But I didn’t let that show. Instead I just whistled a respectful low whistle. “I have to admit,” I said, “I didn’t think you fibbies had it in you.”
“It’s easy when you have one of those,” said Hines, indicating the device still jacked into my computer. “You’d be surprised what this baby can do.” I would be surprised. It looked not much different from a normal data stick.
“Why all the hanky-panky?” I asked. “Why didn’t you just call me into your field office or whatever, and make your pitch?”
“As you said, you had to be vetted. People in your line of work talk a good game. They can’t always back up their claims.”
I turned to Allie. “And you trying to pull the plug?”
“For my benefit,” said Claire. “To see how much bottle you had.”
“Enough?” I asked.
She nodded. “You seem to have the requisite stick-to-itiveness.”
“Do you talk like that at home? Do you compliment your boyfriend on his stick-to-itiveness?” I was pinging her again, on a more personal level. I didn’t get much of a hit, just a hint of rising color at her collarbone, but it was enough to know two things—no boyfriend, and she felt the lack.
As for the rest of it, truth to tell, I had no idea. They could be who they said they were, or this could be just the next level of noise. Frankly, I was getting tired of shoveling such smoke. I needed some tangible facts.
Time to ping the whole joint.
I closed the file and placed both hands on the cover. “Look,” I said, “this is crackerjack work, really. When I think of all the hours of research, the wiretaps, the passwords axed, well, it just puts me in awe of my mighty tax dollars at work. Either that or it’s not tax dollars. For all I know, you’re all on the razzle and just head and shoulders better at it than me.” I looked at Vic. “Except you, Mirplo. I’m guessing that you’ve been played like I’ve been played.” To Allie and Hines I said, “As for you two, you’ve fed me nothing but horseshit since the moment we met. Can you forgive me for not wanting to swallow some more?” Next I addressed the notional Aussie. “You I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m gonna go with ‘guilty by association.’ You look nice, though. Bet you look great in a wet T-shirt.” I don’t know why I said that. It was unnecessarily provocative. But something about the woman just rankled me, and I couldn’t resist rankling back. I was rewarded with a look sour enough to curdle milk.
I stood up. Grabbed my computer. Popped out their peripheral and dropped it in the bowl of wax fruit. “Now then: If you’ve got uniformed Jakes downstairs waiting to arrest me, so be it. I’ve been busted before. It’s not the end of the world. But I have a feeling there are no waiting Jakes, just like I’ve got a feeling there’s no Australian High Tech Crime Centre, or federal fraud task force, and the closest you, Hines, have been to the FBI is a true-crime show you saw on the Discovery channel once. This is all just bogus bogosity, and I am out of here.”
I can play ball with cops. I can. But you have to know it’s cops you’re dealing with, and there was just no way I could trust any answer I got from this crew. It was like Mirplo swearing by the authenticity of his Photoshop fakes. How are you going to believe the guy with the manifest reason to lie? So I forced their hand. I had to. If they did have Jakes downstairs, it would at least verify their bona fides, and then we could do business. If they were just a bunch of big lying liars, I figured they’d be so stunned by my declarative exit that I could get in the wind before they had a chance to react. I knew I’d be putting some things behind me, notably one lame friendship and one abortive love affair (and the Merlin Game, but that’s just money). Plus also I’d have to vacate L.A., which was a shame, but unavoidable. Part of successfully cutting your losses is knowing when to cut and run. Which you do without ego and without stopping to measure anyone’s dicks. Considering how well they’d played me so far, I had to tip my hat to their superior skill—a hat I