Shadow Play Read online

  “That’s my mom,” she said. “Every year or so, you get into deeper piles of shit, I can’t even imagine this thing, it sounds so operatic. Oh, don’t forget the messages on the answering machine.”

  All from the same person. “Hi. It’s Vincent. I’ve been worried about you. Wes told me he was at your other house last night. I’m really saddened and angered at what he did, I can’t apologize enough. He won’t ever bother you again. He’s going to…he’s going away…he’ll disappear, I promise you. Please call me when you get in. The casino will know where I am. Please call? ’Bye.”

  37

  “We’ve got a database,” Alex shouted. “We’re reformatting it.”

  Waiting. Ten the next morning, after not sleeping at all, staying up until four talking with Spider, our first real mother-daughter talk, incredible, just when you think your kids have drifted out of your orbit, pow, you both realize you’re not only on the same planet, but still very much in each other’s lives.

  I’d finally driven to our main Tucson office where Alex and a crew of four people slid their expensive ergonomic chairs between half a dozen computers.

  Data mining. A growing business. And much of it legal.

  When I started hacking, only eight years ago, information wasn’t readily available. Working with dial-up modems, connection speeds, and bandwidth meant that you had to write password-cracking scripts that ran for hours and hours until you found the right combination of log-in names and passwords. Almost all of what I got, I got illegally. Now, with online databases everywhere, anybody could look up information. Googling for private investigators, you could pay as little as sixty bucks to find out if people you just met at a singles bar told you the truth, if they really were stockbrokers or models or rich or whatever. Pay more money, you could find out what kind of potato chips they bought using their grocery-store discount cards. Take out your wallet, I’m telling you, look at the cards in there with that magnetic strip, you swipe the card at the supermarket, the ATM, a gas station, the transactions were all recorded in databases. Turn those cards over, like, say, look at the back of your driver’s license. Does it have a bar code? You know, those weird numbers on things you buy, the supermarket scans them? Almost everything you supply to the state about yourself, just to get that driver’s license, all of that could be in the bar code. So you’re on a long drive, gas running low, you’re thirsty, need to find a bathroom, you give the card to the kid at the cash register, when you’re not looking, he not only copies your credit card number, he zaps the bar code with a scanner. Then he sells off your information to a data miner.

  “We got it, we goddam freaking got it!” Alex shouted.

  The monitor listed several thousand names.

  “What does it mean?” I said.

  “Too early. Too many fields. Whatever else Leon Begay did, he knew how to construct a clear database. Right now, all we’ve got is columns of data. At a glance, two important columns. Names. Dollar amounts. No way are we going to have time to back-check everything. So how do you want to work this list?”

  “Outsource the list,” I said.

  “That’s a lot of money we’re talking if we don’t crunch the list ourselves.”

  “Not enough time,” I said. “Besides, we’ve got to work out the most likely names on this list, work them ourselves.”

  “We’re on it. This could take time, just be patient.”

  Alex used three people to do most of the serious analysis.

  Anything corporate, banking, follow the money, Alex gave those jobs to the Two Sarahs. Dee and Vee, they never used a last name, just an initial. When we first interviewed them, they showed us ID with the last names as Dee and Vee. Two women who shared an old home in South Tucson.

  They drove to the office only if they needed to get paper data, otherwise they worked exclusively from their home next to a one-acre greenery and community garden. I rarely saw them, but when I did they were always together. Sarah Dee was somewhere in her fifties, long, lanky, hair part blond, part graying, usually in a braid lying two feet down her back. She always wore sleeveless sundresses that hung to the floor. Sarah Vee was at least fifteen years younger, skin naturally dark, almost an olive brown-green, with short red hair curled tight as a Brillo pad.

  One day at the office, Nathan, thinking they couldn’t hear him, asked me what the Data Dykes were doing. Sarah Vee poked her Brillo-hair head around the doorway, got his attention and held it for a minute until she just shook her head and smiled. You just don’t know how good it is, being a woman, she said to Nathan.

  The Two Sarahs got all the money-trail stuff. When it came to finding data on real people, Alex worked with Lola Darlin, a women of completely indefinite age and sexuality. Probably in her sixties, skinny as a bean pole, nearly six feet tall. Hair dyed in various colors, according to the weather or time of year or some secret mood. She mainly lived out of her 1982 Coupe de Ville, the backseat always loaded with cardboard boxes of indeterminate age. No passenger bucket in the front, a doggie bed for Billie and Babe, her two Yorkies, plus discarded chew toys and scraps of dog bones. At one time, Lola had also lived in Arrivaca, the Two Sarahs brought her to Alex one day, asking Alex if she needed more help.

  Still waiting.

  At seventeen, Alex knew her place in life, existed somewhere between teenage and adult years. Although I hadn’t seen or heard from her directly for two years, when Don Ralph died in the plane crash, she reappeared in my life as though she’d been there all the time. Never said where she’d been, what she’d been doing. Extraordinarily beautiful, in two years she’d grown from spunky brat to woman. An adult’s body in the neck and legs, slim but not thin, small breasts usually bouncing beneath a tee or tanktop. She’d work a laptop, usually a Mac of some kind, a heat pad underneath to avoid scorching her bare thighs. No makeup, lots of silver rings, at least one on every finger, the only other person I’d ever met with so many rings was Shane Caraveo, the computer guru at Florence Prison. How they both could work a keyboard, I never knew.

  Alex never talked about her private life, I had no idea if she had a lover, a boyfriend, a roommate. Once, she saw me looking back and forth between her and the Two Sarahs, wondering, and she read my look instantly. Nah, she said, tried it once, realized it just wasn’t me.

  Tried it once. I couldn’t imagine myself ever being so casual about lovers.

  Half my age, she understood people much better than I did, she could read anybody, take them on by dissembling. Customer pushed against her, Alex immediately sized up the strength of the push, if it was serious, in her face, she got right back into his face. But the bluffers, scammers, macho men, weepy ladies, whoever, she could play their weaknesses like a pianist. She always looked people right in the eye when talking to them, yet she projected an artlessness, an honesty of relationship. At seventeen, people trusted her.

  I doubted I’d ever get that ease of social relationships.

  “Waiting,” Nathan said. Fidgeting one moment, absolutely calm the next.

  “Done a lot of it. Waiting in Nam was hard, unless you were so far in the rear that no Charley was gonna pop out in front of you. Men wait around, they either drink or dope or they talk, on and on, macho stuff, women they’ve screwed or, mostly, they’ve imagined. Lots of war scenes from movies, so men can go over the action, keep themselves pumped to survive like the Terminator. The sounds of waiting, the smells, different all over the world. Daytime, daylight, any light, waiting is not so bad. Night, that’s the same everywhere.”

  “We’ve got it!” Alex shouted an hour later.

  “Tell me.” Hands up, palms facing me I waggled my fingers at her, the universal symbol for Give it up to me.

  “Credit cards,” she said.

  “Stolen credit cards?” I shook my head.

  “Knew it was credit cards over an hour ago. But didn’t want to give you just a piece of the story. Single people come to gamble. They live mostly out of state, they’ve got so-so jobs, no husband or
wife or significant other, mostly not even pets, very few relatives, they come to gamble and soak up the sun for a week. Like Vegas, only a smaller scale, not so expensive. They lose or win a few hundred, they pay their hotel bill with a credit card, they go back home.”

  “Identity theft,” I said.

  “Exactly. We selected six at random from Leon’s database. The six with the highest figures next to their names. We ran credit checks. All of them have never reported loss or theft of credit cards, but all of them, in different states and even in two different countries, all six have taken out multiple mortgages that were almost immediately cashed in. The number of scams is breathtaking.

  “How does it tie to the casino?”

  “They all used their credit cards the first night.”

  “Is there a direct link? Why are you all lit up, what else did you find?”

  “That list of seven names, that you called in to me.”

  “The suicides?”

  “The suicides. All seven.”

  “On the list?”

  “On the list.”

  “Anything tying the names to Vincent Basaraba?” Nathan said.

  “Nope,” Alex said. “All circumstantial. But why would Leon Begay, brother of casino owner Vincent Begay, keep this detailed record?”

  “Exposure,” Nathan said. “Leon knew his brother was stealing money.” He took my cell phone and walked away to make a call, ran back. “Let’s go,” he said to me. “Casino. Police have been there for an hour. Vincent claimed two of his employees tried to embezzle money, they attacked him, he shot them both.”

  “Chavez Sliding,” I said. “And Wes McCartney. Wait, wait…”

  I flipped everything I knew on its head, starting with the very first of all the suicides. “Leon’s father didn’t commit suicide. Vincent killed him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just believe it’s logical. Vincent shot those two men?”

  “Both dead. Let’s go.”

  And on the way to the casino, I remembered Vincent’s mesage on my answering machine. The message about Wes McCartney.

  He’ll disappear, Vincent said.

  38

  Outside the casino, we sat in my Cherokee, waiting for all the police cars to leave.

  Heavy gusts of wind rocked the car, rain fell heavily for a short time.

  “I’ve done too much waiting in my life,” Nathan said. “Night, mostly. You’re up, it’s raining. Everything’s dark, everything’s got its own time. You’re waiting. You’re somewhere between the beginning and the end of your watch, somewhere between the real world and the jungle. Sergeant, or maybe the lieutenant, he controls what you’re doing, he controls the time zone.”

  “Sweetie,” I said. “Waiting is hard enough for me. No war stories, okay?”

  “Yeah, well. Here, we see what we’re waiting for. Police leave, we go in. Everything’s in bright lights. In the bush, you’re nothing but two eyes, a finger on a trigger, maybe another finger on the button for some claymore mines, or flares, in case you think Charley’s out there. When you’re new in-country, that night goes on for a century. But when you’ve been there a few months, you get this feeling for the time zone, there’s a rhythm to those nights. Ears, eyes, sometimes your nose, they talk to you. Teach you what to trust. Am I right?” I kept silent, waiting for him to stop talking. “Yeah. I’m right.

  One police car left in the parking lot, its turquoise and amber lights still flashing. The monsoon rains stopped gradually, the winds still buffeting the car.

  Alex called again.

  “This guy is a vapor trail,” she said. “Absolutely no traces of him being involved in anything.”

  “Stand by,” I said. Still waiting for that last police car. I told Nathan what Alex had just said.

  “He’s just a few strings short of being our puppet,” Nathan said. “That’s all. You remember what I want you to do?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Just checking.” The last police car drove away, lights off. After ten minutes the front of the casino looked no different than any other night, a single uniformed cop near the sliding doors, gamblers arriving and leaving. “All right. Here we go.”

  Braced against the wind, we hurried to the front door where the cop tried to stop us, recognizing my face. Nathan held up his badge. “I’ve got a coupon.”

  And the rest went down so fast I hardly marked time, it seemed just a minute or so after we got into an elevator, rode to Vincent’s floor, went into Vincent’s office. Surprised to see me, he started to protest but Nathan gave him no time to talk, throwing him to the floor. Nathan took one of the wooden-framed office chairs and held it on top of Vincent’s body, the frame across his neck. Nathan pulled out a Glock, I didn’t even know he had the gun.

  “We’re leaving,” Nathan said to Vincent. “Now.”

  Vincent didn’t move.

  “Am I rushing you?” Nathan said, the Glock against Vincent’s head. “You don’t seem to understand what we want, you don’t seem to understand we don’t care what you have to say, we’d prefer you didn’t say anything. We know all about the bogus movie, the credit card scams, we know everything.”

  “Not a bogus movie,” Vincent said.

  “I don’t care,” Nathan said. “Now, get up. Let’s go downstairs, let’s go outside. I’m an officer of the law.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “We’re taking you into custody.”

  “I want to talk to the regular police,” Vincent said, the last thing he said as Nathan mashed his lips with the Glock, not breaking skin but so hard against Vincent’s teeth his eyes glazed with pain.

  “We don’t really care who you want,” Nathan said. “Now. Let’s go outside. You won’t say a word to anyone, you won’t give a code phrase to any employee, you’ll nod and smile and wave off anybody that tries to talk to you.” He released pressure from the gun barrel, Vincent licked his lips, sucked the lower lip as he slowly got up. “I know what you’re thinking,” Nathan said. “It’s a long way out to the parking lot, you’ll find an edge. If you try for that edge, I want you to know this. You’ve caused the death of two of my oldest friends.”

  “I killed nobody.”

  “And other people, I don’t know how many other people. If you don’t come with us, come and get in our car, if you do anything to get away from me, I’ll kill you on the spot.”

  “You’re bluffing,” Vincent said. Nathan stuck the Glock in his belt, pulled his light sweatshirt over the gun. “I get my chance. I’ll take you down.”

  “He thinks this is a movie,” Nathan said to me. Vincent actually smiled. “Okay,” Nathan said. “Let’s start.”

  “I’m not leaving this room.”

  “The hard part of playing chicken,” Nathan said, “is knowing when to flinch. Except when you’re heading into a guy who’s never going to flinch.”

  Nathan slowly raised an index finger, cocked his thumb, and aimed his hand at Vincent’s head, Nathan stepping off the distance between them, one stride at a time, the hand extending as he moved, arm fully horizontal until the finger rested exactly between Vincent’s eyes and he backed up a step, the smile fading as Nathan stepped with him, a slow dance until Vincent bumped into window glass.

  “Here’s your choice,” Nathan said finally. “Come with us, or stay. If you won’t leave the room with us, I’ll throw you out the window.” Vincent’s face blanched whiter than his capped Hollywood teeth. “Like the suicide here the other day. Either way, it makes no difference to me.”

  The brightest people, not so much the most intelligent, but people with street smarts, they figure things quickly. A scent on the breeze, a slight sound, like a dog licking its paws and suddenly stopping, the slightest changes in stimulation sets these people in action. You don’t need to feed them much, the less you feed them the more alert they become as they look for an edge.

  All the way downstairs and through the casino floors, Vincent looked left and r
ight, trying to find his moment, needing to find an edge.

  As the glass front doors slid open, Vincent half turned to the Tucson policeman standing just outside, but a deluge of rain squalled across the parking lot just then and the policeman ducked inside the door to keep dry and Nathan pushed Vincent to keep walking.

  He never found another chance.

  Nathan forced Vincent into the backseat of the Cherokee and wrapped plastic quick-tie handcuff strips around his wrists and ankles.

  “Where are we going?” Vincent said. Still a measured, cool voice. “Where are you taking me?”

  “North.”

  “Phoenix?”

  I stretched around, my Beretta out for anything, I didn’t know what, but the movement caught Vincent’s eyes. “To Monument Valley,” Nathan said. Vincent’s eyes and mouth opened in the first sign of real panic.

  “Why?”

  “Somebody up there killed my two good friends, killed off a whole clan family, killed all the Begays left who might know something about you.”

  “McCartney did it. He told me, he wanted me to sign a document that said I’d embezzled money from the casino. He was going to shoot me with my own gun, with the Colt .45 I got from my dad.”

  “Henry Fonda’s gun?” I said. “From when you were a kid, working on Fort Apache with your brother Leon and your father?”

  “Yes, that gun, yes.”

  “That’s it,” I said to myself.

  “What?” Nathan said.

  “That’s it. The same gun that killed your father.”

  “He shot himself, yes,” Vincent said. “With that gun. Yes.”

  “You mean,” I said, “the gun you used to kill your father. It’s not even about money for your movie. Your brother Leon found out that you’d killed your own father. You didn’t know who he’d told, you couldn’t even ask. You just killed them all. It wasn’t about money at all.”