The Texas Twist (8 page)

“We win? A mother's hope for her son is destroyed, and we win?”

“That's not what I mean and you know it. Apart from the money, apart from getting scammed, Sarah needs to focus on Jonah right now.”

“Don't you think that's her choice?” Allie wasn't sure Radar was wrong, but it irked her how Radar was sure he was right. “At minimum, she could put herself on the Institute's map, make Jonah a candidate for treatment.”

“That's fine if she wants to do that,” said Radar. “Only not through Ames. He'll dead-end her money and she
won't
get on the Institute's map.”

Allie grabbed the big water bottle she now felt compelled
to carry with her everywhere and downed a significant chug. She felt herself becoming frustrated with Radar. Was it hormones already? The thought made her cheek twitch. Morning sickness. Ridiculous thirst. Food cravings next, she supposed.

Allie admired and appreciated Radar's bright and shiny reaction to her pregnancy, for it was unguarded, and in a Hoverlander, unguarded moments are rare. She felt she could trust that Radar wanted a kid, but here in her fifth week, ambivalence was Allie's middle name. Not about the body stuff. That she could handle. But Allie, as a damaged child of damaged parents, with further damage inflicted by all those fosters, feared she'd be a damaged parent, too. She looked at Radar and knew she could count on some of his courage to carry her.
This is a good man,
she thought.
Against all odds, a good man.

When they first met, Allie thought Radar was damaged, too. He had to be, or why would he be attracted to someone damaged like her? By now, though, she had met Radar's long-lost father, the roguish Woody Hoverlander, himself a con artist of the first water, and she understood that her link with Radar was the game, not the pain. He had been trained in the grift, raised in it from birth, prodigiously talented and soon great at it, but he never got a chance to show off for the person who mattered most. Through her he had filled a long unrequited need. So she drew comfort from his comfort and accepted his acceptance of her. That he showed off for her made her something of a surrogate, and she accepted that, too.

She just worried that he was showing off now.

“Radar,” she said, “I don't get you. We've done diligence. You met the guy. So he acts too innocent. So he misuses a word.” She shot a look at Vic. “Like that never happens around here.” She leafed through the documents. “I don't see anything here that barks like a duck, Radar, and if you're honest, I think you'll agree. We've done our job. We can let Sarah handle this now.”

“End-around Ames direct to the Institute?”

“If that's what she chooses. But Radar:
She
chooses.”

“No. She's not that smart. She'll screw it up.”

Something in Radar's voice shot through Allie to a place deep inside her, for she detected his sense of protectiveness, a protectiveness she'd have sworn he reserved only for her, or possibly for Mirplo at certain particularly clueless points in his past. She said, “Radar, do I have to quote you to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“‘There's two kinds of problems in this world, my problem and not my problem.'”

“She's right, Radar,” said Vic. “I've heard you say that.”

“We can tell Sarah what we've found—and what we haven't found. We can suggest a course of action. Anything beyond that is making not our problem our problem. I don't understand why you'd want to do that.”

“And I don't understand how you can be so cold. Sarah's in trouble. This Ames is bad news.”

She pointed to the papers. “You can't prove it with this. Radar, she's my friend, too, and I don't want to see her hurt any more than you do. But you can't trash the guy and dash her hopes just because you've got a hunch—”

“It's more than a—”

“It's a hunch! And if you sell it as more than that, you're not telling the truth, and you're not doing a service to a friend.”

“I see your point,” he said at last. “But I'm not done digging.”

“That's up to you,” said Allie coldly. “The rest is up to her.”

Vic glanced back and forth between Allie and Radar. He hated it when mom and dad fought.

Later that night, after Allie had gone to bed, Radar found Vic sitting at the kitchen table, messing with his Rabota, and said, “Let's have a closer look at those pictures of Dylan. If we knew where that park was, we'd know Adam's home base.”

“Maybe.”

“Likely. Look, if you're right that he photo-stalked some stranger's kid, it would have to be someone familiar, someplace familiar.”

“Where he could exploit a routine, like?”

“Exactly.”

“Like where the kid plays after school.”

“Like a park.” Radar tapped open his Grape and navigated to the Dylan Ames tribute page. “This park.”

“You know what?” said Vic. “Let's have a closer look at those pictures.”

“Excellent idea.”

Vic navigated his tablet to the same page. They clicked through the pictures, scanning for location clues in the backgrounds. Most were leafy frustrations of featureless green, but one showed Dylan grinding a rail in a skate park, with a sign behind that read,
Town Ordinance 3.14, No
Skating After Dark.
Radar called it to Vic's attention.

“What?” asked Vic, staring blankly at the photo.

“What what? All we need is to find the town with this ordinance and we're home and dry.”

“How will we ever…?” Vic started, then stopped. “Race you?”

“Go!”

And off they sped through a slew of government databases, PDFs of regulations in parks-department manuals, and microfiched municipal statute books. Their fingers hopped and danced across their tablets in a ballet of hacking and cracking that each had internalized through the practice of long years. God, was it getting to be long years already? Well, yeah. They were both pushing thirty and, as Vic would put it, no springing chickens. Through long practice, then, of wielding the internet to find marks, hide tracks, or support short stories, they'd become adept at ferreting information and habituated to the lines of logic (yes, logic, even for Mirplo) that would guide them through their search. Still,
Town Ordinance 3.14,
that was a bit of a needle in a bytestack.

It took Vic ninety seconds.

Radar got there first.

“Here we go,” he said. “Athol, Massachusetts. ‘Town Ordinance 3.14: There will be no use of skateboards, roller skates, rollerblades, bicycles, or any other human-powered conveyance for any purpose other than point-to-point transportation between the hours of sunset and sunrise.'”

Vic meanwhile had already located Athol, a town of ten thousand people some two hours' drive west of Boston. He
studied a map of the place. “Skate park might be closed for the winter,” he said, “but there's a pond right there. If it's frozen there'll be hockey. Let's see.” He accessed a keyhole satellite that offered earth views as current as the last orbital pass. It wasn't strictly legal for Vic to visit, but nobody seemed to have minded so far, or anyway caught on. “It's frozen,” he said. “Infrared says sixteen inches.”

“Plenty enough for hockey. Zoom in.”

“Zooming.” A moment later, Vic said, “Yep, they've cleared a rink.”

“Then I guess it's worth a visit,” said Radar. “You want to check it out?”

“Austin to Boston, baby.” He gave his friend a mischievous smile. “Speaking of babies, what are we calling yours today?”

“Oh, I stopped doing that. Can't be obsessing over names for the next nine months.” Mirplo just stared until Radar relented. “Coyote.”

“Coyote Hoverlander. Not in a million years will Allie go for that.”

“You're probably right.”

“But you're cool with this, aren't you?”

“What?”

“This. You know, daddyness.”

“Yeah, you know what? I think I am. It'll be fun. Daddyness. Raise the kid in the business.”

“Thought you were tired of money.”

“Not that business.” He tapped his temple. “The thinking business. I'm looking forward to tuning that tool.”

“Oh, now I get it. You've discovered your immortality. Gonna train you up a new model Hoverlander, better than
the original.”

Radar said sternly, “Athol, Vic.”

Vic left the next morning. Late that afternoon, Sarah ran into Radar in the hall between their apartments and asked about the meeting with Ames. When he told her the jury was still out, she smiled and hugged herself. It made Radar feel strange to see a hope so misplaced, yet so fervent. He wished he could be wrong. He wouldn't bet that he was.

I bomb out to Athol
(writes Vic Mirplo) in a rented Song Salsa, a ridiculous kiddy compact that fights my every effort to squeeze performance out of her malnourished four-banger, rubber band steering and little red wagon wheels. A Mirplo doesn't belong in a car like this. A Mirplo belongs in a candy flake Caddy, 1959, convertible, with fins that cause local atmospheric disturbance when they pass.

But the last one just left the lot, so I'm stuck with this.

Beneath leaden winter skies, Athol is brown, the color of a brown goat. I easily find my way to the park. I don't need directions; a Mirplo knows his way around. A crust of ice crunches beneath my feet as I cross the park to the shore of Silver Lake. There I see the ad hoc hockey rink, its perimeter defined by heaped walls of plowed or ploughed snow. Kids sit on the snowbanks, about two teams' worth, lacing up their skates. My timing couldn't be better, like my timing always is. I shift my leather duffel to my left shoulder, looking cool, and bestow myself upon them.

“Mirplo,” I announce.

“That supposed to mean something?” asks one of the boys. From the look of him, I guess his name is Tommy.

“Just want you to remember it,” say I. “Case I get famous.”

Tommy slides back and forth on his blades. It's about a foot down to the ice from where I stand, but his face is level with mine. Even accounting for skates, this is a big galoot. That's good. I like my galoots big. “What would get you famous for?” he asks.

I look him dead in the eye and say, “I'm writing a book.” I whip out a printout of Adam Ames's picture and shove it in his face. “You seen this mug?”

“Mug?” asks Tommy's buddy, who I judge to be Wayne.

“Face. Appearance. Physiognomy.” I speak slowly and clearly, as if to infants. “Do you know this jamoke?”

“Why? Is the book about him?”

I square my jaw. “The book,” I say, “is about punks who ask too many questions.”

Tommy and Wayne exchange looks. And then they laugh. “Okay,” says Wayne, looking around, “where's the hidden camera?”

But my jaw is still set. “No camera,” I say, then ask again, “Do you know the guy?”

“If we did we wouldn't tell you.”

“Figured as much.” I nod toward the near net. “How about a shootout?” I drop the duffel and kick it open. A pair of skates falls out. Black leather bruisers. Even my skates look tough. The other kids stir, thinking,
This could get good
. Of course it could. With a Mirplo it always gets good. Let's see what these Massachusetts Athols are made of. “Here's the deal,” say I, “ten shots on goal. I make more than half, you spill all beans. If not, you keep my skates.”

“What would I want with your dog-ass skates?”

“I keep my dough in there.” I grin, slit-eyed. “And ten to one on a Mr. Franklin says you can't half shut me down.”

Tommy skates backward in a lazy weave. “I'm a pretty good goalie,” says he.

“I'm a pretty good shot,” say I.

“Then let's get it on.”

On it is gotten. Borrowing some local lumber from a gaunt, angular chick named Valerie I assume, I lace up and glide out on the frozen plane. It's bumpy. Kids need a Zambezi. Zamboni? An ice resurfacer. I stretch my calves and they feel good. Then I do a few quick sprints up and down the ice and I can tell that they're impressed with my speed. Can a Mirplo skate? Of course a Mirplo can skate. Well, since last night.

I've always been a quick learner.

Someone chucks me a puck and I make it dance on the ice, flicking the stick like a snake's tongue. Tommy takes his position in the crease. The others gather round, all going “Woot, woot!” for Tommy. All except Valerie. She looks at me with doe eyes.

Chicks get crushes so easy.

I make my first run at the net, and send the shot wide on purpose, just to check his tendencies, and yep, he goes left. So next I come right, and he easily stops that shot, anticipating that I'd try for his off side. So now he thinks he's got me figured out, only guess what? Now I'm riding the levels between what I know and what he thinks he knows, and it's child's play to get him leaning the wrong way. Which he does, over and over, as I rack up the goals. I shoot him a couple of cupcakes, so
he can look good in front of the girls, but the conclusion is foregone. I beat him with brains, like you do.