like shoplifting. Vic wanted to hit the Glendale Galleria, open late for holiday shopping, but I vetoed. Last thing we needed in the middle of a major grift was a misdemeanor theft arrest.
I figured that Hines was watching the house, or having it watched, in which case he’d know that we four were hanging out. Was he cool with that? Hard to say. Having shed the Chad Thurston identity, I was now working in diligent open partnership with Yuan, and Hines wouldn’t mind that. But what about Allie? If he saw us together, would he assume she was still playing me, still easing me in? I decided not to give a rat’s ass. Allie was with me now for the duration—even if that duration turned out to be only the last ten minutes before police battering rams arrived.
And Detective Constable Scovil? MIA. Completely. Which I found a tad distressing. In terms of personal appearances, this staunch Sheila was 0-for-December—odd for someone who’d previously come on so strong. What gave? Had she bought my mislead so completely that she’d had to bank her fires while confirming up her chain of command that she wasn’t inadvertently stepping on another undercover operative’s toes? Had she, in short, believed Vic? Impossible. Who believes a Mirplo? But if she’d doubted him, why had she not confronted me? I was still her bitch, right? Or was I? Had she changed the parameters without telling me? While I would feel affronted by such duplicity (what, she didn’t trust her bitch to stay bitched?) I could certainly understand it. She’d want to keep me guessing.
I asked Vic if she’d given him any hint about how she took his news. “She told me to go fuck myself,” he said, “if that’s any help.”
It wasn’t, not really.
She was a worry, though. All week long, she’d been like a seed stuck in my tooth. What was she up to? Was she really content to let me work without her supervision? Did she really trust me that much? Unlikely.
So then, she was giving me leash, and a whole damn lot of it, too.
Why?
Well, on one level you could say that while she didn’t trust me, she still might have confidence in me: confidence that, via either the Penny Skim or the Merlin Game, I’d reel in Hines, the fish she wanted to land. But wait a minute, whose word did I have that he was, really, her intended catch?
Hers. Only hers.
I cast my mind back to my first encounter with Scovil, how we’d instantly rubbed each other the wrong way. I hadn’t really disliked her, I recalled—just responded to the vibe she’d given off. But where did that vibe come from? Why did she loathe me so? She didn’t even know me.
Did she?
Well, did she?
“Hey, Billy,” I asked. “How far back do you and Scovil go?”
“Years, mate. She recruited me out of prison for her training program.”
“Yeah, that’s what she told me,” I mused. “That was a rather profound act of trust.”
“She said she had my measure. Knew my type. Said if I so much as thought an evil thought, she’d know it.”
“Knew your type, huh? I wonder how.”
“Ah, well, as to that, she’s had long experience with the art of the con.”
“As a practitioner?”
“Nah, mate. Victim.”
My ears pricked up. “Go on,” I said.
“Right, well,” said Billy, “you have to know she was drunk when she told me this, so it could either be true truth or only pub truth, yeh?”
“Understood.”
“It was the night my training program finished.”
“You’d already figured out you were going after the Reserve Bank?”
“Too right. You don’t want your training to go to waste.”
“So much for having your measure,” said Allie.
Billy smiled. “Anyway, that night there was a bit of a piss-up down the road. We shouted rounds back and forth till closing. At which time she confided in me that her parents had been ruined by a grifter. Picked clean. They lost their home, savings, everything. That’s what brought her into anti-fraud.”
“Righteous indignation?” asked Allie.
“Fuckin’ rage.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. I had an awful premonition about what I’d hear next. “Did she say how they got snuked?”
“Mortgage fraud. They thought they were leveraging their land to buy more land. Exotic shit, too.”
“A tropical island?”
Yuan’s eyes widened. “How did you—?” He bit off the end of the sentence. “Oh, no. Oh, mate, you didn’t.”
“What?” asked Vic. “Didn’t what?”
“I’m afraid I did.” (Through a dummy corporation called Vala Island Holdings. Look up