right—the Hackmaster did tricks!) said otherwise. The e-mail took pains to couch its intent in circumlocution, but the gist was this: that certain code cowboys in the Central Bank’s IT section had written some skim software, “just for fun.” Now they were thinking about moving it out of the fun stage and into implementation, but the regulatory atmosphere in Taipei was not conducive (i.e., too nosy), and would Mr. Zhao be interested in speaking to the regulatory atmosphere in Beijing?
Billy and I had worked on the pitch day and night for a week. That is, I had worked on the pitch while Billy backstopped my language choices (it turned out that, yes, he was fluent in Mandarin) and also refined the relevant software, which intended to exploit certain bookkeeping lags and inefficiencies—friction, if you will—to grift the smallest fraction from any transaction. Though the amount of each skim was negligible, when you multiplied it by billions of transactions, the sum of the get would be exactly, uhm … a buttload. I, meanwhile, built a moiré effect into my pitch. In graphic design, a moiré effect is created by two sets of lines or dots imperfectly aligned so that other patterns emerge. Such patterns can be beguiling or distressing, but mostly what they do is occlude: They make things fuzzy. In the grift, a moiré effect is a sorting device that presents a pitch to prospective marks in terms that can be interpreted as an offer or a threat, depending on the mark’s proclivities and point of view. It’s self-selecting in the sense that those who consider it an offer come after it, and those who see it as a threat (those cowering cowards we don’t want anyhow) just blow it off. Naturally, I wasn’t putting all my eggs in one Zhao-shaped basket. Like every other grift, you separate the qualified leads from the chaff—but you don’t want the chaff going around making noise. The moiré effect, with its veiled you might be blamed for this warning, assures that relevant whistles go unblown.
If Zhao doesn’t respond, then, someone else will. Even a centralized system like a big bank has redundancies, and like every other part of China’s bloated bureaucracy, the People’s Bank IT department (in both the central branch and its many lucrative regional offices) was top-heavy with earnest wage earners desperate to stay ahead of the nation’s rapidly steepening prosperity curve. For some, this meant keeping up with the Jianses in the rush for more appliances, better mopeds, and—God love them that they dare to dream—two-bedroom apartments. For others, it was the pressure of grease from above. When every palm must be crossed with silver, lest hopes for advancement be dashed, silver is a never-ending need. Now here comes an offer to partake in the nation’s national pastime—corruption—cottage-industry style. Accept or decline the offer, that’s moiré or less up to you. But be sure that if you don’t, your brother will, and there’s no point in ratting him out because then you’ll just be passing the benefit up the food chain to someone who, let’s face it, is already sucking at the public tit too much as it is.
Thus I put my prospectus out to every midlevel brain boy with access to the big bank’s mainframe. Given the size of my target market, I projected that we’d get dozens of positive responses. More than enough for our purpose.
It was Sunday evening—Monday morning in Asia. We had just unleashed the pitch on China and were kicking back, congratulating ourselves on the completion of phase one. Allie had come over to my place, where, for convenience, Billy and I had set up shop. She’d brought Chinese food, which I thought was clichéd, but she offered it with ironic intent. Allie, Billy, and I had passed pretty quickly through the whole “I know you like me, but I’m dating him now” thing. To his credit, Billy had taken it in stride, and I thought I understood why, for there’s nothing like an involving snuke to take your mind off your thwarted heart.
Mirplo was there, too, trying to interest everyone in a game of shenanigans, which is not the board game you may be thinking of, or the album by Green Day, but the grifters’ version, where a gang of you invade a public place and at the drop of the code word—“Shenanigans!”—all start acting in some chaotic, random fashion. This can be just for fun or to create a diversion for other endeavors,