Deadly Odds

by Allen Wyler

  When Arnold didn’t continue, Davidson asked, “You’re saying you think she looked in your wallet?”

  Arnold wiped his brow. “Yeah, exactly.”

  His lawyer shook his head. “Still don’t get it. You say you went there with fake ID, that she only knew you as Toby. What I still don’t understand is they obviously know who you are. How? How’d they know your name and address? You leaving out some key information or I’m going senile? Which is it?”

  Time to come clean. “Yeah, all that’s true. The thing is, I had my real ID in there right along with the Toby stuff. Just in case…”

  Davidson pondered this a moment. “In case of what? How come that ID wasn’t in the safe with the rest of your valuables?”

  Arnold resumed pacing. “Aw, Christ, I don’t know… I was worried… I brought it because of the TSA and all. Started thinking, what if I get injured or sick, have to be taken to a hospital? What if I get arrested for something?” He held up a hand. “Yeah, I know, you’re going to ask, arrested for what? I don’t know. Anything. Jaywalking. Looking in store windows. Just something. I was also kind of worried about seeing a hooker. Made me twitchy. Yeah, I know the state of Nevada permits prostitution, but that’s only in certain brothels outside of Vegas city limits.” He shrugged off the statement with, “I was trying to be prepared, think of anything that could possibly go wrong. I know, I know, but it’s just the way I’m wired, like when I write new code, I try to anticipate every possible eventuality and plan for it. Want to do it as bug free as possible the first time, have minimal troubleshooting. I admit that now, in retrospect, it was a stupid thing to do. And since I did bring my real ID, I should’ve put it and the wallet in the safe like you said. But I didn’t, and here I am. Just another good example why retrospect’s such twenty-twenty vision.”

  Davidson gave no reaction, just seemed to accept the argument and said, “Point made,” in a tone vague enough to sound he was verbalizing thought instead of making a comment.

  And this compelled Arnold to further justify his actions. “Thing is, ever since my parents…” Couldn’t say the words “were murdered,” so opted for, “died, I’ve been extremely security conscious.” He raised both hands in mock surrender. “Yeah, yeah: to a fault. I get it.”

  Davidson dismissed the statement with a wave. “Don’t worry. I share your concerns, so you won’t hear any criticism from me.” Davidson cleared his throat. “Let’s change the subject, move on to something else. You mentioned gambling for a living. That true?”

  Arnold hesitated, still gun-shy about discussing the subject, but could see no reason to avoid it. “Yes.”

  Davidson appeared to reevaluate him. Typical. Breeze’s attitude changed soon as he proved he was a player. Yeah, then look what happened.

  “And the artificial intelligence bit, that true too? This isn’t all just a story?”

  “Yes, it’s all true.”

  A vague smile crossed Davidson’s mouth. “Interesting. How does that work?” He quickly added, “The Cliffs Notes version. I wouldn’t understand anything more complicated.”

  Arnold loved to talk about AI—lived for it, actually—but only with other geeks—Howard especially—because they didn’t need complicated explanations. With like-minded people, he could sit for hours debating the pros and cons of topics outsiders didn’t know existed, much less understand. He hated having someone ask him to explain a concept only to end up staring into a glassy-eyed receptacle of wasted breath. How do you explain something so complicated to someone so unprepared to understand? And cover it in thirty seconds or less? He knew Davidson hadn’t asked the right question.

  “What you’re asking me to explain is what’s on the computer Firouz and Karim killed Howie for. Right?”

  Smiling, Davidson nodded. “Since you put it that way.”

  Arnold dropped back into the chair, his steepled fingers tapping his chin. “Ever hear of Nate Silver?”

  Davidson frowned. “Name’s familiar, but can’t tell you why.”

  “Well, he’s a god. Probably one of the coolest guys walking this planet at the moment. Mr. Prediction. The Man. He’s called Super Bowls, presidential elections, any number of big ticket items. Ring a bell now?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Professionally he’s a statistician. But he’s parlayed statistical analysis into such a fine art he can accurately predict just about any phenomenon you might want to analyze. What’re the odds the Eiffel Tower will collapse next year? He’ll tell you. Who’s gonna win the Super Bowl this year? No problem. All the big Wall Street brokerages hire these guys—they call them Quants—to predict commodity prices. Each guy devises his own analysis paradigm in hopes of gaining a percent improvement over everyone else doing the same thing.

  “No one knows Silver’s exact paradigm, but they pretty much work the same. You use every bit of data you can find that might affect a phenomenon—commodity prices, presidential elections, just about anything—cram all of it in a supercomputer, crunch the numbers, and voila, you have a probability of something occurring. I do the same with sports, but I specialize in football. I’m constantly updating my database of players, both pro and collegiate. Guy sprains an ankle, boom, it’s updated. Same thing for the coaches. Terabytes of data. I have Google searches running continuously. I practically update things before things happen. You wouldn’t believe all the information I track.” He paused for a breath. “Because even though we’re all sort of doing the same thing, the biggest thing that separates one person from the other is the variables they track and the weight assigned each one. The more accurate the weighting, the better the results.

  “For any given upcoming game, I update data right up until time to bet. I press a button and let the computer give me an objective point spread. No hunches, no emotional deviations, just purely cut and dried. Pretty simple, right? So simple, in fact, that everybody, including the dudes in Vegas who make the spreads, do the same thing. But, you might ask, if everybody is doing the same thing, why doesn’t everyone win? Simple answer is because they don’t. And why not? Depends on your system. That’s what makes it proprietary. And no one makes money just betting the point spread. The real money comes from being able to spot the games in which one team will beat the spread. That’s what I do. I cherry pick the upsets.”

  Davidson said, “Not sure that really explains it, but I won’t try to probe any deeper.” The room fell silent except for the muted sound of a jet out over the harbor on approach to SeaTac.

  A few seconds later Arnold realized he’d slipped into a fantasy of being aboard that jet heading to some place far away, some place where he could begin a new, unencumbered life with no one chasing him, no one trying to steal his intellectual property, no reminders of his parents or Howard’s murder. Seemed too good to be true.

  But if that were to happen, where would he go? Hawaii? Yeah, sure, where else? When he was twelve years old, his parents had taken him on a vacation to Oahu, to a hotel on Waikiki. He’d long since forgotten the name of the place, but he’d never forgotten the warm grainy sand between his toes or humid air embracing his embarrassingly white skin. To this day, the smell of coconut reminds him of suntan lotion and sepia-toned memories of those few precious days, the experience long ago embedded in his memory. They were an intact family then. It was a wonderful time.

  “Okay, moving on,” Davidson said, breaking Arnold’s train of thought. “Firouz now has your computer. Isn’t this part of the dynamic now game over?”

  And that was another facet he really hadn’t had time to consider. So much had happened in such a compressed period of time. “Not even close.”

  “Explain that.”

  “First of all, I doubt he can break my security.”

  Davidson leaned back in his desk chair and interlaced his fingers behind his head. “Why not? I thought password busters were as plentiful as water.”

  Arnold laughed at that. “Password? No offense, Mr. Davidson, but that’s so old school. No
body with any smarts and anything to protect relies on a password anymore. Why? Because, you’re absolutely right: they’re too easily broken. I use biometric security, but even that can be broken by someone who knows their way around.”

  “What are you using?”

  “Both right thumb print and left retinal identification. And,” Arnold said with a glow of satisfaction, “if they get around that—say, by cutting off my finger—if you then don’t use the right password in two tries, the hard drive self-destructs with a virus I call Revenge.” He warmed at the memory of the hours spent developing the routine. He’d written it simply as payback to anyone who did what Firouz had done tonight. The virus was never intended to be released for malicious use.

  “And if those aren’t enough reasons,” Arnold said, “that laptop is only a workstation. The real software resides elsewhere.” He decided not to mention where. In spite of Davidson being his attorney, he saw no upside to disclosing such information.

  “Excuse me for asking,” Davidson said, “but isn’t that a bit excessive?”

  Arnold couldn’t help but smile. “You mean paranoid?”

  It was refreshing to see Davidson caught off guard. For once tonight someone else was feeling the sting of embarrassment. “There is a fine line that separates paranoid from cautious,” Arnold said. “You tell me where it is.”

  Davidson gave a concessionary grunt. “Interesting point. Probably no different from distinguishing art from porn: all hinges on how appropriate it is.” A pause. “Change of subject. Howard was your best friend?”

  Was. Past tense. He glanced down at his hands, the memory flashing back. “Yes.”

  “And you saw who killed him.”

  The words came as more statement than question, but this time he felt obliged to answer. To claim differently would be to lie, and to not answer would carry the wrong implication. “Yes.”

  “So, my obvious question is: why didn’t you tell the police? Don’t you want the killer arrested and locked up?”

  “I do want them locked up, but…” Firouz’s eyes flashed across his mind: intense lasers boring straight into him with the burn of dry ice. The moment he met the man in Starbucks, Arnold feared for his life. His words could never describe the intensity of his fear, so he simply said, “Trite as this sounds, he scared the crap out of me. If I finger him, he’ll have me killed, no question about it. He’s the kind of person who can get something like that done no matter if he’s in or out of prison. In other words, I’m screwed regardless of what I do.”

  Davidson, still leaning back in his chair, listening intently, shook his head. “I don’t agree. It’s always more difficult to manage people on the outside if you’re locked up. Especially if he ends up in a prison for terrorists.”

  Well, shit, whether Davidson agreed with him didn’t change facts. “Look, here’s the deal. He wants my system. I have to assume he’s got someone who can break into my laptop. Fine. If they tried, it blew up in their face, so to speak. The moment that happens, it tells them what?” Being rhetorical, Arnold continued, “It tells them there really is something in there worth stealing because there’s no other reason for such elaborate security. Meaning by now they’re probably even more interested in getting their hands on my work. Meaning now I really am fucked. To make matters worse, Karim saw me. We looked right into each other’s eyes. Meaning he knows damned well I can identify him as Howard’s killer. All the more reason to want to find me.” Arnold shook his head. “No, way I see it, I’m totally screwed.”

  Davidson was starting to say something when his phone rang.

  16.

  Davidson nudged the phone a bit to see the caller ID and frowned. “I better take this.”

  “No problem,” Arnold said, as if his opinion meant anything. He realized immediately it was a stupid thing to say, but didn’t dwell on it or try to change it. He was thankful for the break. So far this interview—if that’s what it was called—was really stressing him out, coming right on the heels of the worst night of his life. He tried not to think of the sound of the gunshot, of Howie’s last words, but quickly realized that trying to ignore those memories just made them all the more vivid.

  Then Davidson was covering the mouthpiece, shooting him a strange look, and he realized he’d spaced out as to what was going on in the room. “What?”

  Davidson asked, “You willing to talk with an FBI agent?”

  Arnold’s initial reaction was to say, “Of course,” thinking that if the FBI were involved it would help the police find Howard’s murderers. Then, on second thought, it seemed odd for the feds to be involved in a local homicide.

  Aw, shit! An ice cube froze his gut. He nodded okay at Davidson.

  Davidson leaned forward on the desk and stared at Arnold after hanging up. “It’s disconcerting that the FBI wants to interview you. Anything I need to know about? Other than your involvement with the terrorists?”

  Was that sarcasm? Arnold gave Davidson the benefit of the doubt. “No. But that’s the only thing makes any sense.”

  Davidson sighed and started drumming the Mount Blanc on the desk. “I agree. But we don’t know for certain yet. Still, we need to get your head straight so you can talk to them without disclosing too much.”

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t want to disclose anything important until we form a much clearer idea of what they’re after and what they know for certain about you.”

  “Good point. Thing worrying me, is how did they zero in on me so quickly? That’s making me nervous.”

  Davidson considered the question a moment, still drumming the desk, “As your attorney I advise you to listen to what Agent Fisher has to say but do not answer any questions until you and I have conferred in private. We’ll decide jointly what you will or will not answer. Any question about this strategy? We clear on this?”

  Not sure how he could make it any clearer. “Yes.”

  “He called from down the street, so it should only take him a few minutes to get here. About enough time to go wring out a bladder.” Then muttered, “Damned prostate.”

  Firouz disconnected from the call, slipped his cell back into his pants, saying, “His lawyer’s name is Davidson.” He paused, mulling over what he’d just learned.

  Karim asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “Strange. Apparently he told the police nothing about us.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t understand. He was questioned by a detective named Elliott but refused to say who was in his house and why we were there. You sure he saw your face?”

  “We looked straight at each other. There’s no mistaking he saw me. Otherwise, why would he run like that?”

  Still deep in thought, Firouz shook his head again. “I wonder. I think I should talk with Breeze.” He smiled at the false name, the hidden meaning. “Perhaps our little Jew is more fond of her than we think, or than she said.”

  “Are you sure of your friend’s word?”

  Firouz nodded. “He’s a true believer. He would never ever think of giving us false information.”

  Arnold wasn’t exactly sure why—maybe the straight-back square-shoulder posture or the closely cropped well-groomed blond hair in addition to the way he carried the black leather attaché case—but Special Agent Gary Fisher struck him as ex-military. Efficient and serious. All business without coming across as brusque.

  After Fisher showed his credentials, Davidson offered him the chair farthest from the desk and motioned Arnold to the closer one. Even before they had completely settled in, Davidson started with, “May I ask what you wish to discuss with my client?”

  Fisher shot the cuffs of his white shirt, taking his time to answer, defusing any momentum Davidson might have gained from such a direct approach. “We’re aware that Mr. Gold,” with a nod toward Arnold, “has recently been in contact with people who have suspected links to a terrorist organization.”

  Knew it! Arnold’s gut knotted up again.

  Fish
er let that bit of news percolate a moment before going on to say, “Because of this, the homicide at the Gold residence earlier this evening—” with an exaggerated glance at his watch, “—correction, make that last night—piqued our interest.”

  Arnold shifted positions in the chair and realized his mouth was dry as dust. From the moment he laid eyes on Firouz and Karim he had suspected they might be terrorists, but had discarded that thought for two reasons. Initially, because he hated to be stereotyped as a Jew, he hated to stereotype someone when meeting them for the first time. Later, as he started to buy into their story, well… In retrospect, his initial impression had been right. He was a fool to have believed them.

  After a few beats Davidson asked, “And the point of this visit is?”

  Fisher said, “Have a problem with allowing me to record this interview?”

  Davidson pulled a yellow legal-size pad of paper closer and picked up the heavy ballpoint. “Not a problem if I may remain in this room to freely advise my client.”

  “Fair enough.” Fisher balanced the attaché case on his knees, clicked open the top, pulled out a tablet computer, and activated a small recorder, which he set on the cushion next to his leg.

  Fisher turned his attention to Arnold. “Been out of town recently?”

  Oh shit. Didn’t want to lie but didn’t want to answer either. He nodded for Davidson to answer.

  Davidson said, “Yes, he has.”

  After setting the attaché case on the floor, Fisher handed Arnold the tablet. “Recognize this man?”