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Chapter 49

Andrew Two-Hawks had a jelly gut and a fish mouth, a goatee hiding the weak chin. He met Mike at a rear door behind his casino, his smile as broad as his handshake was firm. A leather vest overlaid a patterned button-up, the open collar looking lonely without a bolo tie to string the whole getup together. At Two-Hawks’s side stood a guy nearly as wide as the doorway, a no-foolin’-around Indian with weathered skin and a crisply pressed black suit, his shaved head shaped like a blob of shaving cream swirled onto a palm. He began patting Mike down, and Mike shoved him away before his groping hands reached the.357 tucked into the back of his jeans.

Two-Hawks tugged at his face, the wrinkles pulling smooth, then nodded a dismissal at his bodyguard. ‘Mike here’s on our team.’

The bodyguard scowled and withdrew, keeping a junkyarddog glare trained on Mike.

‘Forgive Blackie there,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘The boy’s so dumb he could fall into a tub of tits and come out sucking his thumb.’ He gestured. ‘Walk with me.’

The good-ol’-boy demeanor and his appearance, that of a Texas oilman who had enough money to dress better than he bothered to, caught Mike by surprise. What had he been expecting? A chieftain bearing tom-toms? They moved down a carpeted hall, the whirl and clang of the casino visible but muted by a wall of tinted soundproof windows. The place, a bit rundown, was considerably smaller than Deer Creek Casino.

Mike found himself sneaking glances over at the man.

‘What?’ Two-Hawks said.

Mike said, ‘Nothing. You look…’

Two-Hawks grinned. ‘As white as you?’

Over the phone Mike had conveyed the basics of his plight – the splintering of his family, the stakes for his wife and daughter – and Two-Hawks had listened patiently, issuing empathetic rumbles from somewhere deep in his throat.

‘First thing you need to know,’ Two-Hawks said now, ushering Mike around a turn, ‘is that Deer Creek Tribal Enterprises, Inc., has staked a fraudulent claim to our historical tribal land.’ He pointed down at the carpet. ‘This land.’

‘They can do that?’

‘No. But they are. And through the techniques perfected by Brian McAvoy’ – a curl of upper lip at the name – ‘they are in the process of turning that claim into law.’

‘How?’

‘Every tribe, you see, has gotta be formally recognized by the federal government to enjoy certain basic rights and protections. A couple of well-positioned politicians – backed, of course, by McAvoy – are claiming that our status was illegitimately shoved through under Jimmy Carter’s appointees when the procedures were more ad hoc. They’ve put our tribal recognition under review, official arguments to begin early next year. If we lose, guess who’s in primo position to take over our land?’

‘And if McAvoy gets your land, he gets your casino.’

‘Bingo.’

‘That’s why you’ve been looking for me. If another heir to Deer Creek was alive, you could use him to outflank McAvoy.’

‘With you we have a chance to cut the man off at the knees.’ A flicker of disgust crossed the shiny dark eyes. ‘He and I are mortal enemies. I have quite a few these days. Does that make you nervous?’

Mike said, ‘I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have enemies.’

A smile rippled that close-shaved goatee. ‘Then you’ll love me.’

They stepped into a well-appointed office, Two-Hawks gesturing to a broad leather sofa behind a glass coffee table. ‘Sit down. Put your feet up. You can’t break the shit, and if you do, they make more of it.’

But Mike remained standing, crossing his arms as if bracing against the cold. A few sad relics adorned the walls – a frayed granary basket, a feather dance skirt, and a pair of tiny moccasins. Mike couldn’t help but wonder if he was taking in the entire preserved history of the Shasta Springs Band of Miwok with a sweep of the eyes. Quite a contrast to the theme-park tribal shrine that Deer Creek had polished to a high gloss.

Two-Hawks set a cell phone on his desk blotter and stared down at it as if it were a half-crushed insect he wanted to put out of its misery. ‘Brand-new phone, brand-new number. I got it after I found out that their lapdog, Rick Graham, was monitoring my old cell. I’ve given this number out to no one. And yet this is the number you called me on. Where did you get it?’

‘It was in Graham’s possession. McAvoy had written it down for him.’

Two-Hawks lifted a heavy brass lamp and, without anger, smashed the cell phone. He set the lamp back down and used the edge of his hand to brush the bits into a wastebasket. ‘Let’s have a look-see at this damning footage you told me about.’

Mike had taken a laptop and some CDs from Graham’s house. Parked on a dark street, he and Shep had copied onto a disc the most legally damning section of the recorded conversation with Graham. They’d stashed the flash drive containing the entire episode with their remaining cash in the motel room’s heating vent, leaving Snowball II to guard over it.

Now Mike withdrew the disc from his back pocket and handed it to Two-Hawks, who slotted it into his desktop computer. The black-and-white footage came to life on the monitor, Two-Hawks giving a growl of an exhale when he saw Mike sitting in the chair across from Graham’s bed, gun resting on his knee. Together they watched Graham spill the bloody history of his association with Deer Creek. The footage ended well before Graham’s lunge and the gunshot that ended his life.

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.’

A long pause ensued.

The petite woman spit her cud of tobacco into a McDonald’s cup. It hit with a little thud. ‘You see anyone using a chips cup?’ she asked.

‘Obese Caucasian, floppy hat, roulette six,’ Shep said. ‘Watch her hands when she dips ’em into the front basket of her mobility scooter.’

Hands flew to joysticks, an entire quadrant of the wall’s screens zeroing in on the woman from every angle. She’d rotated the mounted seat of her medical scooter to the side so she could pull right in to the roulette board, giving her easy under-the-table access to the mounted basket.

Two-Hawks nodded at Blackie, who drifted backward through the door to handle business. Then he said to Shep, ‘Want a job?’

Shep looked away from the monitors for the first time, that crooked tooth slightly visible. ‘You wouldn’t be able to trust me.’

Two-Hawks swallowed, flustered and amused. ‘Talk to you boys in private?’

They headed back down the hall and sat, Mike and Shep on the leather couch, Two-Hawks in his chair, which he pulled around the desk to face them.

Mike said, ‘Two-Hawks here has dirt on our boy McAvoy. But he won’t turn it over unless we acquire the dirt McAvoy’s holding on him.’

‘How good is the dirt you’re holding?’ Shep asked.

‘A no-shit smoking gun,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘Recently I had a man inside Deer Creek’s operation. Someone with access.’

‘How’d you flip him?’ Shep sounded skeptical. ‘Deer Creek’s got more money than you. And more muscle.’

‘Our guy was hired to do some freelance consulting for Deer Creek. He’s a gambler, as the case often is. But you don’t shit where you eat. So he came here, to us, to play cards. And he overdrew his credit line. Significantly. Unlike McAvoy, we don’t maim people for that.’

‘You just extort them,’ Shep said.

‘It was a beneficial arrangement, agreed to by adults.’ Regret moved behind Two-Hawks’s eyes, only for an instant, and then the game face snapped back on. ‘He smuggled me documents. That’s how we caught wind of you.’ A nod to Mike. ‘He told us about your name on the genealogy report.’

‘But you weren’t after that to start with,’ Shep said. ‘So what else did he get you?’

‘Good hard evidence.’

‘Of what?’

‘No problems hearing now, huh?’ Two-Hawks asked.

‘Evidence of what?’ Shep repeated.

‘I promise, you won’t be disappointed.’

‘No,’ Mike said. ‘I need to know what exactly we’d be turning over to you.’

‘That’s not your concern.’

‘If we’re getting it, it is. I won’t bring you something that’ll wreck someone else’s life.’

‘It’s nothing like that. That’s all you need to know right now.’

Mike thought back to sitting in that armchair facing Bill Garner, the governor’s chief of staff. The last time Mike’s judgment was on the line, he’d folded, because what the hell, it was just an award and a couple of photos.

He stood.

Two-Hawks said, ‘Think about your daughter.’

Mike was at the door now, Shep beside him.

‘Okay, wait.’ Two-Hawks was on his feet. ‘They’re just photograph negatives. But they’re essential for us to keep our status – and our casino. I didn’t want to explain them, because… in my business we see up close how greed affects people.’ He scratched the back of his neck, hedging. ‘Sometimes there’s what’s right, and then there’s what’s smart.’

‘I’m a slow learner,’ Mike said, ‘but even I figured out there’s really no difference.’

‘Turning over those negatives – if you get them – to a competing casino is against your future financial interests as the heir to Deer Creek.’

‘Do you have kids, Mr Two-Hawks?’ Mike said.

‘Five.’ Two-Hawks drew a deep breath, chastened. ‘Okay. Maybe I’ve been swimming in the shark tank too long.’ He gestured back to the couch. ‘Please stay, and I’ll explain.’

Mike and Shep returned to the couch and sat, Shep plunking his boots on the glass coffee table.

‘Unless I can pull off a miracle in the next few months before that formal review, we are going to lose our federal recognition,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘There’s a higher bar for tribal acknowledgment these days, more stringent requirements. So far we’ve failed to produce additional physical proof tying our ancestors to this land. We’ve always had an oral tradition, so there’s a paucity of evidence, especially from the first half of this century. Very little survives of our tribe.’

Mike found himself looking at those few humble relics adorning the office walls.

‘Some months ago it came to my attention that there are antique photo negatives taken by members of a botany expedition or some nonsense out of Stanford during the 1930s. Those pictures show our people living on this very plot of land. I was told that the peak of Lassen in the background as well as a distinctive river fork just beyond the settlements made the precise location clear.’ He crossed and threw the window curtains apart. There past the parking lot but still glittering under the outer lights was a narrow river, split into two streams around a massive, cracked boulder.

Gone was the down-home oilman. Indignation had heightened not just his language but his affect. Drawn erect, eyes ablaze, he seemed every bit the chief he was in title. He let the curtains flutter back into place. ‘Of course, I arranged immediately to buy the negatives from the dealer. But somewhere between my hanging up the phone and arriving to pick up the film, McAvoy had stepped in and tripled my offer. He has the negatives. I need them. If we produce them as evidence – irrefutable evidence – of our tie to this land, the Bureau of Acknowledgment and Research will be forced to uphold our tribal status.’

‘And you keep your casino,’ Shep added.

‘Hard as it may be for you to recognize, Mr White, this isn’t only about money. McAvoy’s aim is to dissolve our tribe and steal our land. And we’ve had enough of that in our time, thank you.’

Shep stared at the far wall. He seemed unimpressed.

Two-Hawks turned to Mike, a better audience.

Mike asked, ‘So when McAvoy bought those photo negatives out from under you, you decided to go after dirt on Deer Creek and look for me?’

‘I needed something to protect my tribe. McAvoy found out what I took from him, so he and I are at a standoff. For now. Next year’s tribal-acknowledgment review puts a deadline on our little stare-down, one way or another. But given what I have on him, I’m not dumb enough to think he’ll wait this out much longer.’ Two-Hawks kicked the trash can, rattling the pieces of his smashed cell phone. ‘They’re intensifying their efforts to get back what I’ve taken. I relocated my family out of state.’ His eyes found Mike. ‘My five kids.’

‘So why not make a move first?’ Mike asked.

‘McAvoy has made clear that he’ll burn the negatives if any of the evidence I’ve collected against him sees the light of day. That would destroy our tribe as we know it. Plus, the thought of those pictures burning…’ In the golden light of the office, his face took on shadow, and in his wrinkles Mike could see the faint etchings of his heritage. ‘All we are is what we came from-’

At this, Shep snorted.

Two-Hawks continued, undeterred. ‘Those are the only images of my early ancestors. I put this tribe back together one member at a time, driving around the state in a beat-to-shit Pontiac. Many were homeless. Most were destitute. But we built something for ourselves with our own hands. All of us living today, we’ve never seen the faces of our forebears. For us to be able to see where we came from, to validate our place on this earth…’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t put a price on that.’

Mike studied his hands.

Shep merely looked annoyed. ‘So what’s the play?’

Two-Hawks went on. ‘If McAvoy’s faced with losing his entire corporation to your… bloodline, maybe you and he could strike a deal. You get him to turn over those negatives in exchange for some financial arrangement. You give me the pictures. I give you what I have on him. And then you sink him with criminal charges.’

‘If he turns over the photos to me, he leaves himself unprotected against whatever you have,’ Mike said. ‘He won’t do that.’

A silent sigh lowered Two-Hawks’s shoulders. ‘So what do you propose?’

Mike and Shep were both leaning forward, elbows on knees. Their heads tilted slightly, their eyes meeting. Shep gave a little nod.

Mike said, ‘I think I know where your photo negatives are hidden. McAvoy has a safe where he keeps all his valuable dirt.’

‘A safe. So you’re planning on… what?’

Shep flared his hands. Ta-da.

Two-Hawks let out a guffaw. ‘Come on. A casino safe?’

Mike said, ‘It’s hidden in his office.’

‘In his office?’ Two-Hawks exclaimed. ‘Why not the vault?’

Mike said, ‘Think about it.’

Two-Hawks chuckled into a fist. ‘Of course. The vault is filthy with cameras. Not exactly a choice place to hide dubious materials.’ He stood, walked a tight circle, and leaned on the back of his chair. ‘It’s ballsy of McAvoy, I gotta say. But it makes sense, too. Keeping valuables in a secret safe in a locked room in a twenty-four-hour-surveilled casino on sovereign land – I suppose that’d make me arrogant, too.’

‘Arrogant’s good,’ Shep said.

‘But even then, you’ve got all the cameras on the casino floor.’ Two-Hawks was still winding up. ‘Plus, you can’t possibly crack that safe there. The time, the noise.’

‘No,’ Shep said. ‘I can’t. How’s your pull with the cops?’

‘In the event that you get caught?’ Two-Hawks asked. ‘Good. But relative to Deer Creek’s?’ He blew out a dismissive breath. ‘McAvoy has something we don’t.’ He jabbed a finger at his computer monitor, a reference to the footage Mike had shown him earlier. ‘Rick Graham.’

Mike moistened his lips. ‘Graham is no longer a consideration,’ he said.

Two-Hawks sank thoughtfully into his chair, tilted back, studied the ceiling. Then he glanced at the disc lying on his desktop. He cleared his throat, then cleared it again. ‘I don’t want to know anything more about that.’

‘Good,’ Mike said.

‘We have a police captain nearby who we’re quite close with,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘Coupla DAs, too. There’s no way I can get you off if you’re caught red-handed, of course. But if Graham is no longer a factor, I can ensure that if you’re taken into custody in the area, you won’t be handed over to McAvoy’s goons. There’s one big problem, though: If you get hung up at Deer Creek, on sovereign tribal land, the authorities’ll have trouble crossing territorial boundaries to make sure matters are handled aboveboard. Which leaves you at the mercy of McAvoy. And his attack dogs. In that event you’d better hope the cops arrive before the mallet falls.’

Shep said, ‘Ball-peen hammer.’

Mike squeezed his eyes closed, remembering Graham’s words: Hell, short of the right to pursue felons, the U.S. has shaky criminal jurisdiction on tribal lands.

Mike said, ‘The cops can come in after Shep.’

A moment’s delay, and then wrinkles fanned from the corners of Two-Hawks’s eyes. ‘You’re a felon?’

Shep scowled, insulted. ‘Course.’

Mike nodded at Two-Hawks. ‘We’ll be in touch with the plan.’

He and Shep rose to leave.

‘And I’ll need a lawyer,’ Shep said.

Two-Hawks asked, ‘Why?’

Shep paused on his way out the door. ‘Because I’m planning on getting arrested.’