You're Next

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