<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt"><span style="font-family: monospace;"></span>>>3) The letter from the psychic confirming and charging for the vampire lock-up incident.<br>
<div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>>A psychic who is in on the con, at least part way.<br><br>I do wonder about her "fee." It's over $4k, right, which she says is just for "travel reimbursement" since she mentions elsewhere that she decided to do her other services for free. But that seems pretty steep just for a plane ticket and a few nights in a Hilton. <br><br>>>4) Evidence found by the Collator that Bax had an ancient samurai sword.<br>
</div><div>>IIRC, the Collator never could find the sword.<br><br>He couldn't, but he did find a safe that could have housed it. And the sword was also supposed to be "George's," right? <br><br>>>Where do you plan on obtaining this independent evidence? The Collator is amazingly negligent when it comes to gathering evidence. There should be all sorts of<br>>>records of things that went on - deeds, newspaper articles, police reports, other witnesses - yet the Collator examines none of them. It's like he doesn't want to<br>>>know.<br>
</div></div><br>If Shell's letters are legitimate, then Skotos and the "skinny man" (Nicholas-the-vampire, I assume) were in fact looking for information on Bax, at least according to the guy Shell talked to. Is it possible that Skotos really was Bax/George's father, but that Bax was trying to still create a huge fiction to dupe George after he'd learned all about it? It'd be hard to piece that together, and it would be quite a fragile con.<br><br>In the end, I'm not convinced that the entire thing was a total fabrication. But I am convinced that Wolfe means us to think that it's a possibility since, otherwise, I have a hard time understanding why Bax should ever have been a con man at all, unless it was just an easy way to get the character into (and then out of) jail.<br>
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