Gregg Hurwitz - You're Next

Mike put a heel up on the edge of his chair, hefted the gun across his raised knee.

Graham swallowed again and lowered his hand, the unloaded weapon disappearing into the sheets. ‘If I tell you everything,’ he said, ‘you won’t kill me?’

Mike allowed a little nod.

‘Give me your word.’

‘You have my word.’

This seemed to relax Graham a degree or two. ‘If you know someone’s profile, you know as much about him as possible. I can read people from the data droppings they leave behind. And yours say you’re not a liar.’

Mike lifted the gun a little, Graham’s eyes widening to track its movement. ‘Not generally,’ Mike said.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Your affiliation with Deer Creek.’

Graham moistened his lips. ‘Me and Brian McAvoy go back to the beginning. He was a fresh-faced kid out of UNLV’s hotel-administration program. Family money, smarts to spare, and looking to use both. I was a young gun at Sac PD looking for advancement. We found each other useful. McAvoy funded an exploratory committee looking at expanding gaming outside of Vegas.’

‘He stumbled upon Sue Windbird.’

‘He stumbled upon a living, breathing lottery ticket. Tribes spend fortunes on legal petitions, lobbyists, lawyers, treaty experts, historians, genealogists – just to get what Sue Windbird already had.’

‘Which was what?’

‘You have no idea how big this is, do you?’ Graham chuckled, taking his time. He was stalling, sure, but it was clear how much he relished the tale as well. ‘The Bureau of Indian Affairs thought her tribe was already extinct. So in the seventies, Deer Creek slid right past all the tightened regulations for tribal acknowledgment. But just because a tribe has a surviving member, that doesn’t mean it retains all its tribal rights. Unless’ – his eyes gleamed with something like exhilaration – ‘the tribal territory was never abandoned. And guess what? During all those years when Deer Creek land was carved up and parceled out, ol’ Sue stayed hunkered down in her shitty cabin on a hundred acres of original designated reservation. A federally recognized tribe on sovereign land with one dying member left. Do you know what that means?’

‘Tell me.’

‘That land’ – Graham’s hands went wide – ‘that hundred acres constitutes a tiny sovereign nation in the middle of California. It is not beholden to the laws of the United States of America.’ He paused for effect. ‘We’re not just talking about having a monopoly on gambling when it’s illegal everywhere else in the state. We’re talking about no zoning laws, no federal regulations. Hell, short of the right to pursue felons, the U.S. has shaky criminal jurisdiction on tribal lands. And the best part? Every single dime of profit is a hundred-percent tax exempt.’

Mike thought of those picketers outside the casino: WHY ARE WEPAYING TAX SO CASINOSCAN RELAX?

‘And the location!’ Graham continued. ‘There’s a planned retirement community nine miles up the road – disposable-income heaven. You’re looking at seven thousand homes, one-point-eight people per lot. Those gomers might as well sign their Social Security checks directly over to Deer Creek.’

Mike thought about all the retirees he’d seen out on the casino floor, tugging on slot handles and throwing down chips.

‘Indian gaming exceeds twenty-five billion annually – more than the combined gaming revenues of Las Vegas and Atlantic City put together.’ Graham’s face showed equal parts satisfaction and pride.

Mike’s jaw ached with tightness. ‘That buys a lot of influence.’

‘You don’t know the half of it. Indian casinos were the largest soft-money contributor in the last state election cycle. They practically greased the governor into office. Christ, Deer Creek alone bought thirty-five thousand dollars of tickets to Obama’s inauguration.’ Graham paused, wet his lips. ‘McAvoy started with a high-stakes bingo palace. From there he moved into lotto, punch cards, and unregulated slots. It wasn’t money like now – they were still fighting in the courts over slots and tables. Then the Supreme Court’s Cabazon decision blew it wide open in ’87. It was a whole new world. Remember when the California budget was overdue a few years back? The hundred-million-dollar shortfall?’

Mike nodded.

‘Deer Creek made it up. As in paid for it outright . It’s a pittance compared to what they’d pay in real taxes over the years, but they’ve been smart. They’ve made deals, spread less money around to the right people.’

‘How…?’ There were more questions than Mike could keep track of. ‘How did they pull it off on the back of a ninety-year-old woman at death’s door?’

‘How does anyone pull anything off?’ Graham said. ‘With clever lawyering. McAvoy dug up some ancient clause that said that all reservation land sales were invalid unless preapproved by the federal government. Well, guess what? When the original Deer Creek reservation was parted out and sold off, no one knew to get federal approval. So McAvoy threatened to throw thousands of property sales – and titles – into question. We’re talking two thousand acres of Northern California. We’re talking lawyers calling up influential landowners and commercial real-estate holders, telling them they might not own their property anymore. Land development shut down. Banks stopped approving new mortgages. Didn’t take long for McAvoy to get Sue Windbird what she deserved.’

‘And he secured his own interest by promising to hold everything in trust for the tribe,’ Mike said. ‘So once Sue Windbird died, he’d set up his own tax-free ATM.’

‘And why shouldn’t it be his? You think Great-Granny was gonna up and build a billion-dollar business on her own? When we found her, she was still picking berries and shitting in an outhouse. That woman lived her last years like a queen . They paraded her around in ridiculous tribal costumes to ground breakings and ribbon cuttings. She drank single-barrel scotch and ate chateaubriand.’

‘When did McAvoy find out she had a kid?’ Mike asked.

‘ Everyone knew she had a kid. A drunk – typical full-blood Indian type. Died in a car crash in ’59. What everyone didn’t know was that he knocked up some white girl.’

‘You uncovered that when you were doing the genealogy charts? To prove Windbird’s stake on the land?’

Graham looked impressed. ‘Yeah. We thought we were outta the woods, then bam ! Turns out there was a little girl, born in ’51. Took some searching, but we found her.’

‘ We ,’ Mike said. ‘You keep saying we .’

‘Like I said, I’ve been with Deer Creek from the gates. And even if I didn’t dip my snout in the feed bucket, who do you think bankrolls half our agency? McAvoy’s donated half the law-enforcement equipment in the state. So let’s not get prudish over the distinction between public and private.’

‘That’s how you own all the cops.’

‘I’m a director at the largest antiterrorist agency in the state. I don’t need dirty cops. I finger “people of interest.” That’s what I do. If cops help me, it’s not corruption. It’s them doing their job, following directives. I point and they track.’

‘The girl,’ Mike said, steering him back on course.

‘Danielle Trainor.’

‘My mother.’

‘That’s right.’

If Mike’s mother was half Indian, then Mike was a quarter.

And Kat one-eighth.

Graham ran a hand down his face, drawing his features into a droop, and for an instant Mike caught a glimmer of remorse in his eyes. But then Graham spoke hard, his words defensive, shoring up an argument it seemed he’d been making to himself for years. ‘With the money McAvoy had invested, he couldn’t leave a loose end like your mother out there. Just like he can’t have some foster-home rube show up now and get the keys to the kingdom. Or your daughter – what’s she, eight? – waltz in and stake a claim to the whole goddamned operation. I mean, can you really blame him?’