Scorpion Rain Read online

More whisperings. I could hear a TV set playing in the background. I flicked my TV from MSNBC to FOX, and when I tried CNN there was a middle-aged woman in dark blue pants-suit getting out of a Border Patrol Chevy Suburban in the middle of the desert. Two reporters ran after her, but the woman kept striding through the metallic sand and rocks, finally wrenching off her two-inch heels to plow ahead barefoot toward an area already roped off by yellow tape with crime scene warnings in Spanish.

  I quickly turned on my VCR, began videotaping the CNN reporter just as she thrust her microphone at the woman in the pants-suit, who stopped at the tape, ducked underneath it, but decided to talk with the reporters and get it over with.

  “This is INS Agent…uh, I believe her name is Gilbert. Michelle Gilbert.”

  “Miss Gilbert,” another reporter shouted, running to catch up with her. “Miss Gilbert. Is it true that Margaret Admiral’s body is over there?”

  “I haven’t been told yet,” Gilbert answered carefully.

  “Is it true that the body was mutilated?”

  “I haven’t been told yet,” Gilbert said again.

  “Is the body dismembered? Are there body parts? Is the body buried over there? Can you identify the fingerprints?”

  Gilbert grimaced in disgust and turned away.

  “Fingerprints?” The CNN reporter shouted. “Whoever is buried over there? Can you take fingerprints, can you positively identify the body as Margaret Admiral?”

  A Mexican policeman appeared, his M-16 hanging from his right hand with the muzzle slowly rising at the reporters as he ran to them and put a hand over the camera lens. I switched rapidly to MSNBC, but another policeman had knocked against their camera. It spun wildly, shots of the sky, the camera operator shouting in pain.

  Both live remotes ceased.

  “I’m going to transfer you,” the woman on the phone said to me. “I’m going to put you through to Agent Gilbert’s cell phone. I doubt she’ll answer it, but you’ll get her voice mail.”

  Clicks, a hum, another definite click of a recording device.

  “This is Gilbert. Talk to me.”

  I started to leave a message, thinking it was voice mail.

  “No,” she said, “really, this is me. I was just told you know something about the kidnapping.”

  “The ransom. I only know about the ransom.”

  “I know about the ransom already. What can you tell me that I don’t know?”

  “Where the money came from.”

  “A bank in Phoenix. If that’s all you’ve got, leave a detailed report—”

  “No,” I said. “I know where the money went.”

  A long, silent pause, so long I thought we’d been disconnected.

  “Where?”

  “I have to show you.”

  “Show me? How?”

  “It’s on my computer.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Gilbert finally said.

  “It’s what I do. Track money.”

  “What else can you tell me now?”

  I hesitated, plunged into the whole thing.

  “Margaret Admiral is one of five people I was tracking.”

  “Say what?”

  “I have confidential information on four other names, but there’s never been any news stories that they were kidnapped. I don’t know if they paid a ransom, I don’t even know where they are right now.”

  “Confidential? What does that mean, confidential? Who are you?”

  “Financial information. I run a very discreet computer tracking service. Look. It really would be easier if I could just show you my data files.”

  “Give me the other names.”

  “Billie Holiday. Johnstone Morgenstern. Debra Winfield McCartney. Clarissima Douglas Bisbee.”

  “Are they all from Tucson?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll have to check on…”

  In the background, people started shouting at her.

  “They found what?” I heard her say. “What?”

  A long silence. I thought she’d hung up.

  “Hello? Miss Gilbert, hello?”

  “I can’t talk any more right now. Give me your cell number, I’ll call you as soon as I’m free.”

  “Is it true?” I asked.

  “What,” she said impatiently. “Is what true?”

  “On CNN, they’re saying that the body is mutilated.”

  “Don’t believe all you hear.”

  I gave her my cell number and she hung up.

  I stood at my kitchen window, at the sink, running water, turning the faucet on and off, on and off, trying to focus on whether I’d done the right thing, calling INS. I wouldn’t normally do a thing like that, but if the TV stories were true and the body was Margaret Admiral, if she’d been mutilated…ugh.

  I had to make the call, I had to tell them what I knew. The hardest part would be explaining why I knew about the kidnapping and the ransom, but it was a relief, not having to keep that knowledge to myself anymore.

  I popped three Ritalin ten-milligram pills, stuck my head under the faucet, swallowed the pills, and then ran water all over my short hair, shaking my head like a dog, water spraying off the hair as it ran into my ears and eyes and I licked it off my lips. Just to make sure, I took another two Ritalin pills.

  I’d used a cell phone with a Kansas City area code. If Gilbert or any other INS agents called, I wanted to be ready to talk on my own terms, my own schedule. I also had to figure out whether they might confiscate my computers, so using my Fujiyama SmartPhone, I remotely set all five of my computers uploading all data through my satellite connections and then on to Don’s main database network. When I came home, I could delete most of the information, and if the feds wanted my computers, they could take them after I totally scrambled and wiped the hard drives.

  All I could do was wait, but I thought I’d better tell Meg what was happening.

  3

  “What have you done?” Meg shouted.

  “Meg. I had to tell them.”

  “Jesus Christ, Laura. Why did you have to tell them now?”

  “It was one of my contracts.”

  “You have another contract, with me. Tomorrow morning.”

  “I have a lot of contracts, Meg, that have nothing to do with you.”

  “Four o’clock in the morning, that’s when I need you. Don’t let me down, Laura, this is all arranged to take the woman tomorrow from Phoenix to Nogales.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “Did you give them your address?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if they come to your house, what if they take you to the INS building?”

  “I’ll show them what I know, they’ll leave.”

  “They don’t sleep, Laura. They’ll be at your house sometime tonight, they’ll confiscate all your records.”

  “I gave them a cell number, said I’d always have it on. I didn’t say that I’d be home, so if they come to my house, I just won’t answer the door.”

  “Don’t go.”

  “Besides. Kamesh is coming back with some groceries. Going to cook me some Indian food. I’ll set the alarm, I’ll be okay.”

  “This is a little too spooky. Those voice mail messages. Can you figure anything about the guy?”

  “Not even sure if it’s a man. Whoever is calling talks through some electronic filters. Could be a woman, sounding like a man.”

  “I don’t understand all that,” Meg said. “The most important thing is whether the caller knows where you live.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah, right. That’s what I thought, two months ago. But I know there’s been somebody following my car at times. There are strange calls to the listed number for our safe-house network. I can’t be bothered by it, it could be one of a hundred angry husbands or boyfriends, some guy who’s pissed that I got his punching bag away from him.”

  “Same with me,” I said. “I’ve tracked down so many people who’ve embezzled money. Don and I are alw
ays careful about keeping private about where we live, but it’s the same as you. Could be anybody.”

  “Okay. Just be at Perryville at four in the morning. Set your alarm.”

  “See ya,” I said, holding the cell phone in my hand, the connection still open.

  “Laura?”

  Kamesh stood in the doorway, a sack of groceries in each hand. Heavy-metal music blared from his headphones, which he’d dropped down around his neck. “What’s that all about?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  Kamesh rarely watched television news, sticking to MTV and VH-1 and whatever other cable channels had music. He set the grocery bags on the kitchen counter, turned off his iPod music player.

  “I’m gonna make some pakoras and samosa,” he said. “Got some nan, some awesome green salsa. Okay?”

  “I’ve got to go out for half an hour. That okay?”

  “Sure. We’ll eat, what…eight? You back by eight?”

  “On the table at eight. I’ll be here.”

  laura

  I have to record all of this, I have to put it down, not just write it, but dictate everything and make a digital record. I know it’s paranoia, not just fear, it’s no way realistic, no way a normal feeling…I’m paranoid of the feds, the law, the police, the courts, the attorneys…after what they did to me a year ago, my old arrest warrants toyed with by a U.S. Assistant Attorney…you may not think it paranoia, but I sure do…so, I write these…notes? A diary? A Journal? I’ll just talk into this thing, I’ll just record everything I think might be a detail worth remembering.

  Now that I’ve called Michelle Gilbert, called the feds, at some point they’re going to ask why I know about the people whose names I gave them…and I don’t have a realistic answer. It was pure gut, three months ago, when I was checking bank accounts of several wealthy Tucsonans…well, why I was checking their accounts doesn’t matter, it was a job, a contract on somebody, that’s how it started…but, I was boggled by the amounts of money these rich people moved around, and in a slow week I picked five names at random and looked at all their money, then I got hooked on it, I saw a local newspaper with a list of the one hundred Tucson movers and shakers, I started checking on them.

  Somewhere in that month, news started working through the Internet about the sequestrations in Sonora, Mexico…the kidnappings for ransom, something brand-new for the brazen Mexican drug cartels, who’d always kidnapped south of the border, but now were snatching people from Tucson and Phoenix…except, nobody ever admitted being kidnapped. No newspaper or TV stories, no word at all. Rich people come and go all the time; if some of them were away for a few days, a week, a month, nobody really had to know where they went.

  Like I said, it was part just a gut impulse…no, let me be honest, I was bored, I had no contracts, I’m always testing how I can hack into financial records, security is changing all the time, I have to write new hacking scripts…

  And now the breather…I don’t know if it’s connected to what I’d been doing…I can’t afford to take the chance.

  And one last thing…I am determined to conquer my anxieties and phobias, I am determined to get myself off Ritalin…I’ve been a little too crazy for too long…

  4

  I drove to South Tucson because I wanted to call Don from a public landline phone. It was paranoia, I realized that, but I had a fixed rule about calling Don. Either from a very clean cell phone, or unless I was absolutely alone at a landline phone.

  I’d once called outside an Eegee sandwich shop, and somebody had been watching me with a high-powered lens and tried to trace the phone call back to Don.

  Paranoia, I tell you. Hard to overcome.

  “Terra two five niner,” I told Donald Ralph.

  He hesitated. I could sense him squinching his eyes shut, thinking over what I’d said, eyes snapping open.

  “Ten four, good buddy.”

  I was near a Kentucky Fried Chicken on West Broadway, standing by a pay phone and holding an old seventies-style black box tone cheater. Waiting exactly five minutes, I put coins in the phone and dialed an 800 number. When a voice started speaking, I keyed the tone cheater software. The phone beeped; actually, it sounded more like a string of cricket chirps. I heard the voice stop in mid sentence, I heard a variety of line clicks, then a phone ringing.

  Terra.

  Calling on a public landline.

  Two five niner.

  An agreed code about which cell phone Don would use.

  He picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Phone was on the other side of the room, my wheelchair got snagged on a power cable. What’s wrong?”

  I told him about the latest breather message. About Anthony Hopkins’s voice.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Hannibal Lecter.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Don rarely watched movies.

  “Silence of the Lambs,” I said. “A really scary guy. The voice on the phone imitated him.”

  He was silent for a long time as he ran down the possibilities of somebody actually being able to identify either of us just from the information on our website.

  “I don’t get the connection,” he said. “You’ve got somebody leaving messages on the office voice mail, but that system is totally isolated from you. Except this guy seems to know you. He seems to be leaving these messages for you.”

  “I don’t see the connection either. But all five people had serious money transactions. Six-figure amounts. Margaret Admiral’s husband transferred eight hundred thousand dollars last week.”

  “Give me their names.”

  “All are Tucson residents. All very wealthy, very well connected in Tucson society and business. Billie Holiday. Johnstone Morgenstern. Debra Winfield McCartney. Clarissima Douglas Bisbee.”

  “Other than the money transactions, you’ve more about them, right?”

  “Mostly financial records, but sure, some background. You want that?”

  “No need. I’ll run some checks. But these voice mail messages. You’ll have to shut down the computers in the office.”

  “I’m not going anywhere near there.”

  “You have to shut them down, Laura. It’s the only way I can stop the voice mail. If you shut down all the computer and voice mail routing, and he doesn’t call again, you’re completely isolated from him.”

  “And if he does call again?”

  “Not a chance. Really. Are you near the office?”

  The room behind the stir-fry take-out restaurant, the room with nothing in it except two computers and a black velvet curtain.

  “I could go there. Do I really have to do this?”

  “Yes. Disconnect everything. I’ll put the website up somewhere else, take the phone number off all the web pages, and I’ll reroute the email. Okay?”

  “I don’t want to go there, Don. You haven’t seen the movie.”

  “I can’t disconnect the computers from here.”

  He hung up. That’s Don. Once he makes a plan, he’s got no use in talking about it anymore.

  Parked half a block from the strip mall, I watched car and foot traffic in and out of the parking lot. Kids, moms with kids, University of Arizona students, a group of five Chinese kids. Everybody came and went in a car. Five cars were parked diagonally in front of the mall shops. After I’d watched for half an hour, none of the cars had moved.

  I walked one street over, came up through an alley to the back door of the stir-fry. A huge exhaust fan blew cooking smells onto me. The door was open. I walked in and quickly moved through the kitchen. An ancient Chinese woman and a young black man with dread-locks looked up briefly from the woks at the stove. I’d never seen the man, but the woman had rented me the room. She didn’t even nod in recognition, just sprayed soy sauce in one of the woks and dumped a handful of jumbo shrimp into another.

  Inside the room, I turned on the light switch and locked the door. The only light was a sixty-watt bulb, naked, hanging from a t
wisted wire extension cord that ran up from a wall outlet to the center of the ceiling. I looked quickly around.

  Two computers, on the floor. I’d never even bothered with a monitor, there was no keyboard, no mouse. I’d leased two DSL high-speed telephone lines, installed the modems myself, and once the computers were connected and online, Don had loaded everything else on the computers from a distance.

  I quickly disconnected the two DSL modems, unplugging the cabling from both the modems and the wall sockets. The computer geek part of me wished I had a monitor so I could properly shut down the computers, but the get-out-of-here-quick part of me just yanked the power cables from the backs of the computers and listened to the hard drives shutting down.

  Inside the room for only two minutes, I didn’t even bother turning off the light. I went back into the kitchen, where the woman stirred a wok of cabbage and bok choy, briefly glancing at me before dumping in some hot peppers.

  Kamesh had dinner on the table, some Sex Pistols track playing on his iPod while he dished up the curried chicken. He carefully removed his headphones, as usual showing no interest in where I’d been or what I’d been doing. We ate in silence, and we went to bed.

  At least this part of my life has minimal demands, I thought. Transient, minimal, but the more anxiety I felt, the more satisfaction I got with food and sex and about absolutely nothing else between us.

  laura

  At midnight, after half a bottle of chardonnay, after telling Kamesh, No, I’m sorry, no sex tonight, please, I sat out on my patio, listening to the night birds, the coyotes, the insects, cars on Tanque Verde to the south, and I suddenly realized that the breather calls might, just might be connected with the border crossing firefight.

  I panicked. I thought of waking Kamesh, telling him to leave, packing up my gear and some clothes and leaving the house. But I’m learning, you see, that’s why I’m recording this. I’m learning about my panic syndrome and how it kicks in and how to recognize the symptoms before I do something stupid or crazy or just fly off the edge. So I had another glass of wine and went to bed.