Then She Vanished

Twenty-One

That night I drove to the Tourmaline Resort Casino to see Strait Reelection Committee volunteer Brock Weld, who had pricked enough worry in Natalie for her to tell her sister about him. His alibi for missing work on the day Natalie disappeared had left some of the other committee workers, and Burt, unconvinced.

IvarDuggans.com didn’t have much on Weld: thirty-one, a white male, unmarried, a native of Miami. A business degree from San Diego State University. Employment as security in three San Diego hotels, two Norwegian cruise lines, casinos in New Jersey and Las Vegas, and now the Tourmaline Resort Casino. No criminal record. Last known address, Valley Center, California.

On my way to the casino, the radio news was heavy with the story of Natalie Strait. The evening news had showed pictures of her radiantly smiling face, culled from the BMW ads.

The Tourmaline is large and the grounds are lavish — with drought-encouraging fountains, drought-busting Southwest landscaping, and natural stone construction, all dramatically lit at night.

At the entrance I walked past four National Guardsmen in desert camo, field caps low, rifles slung over their shoulders. A bomb dog, alert and panting. Then through a temporary scanning station before I was allowed inside.

The Tourmaline Casino was surprisingly busy, given that a congressman and his assistant — representing some of these people — had been blown to death by a bomb not twenty-four hours ago. Maybe carnage encourages hopes of a miracle, or at least favorable luck. Special Agent Lark had told me the bomb maker had used short galvanized nails, which tore tender human flesh savagely and were difficult to remove without causing more damage, which mattered not to Representative Clark Nisson and his aide-de-camp, Art Arguello. Lark had also told me that the FBI’s search for the type and origin of the package had slowed to a crawl — not enough of it left to work with. At this point, they were subtracting candidates by trying to determine which packages had not blown up. After the explosion, the congressman’s large office suite had been fully engaged in fire.

I’m almost always early for appointments. Makes me feel ahead of the game. I played some blackjack at the $25 table, nursing a mostly ice bourbon to kill the time. Managed to stay close to even, using the Revere blackjack system I’d learned as a high school kid. Revere has hard rules on splitting certain pairs, hitting the sixteens and counting the cards as best you can. Not easy in a chute with four decks. Pepper, the wispy-brown-haired dealer, gave me her I know what you’re up to look.

The other two players at my table were a young couple, mid-twenties, dressed up and having fun. Making bold plays to little avail, much volume when they won.

Pepper got hot as blackjack dealers often do, drawing improbable cards at impossible times, politely annihilating the table as if it was just part of the job. Hit two blackjacks in a row, allowing us to almost break even on the insurance.

The couple gathered what was left of their chips and headed off, leaving us alone at the table.

“I can’t believe how crowded we are after what happened last night,” she said.

“It must have to do with hope.”

“Everything does. Ready?”

I nodded.

“I’m hot, as you know.”

“I can see that.”

Pepper dealt me a king and a six, a perilous hand that Revere says you should hit against any face card unless the deck is rich. She showed a jack of clubs and the chute cards were close to neutral by my less-than-practiced count. Peeked at her hole card for a blackjack ace.

“My son and daughter were watching the TV when it happened,” she said. “I mean the takeover thing of Local Live!”

I scraped the table felt with two fingernails, caught a five. My lucky night. Pepper turned over a ten, paid up on my twenty-one and scooped away her losing cards with a competitive glance my way.

With a terse sweep of hand over the chute, two fresh cards appeared before each of us, her up card a two.

“And I picked up the remote to change the channel, but I couldn’t,” she said. “So the three of us watched the whole thing. The terrifying masks. The horrible things they ordered us to do. The guns on the newspeople’s heads and poor Dwayne Swift fainting and slipping down. They didn’t fall asleep until early morning, my kids.”

“I’m sorry they had to see that.”

“Now I can’t stop seeing the masks. I look at a player and I see the mask that most resembles them. I feel like a terrible person and a terrible mom. Want a card?”

I had a fourteen, remembered my Revere and held against her two. She flipped her hole card ten, drew a jack of clubs for the bust.

“You’ve changed the luck,” she said. “I’d tell you to keep striking while you’re hot, but that would be giving advice, which we cannot do. But…”

We split a few hands. No one joined us at the table. A not-unpleasant hypnotism fell over us, two souls, two roles, the play of rules and luck, the significance of the wager, the subtle indicators of fate. And the dust of a bomb settling down on a land seemingly so far away.

At the agreed time, Brock Weld came down the stairs and into the Cavern wine bar. The bar was dark, built of rough stone into which diamond-shaped bottle racks were fitted. TV turned to the local news.

The security man was straight from central casting — muscled and hard faced, in a black, well-cut suit and a wire mic in one ear. He moved lightly on his feet.

I thanked Brock for agreeing to meet me on short notice and attempted Chargers, Padres, and weather small talk. No takers.

“The bombs have us all on high alert,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“Dalton Strait hired me to find Natalie. You know that she’s been missing for nine days now?”

“I know she hasn’t been at campaign headquarters,” he said. “I saw part of the Dalton press conference.”

We watched in silence as Local Live! aired video of Natalie Strait from the BMW ads. The more I saw of her on TV the more I felt her spell. Or maybe it was the danger I knew she was in.

Brock sent the waitress away without an order. We studied each other’s faces. I saw a young man of sturdy constitution and staunch beliefs. A man absolutely sure of himself. I don’t know what Brock Weld saw in mine.

“As Dalton noted in his press conference today, there’s suspicion of foul play,” I said.

“Can you give me any details?” he asked.

I told him about her breakfast with her sister, her missed lunch with Virgil Strait, her BMW being found out in the ruins of the farmworkers’ camp. And the two men escorting her from her vehicle to another. I left out the lipstick.

“That’s all I have. But Dalton mentioned you as a volunteer of note in his campaign.”

I saw a bitter disbelief in him. “You’re here because Natalie spoke of me?”

“Yes,” I said. “Natalie was alert to you, Mr. Weld. According to people I’ve interviewed, she found you bold enough to mention as a person of concern. More than once.”

“Concern.”

I nodded and held his dark-eyed stare.

“Let me set forth some facts for you, Mr. Ford. One, I’m not close with Dalton Strait. I originally volunteered for his campaign because I thought he was a good representative for the district I live in, and where my place of business is located. We have big issues here — the Pala Reservation’s interests, the casino’s wealth, land-use, water, and fire-abatement concerns. The marijuana industry. Complicated things. I believe in a strong military and strict immigration enforcement. I’m pro-God, pro-life, and pro-gun. Dalton Strait has been on the right side of things. For the most part. But the more I work with him, the more I see that he’s self-centered, impulsive, and destructive. As you saw in his press conference today. I’ll continue to volunteer because I believe Ammna Safar would be far worse.”

“What’s your relationship with Natalie?”

Weld was sitting bolt upright but managed to straighten even more at the question.

“At the office, strictly professional,” he said. “But over the months I had questions about her bookkeeping. I mentioned that some of the income and expenditures looked shaky.”

“And?”

“She’s a sloppy bookkeeper, Mr. Ford, but she’s a proud worker, and she basically told me to mind my own business.”

“Which would be in line with an indictment for criminally spending donations,” I said.

“I’m not surprised by the charges,” he said. “I’m disappointed. If this plays out, she could spend time in prison. It’s hard to think of her in the slammer. All that energy, charm, and good nature.”

“So you and Natalie are professional coworkers at the office,” I said. “What about outside?”

He nodded as if anticipating the question. “I volunteer sixteen hours a week there. Saturdays and Tuesdays. I started back in November. The office is small and slightly chaotic, so we worked closely. Once a week I’d have drinks after work with her and some of the others. One day it was just us, and that was fine with me. I told her I thought her husband was a foolish child, incapable of satisfying a woman of her intelligence and beauty. And if she ever thought about having some adult male company, I was very interested.”

“A direct approach,” I said.

“It’s the only one I ever use.”

“You’re a single man, I take it.”

“You must know that from IvarDuggans,” he said. “The Tourmaline subscribes, too. It helps to know who’s losing big money in my casino, and if I should be worried about it.”

Noted.

“How did she react to your proposal?”

“She laughed it off. But I could tell that I had found her truth. Her face flushed, so much like a girl. Neither of us ever mentioned that general topic again. Or that night.”

“Back to business, then.”

“Absolutely,” said Weld. “I never ask for anything twice.”

“Did your coworkers pick up on all that?”

“Ask them, Mr. Ford.”

“What do you think the criminal charges will do to his reelection?” I asked.

“We had a flood of new money come after his press conference today. I expect more.”

I asked him if he’d had any communication with Natalie since she disappeared that day.

“None. I would have told you that already.”

“How often did she gamble here?” I asked. A gamble of my own, but favorable odds.

“Occasionally. She actually does well.”

“Did she play here before you two met at campaign headquarters?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d seen her playing here before volunteering. I never approached her.”

“Until working together?”

He nodded impatiently.

“What’s the talk around the campaign committee office?” I asked. “So far as Natalie’s nine-day absence?”

“Until the press conference today, Dalton had been making excuses,” he said. “Family obligations. A long overdue reunion with friends in Hawaii. A lacrosse tournament up in Santa Barbara with her son. These were usual things for her. No one seemed concerned.”

“What did you make of her being suddenly gone?”

“I sensed trouble immediately,” Weld said. “It’s a critical time in the campaign. Safar has a six-percentage-point lead, up a full point since last month. That’s big, with only six months left.”

“There’s a lot of trouble to sense these days.”

“After the station takeover and the bomb last night, I called Dalton on his personal line. I thought The Chaos Committee bomb qualified as an emergency, since all of their targets have been San Diego politicians. I told Dalton he should get the best protection he could afford for the next few weeks. California can’t offer twenty-four-hour security to every one of its senators and assembly persons, so I told him to hire a private company. I recommended two.”

“And?”

“He said you were handling it.”

I held his gaze and shook my head. Which earned a minor smile from Brock Weld. I thought it was time to put what pressure I could on him, though he seemed like the type to welcome it.

“I heard that you were home sick the day Natalie disappeared.”

A stubborn look. “A fact.”

“Why didn’t you quiet down King?”

“You talked to my neighbors?”

I shrugged.

“I was with a friend. It’s complicated and don’t ask me for a name.”

I let that complication hang in silence, hoping it might unravel. Weld drummed his fingers on the table.

“Mr. Ford, you might think about adding some protection hours for Dalton Strait. He’s a perfect target. The Chaos Committee isn’t going to stop. I see unquestioned intent in them. Devotion to cause. A workable cause. Tear down everything. Tap into the popular outrage. Use violence to undermine authority and launch a country into chaos so that order may be restored.”

“Straight from the anarchist playbook,” I said.

“History tells us it can work,” said Weld.

Another silence into which I was hoping Brock Weld might let something fall. Instead he folded his hands on the table and bored his gaze into me as best he could.

“Mr. Ford, I’ve got one hour here before I can go home and forget about bombs and indictments and a woman I’m worried about. Let me know if I can be of any more help in finding Natalie. I doubt that she’s been spending campaign donations behind Dalton’s back. He’s enough of a coward to blame things on her.”

We stood.

I thanked him for his time, found my way to Terrace Café, where I could sit outside, have dinner and a drink, and watch the Tourmaline Resort Casino employees’ parking structure. Waited out the hour.

It was just after eight when Brock Weld came walking toward the structure with a young man and woman. Her suit was black and her blond hair was up. The man wore a black moto jacket and carried a helmet.

A moment later Moto Jacket came out on a black-and-orange Kawasaki, heading down the ramp, keeping down his engine noise for the casino guests. Then Weld and the woman. They exited into the wash of the entry light just as she was shaking out her hair in a pale, shiny wave. Brock Weld’s complicating friend? He turned off the ramp in a white Suburban — the same type and color vehicle into which a worried Natalie Strait had been escorted by two men — almost ten days ago, a few miles from where I sat.