Paper son, p.18
Paper Son, page 18
There was no doubt my father had paid protection money to Old Jun, whose tong controlled the block his restaurant was on. Ba had managed otherwise to keep to the high ground, avoiding the treacherous criminal waters around him. But, I wondered now, what if he hadn’t? What if he’d been seduced by the money, the sense of safety, the feeling of belonging? If he’d joined the tong and risen, as his charm and cleverness would surely have helped him do, to a position near the top? Would my brothers and I, if we’d grown up in that shadow sphere, now be like these younger Fergusons, part of and looking to expand the family criminal enterprise? Or would we, any of us, have had the clear-eyed strength of Anna Rae, to leave for something better?
And had my cousin Jefferson been given a choice in the Fergusons’ world? If so, how had he chosen?
These thoughts swirled through my mind as I ate my eggs and wondered how to approach Johnny Ferguson. As it turned out, we didn’t have to.
From the corner of my eye, I’d been watching the cousins demolish their mountains of pancakes, thatches of bacon, and piles of buttery grits. Just after Lizzie refreshed their coffee, the mustached cousin said something to Johnny. Johnny, whose back had been to us, turned in his chair. He stared, turned back, and spoke to the others.
“I think trouble’s coming,” I said.
“They’ll finish eating first,” said Bill, who’d also been watching. “These grits are too good to waste.”
He was right; it was another couple of bites and gulps of coffee before Johnny Ferguson pushed back his chair. He ambled to our booth, his cousins flanking him, and stood looking down at Bill.
“You the guy who was over in Oxford yesterday, bothering my sister?”
“Actually,” I said before Bill could answer, “that was me.” Bill doesn’t like to be hemmed in and loomed over. Not that anyone does, but he’s been known to erupt, and I didn’t want that before we could have a civilized conversation with these gentlemen.
“Yeah,” said Johnny. “She said there was a Chinese girl, too. Jefferson Tam’s cousin.”
“Lydia Chin. Pleased to meet you.” I stuck out my hand. Johnny Ferguson ignored it. I shrugged and picked up my tea instead. “It was Jefferson we were looking for,” I went on, talking to all three of them. “We heard he was in Burcell a few weeks ago and we were wondering why.” I looked right at Johnny. “And of course, we’re wondering where he is now.”
Johnny Ferguson stayed with the part that was making him mad: us messing with his little sister.
“Anna Rae don’t live in Burcell anymore.”
“I know, but we’ve heard she’s a friend of Jefferson’s.”
The balding cousin snickered. “What’s she saying there, Johnny-boy?”
“Shut up, Keith. Ma’am, what that sounds like, it better not be what you mean. Some people”—he looked at Bill—“might be all right with that sort of thing, but it don’t go over here.”
“I don’t mean anything,” I said. “I just thought if they’re friends, she may know why he was there, or where to find him now. Or . . .” I paused, as though the idea had just occurred to me. “You might.”
“Why the hell would I?”
“Well,” I said reasonably, “if Anna Rae doesn’t live in Burcell anymore and Jefferson was in Burcell, he must have been there to see someone else.”
“Who says he was there?”
“The sheriff,” said Bill. I could see him starting to steam. I kicked him under the table, but gently.
“The sheriff? He couldn’t keep Jefferson in his own jail, now he thinks he’s in Burcell? Why don’t he come look, then?”
“No,” I said, “the sheriff knows Jefferson was in Burcell, but before Leland Tam’s murder.” That might not be true, since it was Tolson Reeves’s car that had been in Burcell, and we might be the only people besides Reeves himself—and Jefferson—who knew Jefferson had been driving it. Although if the Fergusons were as buddy-buddy with Bert Lucknell as we suspected, Lucknell might in fact know Jefferson had been in Burcell, as well as exactly where and why, and where he was right now, and what he was having for breakfast.
“And he told y’all about it?” Johnny sneered. “Don’t make me laugh. Sheriff Bradley couldn’t pour piss from a boot with directions on the heel, but he ain’t about to say nothing about nothing to two Yankees and an old man Chinese gambler.”
At that, Pete pursed his lips and gave a thoughtful frown.
“If it weren’t true,” I said, “he wouldn’t have anything to say nothing about, would he? So, if Jefferson didn’t go to Burcell to see Anna Rae, who did he go to see?”
For a moment, all three Fergusons looked confused. Pete’s frown turned into a barely suppressed snort of laughter.
“Whoa!” said the mustached cousin. “Shit, Johnny, I think she’s saying you and that Chinese boy got a thing going on.” He dangled a limp wrist and laughed.
“Shut up!” Johnny took a step closer and poked a finger in my shoulder. “Girlie, you’d better—”
Smoothly, Bill slid out and stood chest-to-chest with Johnny. All three cousins, none of them as big as Bill, took a reflexive, choreographed-looking step back. I got up fast and put a hand on Bill’s arm. I knew what the next scene was likely to be, and Johnny Ferguson flying through a plate-glass window wasn’t going to be much help to us in finding Jefferson.
“I’m sorry if you got the wrong impression,” I said. “I’m just worried about my cousin, and I’m hoping you can tell us something that will help us find him.”
“Your cousin and his troubles ain’t my business, and my family ain’t yours. I got nothing to say except y’all better keep my sister’s name out of y’all’s mouths from now on.” Johnny stabbed his finger forward, stopping barely short of sticking it in Bill’s chest.
That was enough for Bill. He shook off my hand and said, “Let’s take this outside.”
“Ain’t nobody taking it outside, nor in here neither.” Lizzie, still wielding her coffeepot, wedged herself between Bill and the Fergusons. “Anyone breaking up my place, and that includes my parking lot, better not plan on coming back. Now y’all know my grits are way too good to lose them to whatever it is y’all are fixing to fight over. Lord’s sake, Captain Pete, put down that pie!”
I turned to Pete, still in the booth but standing. He held the plate with his slice of lemon meringue by his shoulder like a javelin ready to launch.
The Fergusons stared, dumbfounded. An old Chinese man was ready to hit them with a pie and a large Yankee who’d called them out was practically toe-to-toe with Johnny, with just a middle-aged Lebanese woman and her coffeepot between. It made a pretty funny freeze-frame, but I didn’t dare smile. The Fergusons weren’t sure which way was up, but any hint that the joke was on them and fists would fly.
“Captain Pete!” Lizzie said again, and then, “Okay, boys, y’all’s finished up, breakfast’s on me, git on out of here now.”
Pete put the pie down. After a moment, he sat. I decided that was a good, defusing idea and sat, too. Bill stayed standing, but he unclenched his fists.
Johnny Ferguson glared at Bill, then at me. “Stay out my way from now on,” he snarled. He strode back to his table, dug two twenty-dollar bills from his pocket, and slapped them down. He pushed out the door, flanked by his cousins.
32
“Well,” said Pete, when the door closed behind the three Fergusons, “I can’t see where that got us very far.”
“I disagree.” I spoke as the rest of Walid’s breakfast crowd—with a certain degree of disappointment, it seemed to me—turned back to their own tables and booths. “For one thing, Bill and I learned how far you’re willing to go to protect friends and family. I, for one, am humbled to learn that if need be, you’d sacrifice a slice of pie.”
“Can’t tell you how happy I am it didn’t come to that.” Pete stuck a fork in the weapon’s crust.
“I am, too,” said Lizzie, now with a pot in each hand. She topped off Bill’s and Pete’s coffee, and when she refilled my cup with hot water, she put down another tea bag. She cast a suspicious eye on Bill. “I don’t know y’all, but you’re with Captain Pete, so I’ll cut y’all some slack. I’ll say this for free—y’all don’t want to be messing with those boys.”
“I apologize for disrupting your place of business, ma’am,” Bill said, his face contrite and his voice dripping Southern honey. “I shouldn’t have let them get under my skin.”
“They do make that a specialty.” She seemed mollified. Breaking into a smile, she added, “And I gotta admit it was a hoot to see Johnny Ferguson not knowing whether to scratch his watch or wind his behind.” She grew serious. “But whatever it was about, y’all best be on the lookout for them now. They don’t like to be worsted.” Lizzie threw a significant glance at Pete and left to bring the blessing of caffeine to another table.
Bill drank some coffee, put it down, and said to me, “I apologize to you, too.”
“Accepted.”
“For what?” Pete asked.
“My knight-in-shining-armor routine. Lydia doesn’t like it when I do that, and she’s right. She can take care of herself.”
Pete stared at me. “That’s ridiculous. Everyone could use a little help sometimes. I’d be grateful, have someone rescue me like that, if I needed it.”
“Well, I didn’t, right then.” I smiled. “But to know I would if I did, yes, I am.”
Bill smiled back and turned to Pete. “And, Captain Pete, if you ever find you do need it, you’ve got it.”
Pete broke into that giant smile, and we all sat there grinning like idiots.
Bill, reaching for his coffee, interrupted the lovefest. “Actually, I think we might have learned something else.”
I considered that. “That you, in fact, can control yourself and not automatically beat on anyone who invades your personal space?”
“Yes, and I hope you remember that next time you feel like invading my personal space. But besides that, while you were running verbal rings around the Fergusons, I was watching. From Johnny’s reaction to the idea of Anna Rae and Jefferson as an item, it didn’t seem like it was something he knew and was trying to hide, from his cousins or anyone else. It seemed to genuinely piss him off.”
“I got that same impression. Which unfortunately makes it more likely that Jefferson was in Burcell for business, not romance. I’m sorry, Pete.”
Pete shook his head. “Not like we hadn’t thought of that. But what do we plan to do about it?”
“I’m not sure. I did notice that Johnny invited the sheriff to come on over to Burcell and look for Jefferson, but he didn’t invite us.”
“And you’re not going.”
“It’s either us or the sheriff. The objections to him going are the same as before.”
“And the objections to you two going are worse. Now you’ve crossed them. They find you on their patch, they’re not going to stop for a howdy-doo. If you think I plan to explain that to your mama, you got your head screwed on funny.”
“I understand. But—”
“But maybe we should take this outside,” said Bill.
I looked at him and then around the room. You can feel people’s attention on you even when they’re not looking at you, and Walid’s was full of that feeling.
In an echo of Johnny Ferguson, Bill dropped two twenties on our table. It was far more than breakfast cost, even with a generous tip, but we had disturbed the peace of the morning.
Out in the parking lot, we began to discuss a plan for the day. We were about to put one of our ideas into action—to have Bill, as a man and a Southerner, call down to Parchman and try to finagle a way to speak with Trevor McAdoo before his stretch in solitary was up—when my phone rang.
I checked the screen and put phone to ear. “Linus, don’t you ever sleep?”
“Why, is it some weird time again? Trella just made coffee. I thought it was morning.”
Through the speakerphone echo, Trella called, “Hi, Lydia.”
“Hi, Trella. Yes, Linus, it’s morning. Never mind. What’s up?”
“Me!” he said brightly. “No, seriously, cuz, I got it. Your boy’s algorithms.”
“Linus! You deciphered them?”
I almost put him on speaker at this end, too, so Bill and Pete could be part of this revelation, but I realized that whatever was coming might not be something I wanted Pete to hear first from a stranger on the phone in a parking lot. Instead, I walked away, one finger in my other ear, as though the road noise was making it hard to hear.
“Well, not me,” Linus said. “Can’t lie, bad karma. I farmed them out. See, Trella and I were getting nowhere and it was driving me nuts. Trella said maybe it needed fresh eyes. That worked for me, so I sent a couple of Jefferson’s files around to some friends of mine and asked if they looked familiar, or if anyone had any good guesses. This one guy—Azarael, I think he’s in the Bahamas or something—he was all over it.”
Trust Linus to call people he’s never met, only knows by their screen names, and can’t even geographically locate, “friends of mine.”
“And? I’m holding my breath here.”
“They’re for online sports gambling.” He took a breath the way he does when he’s about to explain something. “Remember I said I found DraftKings and FanDuel on here? The way they work—”
“No, I’m actually good with that. You make lineups from players from lots of teams and however they do that week combined, that’s how you do.”
“Oh. That’s right. Do you play them?” He sounded like I’d told him I’d enrolled in culinary school: not outside the bounds of possibility, but nothing he’d ever considered.
“Can’t lie, bad karma. Bill explained it to me yesterday.”
“Aha! How come?”
“Because someone told us Jefferson did it. I hate to say this, but so far you haven’t told me anything we don’t already know.”
“Ah, but I’m about to. So you know the way the gambling part actually works?”
“You play other people who picked other lineups?”
“Right. But you don’t choose who the other people are. The gambling site puts you against them. And it’s always other people you’re playing. Nobody plays the house. The site just takes a cut for, like, being the place where it happens.” He started to bellow, ‘I wanna be in the room where it happens, the room where it happens—’ Anyway, they make it sound scientific and complicated, how they connect people, but no matter what they say about newbies playing newbies, Azarael says the sites make the most money off people losing to whales, and the whales only keep coming back if they win, so you’re always playing whales. That’s—”
“Big, big fish.”
“Right. Good.” I felt like he’d patted me on the head. “Now, Azarael says a lot of whales pick their teams mathematically. That’s what the base algorithms on Jefferson’s computer are, they’re for picking teams. Using algorithms is against the sites’ rules, but Azarael says whales do it all the time and it’s almost impossible to catch them at it. If the sites even try. Mostly, they don’t.”
“So, Jefferson’s writing algorithms for whales?”
“No. Better. Those are the base algorithms. I don’t think he wrote those. He must have hacked them, or maybe he even bought them from wherever the whales get theirs. I mean, someone must write and sell these things, right?”
I could hear his wheels turning. “Don’t even think about it,” I said. “Bad karma. Go back to what you were telling me.”
“Oh. Okay.” If he was disappointed, I couldn’t hear it. I’ve often wondered if ideas pop into Linus’s head so fast that he’s used to chucking out ones that for whatever reason—like his cousin warning him off—don’t seem worth working on. “So the base algorithms. I think they’re not his because they have—they’re—the way their code reads—”
“It’s okay, I’ll go with blind faith. You have reasons to think Jefferson didn’t write them. What about the others?”
“I think he wrote those. And they’re for busting the base ones.” Linus’s triumphal grin just about blazed through the phone.
Except: “I don’t understand.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. You’re a whale. Your algorithms pick teams of players. Maybe you don’t pay much attention. Maybe you’re not even a sports fan, you’re just a gambler. You don’t give a—you don’t care who you have, you just check at the end of the day to see how you did. You lost a few, maybe, but overall you did great. Because the algorithms, they consider every player from every angle: their stats, their past seasons, how they do in the rain, ’cause that’s what’s predicted IRL on Sunday.”
“IRL?” I interrupted.
“In real life. So the algorithms match your players up really well. That’s what they’re written to do. So, say, if the algorithm picks you a quarterback who’s killer accurate but not strong enough for a really long distance, it’ll pick you a receiver who’s great at finding a gap. If your quarterback can throw for ninety yards, it’ll pick you a fast receiver who can be there by the time the football gets there. See? That’s how the algorithm works.”
“And those are the ones you’re calling the base algorithms on Jefferson’s laptop?”
“Yes, they are.”
“So what about the others? The ones he wrote?”
“Well. So what if every time your algorithm picked Player X, some other algorithm snuck in and replaced him with Player Y? In fact, what if the second algorithm started going around sticking random players, irregardless of their stats, into all a whale’s algorithms?”
“Um . . . I don’t know. What if?”
He took his explaining breath. “Well, what does an algorithm know? If you stick in random players instead of the ones it picked, it’ll play those. Then, if you’re the newbie playing against its teams and you pick players for your teams based on actual talent, stats, whatever—the way the algorithm was supposed to do it, the way these sites tell the newbies to do it—you’ll beat the algorithm’s now-random lineups all to little pieces. And mostly, the whales will never know, because they didn’t even know who they had to begin with.”
