pure whole cloth invention. But they bought it completely.
I guess I was just on my game.
“And,” I added, “that’s back when they measured economic change in centuries. You know how it is these days: Someone pets a monkey in Uganda, flies to Chicago, you have Marburg all over the Midwest by midweek. Same thing with public monetary confidence. By the time it hits CNN, it’ll be too late to stop.
“Like I said, your bosses aren’t going to like that. Especially since your bosses have no idea what you’re up to, do they?”
Hines and Scovil exchanged unhappy looks. Now to administer a tincture of panic and beat a hasty retreat. “Here’s the deal,” I said, “Two million dollars in twenty-four hours stops this thing in its tracks. And gives you Billy Yuan as a kind of a consolation prize.”
“You’d sell out your partner?” asked Scovil.
“What partner? I’ve known the dude two weeks.” I turned to Hines. “But Allie’s mine. She walks.”
“Why?” asked Scovil, which suggested that Hines hadn’t clued her in on the latest state of l’affaire Allie.
So I jerked a thumb at Hines. “Ask him.”
Hines opened and closed his mouth. More for cover than anything else, he said, “What about Mirplo?”
I smirked. “If you think you can put this all on his scrawny shoulders, be my guest. For the record, he’s not as loyal a servant as you think he is.” I turned to walk away, then paused, as if something very important had just occurred to me. “By the way,” I said, “if you’re considering some sort of preemptive strike, either legal or …” I fixed them both with meaningful looks “… extralegal, I suggest you look up ‘Dead Man’s Switch’ on Wikipedia.” Then I walked out, leaving the Polo Lounge to its standard olio of dealmakers, heartbreakers, and, I predicted, two morose cops who would run up a hefty bar tab before they stumbled out into perfect Beverly Hills.
I stopped by the Blue Magoon on the way home. The place was creepy, but somebody there had something I thought I might need.
* * *
*“The Sky Crane will fly off and crash-land a short distance away.”
* * *
26.
event horizon
“Y ou what?!” shouted Vic. “You fucking sold me out?”
Unable to stomach yet another Java Man, we were hanging at one of its one-off competitors, Sheik of Arabica, located way down Slauson and situated, we hoped, well off Hines and Scovil’s map. Allie, Billy, and I were quaffing cappuccinos. Vic was throwing a bit of a fit.
“Relax, Vic,” I said. “Nobody sold anybody out. It’s all part of the snuke.”
“Well, I like your part better than mine. Two million bucks. You’d better fucking cut me in.”
“Vic, use your head. They couldn’t possibly pay, even if they wanted to, which, trust me, they don’t. Hines has a theoretical half million from the Merlin Game, but, what? He’s gonna pry it out of me to give it back to me? And Scovil, what’s she going to do? Hit an ATM for a million-dollar advance on her credit card?”
“Well, if they’re not gonna pay,” he asked, “what are they gonna do?”
“Probably try to kill me.”
Allie flinched at this but recovered quickly, realizing, “That’s part of the snuke, too?”
“Of course. First they’ll make a separate peace with Billy, and once they’ve got him tucked in, they’ll finish the unfinished business of me.”
“That would satisfy Scovil,” said Billy, “but Hines still needs a payday, yeh?”
“That he does,” I said. “Likely before he endgames my ass, he’ll try to strong-arm Allie into romancing away the Merlin stash.”
“He already has,” said Allie. I blinked. I had figured that my little confab with Hines and Scovil would stimulate action, but I didn’t think it would come on so fast. “Though it wasn’t exactly a strong-arm situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said if I managed to get the money, he’d cleanse all my records, and I could go stroll.”
“Anything else?”
“Well … he kind of made a pass.”
“What kind of pass?”
“Oh, lifetime. He told me how great I’d look in something sexy—like a Moroccan villa.”
“What did you tell him?”
Allie fixed me with a level grin. “What do you think I told him? That I can’t wait to be his burka baby.”
Vic snorked a laugh, but then his primeval brain returned to the subject at hand. “Still, what about me? You think I want to take the fall for this?”
“Of course not,” I said. “No more than I want to get dead.”