The Texas Twist by John Vorhaus Page A

keep out of Sarah’s life, what kind of man would I be? Idon’t mean the question rhetorically. Who did you fear you would meet?”
    â€œYou really want to know?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSome people prey on weakness. I don’t like them preying on my friends. Which brings us back to…” Radar stood to go, “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
    Which, he well knew, they would not.

His Pollyanna Docket
    W hen the short winter days were mild, Radar, Vic, and Allie would sit out on their balcony to read or work or just mark the sun’s march across Lake Austin and over the far hills of Laguna Loma. From here, five floors up in their shoreline condo complex, they could see downriver to the Tom Miller Dam and upriver to nothing in particular. Today they occupied themselves with the paperwork of Adam Ames, looking for what Vic dubbed the smoking gun of hooey. To this point, it remained unfound.
    The documents came across as a hasty potpourri of available information, just the sort of found artifacts an earnest, honest-Abe Ames would pull together to mollify the suspicious friend Radar purported to be. There were photocopied research reports, laboratory data sheets with timelines showing Karn’s in remission, and a couple of web-press fluff jobs: happy journalism about prospects for a cure to this heartbreaking disease. Regarding the latter, Radar hadplanted enough faux news stories in his time to know how easily it was done. For that matter, these could be legitimate articles about legitimate wins against Karn’s, and yet be completely unconnected to Ames, apart from the fact that they had passed through his printer.
    Ames also provided the mission statement and available financials for the Gauch Institute. The mission statement was a standard medical reacharound about the betterment of mankind, but the financial information gave Radar pause, for it was the practice in scams of this sort to skimp on that, yet here was a deep drill into the clinic’s funding sources, research budget, and revenue projections. Radar handed the report to Vic, who skimmed it and passed it on to Allie.
    â€œWhat do you think?” asked Radar.
    â€œThose are some lily-white numbers,” said Allie.
    Vic’s fingers danced across the surface of his Rabota, the sexy new Russian tablet computer that everyone seemed to want but only able navigators of the international gray market (such as Vic) could get their hands on. He found and opened the Gauch Institute’s own annual report. “And they match the Institute’s,” he said.
    â€œWhy is he selling the financials so hard?” asked Radar.
    â€œBecause he can,” said Allie. “Because they’re there.” She added, referencing her own tablet, a next-generation Geoid, “Just like the medicine is there. Radar, this all looks square.”
    â€œSo it’s a piggyback play,” said Radar. “Ames goes fake middleman between Sarah and them. Leverages their authenticity.”
    â€œOr,” said Allie, “he’s exactly who he says he is.”
    Radar braked. He looked at Allie. “You don’t mean that.”
    â€œWhy not?” she asked. She waved her hand at the documentation. “Show me anything here that really proves otherwise.”
    â€œAll this could be faked,” said Radar dismissively. “Besides, ‘scram’ instead of ‘scam’? That business about the miles? The lengths he went to to meet her? The guy is way overselling his Pollyanna docket.”
    â€œYou don’t know that. You only feel that.”
    â€œAllie, we’ve seen this play before. Hell, we’ve run this play before.”
    â€œWhat Radar’s saying,” said Vic, “is if it barks like a duck, it’s a duck.”
    â€œDucks don’t—” Allie didn’t bother. She merely repeated to Radar, “You don’t know