by David Cole
“Thanks,” I said. “I really do appreciate this. But I’m not sure what else I can do for you.”
“I understand. Bob tells me you may have a link to the maras?”
Actually, Bob hadn’t told me any such thing. I’d avoided all phone calls since leaving the park earlier. I’d left clear instructions with Alex that our office would not respond to requests. Mary Emich called twice, but I had nothing to tell her yet. Nor had I worked out what I wanted to do.
“There’s a third party, yes.” I left it at that. “If something develops, you’ll know. Otherwise, I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
That wasn’t what Kligerman wanted to hear. “I thought…” he said, “I thought at least you’d visit my department, meet my people, get a briefing on the tools and technology and money we want to throw at this problem.”
“Laura,” Bob said. “Are you firm about leaving tomorrow? Can’t you at least spend an hour or two with us? In the morning?”
“Early is no problem,” Kligerman said. “I can assemble the team at six.”
Neither Gates or Kligerman pressed me, no urgency in their words, or in their eyes or bodies. They both sat relaxed, open to my not working with them. Trouble was, I really didn’t know what to do. The murdered family at the crime scene kept popping into my head at weird moments all afternoon. And I’d promised Mary Emich that I’d follow up on the gambling website, although Alex could easily handle that.
“With all respect,” I said to Kligerman, “I’ll have to think about it.”
“Good. Can’t ask for more, at least right now. I’ll have the team on standby, ready anytime you say. I’ll show you your equipment, your office.”
“I’d expect to continue working from home.”
“Our networks are internally secure,” he said. “Outside access is severely limited. Even I’ve got to go through five passwords to get through our firewalls.”
He knew of me, he knew of my work ethic. I wanted privacy, I wanted my own computers, I guarded my security, I wasn’t going to let any data traveler get to my computers.
“With all respect,” I said, “the only secure computer is one that’s not connected to anything. You want my expertise? Fine. But I don’t want your five passwords and your firewall. I trust only what I myself set up and control.”
“Surely,” Kligerman said, “computer security isn’t that much of a problem.”
“You’re a fool,” I said. He clearly didn’t like people saying that to him. “Name me any institutional database used by anybody in this city and I guarantee you I will get inside that database and suck out all the information I want. I will change whatever information I want, I will create fictitious identities and alter real ones.”
“Well.” Kligerman laughed, nudged Gates. “Bob, you sure picked the right girl for us.”
“You’re a double fool,” I said. Being called a girl always pumps up my sarcasm. “If I can do all of that, so can somebody else. You want me to locate records? Sure. I’ll locate records. But whatever are you listening to when I talk about what I can do? How the hell would I ever know if the records I found were genuine? Jesus Christ, Bob. He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. This is a waste of time.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Kligerman said. Oh shit, I thought. He’s going to take back my PI license. I smiled, okay, it was a half-hearted smile, but I tried.
“As a minimum,” I said. “I’ve got to work at this from outside your office.”
“We might be able to work something out,” Gates said.
Kligerman’s jaw tensed, muscle plates shifted at his temples. He said nothing. Not even aware of the transparency of his thought process, you could see Gates’s comment work its way from his head down to his gut and then back up to reason and his back straightened.
“You make computers sound so mysterious,” Kligerman said.
“Not so much computers. Data. Looking at somebody else’s data, being unaware that somebody else is looking at yours.”
“I don’t see why it’s not controllable. Why you make it so…so mysterious.”
I cut my eyes to Bob, he knew my frustration, he held out both hands, palms down, the cool-it signal.
“You’re right about one thing,” I said. “All of this is a mystery to me.”
“How so?” Kligerman said.
“Life is a mystery,” I said. “What you’re asking me to do, that’s a mystery. Why you’re asking me to do this, that’s a mystery?”
“Gee. You sound so cosmic. But fascinating. All right, Laura. I’ll honor your paranoia about security. How would you work from outside my office?”
“A VPN,” I said. “A virtual private network. I’ll set up.”
“Now you are sounding mysterious.”
“You’re okay with that, Jordan?” Gates said. “Her working off site?”
“Of course.” Kligerman smiled. “Laura. A pleasure. Tomorrow.”
Gates stayed long enough to bring his head close to mine.
“You look really pissed off,” he said.
“I am.”
“So, working with TPD isn’t going to happen?”
“That’s not why I’m pissed off, Bob.” He waited. “Private thing.”
“Maybe you’ll charge your pissiness tomorrow,” he said.
After half an hour of being bustled around by the Magellan’s crowd, and after a wonderful steak, I started to get really chilly. The aircon was on frigid, all the men with shirts and suit jackets and warm inside their clothing cocoons, but I’d only worn a short-sleeve cotton blouse, open in front.
Goosebumps on both my arms, I frowned at whatever guy was hitting on me right then and walked to the exit and outside into the hot June weather. Fifteen percent humidity is great for coping with ninety-five-degree heat, but not when the aircon is set to polar and you’re wearing shorts, or short sleeves or a tank top.
Two men bumping each other with knuckled fists, laughing and oblivious to me, tried to come inside Magellan’s front door just when I was leaving. And they weren’t there for the first drink of the day, nor did they have breath mints, just boozy odors, we were jockeying for position at the door, each of them taking one of my arms, Hey, don’t leave, baby, we just got here, give us a shot. I pushed violently between them, an elbow in each guy’s gut, I had to resist kneeing one of them in the balls. Just outside the door at last, the hot monsoon humidity enveloping me with a wonderfully warm hug.
I drove around with the windows down and the moon-roof open. Somehow I found myself back at the park, but a chain hung across both entrances. I parked across the street, turned off my engine to watch three gardeners inside the park struggling with an uprooted thirty-year-old mesquite.
During high winds, and frequently during a monsoon, in seconds a tree can be uprooted. It shudders in the wind, but the roots are shallow, and somewhere around forty miles an hour, winds rip the root-ball out of the ground and the weight of the tree pulls it over, toppling to the ground. Sometimes, although not common, the tree can be saved if gardeners work quickly. Usually, the tree lays there until it rots, or somebody chain-saws it to pieces. I used to save stumps, gnarly ones I’d find while out driving, and I’d wrestle together some people who could load the stump into my pickup and then position it somewhere on my property.
One time, I remember this so clearly, a huge blue Palo Verde lay across a hedge of Arizona bird-of-paradise flowers. I sat on the trunk of the Palo Verde, the bark still smooth and rippling with imperfections of a few decades of growth. Nobody else around, so I leaned over to lie, sideways, on the trunk, which, being nearly a foot wide, meant I couldn’t lie on my back, but lying on the side was perfect. I put my ear against the tree, looked around to make sure nobody watched me, lay on my chest, and wrapped both arms around the tree.
I heard a woman sob and I sat up quickly.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the woman said. Tears runneling down both cheeks. “I really, really didn’t want to disturb you. That tree, I know t
hat tree so well, my grandfather planted it when I was about eight or nine years old. When we owned the house, back there, it was the only house around at that time. So when I saw you hugging the tree, I had such memories of how we all watched over that tree. I didn’t even know it was down. I hardly ever come by here, I live a mile away and I walk every day but usually along another road.”
“It’s a beautiful tree,” I said. “Maybe we can find a gardener or landscaper who’s got the equipment to plant it solid.”
“Maybe,” she said. Took out a cell phone, started to punch in a number. She wiped her tears and gave me a laugh. “I’ve just got to say, I’ve been an environmental protection person for years, but, true story, while I’m used to being called a tree hugger, I’ve never seen anybody hug a tree like you just did.”
My cell rang. “You’ve got to see this,” Alex said.
“See what?”
“I can’t describe…we’ve never, none of us, we’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Is it a name? Somebody we know, is it their name?”
“No.”
“Someone from the park?”
“From the park, yes. But nobody you know.”
“You’re talking in codes, Alex.”
“Yah. Um, first thing we did, we found who’d used the computer. To look at the online casino. I called, what’s his name, Charvoz. Told him the name of the person. He said he’d contact you later. But Laura, you’ve got to see this now.”
“Right now I’m not in the mood to see anything.”
“You sound really worked up.”
“Whatever.”
“Laura.” Insistent now. “Laura. You’ve really got to see this.”
“Okay. I’m closer to home than the office. Bring it to my house.”
“No,” she said. “Come here.”
“What’s so important?”
“Laura,” Alex said. “I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t really know why I’m looking at this, this…Laura, is this something personal? This online casino website? Or are we being hired by somebody?”
“Does it matter?”
“I want to put these people down,” Alex said. “I want us totally involved in this, I want us to drop just about everything else we’ve got and work this case.”
“We don’t need any more clients,” I said.
“I don’t care if there are clients or not. I’ll work this by myself, if you don’t want anything to do with it. This really really can’t be ignored.”
“Alex,” I said. “I’m not sure who’s more worked up tonight.”
“Oh, I’m angry,” Alex said. “At first it just freaked me out, but now I’m so angry I won’t work on anything else.”
“Okay. Who’s there with you?”
“Kelle’s still here, but I’ve sent everybody else away for the night. You’ve got to see this in the office, Laura.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t want it in your home.”
13
What wouldn’t I want to see in my own home?
What would be so…terrible? Disgusting? Horrible? What would make me walk immediately away from it? And I immediately thought of Nathan, walking away from me. Was I disgusting, was I somebody to be shunned, erased from his life?
I clamped down hard on that thought.
What wouldn’t I want to see in my own home?
Something on the Internet, that was clear. In ten years, I think I’ve seen everything possible. Websites displayed anything imaginable:
pornography
war
senseless violence
gambling
Pornography is boring. I’ve sifted through hundreds of spam emails and websites, I’ve seen the most grotesque sexual positioning of naked genitals. Pornography is a huge business, generating thirteen billion dollars every year.
War is for television news programs and documentaries on the History Channel. War itself is senseless violence, but violence is all over television and movies. Despite years of rumors about snuff films, filming an actual death no longer seemed outré, the Vietnam War changed all that, and cameras in the two Iraq wars perfected battlefield violence.
Gambling. Had to be something involved with gambling. Alex had cracked beyond the entry requirements of the online casino. People gambled for
money
excitement
sex
anything of value
things of no value.
The gambling game of choice was whatever suited the gambler.
Online gambling exploded into popularity around the turn of the century, fueled by the increasing number of casinos on Indian lands, state lotteries, and televised poker sessions. Gamblers always wager on the endless number of sports which demanded that somebody win, somebody lose.
You can bet online, but this is passive gambling. You make a bet before the action, you collect or pay out when the game is over.
Gamblers want hands-on action.
Dealing the cards, flinging the dice, staking chips on red or black or number twenty-seven.
For most people, the boringly repetitive routine of activating a slot machine.
Few slots even have a handle these days. You don’t pull down the handle, you punch a button. Slots duplicate all kinds of TV game shows. America’s top-rated TV game show is no longer for couch potatoes. You could play Wheel of Fortune and be your own Pat Sajac, Vanna White, or better yet, be a contestant.
Online casinos have mixed reputations. Some guarantee financial security with recognizable protection programs. Other casinos are like most websites. Here today, gone next month. Reputable and disreputable online casinos are indistinguishable to whatever flies are drawn to the site.
Now there are so many websites that casinos offer bonus chips when you make your initial cash deposit. Up to one hundred dollars if you predeposit a thousand dollars from your credit card or bank statement. Deposit more, get two or three hundred in bonus chips. Not to worry, an online casino isn’t basically different in most ways than going to Vegas. They have the odds, they have the edge, and eventually, they’ll get your money.
But once again, what had Alex found on an online gambling website that I wouldn’t want to see in my own home?
I exited from I-10 Southbound at Congress and turned east, toward our office on the third floor of a 1930s renovated brick and adobe building.
What don’t I want to see? Or turn that question on its ear. What wouldn’t I want my daughter to see? Spider had seen everything. Like me, she’d been a runaway, a thief, and had served jail time. My granddaughter was too young to really see anything.
Cruising past the downtown park, I almost rammed the Chevy Suburban in front of me at the stoplight. In the park, three women had a man pinned to the ground, kicking and punching him. One of the women picked up a shopping cart and smashed it against the man’s knees. The sudden violence caught me by surprise, cars behind me honking and screeching around me when the light turned green.
Violence.
Think video games, okay, sure. All manner of slaughter and destruction. Wreck cars, become a gangbanger, sell drugs, and most of all, the first person-shooter games like Doom, but now involving sophisticated graphic animation of warfare. Save Private Ryan yourself, storm ashore at Normandy.
But the thrill is the destruction, the ultimate rush when you’ve reached the highest game level by efficiently avoiding your own death by killing everything that’s moved. How would you gamble, if you were actually driving the game?
No. That wasn’t gambling.
Violence.
I parked in our office underground garage. When I park down there at night, after business hours, I always think of Robert Redford meeting Deep Throat underground in All the President’s Men. Deep Throat, well, Hal Holbrook, half hidden behind a concrete pillar, clouds of smoke curling around his half-hidden face, and the end of one scene where a car’s tires squeal somewhere inside the garage and Redford loo
ks away and looks back to find himself all alone, the scene ending outside the garage as he’s running away from…running from what?
Violence.
What kind of online casino would let you gamble on violence?
Boxing? Wrestling? Iron-man-to-the-death contests, animated?
What if…and then it came to me, what Alex discovered.
It had to be violence.
Real violence now appeared on the Internet in an unpredictable way. A year after declaring victory in the war against Iraq, armed revolutionaries and terrorists still blew themselves and other people apart. Worse, kidnapped innocents were made to appear on grainy home videos, pleading for their lives as they knelt before heavily armed and hooded terrorists.
Most of the world never saw the beheadings. Editors and publishers have moral and ethical standards, any sight too gruesome never makes it through the publication gateways. But the graphic pictures exist on the Internet.
Knives drawn, the terrorists forced Daniel Pearl to repeat, “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish,” and then he was decapitated. Many of the executions captured on video were reproduced on inexpensive CDs, including the final beheadings, and sold by the thousands on the Arab street.
This gruesome entertainment, and it does entertain those with violent political beliefs, probably started with the Chechens and Iraqi terrorist groups like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad. Zarqawi realized the awesome power of images, probably influenced greatly by the Abu Ghraib photographs of U.S. jailers humiliating Muslim prisoners. Zarqawi and others quickly and correctly estimated the power of the image, so the most logical step has a terrorist becoming a video director, despite the amateurish posing of the terrified victim on the ground in front of five hooded and armed men, one of whom reads out the death sentence.
American film ratings dilute this violence with an R-rating:
Restricted—Contains mature themes (usually sex and/or violence). Children under 17 not admitted without an adult
