Falling Down (21 page)

VIDEOCONFERENCING ON A SECURE HIGH-SPEED CONNECTION.

 

ALEX:
We're good to go.

LAURA:
Who's in the shop?

KELLE:
Me.

ALEX:
Guy in the background is Kelle's boyfriend.

NORMAN:
Norman Don. Hi.

LAURA:
First, anything on the cockfight video I shot?

ALEX:
Wait, Laura, wait. How you doing over there?

LAURA:
Sniper on the roof. Four men on the grounds. How would you feel about being in a small castle with the drawbridge up?

ALEX:
Scared as hell. What do you want first?

LAURA:
The video I shot at the cockfights. Anything usable?

KELLE:
I isolated the videographer's face. Clearly a woman. Here's a frame from the video. Her face enhanced. Sending you a graphic file.

KELLE:
We're calling her UNSUB two. From the way she handles her gear, she's a pro. We're hoping she's not from out of town. I've sent her image to contacts all over Tucson and Phoenix. Nothing yet. The other videographer, diagonally across the fight pit, probably a young male, but I can't enhance his face at all.

LAURA:
Okay. Sticking with the cockfights. Can you make any digital connection between the actual videotaped fights and the animated version that shows up on the casino website?

ALEX:
Got three different answers to that. [
drinks from liter plastic bottle of Mountain Dew
] First. The casino website is gone.

LAURA:
Just the cockfight part?

ALEX:
All of it. But somebody is really savvy. The website is up and running at a different web address. So they know what they're doing, they have capability to switch IP, Internet Protocol, numbers, get the site switched. Took us only an hour to find the new site because part of the IP is identical.

LAURA:
So they must have some way of notifying people where to go.

ALEX:
Right. Maybe an email list. More probably instant-messaging, something that's dynamic and is very difficult to hack in to.

KELLE:
[
winding and unwinding a ringlet of hair over her forehead
] I've compared camera angles that UN SUB two shot, you can see, in your pinhole video, where'd you have that hidden, anyway?

LAURA:
In my leather bra.

KELLE:
Must've tickled. Anyway, you bracketed UNSUB two really really well, so I worked up pretty much what she shot versus the camera angles on the video game. We saved that just in time, before the website moved somewhere else.

LAURA:
Could the videographer also be the animator?

NORMAN:
[
comes to videocam, face momentarily distorted, a fish-eye effect as he gets too close and backs
off a few inches
] That's what I'm working on. Same person? Very hard to tell. Animation is both labor-and computer-intensive. That tells us something right away. In addition to being able to switch websites to another address, this operation probably includes a separate animator. We're calling that person UNSUB three.

LAURA:
What happened to one?

ALEX:
Somebody's running this operation. UNSUB one. Don't know anything yet. Could be one person, could be a dozen, could be more people rotating in and out. UNSUB. Totally unknown suspect.

KELLE:
I've got feelers out for any information on local graphics whizzes. Nothing so far.

NORMAN:
We've not yet found any animated gambling sites with dogfights. But cocks, dogs, my guess is we'll find just about anything.

LAURA:
Okay. It's the people behind this, anyway. Dead animals is bad enough, but we have to focus on who's running things. The bank account?

ALEX:
Not a gold mine, but we got some product. Dakota Barbie, we're assuming that's a fake name. At the end of the trail, after all the intermediary transactions in Europe, Japan, and the Caribbean, it ends in one Tucson bank account with all kinds of deposits and withdrawals, all by wire transfer. That took real finesse, getting into the local bank. These people are getting better at protecting their digital data. We're still trying to work out where the money comes from and where it goes.

LAURA:
That's it?

ALEX:
That's it. What next, Laura?

LAURA:
Any useful data on the
maras
cartel?

ALEX:
Lots of data, nothing useful. They're not really
cartels, like the traditional Central and South American drug cartels. The
maras
are more like gangs, some of them formed in prison. But depending on the city, or even the territory within a city, the gangs operate in a very loose confederation, if they're not killing off the competition.

LAURA:
Let me handle that end. Last thing I want is for you to get nabbed hacking into NCIC or INTERPOL or any law enforcement source. Anything on the name La Bruja?

ALEX:
Nothing.

LAURA:
All right. Keep whacking away, kids. Thanks. Let's conference again in, say, two hours.

ALEX:
Cell phones?

LAURA:
I've got five totally clean phones here. You know the numbers. Don't call unless you've got something important

ALEX:
We never close.

VOICE MAIL, CELL THIRTEEN, SEVENTEEN MESSAGES.

JORDAN KLIGERMAN:
Laura. Laura Winslow. Please contact me, contact anybody in my office. You have the numbers. Urgent we talk.

INCOMING CALL ON CELL THREE

KEN:
Laura?

LAURA:
Hi, Ken.

KEN:
You disappeared on me.

LAURA:
Are you on your cell phone?

KEN:
No. Landline. Pay phone. Are you all right?

LAURA:
Yes. We're doing, we're okay.

KEN:
Mary's not home, either.

LAURA:
She's with me. And Ana Luisa, they're both with me.

KEN:
At your house?

LAURA:
Yes.

KEN:
I'm coming right over.

LAURA:
No! Don't do that.

 

LAURA:
It's not safe.

KEN:
It's not safe?

LAURA:
Not for a while, no.

KEN:
It's not safe? What do you mean? You're not safe?

LAURA:
Ken, please. We're here, but it's not safe. And I don't have time to tell you everything.

KEN:
I'm coming over.

LAURA:
You've got to trust me. Work your contacts at TPD.

KEN:
I want to see you.

LAURA:
We're all right.

KEN:
I want to see
you
.

LAURA:
Do this. Go somewhere and buy three new cell phones. Don't transfer over any existing numbers. All new phones, new numbers. When you've got them, call me from another landline, give me the numbers of all three phones.

KEN:
This isn't making sense.

LAURA:
Trust me.

KEN:
Give me an hour. Why all the phones?

LAURA:
We don't know who we're up against. But we do know that they're extremely technologically sharp. So maybe somebody monitors wireless cell calls. It's not hard to do, once you find who you're looking for, then you can easily triangulate the call and get a location.

KEN:
You're telling me to watch my back.

LAURA:
Call when you get the new phones.

KEN:
I'm on it. I really want to see you.

LAURA:
Not a good time for that, for…not a good time for me and you.

OUTGOING CALL ON CELL FIVE

KYLE:
Homicide. Kyle.

LAURA:
It's Laura Winslow.

KYLE:
Where you been, girl?

LAURA:
Busy.

KYLE:
So what's up?

LAURA:
Max Cady has a real name. Tuglivik. Tuglivik Taerbaum.

KYLE:
Not on VICAP or NCIC.

LAURA:
We got this through a U.S. Customs database. Taerbaum. An Alaskan Indian. An Inuit. His Customs jacket's half an inch thick. Armed robbery, armed robbery, manslaughter, that's how he went down to Florence seven to twelve, paroled in the eighth year. Also suspected in thirteen murders, all cartel assassinations. A muscle man, an enforcer. The cockfight thing, probably a sideline. Or he's moved up with added territory of his own.

KYLE:
A total mystery to us down here.

LAURA:
Anything more on the gardener? Carlos Canas?

KYLE:
Still trying to decipher the meaning of that tattoo. E210.

LAURA:
Yeah. Could be anything. E210…E210…useless, without something else. You'll keep me posted?

KYLE:
Sure. Hey, listen, word's out everywhere in TPD, if you contact anybody here, you're to know that Jordan Kligerman wants you to call.

LAURA:
So tell him you called me?

KYLE:
All right George. [Obviously being overheard on his phone.] Sunday night, my place. See ya.

OUTGOING CALL ON CELL FIVE

INCOMING CALL ON CELL THREE

KEN:
Got the new phones. Laura, I want to know what's going on.

LAURA:
Have you got half an hour?

A
nd we waited. And we all waited. One day, two, three days, four.

Not much happened, except routines, swimming, eating, staying away from windows at night. I thought Spider would complain, but she did most of her business by phone or computer.

And then one day the crocodile arrived.

 

Among Spider's many clients, she did public relations for a local gallery, which just opened a show titled Concert Party. Curated by Michelle Gilbert, an art historian at Sarah Lawrence College, the entire exhibit consisted of huge hand-painted signs on sheets of plywood.

After half an hour's bickering with our private security, a U-Haul van came up the driveway and three men unloaded a painting on two joined four-by-eight sheets of plywood. A lady sat on a crocodile in the middle of a river, her face serene as she gripped the crocodile, a large wooden box inside its gaping mouth as it moved downstream.

The men installed the artwork on an inside wall of our three-car garage.

 

“That is totally weird,” I said. Our cars moved out of the garage for the viewing.

“It's an advertisement,” Spider said. “In Ghana, local
pop artists work with singers and bands to prepare advertisements for what they call concert parties. Singing, storytelling, dancing, a band, the working out of legends. This is A. B. Crentsil's band. Not that I'd know the difference. They play a local style of music called highlife. Michelle collected the advertisements during several visits to Ghana. This artist is Mark Anthony.”

“This is for a play?” I said.

Spider consulted her catalogue.

“It's a proverb about selfishness. Literally, it says,

“Or, more or less, ‘If you do not allow your brother to climb, you also will not climb.' I got this one for you, I was thinking you miss Nathan.”

“I miss him awful,” I said. “But a crocodile?”

“It's a Ghanaian reworking of the legend of Snow White. It's about the jealousy and envy of an older powerful woman towards her junior. You know how it goes, that children's story. A treacherous and destructive Queen Mother has the power of life and death over the good, obedient, religious, and beautiful daughter Snow White. In this play, Snow White survives each trial placed before her by the Queen Mother and ultimately is rewarded and in the end the Queen Mother dies.”

“All I remember is the poisoned apple,” I said. “Why is this woman on a crocodile? And what's that in the crocodile's mouth?”

“The Queen Mother has given the girl a box and told her to collect something from a distant Queen Mother, who lives in the land of the dead. On the way, an angel tells her how to proceed on her journey and gives her some gold to throw into the river which she must cross. The angel tells her not to open the box which the Queen Mother will give her, and on her return, she must throw a gold piece into a river and a crocodile will come to
carry her across. The girl returns and gives the Queen Mother the box and the Queen Mother thinks the girl has opened it, and so she herself opens it, discovers it is full of gold coins, and goes mad. She then tells everyone how she wronged the girl. She dies and the girl becomes Queen Mother. End of story.”

“What's the moral?” I said.

“I don't know. A morality tale about envy, pride, stepmothers, and royalty? In the end, the intended victim survives and the evil perpetrator dies.”

“I meant, what's the moral for me?”

“I love you, Mom.”

“I'm not an evil mother?”

“No,” she said. “You just miss Nathan. I thought this might cheer you up.”

“Thanks, sweetie. Thanks a lot. But it is totally weird.”

“Also,” she said, “I guess…I really don't want to know why there are men with guns all over this house. Last night, when I went into the kitchen to feed Sarah Katherine, one of those guys was sitting there drinking coffee. I'm not sure which of us was more freaked out, me seeing a gun, or him seeing me breast-feed.”

“I'll tell you why he's there—” I said.

“No. I don't want to know. I trust you, I love you. If it's something you really believe is necessary, that's enough for me.”

 

And for me, the real moral of the crocodile is trust.