"No, but you always seem to have one."
Billy laid his fork down. "How did you find Dale Bingham?"
Thorpe was surprised. "How do you know him?"
Billy leaned forward. He seemed to engulf the table, the hula dancers on his shirt in perfect syncopation. "You asked me to find out if the Engineer worked for another shop, so I quietly put out the word. It was Bingham who finally provided confirmation. Now you surprise him, asking questions, so he thinks I gave him up."
"I had no idea, Billy. I got his name from another source."
"I told him that had to be the case, but he doesn't believe me." Billy drummed his fingers on the tabletop, restless. "That's what I get for trying to do a good deed. I'm picking up all your bad habits." He glared at Thorpe. "I had hoped to recruit him."
Thorpe shook his head. "I don't think Bingham's right for the job."
"Bingham has a great set of ears. He could have been very useful." Billy poked at his omelette. "I won't ask you who referred you to him."
Thorpe laughed. "Go ahead, ask."
"I don't want to fight." Billy delicately lifted a thin forkful of eggs and avocado, offered it to Thorpe. "Bite?" He waited, shrugged. "Warren said to tell you that he's traced the Engineer to Southern California. He's definitely still in the area."
"I know."
Billy looked surprised.
"He instant-messaged me a few nights ago. We had a little chat."
"He told you where he was?"
Thorpe smiled. "He said he was living on the beach, talked about the offshore swells coming in. I told him I was living on the coast, too."
"Risky behavior on your part, don't you think?"
"Why lie when the truth accomplishes the purpose? We both want to get together." Thorpe watched three trim, well-dressed older women at a nearby table, laughing as they worked on their second round of mimosas. One was showing the others something in the newspaper. "The only difference is that the Engineer wants to talk before he kills me. He thinks I've got a few million stashed, and he wants me to tell him where it is. Me… I don't need to talk with him. I just want to kill the motherfucker."
Billy rested his fingers on Thorpe's wrist. "Be careful." His fingers flexed. "I wouldn't want anything to happen to you."
Thorpe glanced at Billy's manicure, noted the perfect half-moon cuticles, the thick, healthy nails.
Billy removed his hand. "Come work for me. I've got a very tricky job. It's just your style."
Thorpe checked his watch. Shock Waves was out of print, but he had located a bootleg 35-mm copy from a collector in Seattle and had received it by FedEx yesterday. In four days, it was going to be shown as the midnight feature at the Strand, a small theater in Huntington Beach. The local papers were running small notices about the special presentation in the entertainment sections tomorrow. He had thought to publicize it more widely, but he didn't want to scare off the Engineer. If he really was a movie buff, he'd see the notice.
"Frank?" Billy pursed his lips. "Remember the account I told you about at the bowling alley? I'm trying to turn the chief software designer of a local firm. He's relatively young, MIT grad, not married, but he has a girlfriend. Interesting woman-breeds Dobermans and is a chess grandmaster. I was hoping to use a variant of what you did with that coven of white supremacists in Bakersfield. A masterful scenario, but difficult to execute, and I don't have anyone on staff I trust with the job. I was hoping you could step in for a couple weeks. Money is no object. The client has given me a blank check."
"I'm busy."
"Nonsense. You're finished with your wake-up. All you're doing now is waiting around for the Engineer to pop out of a cake or something. I'm giving you a chance to earn some money."
"I still have most of the get-lost cash the shop gave me."
"May I give you some advice, Frank?"
"No."
Billy pushed aside his plate, sent silverware clattering. "You've got too much heart. It gets in your way. It limits you. I want you to reconsider what I've-"
Thorpe turned as the ladies at the nearby table exploded in laughter, and he saw a photograph of Missy in the paper one of them was waving.
"I've always been open to compromise," said Billy. "Perhaps you'd be willing to consult on the case. Just give me the value of your expertise. I'll be honest with you-I think once you get your toes wet, you won't be able to resist. Come on, Frank, quit playing hard to get."
"Excuse me," Thorpe said to the woman holding the newspaper. "Could I see that when you're finished with it?"
"Take it, please," said the woman, a taut matron in white silk workout garb, her mouth a lascivious slash. "The girls and I will pee ourselves laughing if we read it again."
Thorpe took the copy of the Gold Coast Pilot back to the table, starting to read it as he walked.
"What is it?" asked Billy as Thorpe sat down.
"Trouble," said Thorpe.
16
"I don't think it's so bad," offered Clark.
Missy tore the newspaper out of his hands and stood up from the breakfast table, hovering over him as she read from the paper. " 'Proving the adage that a fool and his, or her, new money are soon parted, wanna-be socialites Clark and Missy Riddenhauer recently discovered that a piece of pre-Columbian art they overpaid for, in a vain effort to impress the cognoscenti, was a fake. It's called irony, children. Fake art bought trying to achieve fake class. Not in my Orange County.' " Missy glared at Clark. "Not so bad?"
Clark rested his elbows on the table, rereading the column. He was just back from surfing, his dirty-blond hair snarled, his swim trunks soaking the upholstery of the chair.
Cecil peeked in from the kitchen but didn't say anything.
Clark looked up at Missy. "I always wondered what irony meant. So it means being ripped off?"
"It means everybody we know is laughing at us," said Missy. "It means whatever we do is not enough." She stalked around the dining room in her brand-new blue Givenchy suit and a diamond choker with matching anklet. "It means we've been fucked over."
"Harsh language, babe." Clark sipped his breakfast Pepsi. "Come on down to the lab and I'll fix you up something that will mellow you right out."
"I want you to take care of that bitch," said Missy. "Her, and him, too."
"Meachum? Come on, the man already called and apologized. He said he wasn't the one spilled the beans to Betty B."
"All he needed to do was tell her that the wall panel was such a perfect fake that even he was fooled. Instead, he tells her that he had doubts but that I was the one who insisted that I knew what I was doing."
"Can't blame a man for covering his ass."
"I can."
Clark blew a mournful note across the mouth of the Pepsi bottle, serenading her. He loved her like this, up on her high horse, taking names and keeping score. God, she was totally awesome. He kept the tune going. Their first date, he had played her "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on this big glass bong, and she had laughed, coughing out smoke from four-hundred-dollars-an-ounce Hawaiian bud, and he'd thought if there was a more beautiful woman in the world, some king or movie star probably had first dibs.
"I want Meachum taken care of," Missy said quietly. "Both him and Betty B."
Clark shook his head. "Freedom of the press. That's in the rule book."
"Look at me, Clark." Missy did a slow turn, showed off her outfit.
Clark raised an eyebrow. "You look like a prom queen at Martha Stewart High School. I like you better leathered up, hot and nasty."
Missy smacked the table. "It's a designer original; it's supposed to be conservative. I'm wearing it because I knew the article was coming out today, and I wanted to make a grand entrance at the club. Now what do you think people are going to be thinking when I walk into the main-"
The phone rang.