California Roll by John Vorhaus -- excerpt

8/14/2019 California Roll by John Vorhaus -- excerpt

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the

California Roll


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B o o k s b y J o h n V o r h a u s

* * *

The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If Youre Not

Creativity Rules! A Writers Workbook

The Pro Poker Playbook: 223 Ways to Win More Money Playing Poker

Killer Poker: Strategy and Tactics for Winning Poker Play

Killer Poker Online: Crushing the Internet Game

The Killer Poker Holdem Handbook

Poker Night: Winning at Home, at the Casino and Beyond

The Strip Poker Kit

Killer Poker Online 2: Advanced Strategies for Crushing the Internet

Game

Killer Poker No Limit

Killer Poker Shorthanded(with Tony Guerrera)

Under the Gun(novel)


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the

a n o v e l

Shaye Areheart Books

N E W Y O R K

Roll

California

John Vorhaus


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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product

of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by John Vorhaus

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the

Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Shaye Areheart Books with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

ISBN 978-0-307-46317-3

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Lynne Amft

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition


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The best offense is a good pretense.


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1 .

on the snuke

T he first person I ever scammed was my grandmother, who hadAlzheimers disease and could never remember from one minuteto the next whether shed just given me ice cream or not. Id polish off

a bowl, drop it in the sink, walk out, walk back in, ask for another, and

get it. Boom. They say you can get sick of ice cream if you eat too

much. I found that was not the case.

They also say you cant cheat an honest man, but I say you can. The

honest ones never see it coming.

In first grade, I cooked up the Golden Recess, which was a Ponzi

scheme, though I didnt know to call it that then. I got my classmates topool their allowances for me to invest in something. Action figures?

Baseball card futures? I really dont remember. By the time the pyramid

collapsed, Id netted twenty buckshuge money for first gradeand I

didnt even do time because, though of course I got caught, no one

believed a little kid could have such larceny in his soul.

Honest people. Like I said, they never see it coming.

And snukesscams or the people who perform themmay have

a bad name, but its not always the case that someone gets burned. In

fact, when you think about it, the best cons are the ones that leave

1


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people feeling like they got something for their money. And you know

what? Sometimes they even do.

Consider the Doolally shorthair.

Im like nine, ten, something like that, and I find this stray dog. He

was a real mess, with matted, gunked-up fur and scarry evidence of

many fights. I knew if I took him to the pound, theyd kack him for

sure, and I couldnt stand to see a dog go down. So what I did, I shaved

him and sold him to unsuspecting yuppies as an exotic purebred: the

extremely rare and fairly expensive Doolally shorthair terrier. Icharged a ton because, again, with honest people, they definitely think

the more you pay, the more its worth. Of course, it wouldnt do to have

his hair grow out on themwho ever heard of a longhaired short-

hair?so before I sold him, I trained him to pigeon home. Which, at

the first opportunity, he does. I shave him again and take him back

again, and oh, the happy couple, they cant believe I found their pre-

cious pooch! I explain how the Doolally is so valuable and rare that

they all get GPS microchipped at birth, and these yuppies are so

grateful, they give me a reward, which I protest taking but take just

the same.

So the dog bolts again, and I return him again, this time spinning a

yarn about how the chip only has a limited number of resets, whatever

the hell that means, and had to be replacedat cost, of course. Thisthey totally buy, and why not? I mean, just look at me, such a choirboy.

Beatle bangs, cherry cheeks, scouts-honor smile. Thats always been a

strength of my game: I look so straight, youd never believe Id try to

sell you your wallet out of your own back pocket.

Anyway, the dog jets again, and I trot him back again and get paid

again. Im definitely thinking, good times.

But it cant last forever, right? Even the dullest dull normal will

eventually catch on, so after the Doolallys last scamper, I show up with

another mutt, some additional stray I rescued. I suggest that the

J o h n V o r h a u s2


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Doolally is a little more peripateticat that age I was all about the SAT

wordswandery, yeah, than they can handle, but this other dog is a

real homebody and wont go nomad like the Doolally. A schnuffle-

hund, I called it. Very rare.

Sadly, the schnuffle costs a bit more, and would they mind making

up the difference?

I kept that one dog, the original Doolally, and placed him in about

five different homes before he had the bad luck to get run down by a

rototiller (how does that happen?), and in the meantime, thats thelives of five other strays I saved, plus five other families who got the

loyalty and love of a worthy woofer, even if they sort of overpaid for it.

So you see, it was like the Haiphong phone booka Nguyen-Nguyen

situation.

Which is not to say that every day is Sunday in the park with

George with me. Having been a grifter now for about twenty years (if

you count the ice cream thing as the start, which I do), I recognize the

big pitfall, and no, Im not talking about getting (A) arrested or (2) the

crap kicked out of you. (Both I have, and neithers a big deal.) Im not

even talking about what they call grift drift, where you have to make

rootlessness your root and homelessness your home because it doesnt

pay to set a stationary target, not in this line of work. No, the real prob-

lem with life on the snuke is how it makes you cynical. Once you knowhow easy it is to pull wooland it seems like I knew it neonatally

you start to expect the worst, or at least the least, of people. Its not fair

and its not fun. So I work hard to keep up my pointillist perspective

make every day indeed Sunday in the park with George if I canand I

always try to give my victims the metaphorical reacharound, so they

can feel like crossing paths with me wasnt the worst thing that

couldve happened to them in life.

According to me, Im moral.

Plus, according to me, Im normal, which is not at all abnormal

t h e c a l i f o r n i a r o l l 3


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when you think about it, because everybodys default view is the view

from inside their own skin. Though I appreciate that I strike some as

strange. First, theres my career, my chosen line of work, which few

would choose. Next theres my inexpressive expressiveness. I learn like

a sponge, and like a sponge I hold everything without judgment and

sort without order. Im equal parts lunch bucket, pop culture, and

string theory, and this can make me appear quite random at times,

though I find that people find that part of my charm. Of course, what

they call charm I call a tool, but thats a subject for a different time.Then theres my name: Radar Hoverlander. Seriously, whos got a

name like that? People assume its a fabricat,* possibly something I

cooked up between when I entered Harvard at the age of fifteen and

when I got expelled for celebrating my eighteenth birthday in the apse

of the Appleton Chapel with a bottle of absinthe and the underage-

yet-in-my-defense-wildly-precocious daughter of a Radcliffe provost.

Thats a reasonable supposition. Certainly if Id been cursed with a

Doe-value name, my first order of business would have been to tart it

up to suit the grift. Zakaz Kouren, Vietato Fumare, something like

that. But Radar Hoverlander I was born, and I have the birth certificate

to prove it. Which assertion, of course, might not be all that assuasive,

since when it comes to birth certificates I had six at last count. What

can I tell you? Documents of identity are to my line of work whatbromine and xylene neutralizers are to an EPA cleanup crew. You like

to have choices. Anyway, for my given name I can thank my fathers

whimsical bent toward palindromics. Which, when you think about it,

thank God for Radar, for I could just as easily have been Otto. Or Gro-

gorg. Milton Notlim. Lysander A. Rednasyl. All of this, by the way,

according to my mother, for by the time I was old enough to ask such

questions, the old man was long since coopgeflonnen. North to Alaska.


*An invention. Like this word.


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South to Ixtapa. Or just into the vapor where grifters go when grift

drift takes them too far too fast.

Hoverlander, they say, is a family name. German or Dutch, they

say. Fabricat, say I. Pure Ellis Island improv. Probably the original

was something with an unspeakable number of consonants, or an

unsightly and un-American -ilych or -iliescu suffix, which would never

do for this conniving bloodline of mine. From what I know of my

familyon both sides, because like attracts likeweve followed the

main chance for a thousand years, with moving on and blending in ourancestral stock-in-trade. Find a place, stay till you wear the welcome

mat flat, then scat. Thats how we ended up in California. We just kept

heading west till we ran out of west. The earliest memory I have of my

mother is her standing on the end of the Santa Monica pier, saying,

Guam. I wonder what thatslike.

Shortly thereafter, my mother discovered that while a deftly batted

eyelash can cadge a drink or liplock a landlord, no amount of coquett -

ish demur can deter the clammy hands of cancer. So with Dad in the

wind and Mom in the ground, it was just me and my mentis non

compos nana through all the years of my childhood. I perpetrated

the fiction that she was taking care of me, though of course it was the

other way around. In the end, I had to forge some papers, reinvent

her as a navy nurse (with Antarctica Service Medal, because if youregoing to lie, lie big) and park her in a VA hospital where liberal applica-

tions of morphine derivatives eased her transition from this life to the

next.

And by the way, if you want to know why I got kicked out of Har-

vard, really the apse and the absinthe were just the tip of the icebag. I

always said that the thing with the provosts daughter was an affair of

the heart, but in the wake of that myocardial infraction they went back

and exhumed my application, cut through the Gordian knot of its

liesso I made up the Finnemore World Prize for Teen Excellence and



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awarded myself one, so sue meand gave me the boot. I think they

should have given me a scholarship. Doesnt imagination count for

anything in this world?

Still, Harvard at fifteen, that was something. Ive always had a rest-

less mind.

But a real problem with honesty.

It gets me into trouble sometimes.



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2 .

the noochis of

this world

L ook at this flapdoodle. I mean, just look at it.My name is Patrick Noochi, the Fund/Property Manager to Mr.

Kim Woo Koo, Daewong Group founder. Last November, my

client Mr. Kim come to South Amfrica and made a fixed deposit

valued at US$55.5M with Rand Bank South Africa. How-

somever, Mr. Kim has been sentenced to ten years in prison for

fruad and embezzelment relating to the collapes of the firm under

$8.2 billion dollars of debt. I am contacting you to asist in repa-

triating the money and will renumerate your effort to the someof 20per:Cent of the gross.

Ignoring for the moment all the heinous crimes against syntax, is

this not the weakest, most obvious sort of scam spam youve ever seen

in your life? You wouldnt fall for it. I wouldnt fall for it. No soul in his

right mind would fall for it. Which means that the Patrick Noochis of

this world, if they expect to make a living, must find souls in their

wrong minds. While these are not exactly plentiful, lesser life forms do

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aluminum siding that sounds too good to be true, trust me, it is. Theyll

take your deposit and be three states over before the check clears.

Or maybe not. Maybe theyll loiter a while to strip-mine your bank

account. After all, youve just given them a piece of paper with your

name, address and phone, account number, and signature. A license to

rob you at pen point, Merry Christmas.

But bunco at the highest levels requires a complex package of skills.

I can read lips, pick pockets, pick locks, run a six-minute mile, hot-wire

a car or disable its engine, field-strip an M16, throw a pot, and build aworking computer from scratch. I know biology, geology, and half a

dozen other ologies, including theology, which is more useful than you

might imagine in this God-fearing world. I can preach a sermon, hit a

baseball, bake a cake, splint a broken bone, jam on electric guitar. None

of its wasted. None of it. You never know when youre going to need to

come off as an expert. Or jump off a roof and know how to land. When

I was a kid, they called me a polymath and imagined that I didnt know

what that meant. Thats really the key to a grifters skill set: knowing

what they dont know you know. Like languages. Im fluent in

German, Russian, and Portuguese, and could get conversational in, say,

(Greek in a week).

This one time I was working unlicensed salvage from a NATO base

in Baden-Wrttemberg, selling, I dont know, missile parts or some-thing to some random Hans undFranz. They were spreching between

themselves, and guess what? Theyre undercover oink. If it werent for

me knowing German and them not knowing I knew, Id be stewing in

a Stuttgart hoosegow now.

I can operate a forklift, make brandy, read a blueprint, and do fairly

heavy math in my head. I shoot scratch golf, which is just bedrock use-

ful, because golf hustles, like pool hustles, are insurance, something

you fall back on in slim times. The one I like best is where I let the

mook play best ball. Taking three drives, chips, and putts per hole, and



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playing the one he likes most, he thinks hes getting a huge edgeso

huge that hell often give oddsbut what he doesnt realize is that all

those extra swings add up. Hes playing like fifty-four holes of golf

while Im playing only eighteen, so by the back nine, his ass is dragging,

while Im still as peppy as a preppy on Red Bull. Even playing best ball,

he doesnt stand a chance. Plus, people cant putt for money. Not if

theyre not used to it. Pressure is leverage. A good grifter eats pressure

for lunch.

But pressure is a double-edged swordfor the truth is revealedunder such, for snuke and mook alike. Truth about your essential

nature. Truth about what you want out of life. Sometimes a truth you

didnt even know was out there. Like maybe the control you thought

you had was just the illusion of control all along.

Which brings us by roundabout means to the start of our tale.

It was Halloween. I had crashed a party in the Hollywood Hills by

putting on no costume whatsoever and walking in the first open door I

saw. When they asked what I was supposed to be, I said, Party crasher,

and this struck them as so charming and conceptual that they just

pointed me to the bar and said have a good time.

I had nothing in mind so crass as a petty boost. Not that I couldnt.

Infiltrating a hosts bedroom is easy as getting lost on the way to the

can, and the things people think are hiding places . . . really arent. Butthats not what Im about, not on Halloween.* See, for most people,

Halloween is their one night a year to sell an imaginative lie, while for

me its just the opposite, my one day of the year for me to be me,

should I so choose. After all, tell people on Halloween that youre a con

artist and whats the chance theyll believe you? Youre just all charming

and conceptual, thats all. Soliterallya busmans holiday.


*Or even ever. The day Im sniffing through panty drawers for loose change is the daymy big toe starts itching for the trigger.


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Even so, one thing I was doingthe thing you never ever stop

doing on the griftwas prospecting for leads. At any party, anyway,

youll find me chasing the main chance, seeking that sweet harmonic

convergence of deep pockets and weak mental defense. Defenses drop

on Halloween, as a function of altered identity but mostly as a function

of booze. Plus, I have some lovely Christmas cons that take about six

weeks to put the partridge in the pear tree, which makes Halloween

sort of the kickoff to the Christmas scamming season.

So there I was, panning for grift in a stilt-level Mulholland Drivemansionette with a stunning view of the San Fernando Valley, the

magic of its twinkling lights alchemized out of dust, grit, and imper-

fectly combusted hydrocarbons. This was a Hollywood producers

party, as I gleaned from context: the framed signed movie posters in

the front hall and the swarm of urgent actorlings costumed in disguises

sufficiently elaborate to impress but not so elaborate as to hide the

identities of people whose need to be recognized is, lets face it, patho-

logical. I disqualify these struggling artisans from con consideration,

for they generally prove to have no money, plus, their interpersonal

answering machines are so relentlessly set on Announce Only that you

cant get your pitch in edgewise.

At Hollywood parties, even Halloween ones, actors and others are

always working the room. Unlike me, theyre not trying to steal anhonest buck; rather, they carry this myth inside them, the Myth of the

Perfect Party. They believe that theyre always just one party (or indus-

try softball game or even AA meeting) away from encountering that

one producer or casting director or studio executive wholl change

everything for them forever. With this flawed thought in mind, they

relentlessly parse everyone they meet into two groups: Those Who Can

Help My Career and Those Who Dont Exist. To be nonpro at a Hol-

lywood party is to be a wallflower perforce.

I noticed this one older couple, clearly nonpro and therefore fully



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marginalized, completely ill at ease in their homemade Raggedy Ann

and Andy drag. Hopelessly adrift on this surging sea of ego, they had

eddied to a corner of the living room and stood isolated in their own pri-

vate backwater. I had it in mind to join them there, pitching myself as a

socially awkward inventor of medical devicesin search of investors, of

courseas out of place as they in this clove-cigarettes-and-appletinis

crowd. First, though, a quick spin to the bar to collect some sparkling

water, for we socially awkward inventor types are notoriously teetotal.

As I waited at the bar, the woman beside me said, Couldnt find acostume? I looked left and absorbed at a glance the parts of the whole:

Nordic nose, slightly seventies cinnamon shag, big silver hoop ear-

rings, bas relief collarbones, and the rounded curve of breast beneath a

creamy satin vest that missed exactly matching her teal blue eyes by

about 5 percent of spectrum tilt toward true green.

You either, it seems.

No, she said, looking herself down and up. I misunderstood. I

thought it was come as you are.

On Halloween?

Like I said, I misunderstood. What are you drinking?

A good grifter adapts quickly to changing circumstances, so . . .

good-bye, socially awkward inventor, hello, bourbon connoisseur.

Fighting Cock, I said, fully expecting a nervous, entendre-engenderedlaugh.

Instead I got a haughty, Here? Youre lucky if they pour Four

Roses.

Four Roses, then, I said with a shrug. You?

GMDQ, she said.

Not familiar with that libation, I said.

Libation. She snorted a laugh. Like, Lets all get libated tonight?

Im not sure libatedis a word.

Oh, its a word, she said. Not that you care.



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Whats that supposed to mean?

Nothing, she said. You just dont strike me as a slave to

orthodoxy.

I admit Ive never been accused of that, I said. And GMDQ?

Get Me Drunk Quick. Two parts vodka, one part attitude.

Might want to cut back on the attitude, I said. I think youve had

a little too much already.

This also created a hole where a laugh should have been. Neverthe-

less, she extended her hand, offered her nameAllie Quinnandwaited for me to offer mine back. This was not as simple a matter as

you might think, for I had many to choose from, and your name, lets

face it, defines you. Kent Winston makes you a bowling buddy; Raleigh

Newport is an investment counselor. Who did I want to be?

It was Halloween. I chose to be me. Radar Hoverlander, I said.

Radar? she asked. Like that guy in M*A*S*H?

No, but I get that a lot.

By now the bartender was waiting to serve us. Allie pointed to two

bottles and said, That and that. We got our drinks and moved away

from the bar. Now, she said, whats up with the mufti?

I assume you mean the word in the sense of civilian clothing, not

interpreter of Muslim law.

Now youre just showing off, she said. I shrugged. So. Thecostume?

Im a party crasher.

She gave me a long, blank look before saying, Oh, I get it.

You ever get that feeling like you just farted in church?

With four simple wordsOh, I get itAllie ruled my noncos-

tume not charming and not conceptual but merely self-conscious and

lame. This would have bothered me were it not for the known true truth

that women seduce men precisely by making them feel self-conscious

and lame. Its the first move of an elegant and time-tested three-act play.



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Act one: Steal status. Like it or not, in the world of women and

men, men hold the high ground. True, women man the sex valve and

can shut it off at will, but as long as man has hand, this problem is not

irresolvable. Meantime, whether in negotiation, sales, or seduction, its

difficult to win uphill battles against status, so job one is to level the

playing field. Women can do this to a man just by judging. Mock his

haircut. Laugh at his ignorance. Look down your nose at his nose. Dis

his supposedly clever costume concept.

Belittle a man and he will be little. This is a known true truth.Once hes weak and vulnerable, its time for act two: Initiate inti-

macy. To make a man covet your opinion (and therefore covet you),

you need to create a bond, and the best way to do this is to touch.

Brush a hand along a shoulder. Stand too close. Push a random strand

of hair out of his eyes. Pluck lint, even. Your tender touch renders him

like a dog in submission position.

Now comes the third act in this little passion play: Extend val-

idation.

Validation (and this is an absolutely historically verified known

true truth) is a mighty aphrodisiac. Let a man feel good about himself,

and he will adore you out of gratitude. Tell me Im wrong, guys. Tell me

you havent ever thought, I like her because she likes me. You cant

help it. Its human nature.This is why hospitalized soldiers fall in love with their nurses, and

not just in movies but in real life. First they experience this steep status

drop from warriortopatient, and theyre forced to surrender control,

which they hate. Next, its meet the new bossthis nurse who initiates

intimacy in all sorts of sponge-bath and bedpanny ways. Finally, the

intravenous validation drip: Youre a good man, soldier, and a good

patient; youre going to be okay.

So there you have it. Steal status with a mock or a smugly held



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opinion. Slice through defenses with the stiletto of intimacy. Then

make im feel good. After that, you can write your own ticket.

So when Allie absently reached behind my neck to flip down the

label on my shirt, I had to believe she was on script.

And when she suddenly started liking my jokes, I knew I was being

played.



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Excerpted from The alifornia Rollby John

Vorhaus Copyright 2010 by John Vorhaus.

Excerpted by permission of Shaye Areheart Books,

a division of Random House, Inc. All rights

reserved. No part of this excerpt may be

reproduced or reprinted without permission in

writing from the publisher.


24/24

To purchase a copy of

The alifornia Roll

visit one of these online retailers:
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