right there.”
“If you say so. All I know is, this little ol' foundation is going to put on a party the likes of which the Austin Convention Center has never seen.”
“You booked the
convention center
?”
“I had to. At first I thought the Marriott, but demand⦠sheesh. For a while there I was eyeing Darrell Royal.”
“Darrell Royal?”
Vic hooked a thumb in the direction of campus. “The stadium over there. Hook 'em Horns.”
“Hook 'em Horns.”
“Yeah, so, stadium. But then I thought, you know, what if it rains?”
“What, Vic Mirplo can't control the weather?”
“Come on, Radar, I'm not God.” He paused, then added utterly without affectation. “Though admittedly a bit godlike.”
Not for the first time, Radar reflected on how far he and Vic had traveled together down their common, crooked road. There was a time when he'd thought of himself as Vic's mentor, but that time had long since passed. Radar now understood that Mirplo was the singular sum of his gifts: unquenchable enthusiasm; bent perspective; and the superpower of someone who knows no no. In that moment, Radar's heart actually overflowed with love for his friendâlove and regret, for he knew that one consequence of Allie's pregnancy would be an irreversible change to the dynamic of their friendship. When Mommy and Daddy started focusing on the needs of little Lavender Rho Hoverlander, a Mirplo must necessarily find himself the odd man out.
Nor did it surprise Radarâhe was well past being
surprised by Vic's sick synchronicityâwhen from out of nowhere Vic voiced a similar thought. “You're gonna have a tough time getting along without me. You and Allie and the baby.”
“What, no Uncle Mirplo?”
“Maybe for visits butâ¦no, largely it's time we each chart our own course. After we button up Ames, of course.”
“Of course. But Vic, why?”
Vic looked off to the south, where the dome of the Texas state capitol dominated the view. “This is a small place,” said Vic. “It's just not enough.”
“Austin? Texas?”
“The whole country. There's too many Perus and Katmandus out there waiting for me to see. Besides,” Vic spread his hands expressively, “no little girl wants to see her father consistently outshined by his best friend.”
“So you think it's going to be a girl, too.”
“Not think: know. I already told you I read ahead.”
“You are aware, Vic, that there's at least a barely discernible difference between the real world and the world of your imagining.”
“Barely,” conceded Vic.
“So then with one foot in the future, do you know how this all plays out with Ames?”
“Well, now, that's a little trickier. I know where and when, and that's the convention center, April first, cocked and locked. As to how, well, I've mapped some scenarios. I'm sure you have, too. But they all come back to the leveling problem.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What, I have to explain the leveling game to you?”
“No, Vic, I was speaking rhetorically.”
But Vic was already off and running down another Mirplovian byway. “I explained it to Kadyn. I told her how there's truth, then lies, then truth disguised as lies, then lies disguised as truth disguised as lies, and so on unto the umpteenth level. I said that's the leveling game: figuring out what level of deception your enemy is on. Know what she said? She thinks there's only two levels.”
This took Radar aback. Like every dedicated grifter, he had spent much time in contemplation of the leveling game, trying to get to the bottom of the bottomless
I know that he knows that I know that he knows that I know that he knows
conundrum. “Only two levels?”
“That's what she said. A person is either A or not-A. If he starts out as A, he can flip and become not-A. But if he flips again, then he's not B or C or sassafras tea, he's just A again, a different version of A, but one that plays the same. He might have a thousand reasons for choosing either truth or lies, but none of them matter, since what he gives you in the end can be only that: either truth or lies. Once you've figured out broadly whether he's not-A or A, you've got him. Anything beyond that is oversolving the problem.”
“Interesting,” said Radar. He was genuinely impressed, for original thought on the leveling game didn't come along every day. “Vic, I gotta say, she sounds like a good match for you.”
“I know, huh? I believe I might have to fall in love with her.”
“What, you don't know? Haven't you read ahead?”
“No, that would be cheating,” said Vic solemnly. “One never cheats in affairs of the heart.”
“Well, she's put some good thought into it,” said Radar, “but I'm afraid it's not that simple.”
“Why not? There's only two parties: the collective us and the collective them.”
“Except we don't know if half of themâSarahâhas genuinely flipped, so that doubles the number of levels we have to think about.”
“Ooh, you're right,” said Vic.
“Plus, what's Jessup? A confederate or a free agent? Did Ames approach him on this deal, or was it the other way around?”
“And the levels double again.”
“And then heads start to explode.” They had reached the street entrance to the office and loitered there for a moment before buzzing themselves in.
“Well, how are we going to run this, Radar? On the night, I mean?”
“Money-go-round,” said Radar.
A money-go-round is a particular kind of scam, one in which competing con artists bring cash to a certain place at a certain time, and the object of the exerciseâplayed for bragging rights and bankrollsâis to romance or trick your enemy's money away. Money-go-rounds are usually one-on-one, but in this extraordinary case there were eight players that Radar could name: himself, Ames, Allie, Vic, Sarah, Woody, Jessup, and Kadyn.