a little thicker, why don’t you? I thought. But I let the man make his pitch. It had been a long time since I’d seen someone try to pull off a pigeon drop. I was interested to see how he’d set the hook.
He played the guileless angle to the hilt, which isn’t typically how the pigeon drop goes down. Usually the wise guy leans heavily on cynicism and outrage, noting how he and the mark have an almost moral responsibility to keep the ill-gotten cash they’ve found. Still, even draped in innocence, he managed to hit all the classic pigeon-drop beats. Having verified that the money was both dirty and anonymous, he then phoned “a lawyer friend” for advice on how to proceed. The friend apparently suggested that we rathole the cash while we took the necessary legal steps to ratify our claim. Then came the bit about how both of us should put up some earnest money to demonstrate our good faith. At this point, his faux naïveté played particularly well, for my new best pal simply couldn’t see “any reason in the world” not to trust me—but his lawyer friend said to approach it this way, and in matters such as this, lawyers generally know best, right? I matched him innocence for innocence, and enthusiastically assured him that I had no problem fronting as much cash as necessary, but I hoped it wouldn’t be more than five hundred bucks, because that’s all I had on me. I looked to see if his eyes would give away his greed on this, but to his credit, he kept his “concerned citizen, slightly out of depth” mask firmly locked in place.
All that remained at this point was for us to divvy the loot. He’d hold my earnest money and, “because I seemed trustworthy,” I could hold the wallet and its much larger sum. First, though, did we really feel comfortable with the wallet in plain sight? He asked one of the counter girls for a paper bag, which, of course, sets up the ol’ switcheroo, where a wallet full of cash becomes a wallet full of Yellow Pages pages.
But we weren’t going to get that far. It was time to blow the guy’s cover.
Because here’s the thing about coincidences: Generally, they aren’t. If I was waiting in a random Java Man for someone who knew suspiciously too much about me, and I “just happened” to get hit with a chestnut like the pigeon drop, the chances were vanishingly small that these two events were unconnected. So when the citizen returned from the counter, I took a stumbly step into him—and picked his pocket. A moment later, he was staring at two Calvin Klien wallets, lying side by side on the tabletop. One contained cash, though of course a grifter’s roll, with a few big bills for show and the rest just a whole bunch of ones. The other wallet contained money-cut pages from a Bible. Or no, not the Bible, the Book of Mormon, which I thought was an interesting touch.
“Well,” he said with sheepish frankness, “that didn’t take you long.”
“Nor would it,” said a voice by the door. Allie’s, of course. She crossed to us and cast a casual arm around the old man’s shoulder. “You have to remember, Grandpa: This is Radar Hoverlander, the brightest bulb on the bush.” Then she turned to me and said, “Hello, Radar. And where’s my goddamn shoe?”
6.
dishonest honesty
I gave her the shoe. She stuffed it in a dilapidated Hello Kitty backpack, and patted my cheek. By way of thanks, I suppose. “Want some coffee?” she asked. “I’m buying.”
“I’m good,” I said.
“Oh, that you are, sweetie. Why do you think I tracked you down?”
“The question,” I admitted, “has crossed my mind.”
“Of course it has. Well, don’t worry. All will be made clear just as soon as I get my hands on a hammerhead.”
“Hammerhead?”
“Black coffee, extra shot.”
“Won’t that keep you awake?”
“Honey, nothing keeps me awake. When I want to sleep, …” She shot me a wink. “… I sleep.”
She ordered her drink from one of the goth counterettes, while I and the man she’d identified as Grandpa stood on either side of an awkward silence. I sized him up a second time, in light of the new information. Grandpa? He looked old enough, but then again not. I wondered if grandpa was code for sugar daddy. After a moment, he said, “I’m Hines, by the way. Milval Hines.”