Paper son, p.19
Paper Son, page 19
“So what Jefferson was doing was writing algorithms to defeat the algorithms the whales use?”
“Not really defeat, more like screw up. Make them trip over themselves. Throw a monkey wrench into their works. Because, see, when they—”
“Yes!” Trella called from across the room. “Lydia, that’s what they’re for. Linus, she doesn’t need to know how they work.”
“Oh. Okay,” Linus said. “But the thing is, I don’t think they do work. Yet. They need a couple more iterations. If you want me to, I’ll work on them, but I’m not sure there’s enough time.”
“Why is time an issue? Especially for a guy who doesn’t sleep?”
“It’s not my time. It’s NFL time. I’d have to make changes and then see if they work for this Sunday’s games. Then make more changes if I need to. But this whole online gambling thing, it’s really only good in the regular season, or, if you push it, maybe into the first round of the playoffs. After teams start getting eliminated you don’t have a big enough player pool to draw from, and the ones you do have are all on the top teams, so there’s not enough differential in their stats to make the odds worthwhile. By the second round, Azarael says, the whales all quit football until next season. They go gamble on other sports.”
I thought about that. “So if these monkey wrench algorithms are going to be useful this season, they have to be finished soon?”
“Real soon. Next week or week after, latest.”
“Linus, you’re a genius. Thanks.”
“Hey, it’s what I’m here for, cuz. You want me to see if I can make them work?”
“No, I don’t think we need that.” Although I wouldn’t be surprised if Linus did it anyway, just to see if he could.
“That’s it, then? Nothing else Wong Security can do for you?”
“Don’t sound so disappointed, you were a huge help. If there is something more, I’ll let you know. Again, thanks, and Trella, thank you, too. And thank Azarael for me, whoever he is.”
“Actually,” Linus said, “I think he’s a girl.”
33
We piled into the Malibu. “Where to?” Bill asked.
I was thinking, so I didn’t answer. I wanted to chew over with him what I’d just learned from Linus, but, until we really knew what it meant, not with Pete around. After a few moments, Pete spoke from the back: “Unless you detectives have another plan for where we can go get into a fistfight, I’d like to head to the store. Lord knows there’s enough to do there.”
“Good idea.” I buckled my seat belt. “I’d like to see what you accomplished yesterday.”
“Oh, now, missy, don’t think you can breeze right past that phone call you just got. That was from that New York computer geek cousin, right? He said something you’re not sure you want me to know about. Well, spill it.”
I turned to face him. “Can’t slip anything over on you, can I, Pete?”
Pete gave a righteous harrumph and leaned forward. As we crossed Clarksdale to H. Tam and Sons, I delivered a condensed version of Linus’s report.
The car was silent a moment when I finished. Then, “Hot damn!” Pete slapped his palm on his knee and laughed. “See? Kid really is a genius, isn’t he?”
“He might be,” I said. “Though I’m not sure what he’s doing is legal.”
“Well,” Bill said, “online sports betting is only legal because it’s supposed to be a game of skill. So using the base algorithms might well be illegal to begin with.”
“And if it isn’t,” declared Pete, “it oughta be. That there’s the kind of thing gives gamblers a bad name. Jefferson screwing them up to give the little guys the edge, like he’s Robin Hood—”
“Would be just hacker fun and games,” I said, “if it were theoretical. But I’m willing to bet—ha-ha—that Jefferson isn’t doing this to entertain himself.”
We parked in front of H. Tam and Sons. The bench and the stoop were empty. “Where’s the E Street Band?”
“Henry and them? It’s a touch early. They’ll be along.” Pete unlocked the store and we went in.
“Wow,” I said. “Pete, honestly, the place looks great.”
Possibly better, I suspected, than it had in years. The floors had been scrubbed, and though worn, the vinyl now read as green. Light no longer had to shove its way in but slanted gently through the newly clean strip windows, as though pleased to be invited back. Even the neon-blue pickle jar had been righted and set on the counter beside the ancient cash register. The scattering of goods on the shelves was conspicuously thin, but the store looked ready, even eager, to welcome customers.
The living quarters in the back had not fared as well, though they’d been neatened up. The gutted furniture and mattresses had been dragged out back, to await garbage pickup beside the boxes of broken dishes. What could be salvaged had been replaced in cabinets and drawers. With half the furniture gone and the walls practically bare, the little apartment looked more spacious, but sadder. It had been the Tam family home, even with the Tam family’s belongings strewn and shattered in it. Now it seemed like a thread had been broken.
“Still work to be done back here, sorting things out,” Pete said. “I put piles of stuff in that closet there. Couldn’t stand to look at it. Peculiar, though, haven’t seen a sign of the scrapbooks and all. Wanted to show them to you, Cousin Lydia. I think maybe even there’s a Polaroid or two of your daddy that time he came down. Leland had all that stuff, but it hasn’t turned up yet.”
Pete squared his shoulders, looking at the closet that held the day’s task. This was my opening. “We need to go over to see Tolson Reeves. You want to stay here, and I’ll call you later?”
“Yeah.” Pete nodded without looking at me. I kissed him on the cheek, and Bill and I headed back through the store, leaving Pete standing in the house where he was born.
34
“We’re not going to see Tolson Reeves, are we?” Bill asked as we steered away from H. Tam and Sons.
“Sure we are. First.”
“And then we’re going to Burcell.”
“Yup.”
“Because that’s what the rush was to get Jefferson out of jail. Finishing the algorithms, so they can be used this season.”
“Yup.”
“Because that’s the diversification the younger Fergusons are looking at.”
“Yup.” I turned to face him. “Don’t you think? Take the drug money, which is complicated, time-consuming, and risky to make, and invest it in a scheme to fleece online whales. Safer, quicker, more productive. And the only cost is whatever stake you start your online account with.”
“And,” Bill said, “the cost of your computer-geek algorithm writer.”
“Oh.” I sat back. “Right. That.”
I called the Public Defender’s Office, to be told neither Tolson Reeves nor Callie Leblanc was in. According to the receptionist, Tolson was scheduled to be in court with a couple of clients this morning and had gone to the courthouse straight away. “He’ll be done in an hour or so,” she said. “Should I tell him to call you?”
“No, thanks, we’ll catch him later.” With Tolson, an ambush might work better than a warning. Besides, my sense of urgency was directed elsewhere right then.
As we drove, we kicked around some open questions. Was the older generation of Fergusons party to the cyber sports-book scam? Unlikely, according to what Big Bone Stafford had said. Did they even know about it? Probably not. If the younger Fergusons had broken Jefferson out—the focus required for the elaborately detailed escape, according to Bill, marked the scheme as classic tweaker—they’d likely want to wait until the algorithms were finished and the scheme was a proven moneymaker before they mentioned to their elders that they had a price-on-his-head cop-magnet stashed in the woodshed.
Burcell was its pretty, sleepy self when we rolled in. As we were parking, the door to Rupert’s Bar opened and a scruffy guy with bad teeth scuttled out, stuffing something into his pocket. He loped around a corner and out of sight.
“Well,” I said. “I see business is booming.”
Heads turned and cold stares fell on us as we pushed into Rupert’s. Shades of the Down Home Club. Except for three booths along the left side and the desultory string of multicolored lights behind the bar, the look was pretty much the same, too, dimness and dilapidation being the guiding design principles. Cigarette smoke, thick enough to make me blink, spoke of a robust disregard for the minutiae of public health laws.
Bill ambled to the wooden bar, with me a few steps behind, scanning the room, watching for any movement beyond the lifting of a beer.
“How you doing?” Bill asked the T-shirted, goateed bartender. “Looking for Johnny Ferguson.”
The bartender, narrow-eyed, asked, “And who might you be?”
“Might be anybody, but my name’s Bill Smith. This here’s Lydia Chin.” I stepped up beside him, still watching the room, as it was watching us. “Met Johnny this morning over breakfast,” Bill went on. “Wanted to talk some more. We believe we owe him an apology.”
The bartender’s stare didn’t change. Finally, he said, “Johnny ain’t here.”
“If you could tell us where to find him, we’d be obliged.”
Now the bartender, barely shifting his gaze, called over his shoulder, “Fisheye! These folks are looking for Johnny. What’s your pleasure?”
So that was Fisheye Ferguson holding down the back booth. I peered through the dimness and smoke, but I couldn’t make him out. I could, though, make out the two men who stood up off their barstools. I guessed they were ready in case Fisheye’s pleasure was to have us tossed into the street.
“That a fact?” came a lazy, raspy voice. “What do they want with him?”
“Say they owe him an apology.”
“Aw, ain’t that nice?” The voice’s sneer drained all the nice out of nice. But it went on to say, “Send ’em on back.”
Under the glowers of everyone else in Rupert’s Bar, Bill and I made our way to Fisheye Ferguson’s booth. Fisheye was smoking and fiddling with that indispensable tool of the drug trade, a cell phone. Bill didn’t even break stride, just slid into the booth opposite Fisheye. I slid in next to Bill.
The possibility of having to deal with Fisheye Ferguson himself had been something we’d accepted, though nothing we’d wanted. We were aware that we could be wrong about our hypothesis, in whole or in part. The monkey wrench algorithms on Jefferson’s computer might have nothing to do with the Fergusons, Johnny and Jefferson whiling away the afternoon over a computer at Café Café notwithstanding. But if we were right, it would do neither us nor Jefferson any good to alert Fisheye to what his son and nephews had going behind his back.
And yet, here we were, sitting across a scarred tabletop from him, speared by his one-eyed stare.
Fisheye Ferguson had a droopy gray mustache, droopy gray hair, and vertical anger lines between his droopy gray eyebrows. And then, those eyes. Both of them, the one fixed on us and the one that appeared to be looking at the bartender, seemed about to pop out of their sockets on springs, like in a cartoon. The thought of growing up with that glare almost made me feel sorry for Johnny Ferguson.
“How y’all doing?” Fisheye asked, looking like he hoped the answer would be “poorly.”
“Fine, sir,” Bill said. “Yourself?”
“I’ll do. Can’t say what I’ll do, but I’ll do.” Fisheye cackled at his own funniness. Then his face iced over. “What y’all want with my boy?”
“Like I told that gentleman,” Bill nodded in the bartender’s direction, “we met Johnny out at Walid’s this morning. Got into a little disagreement, and I lost my temper. Come to apologize.”
“That a fact? What’s she doing here?”
“Lydia Chin. She was the subject of the disagreement. I’m Bill Smith, by the way.”
Fisheye gave a laugh that devolved into a cigarette cough. “Sure, you are. Smith. Do she talk?”
“I do,” I said. “I’m the one who suggested we find Johnny and apologize. I have relations around here, and I don’t want to be the cause of any hard feelings.”
“What relations?”
“Captain Pete Tam. The late Leland Tam. And Jefferson Tam.” I didn’t invoke Congressman Reynold Tam. I had a feeling that in Rupert’s, that would be counterproductive.
“Jefferson Tam. Went to school with Johnny. Shows you about affirmative action. The reason Leland Tam’s late is Number One Son drove a knife into him, ain’t that right?”
“No, sir, I don’t think it is, but it’s the general opinion. I wonder what Johnny thinks.” I turned to Bill. “Let’s ask him when we find him.”
Fisheye said, “Johnny? Likely Johnny ain’t had one thought in his head about Jefferson Tam since their school years.”
Many things were likely, but not that. “Well, if Johnny’s not here, I guess we’ll be going. Could you tell him we stopped by? I’d like him to call me, just so we can put this all behind us.” Like Bill’s, my wallet carries a variety of business cards. The one I gave Fisheye had only my mailing address and phone number. He read it, snickered, and slipped it into his shirt pocket. I was sliding out of the booth when his cell phone rang.
“Yeah? Shit, I know it’s you, get to the point. Say what? What? Anna Rae? You little bastard, I’ll shove that . . . I don’t believe . . . That ain’t what I’m paying you for. No, you— Shit. Okay, motherfucker, you better hope you got that right, because if you ain’t, I’m gonna come over there and make you wish you was never born.”
He lowered the phone just enough to punch another button, then brought it back to his ear. “Johnny? Johnny, you got Keith and Howie with you? Get over here, we got business to attend to. I don’t give a shit! Listen, I just got a call from that little weasel over in Oxford. No, Freddie. Yeah. He says—” Fisheye looked up and noticed me, half out of the booth. “Get the fuck out of here! Go on, get!”
“Sorry,” I murmured. “Leaving.”
We strode quickly through the smoke of Rupert’s. Everyone ignored us, intent on the rage radiating from the back booth.
35
Bill and I climbed into the car and hightailed it out of town. At a thickly overgrown curve, we pulled off and waited. “Freddie,” I said. “The manager at the Café Café.”
“Keeping an eye on Fisheye’s little girl.” Bill opened his window and lit a cigarette. The breeze rattled bare branches and brought the scent of damp and decay.
“Her daddy has people spying on her? Ugh, how creepy.”
“Well, Fergusons don’t usually go far,” Bill pointed out. “Fisheye might’ve just wanted to make sure she was okay.”
“Still. That’s one of the things about leaving home—you get to screw up unobserved, not have your boss call your family to report on you.”
“What, you don’t think I’ve been calling your mother every day since we got here?”
“Who made you boss?”
“Good point.”
“And in case you’re interested, I’ve been calling my mother to report on you. So you’d better behave.” I watched a little brown bird hop from branch to branch. “I guess what this says is, even if you leave Burcell, you never really leave.”
“I think,” Bill said, “that’s true of every family. Even if you leave, you never really leave.”
About five minutes later, a dark blue car with silver rims came barreling toward Burcell. A Camaro, I saw, as it whizzed past. It had three men inside and a Confederate flag sticker on the back bumper.
“Holy cow,” I said. “The car that the guys from the Down Home Club saw tearing away from the store?”
“Betcha. Lizzie should have let me take the fight out into the parking lot, we’d have known it was the Fergusons sooner.”
“I’ll remember that next time someone’s trying to stop you from getting yourself clobbered. Did they go there to get Jefferson’s computer, do you think?”
“I’d put money on it.”
We sat there waiting. Whatever the immediate crisis involving Anna Rae, eventually Johnny would leave Burcell again, and since this was the only way out of town, we’d be ready to follow. My focus was on getting Johnny to cough up Jefferson. Still, a part of my mind was interested to know what the big emergency was.
After a peaceful few minutes of waving branches and chirping birds, the growl of an engine made us both straighten up. The Camaro came charging out again, Johnny at the wheel, Keith and Howie in the back, and Fisheye riding shotgun. As they passed, I could see Fisheye talking into his cell phone. He and Johnny both looked grim, but the two cousins wore wide impatient smiles, like kids on their way to someplace exciting.
“Hmm,” I said. “Doesn’t look good. Someone’s in trouble.”
Bill gave them a big lead, then pulled out. We stayed back; until the larger road we didn’t need to be close because there were no turnoffs. Once there, we’d shorten the distance and see which direction they chose. My money was on Route 278 to Oxford. As it turned out, I was wrong.
Johnny Ferguson took a sharp corner in the other direction. Bill swung in a few car lengths back. It was Clarksdale they were making for, and Clarksdale they entered ten minutes later. Cutting through town, they ended up in the last place I would’ve predicted: the parking lot behind the courthouse.
“Wouldn’t you think this is somewhere Fergusons might avoid?”
“They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get out of the car, now that they’re here,” Bill said.
The four men sat, Keith grinning, Howie smoking, Johnny scowling, Fisheye on the phone again. He pocketed it, said something, and they waited. From where they were, they could see through the courthouse’s double glass doors to the inside. From where we were, behind two rows of cars on the lot’s other side, we couldn’t. It wasn’t until Johnny sat up sharply and Keith slapped Howie’s arm that we knew their person of interest had arrived.
