My love, people will warn you: Los Angeles is a hard town. It wears you out. I was prepared therefore, for the dangers that beset the person who dares to join the hundred-year-old migration from country to city. In my turn, I walked that well-worn trail, by now a considerable rut, and I moved from my New England home to seek fortune of modest dimensions. In other words, I endeavored to show all those morons who’d given me beatings, who was laughing now. Cramped living conditions I was prepared for. Liberal arts college dorms are preparatory for nothing if not squalid inner city hovels. I had steeled myself for the challenge of my moral and ethical code. Liberal arts college dorms are preparatory for plenty, actually, in addition to the other kind of filth. Crowded public transportation, smog, disease, rudeness, traffic - no one asked me to leave the countryside. I am a man, or I was, or I thought I was, and these were things I had coming to me, because I was born poor and decided early I would die rich.

Los Angeles is not a hard town. New York is. The Apple of the Nation is legitimately filled with hardness, some humor, and little else. The former East Berlin is a hard town, and a decade of capitalism hasn’t fully erased the lines of leftover bullet holes on alley walls, gently ascending murders in still life. New Delhi is a torturously hard town, and there are plenty of nights I drink to that city alone, drink to the Muslim ghettos and what I saw there, and to what I wish I hadn’t.

Los Angeles is not on par with these. It is not on par with Detroit, or Rockford, Illinois, or Gary, Indiana because these latter are museums of human struggle. One can quantify human suffering in the closed pawnshops and the granite edifices of once famous department stores that loom like brontosaurus skeletons, incapable of having ever really lived. These are towns in which time has moved on, and the people and real estate have failed to. These places reek of failure and dreams bang with a hollow sound, like plywood signs reading “Closed.”

Los Angeles fails to rank, in even the featherweight “Hard Town” division. It can’t get in the ring. Los Angeles is not hard because it is, in every natural respect, perfect. It is stunning. The climate is superb. The flora is exotic and copious. The beaches beckon on the one hand, mountains on the other. Los Angeles is supremely easy. Like the captain of the cheerleading squad, she secretly begs to be bedded by all who see her. And, love, we come in droves. I must confront that I, in common with everyone I can call without first dialing ‘one,’ moved to Los Angeles for greed.

I have always enjoyed the study of human conflict. I admit I have always had a conscious preoccupation with it, that by understanding tactics, and history, I would be better equipped in struggles with my contemporaries. While the study of classical strategy treats the concept of deception as a weapon, nothing prepared me for the scope of the deception practiced by the inhabitants of this gross, effete city of the west. I still boggle at the scale of the mendacity. The other night proved one thing, however. While I can yet be surprised by it, I cannot be fooled any longer. Thus does that internal barometer of hope move from one fifth empty to three tenths dead. It is not others’ betrayals that kill us, my love. It is our own, of our own, whatever the immediate satisfaction.

I am currently a freelance writer. It is rarely rewarding, in the sense of genuinely fulfilling one’s need to create, much less to eat, but it does afford one some measure of pride. A long time ago, around the time the Pilgrims landed, I think, I wrote a modestly successful play, which became a widely praised but as yet unfilmed adaptation for the screen. I have lived on that one incomplete success for nearly a year. In consequence, I am unfortunately well acquainted with the dominant form of life in Los Angeles, the Meeting.

The meeting I write to tell you of promised to be of the fairer variety, as these things go. The place was West Hollywood, in an unfashionable but thoroughly comfortable restaurant. The evening was cool, our table outside. A friend of mine had called me there. Though I am prevented, legally, from disclosing his name, I may say that he is a Producer, one of that nebulous caste which may or may not conceal actual competency of some kind, but never prove a cover for Taste. The brief had been simple. A fellow had contacted him, through friends of friends, and this fellow had an interesting story involving the largest pearl in creation - a gem of some historical significance - and how this fellow had come to possess it. This fellow wanted a screenplay made of his life, and his efforts.

–Work for hire? I asked.

My producer said it was. Naturally, I went.

I did balk initially, for simple enough reasons. This producer had not, to my knowledge, ever produced anything I had ever heard of. Perhaps he was really related to the people he said he was. Every so often, as my opinion of him set, in not very flattering terms, he involved me in a meeting that stood to benefit me in some financial or political sense. As if possessed of a sixth sense for ambient contempt, an attunement that someone, somewhere, had secretly begun to hate him, he would scramble for the bedside phone and arrange Meetings between people who had nothing to offer one another. These meetings invariably went very well, and they invariably yielded nothing of any kind for me. Upon such hooks is hope hung, or maybe hanged, however, and he tenaciously refused to allow himself to be written off completely.

The second reason was equally rational. People who want screenplays written about them, large precious stones or no, are de facto narcissists of impossible proportions. Thus the prospect of spending the next eight to ten weeks at the beck of someone who always lacked skill but never opinion was not something I readily warmed to. My private projects, however, for all their private joys and sorrows, were not generating an income. Work is work. Sometimes, it’s a little more so.

I arrived on time, and quickly found my producer friend. I flirted harmlessly with a waitress who could tell, somehow, that I am still happily engaged, and iced tea in hand, I settled down for strained small talk. I began, because he’s horribly inept with people. That’s why he’s a producer. I cannot explain why that follows; believe me, it does.

–How’s your girl?
–Her throat’s much better. How’s yours?
–Appallingly bored, and drunk most of the time.
Silence.
–Relax, D., I say,
–I’m being facetious. Her new diet doesn’t allow alcohol.
–Oh, he chokes out, in relief. Yeah. He points to his beer.
–Red Hook.
–It’s good. I don’t have much of a taste for beer. Guinness, under the right circumstances, is as close as I come.
–You don’t drink? he asks, lurching to conclusions he has every reason to know are incorrect. I’ve been noticeably drunk with him on four occasions. He eyes his beer with discomfort.
–Copiously, but only hard stuff. Scotch. As you know.
–Oh, he nods, much relieved.
–Yeah. Scotch is hard.
–How did you come to hear of this fellow? More to the point, how did he come to hear of you?
–A friend of my family referred him to me, he says, missing the obvious insult as I’d assumed he would.
–He’s got a great story. And he’s a very rich man. He’s connected to a lot of ‘A’ list actors.

I am not new. I have heard this before. This promise, or threat, works remarkably well, because out here it really is possible. If it were true, one wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of the conversation, obviously. The gorgeous and unforgivable fact of Los Angeles is the daily collective sin of its inhabitants: we refuse to believe in the possibility of anyone else’s dream, while each of us privately nurtures his or her own. I’ll be discovered tomorrow, he says, the agent is going to call, I’ll have a comeback, my tits won’t sag, my wife isn’t cheating… But the truth is as unrelenting as the weather forecast for tomorrow: no one gets discovered, not really; your agent lost your file ages ago and it wasn’t a mistake; you can’t have a comeback if you didn’t get there to begin with; we all stopped noticing your tits a decade ago, you anorexic wraith; and last, but hardly least- I was with your wife last night. I really am sorry; unhappily for both of us, she isn’t.

It’s about quarter past when my friend begins to seriously fidget, enough that I can know he isn’t simply having another attack of ADD. Flourish of cell phone, he calls the fellow we’re to meet.

He leaves a message.

–He lives right around the corner, my friend offers, by way of explanation. It’s a great neighborhood, after all. A good one for walking places.
–He probably left already.

At this point, I’ve already taken advantage of my better view of the entrance to examine newcomers for telltale signs of “I own the largest pearl in the world and fought long and hard to keep it” character. This first impression will be of value, should he decide to do business. I quickly identify the fellow. He stands out a mile among the young, hip, coolly spastic thirtysomethings who loiter, creating the drama their private dreams require for continued belief.

–How old is this fellow? I ask, eyeing the mark at the entrance.
–Fifty-seven, he answers, with sureness that troubles me, as if I’ve hit on the one fact he has and his enthusiasm is compensatory, inversely proportionate to his research.
–What does he look like?
–I don’t know, my friend answers, airily.
–I’ve never met him.

Slow, certain horror rises in me. I do not belong here. I am not proud. Arrogance without pride isn’t much of a trick; I mastered it on the farm, Guernsey teat in hand. I have been here long enough, however, have written sufficient copy to know when a writer is needed, and when he is a premature guest, like the urgent old friend who comes to your parties no matter what slights you have dealt him. This horror isn’t simply to do with the fact that I am now not making love to the aforementioned fiancé. She has not known love in a month, as far as I know, a co-victim of our mutual pact of conscious destruction on the wheel of Los Angeles. This night is perfect in its coolness, and our talks have had an intimacy of late that speaks of real respect, real regard, real human truth, long absent. It is not merely this fact, nor the impropriety of it, but that there is no point to the necessary upcoming performance. The smiles, the sycophantic enthusiams and overlooked stupidity — these will be for naught, because there is no deal, here, yet. My time is being wasted. I wake with this private knowledge, each morning; I don’t need it in my professional life. It’s a first meeting. It reminds me of an old playwright’s advice to me: Always order a drink. It’s seldom you’ll not need one.

I am now certain I am looking at the interested party. He’s the only person for nine square miles wearing a blazer, apart from me, and he’s older, resting a heavy gym bag on his foot. If constipation is an adventure, (and I’m told by those who know, it really, really can be,) then this fellow is Indiana Jones. He does look wealthy, though. He’s our man.
He disappears into the restaurant, and my friend and I settle down to wait.
At this point, I could have left. It would have been an insult to my friend, possibly a serious one, but I couldn’t really count that as much of a loss. Nothing kept me. My friend apologized for his anonymous guest’s apparent tardiness for the third time. So, I was technically within my rights. Naturally, I didn’t move. Hope does spring, after all, or I’d have long since taken that old playwright’s other advice and learned the fine art of plumbing. After all, my friend might actually be related to the people he claims as kin. And Hell, for all its hotness, may one day be the ski resort of the vacationing sinner. I only say that it is possible, and possibility is a hungry, dangerous animal.

After socially necessary glances at our watches, I commit an unforgivable sin - I panic, socially. I ask about work.

–I’ve been really busy, he says. Getting the artwork together before the release.

We speak this way. Definite pronouns are powerful in Los Angeles. The film. The star. The release. They add tangibility to the wafting iridescent hopes we chase, like so many soap bubbles lofted on farts.

–I must apologize, D. I say.
–Your release?
–My album is coming out in two weeks. Not domestically. It’s so competitive here. Japan, Germany - he begins to tick off fingers, a culture in a digit - France, Holland, and… He looks helplessly off into space, the importance of this final destination preventing him seeing the look of amused disbelief on my face.
–Belgium, I say.
–I told you this already?
I immediately ask him, quiet please, I immediately ask him why he has never mentioned his pop music career before.
–I’ve been singing since I was fourteen, he says, ostensibly by way of answer.
–My mother wanted to get into music a long time ago, but the major labels were too competitive. She had this pianist friend; she recorded him and started her own label and distribution company. She sold him to all the cruise lines. It’s her label. Here’s the liner.

The sad desperation of this person, this other life, leaves little doubt, for once, over the veracity of his assertion. The idea of this overweight, middle aged, alleged brother of someone reputable being backed by the horn section of the Titanic as they slip into the ice prevents social catastrophe.

–Congratulations! I sing triumphantly. David Hasselhoff, look out!
–My mother says it will probably only sell ten thousand copies, he says, deflating, snatching the album liner from me.
–I’m going to take a walk around, I say.
–See if our guest is waiting beyond.

I stand and stroll away, leaving him to find the special pocket in his faux leather grip in which his musical ambitions are tucked. I light a cigarette, rock my head to each side, hoping for a pop, determine there are no women of distracting merit, and stride with the confidence and ambivalence only Los Angeles dreamers can have onto the raised marble plaza between the restaurant and street.

I immediately spot my previous mark. Curiously, he had not entered the restaurant, or if he had, he had returned and positioned himself in such a way that he could not be seen but from my current approach. The heavy looking bag is protectively crouched behind his legs, against the marble wall, and he seems confused, old, now. My eyes sweep over his, and move on, looking for other candidates. Finding none, finding nothing of interest in the street beyond, I swivel back to him, walking ever forward.

He’s shaking his head, very slowly, looking me full in the face, fear frozen on his features.

Well that’s fucking odd, I think. In embarrassment, I look away. Not before I see him shake again, his head heading north this time. No, he says to me silently. Not me. Not me.

Obligingly, I ignore him. I walk to the limit of the marble plaza, look first west, then east, then west again, searching for a man I’ve already found, performing the universal pantomime of blind dates. -I’m waiting for someone. Someone here is waiting for someone too. If you’re waiting, it’s likely for me. Come on, now, you ugly cow.

I turn decisively back to the well-dressed paranoid mark. He’s shaken, looking straight at me. -It is you, he seems to be saying.

–P.H.!, I say, naming him. He nods, turns back to his leather bag, now eighteen inches away from his right heel. By the time I’m in handshake range, the bag is in hand.
–It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir, I say, in my very deepest English conservatory trained voice. It even works on straight guys. He returns the idle compliment and follows me to the table where my friend sits, looking strained and tired. And thus, the Meeting begins.

Something you must understand, cos, that few out here do, is the absolute primacy of the rule that someone must control the meeting. Otherwise, how does anyone know when it’s acceptable to go home? It’s usually very clear. I want something from you, and you have it, or have claimed to have access to it, or at the very least, knowledge of it. Thus, I ask, you demand, we negotiate. You give or do not, and when one end or the other had been reached, for now, the meeting is over.

It’s not always that easy.

But with some forethought, it can be. This is another great reason never to have writers at first meetings. We immediately go for the conflict, set about looking for the resolution. We want direction, a sense of purpose. And to be fair, sometimes that simply isn’t how humans work.

–Have you been waiting long? P.H. the mark asks.
–No. About five minutes, I say, not really lying, since it’s merely convention.
Before any conversation occurs, my friend, the Producer, miraculously produces something. Three identical five page stapled documents, to whit.
–Please sign this, he says, thrusting the whole impressive stack before a man he’s never met before, without a word of introduction.

I am not interested in evaluating this technique from a standpoint of elegance. I merely draw your attention to the phenomenon, because one sees it so frequently out here. It can be better examined through the following challenge: Try talking that way to a complete stranger in the “Canned Soup” and “Dressings” isle of your favorite grocery store.

The simple fact is, people do not talk to each other this way in life. There’s a simple reason for this. You talk to a hundred people with this kind of debonair arrogance, ninety of them will kill or maim you, right there, irrespective of the Contadina or condiments. I would happily punch you in the nose, my love, if you spoke to me the way people routinely talk to each other out here. But the veneer of business, ever thinner with some, somehow communicates a sense of safety to people. This friend of mine could no more stop a roundhouse than a hard-line resurgence in Russia. Yet somehow, in some way, though virtually all business in Los Angeles is conducted in informal settings, this false sense of protection is allowed to survive. And thus, so are producers.

–This applies to you, as well as to me, I’m assuming? he says, glancing over the pile of pretentious documents before him.
–Yes, right there, it’s reversible, says my friend, as though he’s talking about a not-very-pretty vest.
–It says each party at this table will receive confidential information, and none of us may reveal without express, written…
I won’t bore you, I don’t remember anyway. It seemed standard, and unnecessary, and fair enough. The man, P.H., reread a particular paragraph and recanted.
–Oh, yes, I see. I’m sorry. I’m a little addled.
Addled? I had to respect him for that.
–While I read this over and sign it, why don’t I show you something? This is an appraisal of the Pearl for forty million dollars, and here, okay, the previous, you see, is dated 1983, here’s the appraisal, it’s all in order, you can check this, here you see I have an independent appraisal for fifty-two million dollars, based on the identity confirmed by the previous appraiser…

He went on a bit. It’s only fair to say, though I had no drink, I cannot report the actual dialogue of the next two hundred minutes of my life. I will give you the general measure of it, beloved cousin. I don’t recall precisely, excepting some more noteworthy passages, because all of the information seemed by the way. It was only later I understood that this was not mere incompetence. At the time I couldn’t help but think,

–Little wonder he wants a writer.

Such arrogance, cos. I should know better.

He handed us materials, talking all the while about the Pearl. As he spoke, six broad beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, followed by five more. -Well that’s odd, I thought. It’s so cool tonight, and dry. And he’s been sitting for some time.

And thus, listening with as much interest as I could manage, I noticed three things: he still hadn’t signed the papers, he wasn’t obese enough to warrant that kind of sweat, so he’s fearful, which doesn’t make sense unless-

The expensive blazer perfectly offset the perfect blue of the thick silk shirt he wore. They both failed to hide the bulky knit of the Kevlar vest beneath.

–Our man is wearing body armor, I thought, turning to D. D. was saying -Yeah, and nodding. He hadn’t noticed. Had he ever seen body armor before? Did I want to explain why and where I had? The answer to these questions was no. It was an item of interest, a curiosity, merely. Our man wore body armor. Fine. I unconsciously scanned for snipers until interrupted by P.H. and the scrapbook he thrust into my hand.

The book contained an exhaustive collection of articles to do with a pearl named alternately the Pearl of Allah, or the Pearl of Lao Tzu, according to one’s faith. The Christians weren’t making an appearance on this one, and I choked back a giggle at my wit, as I gingerly took the beaten scrapbook from the old fellow. According to legend, the ancient philosopher Lao Tzu, famous for his ostensible authorship of the immortal Tao Te Ching, commissioned an amulet of jade, on which his face was carved between the faces of Confucius and Buddha. This amulet was then placed in oysters of increasing size, over the centuries becoming a cultured pearl of enormous proportions. The pearl, said to have made the tending families enormously prosperous, was eventually swept away in its oversized mollusk, and was recovered in the Philippines in the fourteenth century by a Palawan diver. Lucky, lucky bastard, he became the only person to so literally defy the proverbial wisdom of not holding one’s breath. It made his Moslem masters wealthy in their turn, until the cure for malaria arrived in the hands of an enterprising cheat, Wilburn Dowell Cobb. The price of quinine was around two dollars in 1934, but a Moslem chieftain gave the Pearl of Lao Tzu to the death-robbing American in return for his eldest son’s recovery from fever. The Pearl remained in a Wells Fargo safety deposit box in San Francisco until Cobb’s death. This much the scrapbook corroborated.

I did my best to read his articles, and follow the new information as it washed over the transom. It soon became clear that this man had begun his story in earnest. I scanned documents, ordered coffee, and did my best to renew my brightest, most interested half-smile. The man launched into a tale of how he got the Pearl from Cobb. It was confusing, but peppered with amusing anecdotal information. My brain grabbed occasional items, details that would make for good writing, should the deal be clinched. Cobb’s name, for example, stuck. I logged it, as the man proceeded from how-he-had-come-to-own-it, to how-he-had-come-to-be-cheated out of it.

The story had to do with a con man, now this man’s worst enemy and best friend, (his words, I’m not being coy,) and a lunatic mobster. I must admit the bells rang loud at the You’re a Goddamn Sucker station house of my mind when it came out this man did not, in fact own the Pearl. He owned, at best, one third of the blessed thing. To explain this, there was a woman named N., a Saudi Prince, a Mafia hitman, and an FBI agent. It all made little sense, was not told well, and conspired to make the evening run on. If meetings go long, one can know for certain that no one important is there. People who have the capacity to actually do things in this world don’t take long to come to the point. They have to be somewhere, and in Meetings, like Los Angeles sex, sooner is better. All the way around. For everyone.

I am not important, and I had to admit to myself I had actually let myself get my hopes up. So I was stuck hoping. Being stuck provided opportunity for observation. This man was Jewish. He was not from our country, as it turned out, not originally. He’d been part of a large family jewel firm, (snicker) which under the circumstances made him Israeli or South African, and he had been banished from the business. He was down and out, at the moment, trying to climb back up from terrible losses. He had perfect teeth, expensive brother-of-the-best-dentist-in town teeth.

He ran beauty contests.

–Girls? he asked.
–Believe me, I know the best. I’ve organized dozens of the most prestigious contests in the country.

To prove it, he handed me another scrapbook, opened to a page of black and white group portraits, beauty contestants of some distant age posed around the central figure his thick pointer finger indicated was him. I glanced up at him. The drive home was not a complicated one. Why hadn’t I ordered a drink?

Now, deep in his story, it came out he’d recently suffered from cancer. Having a devout relationship with tobacco, I offered, somewhat guiltily,

–I’m so sorry. What kind?
–Cancer of the arm, he answered, and rubbed his left hand beneath his right wrist. I’m better, now. I’m ready to make my comeback.

I couldn’t resist the dramatic irony a moment longer. I acted on a hunch born of prior experience, experience that made me acquainted with Kevlar, and shoulder holsters, and many other consumer items that seem really racy until you actually think you might need them. I lit my tenth cigarette, exhaled pointedly, and watched the fellow’s face.

I eventually went to the bathroom, and then again, and then once more for good measure. The waitress, initially very peppy at the sight of two blazers on a Sunday night, had long since given up any hope of our ordering actual food and had stopped making any effort to serve us. So I excused myself, not out of need, but for the relative pleasures of canned piano concertos and the opportunity to talk smut on my cell phone to my frustrated fiancé. I had already seen the final score, so there was little point watching the game. Humiliation was everywhere. Denied our props, our meeting devolved into rather circular repetition of anecdotal information. It required until well past dark for the fellow to come round to the statement that the script of his life, which he wanted commissioned, would have to be a spec script. Meaning I would be paid nothing until it was made into a film. I managed to not laugh or commit any outward act of violence. He added that once the story, which was a sure success, (oft repeated, by him,) had found its proper place in the Studio System, and was in production, he would cut us in on the ownership of the Pearl. A studio picture would increase the value of the thing many times over, he observed.

–And thus the value of the two-thirds your mortal enemies own, I pointed out, not very kindly.
–You understand perfectly, he said.
–That is why I must find investors to help me buy them out, before word of this motion picture becomes known.
I smiled, the most genuine expression I’d managed all night. After telling us for the second time how he saw the casting of this film, I asked an enthusiastic writerly question.
–Now how precisely did you come to buy the Pearl from Cobb?
–Well, Hobb was an older man, and he had a vision I would…

I knew everything I had to know.

When I was asked to pay for my coffee, I nearly suffered apoplexy. -Three hours, at your meeting, as your guest, and you…

I paid, he took the bill for validation, sticking me with an eleven dollar parking stub. Though normally a syntactical assault, the ever present -May I validate you? was sorely missed, this night. We walked to the elevator for the parking structure, and I didn’t even laugh when P.H., broke pearl owning loser, suddenly realized he wanted to do some shopping.

–You know what, gentlemen? I just bought a new laptop, I need to check to see if the attachments I need are available. I’ll talk to you soon. He strolled away, toward the escalators, his two hundred dollar trousers perfectly crisp, even after all we’d been through. Too broke to pay for a script, but buying accessories for his new laptop? I held the elevator for my friend, and watched his face. Soon-to-be-pop-star that he is, he failed to notice, or register, that all the shops on the upper level had been closed for well over an hour.

By definition, men of P.H.’s kind are not what you expect. They all admit misfortune, they all want your help, and they tell a fascinating story, though few tell them well. Tell your woes well and you risk giving away the fact it’s performance. They’ll all tell you they know more about money and fucking than you do, whoever you are, and actually, most of them probably do. They’re always well dressed, intimidating in their selection of tags. They always inspire feeling, but always the same one.

They are angels of greed.

Ever smoke in front of a cancer victim? They’re religious. It isn’t remotely tolerable. This fellow wasn’t prepared to have anyone dislike him. Furthermore, the muscles of his right arm worked well enough when I pretended to drop his scrapbook, despite their recent malignancy and stated removal.

It’s a fascinating tendency of hopefuls in Los Angeles, the propensity to lie to the one person who is in a unique position to recognize the falsehood. For example:
-I told you my girlfriend was moving into your room on the 15th.

–Yes. But of next month.
Silence.
–You know the show XYZ? I starred in that for two seasons.

To a person who wrote it for four.
The most horrifying element of the syndrome is the blank innocence that invariably follows, a child’s dare, begging for correction and punishment. When P.H. handed me the book of beauty queens, he threw in a casual remark, to distract me, I suppose.

–I don’t suppose that interests you. Ladies, I mean.
–Actually, my fiancé awaits my somewhat delayed return, legs parted, I answered, stretching the premise for effect. My fiancé was no doubt engaged in a game of on-line chess with some smut-talking fourteen year old. Either way, I’m a straight man.
–Oh, good. One never knows, here.
–One never does, I responded, truthfully, earnestly, not missing a chance to insult someone without consequences.. The pictures he handed me were not enormously flattering, but they were professional, and they were clear. Amusingly, even accounting for age, hair loss, and cancer of the lower right forearm, the fellow in the picture was not the fellow across from me. In any way. At all. In the same way as if I insistently told you your name was Marshmallow Frieda, my beloved cousin, you could know that I was not accurately representing the truth. And with as much confidence.

I have it in print, from an outside source, the first American to own the fucking Pearl of Allah, was Cobb. Not Hobb. Or Bob. Or Knob, to his friends. The fellow got a little too wrapped up in his pitch. Just can’t forgive that.

The final rule of the con man, I remember well. Always have a fashionable address, and never let anyone follow you to it. Well, he got that much right. He lost me in an alley after he wandered away from the closed shops. He probably had a car after all.

When D. informed me, three days later, he’d gotten an advance from his mother to invest in the Pearl, I congratulated him, and gave him the name of a terrible writer with whom I’d gone to school. Watch the papers. No one whines louder than a true sucker, and for less reason. I’ll never have those three hours back. I just couldn’t bring myself to warn him.

Thus do I slip happily away, cos. I love you dearly. Do something pure and think of me.

Yours, as ever,
T.