Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Prologue

It was Easter. From his exquisite one-story art deco building in the 9100 block of Sunset Boulevard, Victor Marr talked on the scrambler phone with the Yakuza gangster named Kahawa, in Hong Kong on his behalf. Marr was a mid-60s granite block of a man, with a stud-poker face not easily bluffed, a bold nose, and pale eyes that held no mercy. Tall and wide, still with the unruly hair and whipcord muscles of the Okie oil drill rigger he had been, summers, while attending the Colorado School of Mines. Then geologist for Standard. Out on his own. The first massive wildcat strike...

Now West Indian Oil was one of the Big Five.

“Were you able to close the deal?” he demanded.

From Hong Kong, Kahawa said in accented English, “A man in Europe put money down. Brantley says a number of cutouts were used, he does not even know the buyer’s real name. But I saw the contract. It is of iron.”

“Of course you outbid this man.” The Hong Kong silence was eloquent. Marr’s face tightened. “You did get it from Brantley.”

“I stole it. But moving it safely out of Hong Kong undetected poses certain... problems. It might take time...”

The tension left Marr’s face. His steel-shaving mouth turned up at the ends. He thought he was smiling. For the first time, he used a title of respect in addressing the Yakuza.

“Most satisfactory, Kahawa-san. Make sure no harm comes to it. I need the time to beef up my security arrangements at Xanadu anyway. Tell Brantley to keep news of our acquisition from the man in Europe until it is in my hands. And he must never tell the authorities about this. Not ever.”

“Both will be difficult. Brantley is a man of honor.”

“Until it is in my hands — and never. Understood? If he refuses to cooperate, quote Falstaff to him: ‘Honor... who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday.’ ”

Marr hung up. His tastes had been refined over the years. Now, he could quote Shakespeare. Now, no truck stop waitress could satisfy his sexual urges. Now, no work of art except an original by a grand master could excite him.

But one could possess only so many women, could own only so many grand masters. One wanted... more. The archetypal. The unique. Hence this little gem of an office building on Sunset instead of a Century City penthouse suite. Hence... it.

No need to show his prize to others. Enough to know no one else had one like it because there was no other like it.

Marr speed-dialed Xanadu, his hilltop estate three hundred miles up the coast in the Big Sur wilderness. He asked for, and despite the holiday got, R.K. Robinson, his head of security. He gave Robinson very specific instructions without telling him why: never let a subordinate know too much.

He made the call because there was always the possibility that the unknown European, upon eventually hearing of the theft, might try to reclaim his prize. But Victor Marr, in that secret inner place other men might call a soul, did not believe for an instant there was any actual danger. Who else in this ruthless world was as ruthless as he?

He was right — but also wrong. He was forgetting that in this ruthless world there is also sly.