The Albuquerque Turkey: A Novel (7 page)

I turned to face him. “Hey, Aqualung,” I said. “I know what noise sounds like. If you want the benefit of my doubt, you’re going to have to do better than that. Let’s start with who’s following hard, and why.”

Woody paused to gauge the seriousness of my intent. At last he spoke. “There’s two teams of two. They know I’m in Santa Fe, but they don’t know where. One’s been checking the hotels, representing as health officials on the trail of a Typhoid Mary.”

“I’ve worked that gaff.”

“Be surprised if you hadn’t. The other two just cruise. They saw me outside that restaurant today, but they didn’t know it was me.”

“So that’s why you turned tail. I thought you looked scared.”

“Did I? Hmm. I’m surprised I gave that away. Anyway, they’re just thugs. You know: knee breakers.”

“Working for …?”

“This guy in Las Vegas, Jay Wolfredian. He’s sort of a casino boss.”

“Who you mooked?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“And now he wants his money back?” Woody nodded, doleful. “What, you didn’t give him a VPM?”
^*

“You don’t think I tried for the reacharound? I just couldn’t reach, that’s all.”

This made me laugh. Not because it was funny, particularly, but because it so resonated on my frequency. We spoke the same language. I mean, Allie and Vic voiced my slang, but they got it from me. Suddenly I was drinking from the source. It felt good. Like part of me had been missing. And at least one layer of resentment sloughed off and fell away.

We stayed at it all night, at Frosty’s till closing and then on a bench in the Plaza till the sun came up, exchanging memories, grift techniques, and cell phone numbers. I brought him up to speed on some of my doings, including Allie’s and my plan to parlay the get from the California Roll into a shot at the level life. I thought the Plaza was a pretty exposed location, but to Woody it was more hiding in plain sight. “They rate me as pretty devious,” he said. “They’ll be looking for me under rocks.”

“And how devious are you?”

“Hell, I don’t know, Radar. Used to be, I could get in and out of this kind of guy’s wallet without stirring a breeze.” He shook his head. “But I made such a hash of this one. I think I’m losing my edge.”

“What game were you running?”

“You tell me.”
How could you make someone send you fifty bucks, son?

“Past-post team?” I asked, naming a scam of (as Vic would put it) yesteryore, when groups used distraction and sleight of hand to place bets on, say, roulette after the ball dropped into the slot.

“No way,” said Woody. “Too many cameras, too much heat. Besides”—and here I thought I heard a glimmer of criticism in his voice—“that’s a gambling gaff, not a boss gaff.”

I quickly mentally rifled through other possibilities, ghosting Woody—seeing things from his point of view—and at the same time realizing that I really wanted to get the answer right.
So okay
, I thought,
if he’s going after a casino boss, he has to be bringing what bosses want: action, money
. “Huh,” I grunted. “You high-rolled him.”

“You got it!” he said. “I knew you would.” He beamed with pride, and I have to admit that I basked a little in that bright light.

High rollers, or whales, as they’re commonly known, don’t abound in Las Vegas, but when it comes to a casino’s bottom line, they’re difference makers. Sure, you can survive on the steady earn of small-time slot machine play and the vigorish on sports book bets, but to thrive you need whales, and you land them with all manner of krill: luxury suites, show tickets, five-star wines, ten-star escorts, drugs, obsequity, and generous lending policies. Competition for whales is fierce, but it’s considered bad form to poach other casinos’ high rollers outright, so when one makes a change, you have to make it look like the whale’s idea. Think about trying to seduce a married woman with her husband in the next room: You gain no traction till the lady says yes. As a consequence, there are all these go-betweens, independent operators constantly sweeping the sea lanes for migrating whales. Sometimes they bird-dog pretty aggressively, sweetening the pot with their own resources or whatever the destination casino slips them under the Chinese wall.

That’s what Woody said he was doing: bird-dogging, but with a difference.

“I promised Wolfredian a Saudi prince,” said Woody. “Very proper,
very circumspect. Deep, deep pockets, but he can’t be seen on the casino floor until the moment is absolutely right. And absolutely can’t be seen going to the cage for cash.”

“So Wolfredian advanced you a stake.”

“Against an unimpeachable line of credit.”

“Which didn’t exist.”

“No more than the Saudi prince. Now I’ve got twenty-three thousand out of Wolfredian’s change purse, and he’s all bent out of shape.”

“Over only twenty-three grand?”

“I know, huh? It’s more ego than anything. He hates that I mooked him.”

“How’d it go wrong?”

“Excellent question. Do you mind if we save it for another time? I’m beat. I’m not used to these all-nighters.” He got up to go, effortlessly affecting the leering, drooling look and demeanor of a man you would not want little Jimmy or Nancy anywhere near.

“Where are you staying?” I asked.

“Elsewhere,” he said airily, which I took to mean anything from a bed-and-breakfast under an assumed name to a blanket beneath the stars. “But don’t worry, I’ll be around. Maybe you can help me figure out what to do with these goons.” He paused, then: “Hey, Radar, are we all right?”

“We’re better,” I said. “I still don’t know how I feel about you.”

“If it means anything, I know how I feel about you. I love you, son.”

I couldn’t bring myself to reply in kind, couldn’t even guess if it was true, so all I said was, “Take it easy, Aqualung,” as he shuffled off into the dawn.

H
alf an hour later, setting aside thoughts of goons and stray dads, I slipped into bed beside Allie, who stirred and said, “Boy? Is that you? Remember, we mustn’t let Radar find out.” Hearing the smile in her voice, I determined that the peeved girlfriend stance had been set aside. It made me glad.

I responded by licking her face.

And I don’t care what Vic Mirplo has to say about randy rabbits, this is the woman I want to make love to for the rest of my life. It’s not just the body parts—the tight, taut, terrific body parts that have a knack for being so familiar but all the time every time brand-new, too. I’m told the new wears off eventually. It hasn’t happened yet, but if so, so what? You love a body from the inside out. When you want someone, really
want
them, you want to wear them like a coat. And every time we had sex, I got this incredible sense of wonder, like
I get to do this again? I get to be with her? How great is that?

It was just carnal at first. It had to be. We were both a big mess, completely accreted like the bottom of an old water heater. Like grifters will get. The only way past all that accumulated emotional inertia was brute force, the fierce urgency of pheromone whores. We could screw, but we didn’t know the first thing about intimacy. Or rather, we did, and it scared us both to death. But after the sex came talk. Hours spent dissecting old lovers, techniques, good ideas, bad ideas, good-bad ideas, hidden treasures, unrequited fantasies. We became open to each other
in a whole different way. And that was a terrible terra incognita to us both. We felt brave going there. Felt brave ever since. God knows it’s tricky when grifters make love. But Allie and I managed somehow.

And we managed pretty well right then.

Later, over
huevos revueltos
,
^*
a Hoverlander specialty, I filled Allie in on the night’s events. She seemed pleased that things were better with Woody. Pleased also, and this surprised me, that Mirplo’d hooked up. “That’s good,” she said. “He needs someone. Artists shouldn’t spend too much time alone.”

“Wait. Artists? Allie, you’re not buying into that, are you?”

“Why not? He’s half right, you know. Half of art is marketing, creating a demand.”

“Yes, but the other half’s talent.”

“Well, talent. We’ll see. What’s that stupid thing you say? ‘Keep giving them you until you is what they want.’ ”

“No, that’s a stupid thing
you
say.”

“I knew I heard it somewhere. Anyway, I want to see his studio.”

“Why?”

“Maybe I’ll buy something.” She shot me a grin. “Original Mirplos could be worth a ton one day.”

On the walk over, I found myself checking out the passing traffic with more than passing interest, as if Woody’s cruising pursuers might somehow turn their attention to me. It didn’t seem likely, for Woody was no doubt adept at shaking a tail, and his costumes were, well, vigorous. Still, it’s kind of a chance to take, potentially bringing collateral damage down on your estranged son just while you’re getting unestranged and all. Why would a would-be doting dad do that, even if he needed your help?

And what if he didn’t need your help after all?

“Allie,” I said, “I think we may have a problem.”

“With what?”

“Woody. What if it’s all smoke? All this being on the lam, the disguises, everything. What if it’s just a setup for something?”

Allie stopped. She let her head sag down on her chest for a moment, then lifted it and looked at me. “Do you actually think that?”

“I don’t know, but we have to at least consider the possibility. I mean, that’s only prudent.”

“If by prudent you mean paranoid.”

“He wouldn’t be the first grifter to mook one of his own.”

Allie sighed. “Look, Radar, I don’t suck at judging people, do I? I mean, I picked you out of the bad-apple barrel.”

“Granted.”

“Well, your father seems okay to me. I like him. And if he’s working to make me like him, let’s call that good old-fashioned charm, and just move on, huh? For once, just take things at face value. See how that works out.”

“Innocent until proven guilty?”

“If you can stand it.”

“And if it turns out he really needs my help?”

“Well, that’s a different story.”

“What do you mean?”

“Operation Citizen, remember? Done with that life is done with that life.”

We walked on. It seemed that Allie was trying to have it both ways, but it took me a moment to put the thought into words. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said at last. “I’m supposed to have a good, honest, wholesome relationship with my father. Give him the benefit of the doubt, take him at face value. In other words, be a loving son.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Only, I can’t lend the hand he might need.”

“Not if it means straying from our path.”

“Those two ideas kind of clash, you know. How do you hold them both in your head at the same time?”

“I’m a complex person,” she conceded. “We’re here.”

Here
was Vic’s Quonset hut, a half cylinder of ancient corrugated steel set back from a narrow street between an auto-body shop and a storefront psychic. The loud drone of something obnoxiously approximating music blared from within. We knocked loudly, but when it became clear that we’d never be heard over the din, we let ourselves in.

The air was thick with a resinous scent I didn’t recognize, though I identified its source as a small, shiny brazier, like a pimped-out hibachi, spewing gray-green smoke that swirled and spread throughout the hut, driven by a fan the size of a jet engine. Vic stood nearby in Bermuda shorts, attacking a painted piece of Sheetrock with a compressed-air nail gun. Peering through the smoke, I could see impaled on the Sheetrock various means of killing rats (traps, snares, poison) and, I believe, a smattering of actual dead rats. On the modeling stand stood Zoe, Vic’s new best friend, naked, posing. At intervals, Vic would pause, stare at her intently, then unleash a frenzied new burst of nail-gun carnage.

“Vic!” I shouted over the oliated din, but he didn’t respond, so I reached forward and tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled, still firing, and I felt a rush of air as a nail whizzed past my ear and clanged off the far curve of the Quonset hut.

“Christ! Be careful!”

“Sorry, man. I was in the zone.” Noticing Allie, he said cheerily, “Hi, Allie,” then repeated, “I was in the zone.” He reached down to a boom box and turned off the audio waterboarding. “Good to see you guys.”

I waved a hand at the brazier. “What’s with the smoke?” I asked.

“It’s sage,” he said. “I’m smudging.”

“Smudging?” asked Allie.

“Ritually cleansing my environment to make my art more potent.” He hooked a thumb in Zoe’s direction. “It was Zoe’s idea. She’s a very intricate thinker.” Then he indicated the boom box. “The music helps.”

“Is that what you call that?”

“Ha-ha, Radar. I composed it myself, you know. A true artist masters all arts. I’ve started taking flying lessons.”

“How is that art?”

“Everything’s art, my friend,” said Vic. “I’m surprised you don’t know that.” He stepped back from the Sheetrock and offered it for our inspection. “Well,” he said, “what do you think?”

“Are those real rats?” I asked.

“Taxidermed,” he said. “Got ’em at a yard sale.”

Allie examined the piece with a critical eye. “What do you call it?” she asked.

“Nailed You Good, You Rat.”

“A little on the nose, don’t you think?” I asked.

“So far,” he said. “But watch.” He rummaged in a nearby bin of flotsam, pulled out an empty Pop-Tarts box, and crucified it to the Sheetrock. Then he sprayed the whole thing with aerosol cheese. “See? Now it’s a comment on consumerist society.”

“Conceptual,” I granted. “But kinda grotesque.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Art’s not meant to be pleasant. It’s meant to make you think.”