The Albuquerque Turkey: A Novel (12 page)

Chips, I now realize. Chips from all different casinos. Plus dice and cards, cash, and pieces of paper that must’ve been betting slips. Did I repress this memory, or just consider it unimportant? It’s sure as hell important now.

I fixed Honey with a narrow stare. I didn’t have to tell him that I’d searched the historical record and found evidence to back his claim. I assumed he could read it in my face. So I skipped to the salient question, “What’s he doing in Vegas if he has a gambling problem?”

“Had,”
said Honey with sudden vehemence. “He got over it. I helped him, like he helped me.” Honey spread his beefy hands. “Radar, I’ve rolled with your daddy off and on for twenty years. Slept in the same fleabag motels. Slept with the same gals more than once. You gotta believe me, when he quit, he
quit
, with not so much as a coin flip since. Now I know what you’re thinking: that he took Wolfredian’s money and pissed it away in a sports book or such. But that’s not what this is about, and if you got
any
capacity to believe, you gotta put it in that. Otherwise …”

“Otherwise what?”

Honey shrugged his shoulders. “Otherwise you can’t save his life.”

Confirmation, class? Coming from a con man, it could be anything from gospel to overstatement to outright lie. In any case, there’s no way I’d rise to such obvious bait, so instead I drew him back to the narrative, still testing its consistency. “How did you roll?” I asked. “You two, all those years. And I’m not really concerned about the gals.”

Honey chuckled. “Squeamish, chico? Your pop’s a very robust man.” But he let it go. “We went to Germany,” he said. “Berlin.”

“Berlin?”

“I’d served in the Army there in the seventies.”

“What, Checkpoint Charlie?”

“In fact, yeah. But that was then. Now it’s ’92, and the Wall’s down. Know what that makes East Berlin?” I shook my head. “The last urban virgin in Western Europe.”

“Hence, a
Liebfrau
land rush.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What did you do, flip real estate?”

Again Honey laughed. “Nah, man, that’s too much work. We opened a local branch of the United States Redevelopment Fund.”

“Not sure I ever heard of that.”

“Well, it didn’t last long.” Or exist, of course, outside their imaginings. “We made friends with big developers, guys who held property options on all these old factories and apartment blocks in East Berlin. Then, when word got out that the USRF wanted to invest—”

“Everyone wanted a piece of what your friends had.”

“Prices spiked, our friends made a killing, we got our cut.”

“Old trick,” I said.

“Old to us. New to them.”

I was reminded of what Mirplo had said earlier about being a page ahead in the textbook. “So you were one-eyed men in the kingdom of the blind.”

“Right on.”

“And your joneses?”

“We put ’em away. Europe was good for our heads.”

“Why didn’t you stay?”

“Why don’t our kind ever stay anywhere?” Honey’s face went wistful at the memory. “But those were good times, though. We were about your age, a little older.” He looked me over as if appraising me for the first time. “You know your youth won’t last forever, right?” I nodded. “But they don’t tell you how hard shit gets. You don’t lose your competence. Hell, you gain competence. I’m ten times the grifter I was back then. But everything takes more effort.” He stretched his arms over his head, cracking the knuckles of his intertwined fingers. “And you hurt more. But whatever.”

“So you skated the ocean.”

“Uh-huh. Back home to America. And find that shit’s changed. Now there’s computers everywhere, Internet, you don’t work in a vacuum anymore. Folks get warned. Folks get wary. I don’t guess you give this too much thought, Radar. Having grown up with it, you know how to game it. For old farts like me and your pop, it was a tough transition.”

“What’d you do?”

“Tried to go legit, become movie producers. Man, that was a money pit. I tell you what, you want to see a real con artist, lift any rock in Hollywood.”

“So you didn’t make any movies?”

“Oh, we made ’em. Just couldn’t make ’em pay. Studio accounting, see.”

“You almost sound affronted.”

“Nah. No one to blame but ourselves. We were blind men in a kingdom of one-eyed snakes.”

“And after?”

“You know, little this, little that. Eventually we drifted apart. I dabbled in credit card fraud, then went over to the other side and worked in security consulting.”

“How to close the barn door behind the cow?”

“Something like that, yeah. Now I’m retired. Semi.”

“Semi?”

“I live in Phoenix. Great weather. Couple hundred golf courses. You’d be surprised how many mooks there think a drunk can’t putt.”

“I’d be surprised if you were drunk.”

I sketched a mental picture of Honey running the Wooden Leg hustle up and down municipal links, flamboyantly faux-Irishing his coffee and doubling bets on the back nine. I suppose you could supplement your income with that. Plus, it keeps a man in trim.

Honey set down his coffee mug and measured me with his eyes. “Trying to run the car trouble con past me,” he said. “I ought to be insulted. But I like you, Radar. I knew I would, from what your old man had to say. I expect you’ll come to like me, too. We’re kindred spirits. But your daddy, now, your dad I love. It’ll sound too dramatic if I say he saved my life, but he did. We’re closer than brothers. I’d do anything for him.”

“Then call this woman,” I said, writing down Allie’s digits on a paper napkin. “Tell her what you told me. If she buys it, we’ll meet in the morning in”—I consulted my mental map of Arizona—“Kingman. If not,
vaya con Dios
, okay?”

“Where in Kingman?”

“The Dairy Queen,” I said. “It’s right off the highway.” Which I knew from having once worked Route 66 as a certifier of historical landmarks.
^*

“I’d rather we traveled together.”

“I know: You’re concerned about my safety.”

“That’s right. It’s—”

I held up my hand. “Look, if Woody’s jammed up like you say he is, then I’m his out, right?” I didn’t wait for a response. “And what good is a dead out? Therefore, I think you’re overdilling the pickle I’m in.” Again he
started to speak and again I cut him off. “I don’t hold it against you. You don’t know me. I could be a total flake. It never hurts to put the fear on the mark. If I were who you say you are to Woody, I’d do the same thing.”

Honey nodded acknowledgment. He tapped the napkin with a beefy finger. “This your girlfriend?” I nodded. “You trust her judgment?”

“More than I trust mine, sometimes.”

“You’re lucky,” said Honey. “Having someone like that. I’ve had a lot of gifts in my life, but that’s one I’ve missed.” He pocketed the paper. “Dairy Queen,” he said, then pointed across to the cashier’s counter and a prominently placed rack of Swoop ’n’ Pummel Energy Blast. “You need one for the road?”

“No thanks.” My coffee had reached room temperature, and I drained it at a gulp. “I take my stimulants like my guardian angels,” I said. “Cool and black.” Honey took this for the compliment I intended it to be. We shook hands. I hit the road.

Half an hour later, my phone rang. I tapped my Bluetooth to answer.

“It’s me,” said Allie. “What do you think?”

“Frankly,” she said, “I can’t tell if he’s a funnel or a shield. But he loves your old man.”

“Yeah, I got that, too. So do I let him roll with?”

“Not my call.”

“If it were?”

She took a breath, then answered, “I would.”

“Was I wrong to have him call you?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“It kind of makes you part of this.”

“I
am
part of this. The anchor part.”

Our conversation turned to other subjects. The stunning monotony of desert radio. How Boy cornered a lizard in the kitchen. Mirplo’s flying lessons. Then we had phone sex. Thank God for Bluetooth, or I’d have run out of hands.

I
slept in a used-car lot in Kingman, a trick of vagabondage I learned long ago. Many places—streets, rest stops, motel parking lots—if you camp in your car, you’re asking for trouble, either from police or from smash-and-grab knuckleheads. In a used-car lot, though, you’re hiding in plain sight, safe as kittens till the business day begins. Choose, as I did, an eastern exposure, and you have a big yellow alarm clock set to shine in your eyes at sunup.

Fueled by bad convenience store coffee (a jumbo ex-wife with cream), I drove toward the Dairy Queen, which I recalled to be on Stockton Hill Road, just south of the freeway.

It wasn’t there.

It looked like it hadn’t been there in quite some time. Though a sand-scoured DQ stanchion still stood at the corner of the lot, the rest of the signage had been replaced by emblazonments for Arturo’s Fish Tacos. But Arturo was gone, too, and the windows were all boarded up. Another victim of the failed economy; in tough times, fish tacos are the first to go.

I parked at the strip mall across the street, facing the dead DQ. I was half surprised not to find Honey waiting for me. To inject such an air of urgency into the proceedings and then be a no-show was something of an inconsistent narrative. The thought crossed my mind that whatever malevolent forces he’d feared—or wanted me to fear—had caught up to him, but I don’t think you can tail an intelligent grifter
on the open road if he’s looking out for you, nor take him by surprise if he’s on his guard.

It did, however, put me in a bind of a kind, for I couldn’t wait around all day. I decided to give it an hour, no more. If Honey didn’t show, I’d head to Sin City. Of course, what I’d do when I got there I still didn’t know. Wander around the Gaia Casino calling,
“Alle, alle auch sind frei!”
? This would have amused Woody, for it was our call sign when I was a kid, smugly trumpeted in authentic German, our way to echolocate each other in crowds, like at baseball games.
Look at that, Radar. You went to baseball games
.

My phone rang. It was Vic. “Radar! I got my first commission! A metal sculpture. Sold it off a sketch of a bird.”

“Does it look anything like a bird?”

“Oh, yes,” said Vic. “Birdlike, very birdlike. I’m all about things that fly. This woman from Albuquerque wants it. She said she’s tired of typical Santa Fe art and finds me fresh.”

“Fresh to the tune of …?”

“Man, you don’t even want to know. I told you, it’s a money tree. Look, finish up what you’re doing and get back here. You could be my apprentice.”

Every now and then you feel an earthquake, and the idea of me being Vic’s apprentice was one. Before I could register an aftershock, I saw Honey’s Sharp pull off the freeway, drafting a big-ass Buick, the kind you don’t see much anymore because the mileage makes folks laugh.

“Gotta go, Vic.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Tell you later. Gotta go.” I snapped off and slouched down low behind the steering wheel. The cars pulled into the derelict Dairy Queen. Honey got out and looked around. If he spotted me, he didn’t let on, and I sure wasn’t about to start honking my horn. Because just then three heavies exited the Buick and spread out. They had attitude, plus muscles. Not bodybuilder muscles: back-room ones; someone’s-going-to-get-hurt ones. These were classic casino
sidewheels,
^*
dressed for off-site work in denim shirts, cargo pants, work boots, and brim caps. The two blockier ones took up station at separate corners of the lot. The third, smaller and slighter, circled around to check behind the building—and revealed a shock of red ponytail poking out the back of her cap. Well, what do you know? The sidewheel business goes EEO.

Wolfredian got out next. He matched his website PR photo perfectly, right down to the same bland corporate tie. This struck a discordant note with me, because if he really were a true vanilla functionary, corporate Vegas like Detroit is corporate cars, then what did he need with three sidewheels? That’s heavy security for a drive in the desert. I thought it might be for my benefit, just to convey what a player he was. And I’m supposed to cower in the face of this? Well, whatever. Jay scanned the scene in one tempered revolution, taking everything in and, I thought, darkly disapproving. Then he faced Honey, who gave him a shrug and said (as I lip-read), “I guess the kid decided to fade.” Wolfredian leaned in the car window and spoke to someone inside.

A moment later, I got a text.
Alle, alle auch sind frei
.

Hmm. Guess I won’t be going to Vegas after all.

I spent a few moments deciding how I wanted to play this, settled on feckless, opened the car door and shambled out. Yawning and stretching, I let myself notice the tableau across the street, then held a hand to my forehead, blocking the sun and peering across as if I’d just made an exciting discovery. “Honey? Is that you?” I called. I crossed the street, still devoid of traffic at this hour, essaying another long yawn as I walked. “I fell asleep waiting.” I paused at the sidewalk, balked by the sight of the sidewheels. “Who are these guys?”

The redhead returned from around back, and flanked Wolfredian as he stepped forward and introduced himself. “Jay Wolfredian,” he said, “Gaia Casino.”

“Hey,” I said, and, “Hey,” again to the lady sidewheel, who nodded slightly, resisting no urge whatsoever to smile. I turned back to Wolfredian. “I see you know Honey.”

“We just met. He says he’s been kind of your shepherd.”

“I didn’t know I needed one. But it’s nice of you to meet me halfway.”

“Kingman?” said Jay. “I come for the sushi.”

This was so unexpected and deadpan that it made me laugh, then let me stand on a platform of pleasant small talk, front-loading the conversation with null signals while I took Jay’s measure. What I got off him was a prickliness beneath the veneer. He struck me as the sort of person who’d be totally friendly right up till the moment he wasn’t.