The California Roll: A Novel

by John Vorhaus

  The trail became steep and overgrown, and running it was less a matter of keeping stride than of bushwhacking and leaping over bracken like a kangaroo. I started to feel good, like you will when the endorphin kicks in. Just for the hell of it, I left the trail and went straight up the side of a tough hill, lunging upward from toehold to toehold, leaving little spurts of dislodged dirt in my wake. I charged all the way uphill until I burst out of the brush at the top, where I stopped to catch my breath. All of Los Angeles spread out before me, rather like a trinket I owned. I could feel my pulse pounding in a ring around my skull, from my forehead through my temples and around to the back of my neck. I am crowned, I thought, and it occurred to me to wonder whether every crown reference in our history and literature was just a metaphor for the buzz of hard exercise. Jesus runs the 440.

  I heard a rustle from some bushes nearby and turned toward the sound, half expecting to see a deer or coyote or some other exotic L.A. fauna. Instead, two men emerged, one young and cut and the other, well, markedly less so. Ah, I realized, they use this part of the park for that. Talk about your multipurpose recreational resource. Just then I heard another sound, the metallic clang of chains. Not far away, a disc golfer pulled his disc from a pole-mounted basket while his buddy lined up a putt. The second shooter eyed his line, rocked gently at the knees to find his rhythm, then sent his disc on a wobbly but straight flight to the pin. It hit the hanging ropes of chain and fell into the basket. The shooter allowed himself a breathy “Yes!” and a fist-pump, then picked up his bag of golf discs and his beer and headed for the next tee.

  I was overcome. It was such a prosaic moment—the intersection of gay cruisers and disc golfers—but for some reason it filled me with ineffable sadness. Perhaps it was the fact that the moment was so prosaic, so normal … just everyday people pursuing their everyday hobbies, habits, or sins. You think you’re just in a park, but really you’re standing in a place overhung with invisible nets: nets of use, nets of purpose. Open your eyes, you see them all laid bare before you. The gay cruisers and disc golfers, the couple arguing in the parked car on the access road, the sad schizophrenic mumbler sitting on a stump beneath a blue vinyl tarp, two girls in spandex walking their dogs. They’re all living so unself-consciously in the now. As a grifter, you can’t afford the luxury of now. You have to be thinking ahead, weighing outcomes, measuring risk. It’s a high-wire life, not long on second chances. I’d always felt at home in the life and always felt free, no more aware of my constraints than a fish is aware of the ocean. Suddenly I was like, Where did this ocean come from? Was it here all along?

  So what did I want? Off the razzle? A suburban home life? Soccer camp for the kids and martinis for dinner for Dad? Wise investments? Hawaiian vacations? Or did I just want relief from the pressure I was always (putting myself) under? A chance to relax, like a normal person. Shoot a round of disc golf. Argue in a car. Walk a dog.

  Or was I doing that now? After all, if I were me looking at me, what would I see? A guy in his prime, more or less, out running the day away in track shoes and bandanna. I’d seem normal enough, wouldn’t I? But if I were me looking at me, I’d know I was seething inside. I would see me questing ahead in my mind to the next move, the next snuke, the next piece of the puzzle that never seems to solve because after every piece there’s another piece, and another piece and a half after that. And who’s putting the pieces in play? Me. Just me. Hooked-on-calculation me.

  All this hard thinking. It makes a man want to rest. Or at least find someone to unbundle to. But who can a confidence man confide in? No one I knew would treat my confession as anything but more smoke, more mirror, and how could I prove them wrong?

  I didn’t run back to my apartment. I walked the whole way, lost in revelation. I suddenly saw a different arc for my life, one where I didn’t always have to live in such a heightened state of intensity. I could learn to relax. I could take yoga. Hell, I could teach yoga. It wouldn’t be bad to have peace.

  By the time I got home, I of course recognized this for the hogwash it was. I didn’t want off the grift. I just wanted out of the present snarl.

  Which snarl promised to get a little more snarly with Detective Constable Scovil waiting for me at my door.

  She wasn’t flying the bitch flag, exactly, but took pains to let me vibe that this wasn’t a social call and we weren’t about to become NBFs, new best friends. I invited her in and took her out on my deck, just large enough for two to sit comfortably and watch the sun settle into the west, casting an orange-into-red glow on the boulevard below and the wall behind us. Film directors call this the golden hour. It makes everyone look good.

  For a while, we exchanged null signals, the kind of empty pleasantries you’d expect in such a situation. At last she half-turned in her seat, sending off the body tell that here came the serious shit. “Radar,” she said, “we have to open our kimonos.”

  “Is that as good as it sounds?”

  “Shut up and listen,” she said, and I did.

  To open one’s kimono, it turns out, means to exchange data with a prospective business partner, like if you want to build WiMax power amplifiers and I’ve got the GaN power FETs you need, and we have to know if my devices will give your amplifiers sufficient linearity, * but without giving away all our trade secrets. In the business world, they underclothe their kimonos with noncompete this and nondisclose that. Out here on the rim of respectability, such niceties don’t exist. You just have the other person’s word for it. Sometimes you don’t even have that. This is where Scovil was. She needed to open her kimono, but what promise of my discretion could she trust or believe? There was nothing for it but to drop the obi and hope for the best. “I’m not here to catch William Yuan,” she said.

  “No?”

  “I’m here to catch Hines.”

  And the none-too-firm sand of reality shifted beneath my feet once again. Which was really disappointing, because I’d pretty much decided that I could make Hines authentically as a fibbie with a hard-on for fraudsters. After all, he had all that documentary evidence of my … let’s call them adventures. For this reason, and by the sharp logic of Occam’s razor, I had decided that the simplest explanation was likeliest to be true: With legitimate access to official records, he’d put together a blackmail package sufficient to bag a Hoverlander. But if he was working my side of the street, then how …? Wait, maybe he’s working both sides of the street.

  I said, “You mean he’s not a cop?”

  “Oh, he’s a cop. He’s just …”

  I filled in the blank. “Dirty.” She nodded. Yep, both sides of the street. “So where does that leave Allie?” I asked.

  Scovil smiled, revealing what she thought she knew about my Allie pangs. “She works with Hines,” said Scovil. “We have to assume she’s crooked as well.”

  “Well, who isn’t?”

  Scovil fixed me with a glare, bricking up her tough gal demeanor with the mortar of self-righteousness. “I’m not,” she said.

  “Oh you’re the honest cop,” I deadpanned. “I always thought that was a myth, like Bigfoot.”

  What happened next, I have to admit, surprised even me. In the time it took me to chuckle at my own bon mot, Scovil was out of her chair and straddling mine. With swift, practiced moves, she collected my wrists in one hand and pinned them against the wall above my head. The other hand she clamped ungently on my windpipe, to which my windpipe replied, “Ack.”

  She leaned in close, like she was about to kiss me, but no smooch forthcame. “I know your type,” she hissed. “Don’t think I don’t. You skate through life on charm and think you just ooze irresistibility. Well, I’m here to tell you, this is one gal who finds you completely resistible, sooky bub. And another thing: You’re working for me now. You report to me, you do what I tell you, and you always tell me the bloody truth.” She squeezed my windpipe a little harder to underscore the point—not, I confess, that it needed much further emphasis. “I own you, bitch. And if you don�
�t think I do, please consider that I’m fully capable of putting you in the ground.” And here I’d been wondering if things could escalate to violence. “Get me, mate?”

  I nodded to the extent that her grip on my throat would allow.

  She shook her head with a look of disgust. I think she was actually hoping I’d show her some of that vaunted Hoverlander bottle so she could go on choking me, or maybe toss me off the deck and see if she could hit the Java Man from here. (I’ve tried it with rocks; it can be done.) Instead, she let go of my throat, though continued to hold my hands in her grasp. She ground them into the wall, I think as sort of a consolation prize to herself for not getting to kill me and such. In any event, it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere until I convinced her I had religion.

  Let’s be clear about one thing: I’m not a coward, but I am a practical man. I’m able to discern an empty threat from a genuine one, and there was no doubt in my mind that Scovil’s was the real deal. Moreover, the puzzle of her personality was clicking into place for me. She’d rubbed me the wrong way from the moment we met. Why? Because she rubs everyone the wrong way. It’s what she likes to do: to define herself in enmity. In that sense, she was like the antigrifter. Where a grifter is all verbal prostate massage, she was a shaft up the ass. And, I feared, not just in a metaphorical sense.

  So I caved. I caved completely and sincerely and, I confess, a bit cravenly. Not my finest hour, but what are you going to do? I had no intention of being collateral damage to a grudge match between a bent fibbie and a self-righteous Aussie cop with blood lust. And if it cost me a little pride, a little dignity, I figured that was a better deal than the whole ectoplasmic package that was Radar Hoverlander.

  Which I basically conveyed to Scovil in the vernacular of “You say jump, me say how high?” Problem was, the abject capitulation of a con man gets taken with the same giant lump of salt as everything else he says. How could I convince Scovil that she did, in fact, have a broken Radar on her hands? By playing the only card in my deck with any texture, my doubts about Billy Yuan.

  I told Scovil how I’d eased myself into Yuan’s acquaintance. “He’s playing me for a mark,” I said, “but I’m not sure he buys it.”

  “Why, Radar,” she offered sardonically, “you’re not smart enough to play dumb?”

  “I can play dumb,” I said. “I can play anything.” Man, she raised my hackles. “But there’s a certain balance of power at work here. As a top grifter, I can convince him of anything, but as a top grifter, too, he’s probably not convinced.”

  “Clash of the bloody titans,” she said. And then slapped me.

  Slapped me!

  Sheesh, what’d I do?

  “Right,” she continued, “here’s what you’ll do. First, obviously, you will keep this conversation to yourself.”

  “Obviously.”

  “You’ll continue to work Yuan. Don’t admit anything. You’re selling a fiction; so is he. That can be useful. Meantime, you report to Hines that the meeting went well, no problems.” She grabbed my cheeks and chin, and squeezed hard. “You’re on probation, mate. You keep your nose clean, do exactly as I tell you, and never so much as shade the truth to me, then Bob’s your uncle. But if anything goes wrong, whether it’s your fault or not, I will end you. Understand?” I nodded to the extent that my squeezed cheeks would allow. Scovil seemed satisfied. She got up off me and, without ceremony, left my place.

  As I rubbed blood back into my hands, I wondered why, and by whose authority, an Australian copper was after a bent Yank fibbie. But it was one of those “Reply hazy, ask again later” questions, so I stashed it for future contemplation. Meanwhile, I couldn’t help noting how my earlier existential crisis had been overtaken—swamped, really—by events. No time for existential crises now. At some point in the future, I might decide that grifting for money wasn’t where I wanted to be, but just then I was grifting for my life, and while I’d always managed a success rate that anyone might envy, in this case I simply couldn’t afford to fail. I’d need all my judgment, guile, and skill just to tap dance through.

  Plus a healthy dose of think-on-your-feet.

  Starting, as it happens, almost at once.

  Because fifteen minutes after Scovil left, Hines showed up.

  Not in what you’d call a perky mood.

  * * *

  *Some people know what all this means; I personally do not.

  * * *

  17.

  name that religion

  T he trouble with having a Mirplo for a chaperone is he’s such a fucking blabbermouth. I should have known he would report back to Hines about my hookup with Yuan—did know it, in fact, but figured he’d be his usual slack self about checking in. But that was before I learned Hines was dirty. Or rather, alleged to be. In this soap-bubble world of mine, the only fact I felt I could completely trust was Scovil’s death threat. Everything else was suspect. Still, if Hines was bent, then he’d be leaning hard on poor Mirplo. It’s what you do when you’re playing both sides against the middle—that, plus fret about running out of middle.

  Thus I had barely come down from my last adrenaline spike when an ungentle pounding on my front door triggered my fight-or-flight response again. One thing was for sure: Once I got through all this (if I got through all this), I would definitely have to move. Too many people knew where I lived now, and seemed to have no compunction about dropping in unannounced. I felt like I was identified on Maps to the Stars’ Homes.

  My apartment had one of those old-school peepholes, a tiny door covered by a wrought-iron grill. I unlatched it and peered out to find Milval Hines shifting nervously from foot to foot on my doorstep. I had seen Hines wearing all sorts of attitude masks, from clueless wannabe grifter to able investment banker to hard-nosed Jake. I had never seen him all twitchy and itchy like he was just then. It didn’t strike me as a mask.

  “Open up,” he demanded.

  “Not sure that’s a good idea,” I said. “You seem a little edgy right now.”

  “Want edgy? I’ll give you edgy.” He snaked his hand under his suit coat and whipped out a coal-black service automatic, which he leveled at the peephole. Oh, this just gets better and better, I thought. I pondered whether a bullet fired at that range would blast through the grill or bounce off, but decided not to push the experiment to the testing stage. I opened the door and let Hines in. Good news: He put his gun away.

  “I need a drink,” he said, exactly like a man who, well, needed a drink.

  “So do I,” I replied, “but this is a dry house.”

  He looked at me like I had syphilis. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, “you don’t even drink?”

  “I drink,” I said. “Just not at home.” Flashing back to my recent one-man tequila fiesta, I mentally added, at least not when I can help it.

  Hines paced anxiously back and forth, his eyes darting everywhere as if looking for lurking monsters. What could have turned him upside down so fast?

  “You met Yuan,” he said suddenly.

  “Yep.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “I eased him in. He thinks I’m a trust-fund baby with more money than common sense.” Hines eyed me suspiciously. I suppose he was measuring my expression for some sign of a lie, but the day has not yet dawned that a fibbie, bent or straight, can read me that well. All the same, he didn’t seem satisfied with my report.

  “So he makes you for a mark,” Hines said. “How’s that gonna help?”

  “See it from his point of view,” I vamped. “A free fish jumps into your boat. No matter what else you’ve got going on, you don’t throw it back. Never leave money lying on the table, right? Besides, he’s lonely. Far from home. Might want someone to talk to. I’ll take an interest in his investment strategies. People like it when you let them teach.” This last comment was a none-too-veiled reference to Hines’s playacting back in the pigeon-drop phase of all this. I half wanted him to take it as a compliment, like I’d borrowed a page from his playb
ook.

  If he was flattered, he didn’t let on. “Any way he’s onto you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Mirplo says he looks like a smart cookie.”

  “Mirplo’s about as good a judge of character as Eva Braun. You want to take his word for it, you put him in charge. Otherwise, man, back off. I’ve got to have room to move.”

  “You should’ve reported in as soon as your meeting was done.”

  “I should’ve gone into sports medicine,” I answered. “But we all make mistakes. Don’t dwell, that’s what I say.”

  “You’ve got a smart mouth, kid.”

  “I know,” I said. “It gets me into trouble. But also out. It’s about a wash.”

  “I don’t think you appreciate how much trouble you’re in right now.”

  “What do you want from me?” I asked. “My career’s on the line. My freedom.” I waved vaguely toward his hidden shoulder holster. “Maybe more. Like I said, I should’ve gone into sports medicine. What’s done is done. I’m not going to have a bad day just because you say so. To an asshole, the whole world looks dark.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s just a saying.”