Falling Down

by David Cole

  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?

  [faces of Alex, Kelle, and Norman side by side, nobody smiling, three young faces showing fatigue but dedication]

  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.

  [connection terminated]

  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.

  [remaining sixteen messages all from Kligerman]

  [all voice mail messages deleted without response]

  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.

  [long pause, traffic noise from Ken’s phone]

  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.

  [connection terminated]

  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.

  [connection terminated]

  OUTGOING CALL ON CELL FIVE

  [five calls to Nathan, all unanswered]

  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?

  29

  And 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 mou
th 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,

  ‘If you don’t let your friend harvest nine, you will not harvest ten.’

  “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.

  30

  On the fifth day, a commotion in the driveway, two security guards escorting Ken up the back stairway to where all of us sat around the outdoor swimming pool.

  “Do you know this man?” One of the security guards, hand on his weapon, the other hand bunching up Ken’s shirt at the back to restrain his movement.

  “Ken,” Mary said. Rising from beside the pool.

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s a friend.”

  Without apology the security guards let Ken go and disappeared. Above us, Jeff Miller, the sniper, stood at the edge, finger on his rifle. I waved and nodded to him, Ken staring until Jeff backed out of sight.

  “That’s an M-40,” Ken said. “Ten-power scope. What the hell is this?”

  “It’s a fortress,” Spider said. “And we don’t much like being in it.”

  “Hey, honey bunny. I haven’t seen you in days,” Ken said. He wanted to hug me, wanted some physical contact, I couldn’t tell what he wanted, so I gave him a quick hug and when he nuzzled his nose into my ear I pulled away.

  “Wow,” Spider said. “That must’ve been some bike ride the other night.”

  “Wanna cool off?”

  The only thing I could think to say.

  “Wanna jump in the pool?”

  An hour later, a security brought us a sausage-and-extra-cheese pizza.

  Beside the pool, afternoon sun on our bodies. Mary turned off the hydrojets for the small spa at one end of the pool, the surface of the spa slowly flattening, no breeze, sun angled just enough to the southwest so that it reflected off the pool. Drying Ana Luisa’s hair.

  I put on my sunglasses. Mary bent over Ana Luisa’s head, Mary’s bikini top hanging loose, her left breast mostly outside the bikini, the nipple still hard from lying against the hydrojets. I looked over at Ken, but he’d turned away to the west, I admired that in him, I liked that in him.

  Not a looker, an ogler, a secret watcher, not one of those men, especially married men, even with their wives and children around, those men who can’t resist scanning any good-looking woman of almost any age that passes near them, like that glowing tube inside a copier if you hold the lid up, those men’s eyes traveling down and up the woman’s body, scanning as though she were naked.

  Gave Ken a kiss on his shoulder, rubbed his nose.

  “What?” he said, still not looking at Mary.

  “I think I kinda…I’m kinda going with the flow here.”

  “The pool? Don’t you get half topless on me.”

  “Phhht,” I said. “You can look at her now.”

  Looking behind the house, staring up at the Santa Catalinas, Ken shielded his eyes.

  “Do you hike?” he said.

  “Hike?”

  “You know, walk with a little extra momentum.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ve hiked all over the Santa Catalinas.”

  “Cool,” he said. “I’ve got boots in my car. Let’s ditch these guards, spend a few hours up in the canyon.”

  “Not a good idea,” I said.

  “You’ve been laid up here five days. You’ve got a gun, I’ve got a gun, up in the canyon we’d not be exposed, anybody got near enough to shoot us we’d shoot them first. Ah, come on.”

  Pushing up the canyon took so little energy that Ken and I decided to hike toward Kristen Peak. There was no marked trail, so we started bushwhacking up from the west side. The only real adventure on the way up was a brief encounter with a banded rock rattlesnake. Storm cells were developing toward the south, but they all looked pretty mild.

  Once we reached a plateau about four thousand feet high, and could see clearly to the south and east, it was a completely different story. Two storms looked potentially tornadic, especially since they were both drifting slowly our way. The one immediately to the east of us did drop a mini-tornado into the valley, but the major storm motion was to the northeast, and that one missed us.

  I initially thought the one southeast of us might pass us on the east, but I quickly became concerned. Ken later said he should have known by the fact that I never sat down. I pointed out to Ken that clouds were forming under the cloud base so quickly that you could watch them spring into existence. But Ken’s basic attitude was that he’d hiked many ten-thousand-foot peaks all over Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, and there was nothing here that could scare him. I pointed out that the entire storm appeared to be rotating.

  “That looks something from Ghostbusters,” he said.

  “One or two?”

  Actually, I was thinking, if it looks like spe
cial effects, it’s time to hike down to safety.

  “I think we should go,” I said.

  “Go?” he said. Stretching his arms out like Moses, daring the storm. “Go?” he said, ripping off his shirt and beating his breast, then turning to look at me just as a few raindrops fell, his face to the rain, and mine also. I rubbed rain into my hair, and the next I thing I remember is rubbing rain into Ken’s hair and rubbing his body, both of us carefully removing the other’s clothes until he couldn’t unhook my bra and grabbed the back of it in both hands, my breasts falling free, and we couldn’t arrange our clothes quick enough on the ground, we fell naked together, Ken underneath me and then inside me and as the storm let loose two minutes later we’d both gasped and finished and lay side by side, soaked with rain and caressing each other’s bodies until I looked up and saw everything black above us.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.

  The storm base had dropped down completely out of sight, doing violent gyrations on the other side of a rise.

  “I think we should run!” I said.

  “No, no.” Ken fumbled in his wet jeans pocket, took out a small digital camera. “Here, just take my picture first. No, wait a minute, take another from farther, behind those little rocks. Oh, I’ve got an idea, I should be holding out the Blair’s Death Rain habañero potato chip bag!”

  “Ken!” I shouted. “We’ve got to go.”

  But first he dug the chips out of a small pack, made me take his picture. Finally dressed, we started to move downslope. About one-third of a mile away and one hundred feet lower, French Joe Peak suddenly disappeared behind a solid wall of water.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Ken said.

  “No,” I said. “No. I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life, but if you don’t stop looking at the special effects, we could die up here!”

  Clouds blew from below the peak, flickering in layers above us like ribbons at a birthday party, like streamers attached to a fan. Ken suddenly comprehended the gravity of our position, and was in such a state of panic that we started running in the wrong direction, running right toward the storm. We changed direction, found a spot about one hundred yards from the top of the peak and opposite the storm strike side. We huddled against the base of a limestone cliff as the storm struck, clouds flying around like trash in a dust devil, the storm a direct hit on top of us.