Gregg Hurwitz - You're Next

When it cut to black, Two-Hawks leaned back in his chair and eyed the blank monitor. ‘A credible start,’ he said.

‘ Start ?’ Mike said.

‘This is just talk. Not hard evidence.’

‘You’re telling me this isn’t enough to threaten McAvoy?’ Mike said. ‘A confession to multiple murders committed on behalf of a corporation?’

‘Delivered by a man with a gun to his head during a home invasion,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘A man under duress, who would’ve said anything to save his life. Plus, if you want McAvoy, this is all just hearsay. He’s got plausible deniability-’

‘So I use this as a springboard.’ Mike’s tone was clipped, frustrated. ‘I can get to someone in law enforcement who’s clean. They could subpoena records, transactions that show payments to his goons-’

‘Deer Creek Tribal Enterprises, Inc.’ – again with the full corporate title – ‘is a sovereign nation, just like ours. You can’t subpoena shit from them. There is no agency in this nation or any other that can get them to release records. They run their business however they want because there is no oversight . And they’ve got judges and cops and DAs from your nation who are favorably inclined to their cause.’

Disgust welled in Mike’s chest. ‘They just plug into the government and use it like it’s theirs.’

‘That’s what you don’t understand,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘It is theirs. There was a pair of brothers who wouldn’t sell land near a Deer Creek development site. They disappeared, couldn’t pay the note on their property. There was some evidence at the site, but whoops, it up and vanished from the police locker. Everyone knows that McAvoy had them whacked, but how can you prove something when you can’t dig into any records and when there are no bodies? I’ll tell you how.’ Two-Hawks leaned forward in his chair. ‘With irrefutable evidence against them’ – one meaty finger thumped his palm – ‘ in hand .’

‘I don’t have it,’ Mike said.

‘Yes,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘But we do.’

Mike had the sensation of being left out of an inside joke, smiling dumbly while everyone else laughed. His lips parted with disbelief. ‘Then what do you need me for?’

Two-Hawks’s chair creaked as he rose, rocking behind him. He set his knuckles on the blotter. ‘Because Deer Creek, in turn, has something we need.’

Mike’s jaw shifted; he felt it crack at the hinge. ‘Mutually assured destruction,’ he said. ‘If you burn them with what you’ve got on them, they can burn you back.’

‘A version of that, I suppose.’

‘So you have information that I could use to save my daughter, but you won’t give it to me because you want something else?’

‘I’m sorry. I truly am.’

Mike stared at him a long time, the gunmetal cool against the small of his back. Two-Hawks stiffened a bit, his eyes jerking nervously to the door.

Mike said, ‘Maybe you should elaborate.’

‘The information that we’ve acquired is our only ammunition against a corporation that is seeking to disenfranchise my people. If we had anything less on the line, I’d give you everything right now to protect your family.’

Mike leaned back. ‘So what do you propose?’

‘You have a legal claim on Deer Creek. Use your leverage to get us what we need. Then we can be free to give you what we have on them .’

Mike weighed this for a moment. ‘Let me call my associate.’

‘An associate.’ Two-Hawks frowned, impressed.

Mike took out the Batphone and called Shep, who was waiting somewhere out beyond the ring of parking-lot lights. ‘It’s safe,’ Mike said.

‘You sure?’ Shep asked.

‘Mostly.’

Shep hung up.

Two-Hawks was on the phone himself. ‘Be right there,’ he said, and set down the receiver. He flicked two fingers at Mike. ‘Come on now.’

They strolled down another corridor and wound up in a surveillance suite, the north-facing wall composed of maybe fifty monitors, each of which cycled through numerous perspectives. Staring vacantly at the wall of screens, three bored-looking men and one woman sat before a desk that ran the length of the room. Red Bull cans and empty Big Gulps cluttered the surfaces, and the smell of chewing tobacco hung heavy.

The woman said, ‘Someone passed a chip cup at table nine.’

‘Run the software,’ Two-Hawks ordered.

She clicked a button on a computer, and a big screen on the side wall flared to life. A facial-recognition program began to map contour lines over the heads of the casino patrons, moving table to table. Now and then a double chime sounded and the patron’s image was pulled into a subscreen and matched with a mug shot and a rap sheet. Connecting boxes listed aliases and associates.

‘I’m getting no one who’s worked chip cups before, but we have a couple slot-machine cheats,’ the woman announced.

‘Of course we do.’ Two-Hawks sidled toward Mike. ‘Manipulating a slot machine is a felony in Nevada, but it’s only a misdemeanor in California, so everyone comes here to train.’

‘What’s a chip cup?’ Mike asked.

‘A weighted hollow cylinder with a real poker chip on top,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘The sides are painted to match the chip’s edges. Since dealers don’t break down chips that come in sets of five, you can pass off a single chip as five.’ He directed his attention back to the woman. ‘Let me know ASAP if another chip cup pops up, and in the meantime keep a close eye on the slot cheats.’

One of the men jogged a joystick, and four of the screens zoomed in tight on the suspects. Mike let his eyes blur, taking in an impression of seemingly every angle of the casino – blackjack table, vault, slots, parking lot – each screen clicking like a slot reel through different angles. ‘You’ve got every inch of the place covered,’ Mike said.

‘Except the bathroom.’ Two-Hawks grinned. ‘That’s about the only place in a casino you can have an “expectation of privacy,” as the lawyers call it. If anything big goes down, of course, the first concern is-’

All four workers intoned wearily, ‘“ What’s going on at the vault .”’

With pride Two-Hawks said, ‘We’ve got fifty-four cameras in the vault alone, covering the cage, the man trap, the count room, the fill bank where jackpots are paid out.’

The woman’s back went rigid, and she swiveled toward a side monitor. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘We got a safecracker up on Biometrica.’

Mike leaned around her to see who the facial-recognition software had pulled from the crowd.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘He’s with me.’

Two-Hawks gave a hearty laugh. ‘Please page Blackie. Have’ – a glance to the on-screen data – ‘Shepherd White brought back here.’

The woman nodded and picked up the phone. She was slender with elfish features, the bulge of tobacco in her cheek adding a fantastical flourish.

A minute later Blackie and Shep pushed through the padded door. They both looked mildly displeased, though Mike doubted they’d exchanged so much as a word along the way.

Two-Hawks said, ‘You’re a safecracker?’

Shep said,

‘What?’ ‘A safecracker. You break into safes?’

Shep shrugged and looked away, disinterested. He took a few steps toward the wall of monitors and gazed at them, a fox in the henhouse. His head was tilted back, his mouth slightly ajar, the light of the monitors putting a spark into his flat eyes. He seemed to be drinking in all the flickering movement.

The workers and Blackie exchanged a round of glances. Blackie said, finally, ‘You want to answer the man?’

Shep said, ‘The broad on blackjack three’s working a shiner prism to read the hole card. Two tables over, the black dude’s counting cards on an iPhone app. You got a guy using a monkey paw on the bank of Hurricane slots along the west wall. And either your dealer on seven paid out a wrong hand accidentally or he’s dumping the table.’