by Mark Cohen
Say hi to your groupie.
Fondly,
Monica
The article was entitled “Frontiers of Finance” and had been published in The Economist. I put it in my shirt pocket and drove home.
I let the dogs out, cleaned up the house, and wondered what to do with myself. Monday Night Football would return in a few short months, the Broncos would begin their annual quest for a Super Bowl title, and all would be right with the world. My problem was what to do for the next few hours. I considered driving to Barker Reservoir and throwing a few lures in the water, but it would be dark soon. Besides, over the past few years, I’d found myself thinking more about animal rights, with the result that I was now somewhat ambivalent about fishing.
I suppose I could’ve read the article Monica had sent, but I’d done enough for one day and just wanted to relax. I scanned my collection of CDs and selected Peter, Paul and Mary. Then I did something I do once every six months—I tamped some tobacco into a pipe my father had given me, then sat on the front deck while I enjoyed the music.
After forty-five minutes or so, Buck started barking and I saw Luther and Missy walking up the path to my home. They had a dog with them, the same shepherd mix I’d seen in their yard a few weeks ago. It wasn’t unusual for Luther to stop by, but Missy seldom accompanied him. Buck trotted over and extracted the requisite amount of affection from each of them.
“Hey, kids,” I said, “what’s up?” We exchanged greetings and I invited them to sit down. Missy’s long gray hair was in a bun and she looked distraught. She took the other rocking chair and Luther sat on the porch steps.
“Missy saw something today,” said Luther, “that I think you should know about.”
“What’s that?” I asked. She seemed hesitant.
“Go ahead,” urged Luther.
“Well,” she began tentatively, “a few days ago I saw a man park on the road and walk up to your house, but I didn’t pay much attention to it.”
“What kind of car?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “A big car.”
“What did he look like?”
“I didn’t get a good look at him,” she said. “He was tall.”
“Tell him what you saw this afternoon,” Luther interjected.
“Well,” she started, “this afternoon I saw a man walking around your house like he was inspecting it. He parked on the road and walked around your house a couple of times.”
“A meter reader?” My pipe had died, so I relit it.
“No,” she said, “he was wearing a tie.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“He was real big and had blond hair.”
“The same man you saw a few days ago?”
“It could have been. I’m not sure.”
“Did you get a better look at the car?” I asked.
“It looked new,” she said. “One of those big luxury cars.”
“A Cadillac? A Lincoln?”
“I’m not very good with those things,” she said. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “What color was it?”
“Dark blue.”
“Did he visit any other houses?”
“No,” she insisted, “he came to see your house. He even looked in your windows. Buck was going nuts this afternoon. That’s what caught my attention.”
“Did he see you?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Did you get a license plate?”
“I wanted to,” she said, “but I couldn’t get close enough without letting him see me.”
Big guy with blond hair. Wearing a tie. Driving a late-model sedan. It could’ve been a Realtor prospecting for new listings, but they usually leave a card or a brochure. Luther interrupted my thoughts.
“Does this mean anything to you?” he asked.
“It might,” I said. “Thanks for being alert. If you see anything else unusual, let me know.” They assured me they would, then walked away hand in hand.
I mulled over Missy’s story as I continued listening to Peter, Paul and Mary. I tried to think of an innocent explanation for what she’d witnessed, but couldn’t. If Polk had bugged my house or tapped my phone, he was about to feel the hammer of justice. I’d hammer in the morning. I’d hammer in the evening. I’d hammer all over this land.
“Mornin’, Wanda,” I said.
“Mornin’, Pepper,” she replied. “Earliest I’ve seen you here in a while. You wanna try a fresh bear claw?” She reached for my Foghorn Leghorn mug.
“Sure,” I said. I have to buy something once in a while to avoid giving the impression that I don’t like her pastry.
I poured myself some coffee, waited for the bear claw, then found an empty booth. It was six-thirty Tuesday morning. I’d stayed up well past midnight. The stranger had not entered my home, but I’d conducted a visual search for bugs just the same. Then I’d used a portable radio in an attempt to detect hidden batteries. If you hear static or interference as you pass the radio over something, that can be indicative of a low-level signal or a power source, but I had been unable to find anything.
I’d finished the process that morning by combing the exterior of the house and the yard for transmitters. Now, as I scanned the Rocky Mountain News, I felt confident there were no listening devices in place. Yet.
I finished the paper, poured more coffee, and tried to examine the situation in a logical manner. The threshold question was whether it had been Polk. If so, what had his purpose been? One possibility was that he had intended to search my home or place listening devices inside it, perhaps in an attempt to learn how my investigation was progressing. But the FBI had closed the case, so why should he care? Another possibility was that he was still smarting from our encounter at the federal building and wanted to finish it, but that seemed unlikely. He wouldn’t risk his career for that, and it appeared he’d purposely waited until I’d left my house.
I put the incident out of my mind and began reading the article Monica had sent. It described the evolution of a school of thought that holds that the behavior of financial markets is fractal in nature. Using a coastline as an example, Jayne had explained that two things are characteristic of fractal objects. First, each point in a fractal object is correlated with the points next to it. Second, the shape of the object remains more or less the same no matter how closely you examine it.
Applying those criteria to a financial market, the authors pointed out that in a financial market, each day’s price depends, at least to some extent, on the previous day’s price. Moreover, markets appear to show self-similarity at different scales. For example, a study of foreign-exchange markets had established that the difference between price movements over one day and two days is, on average, the same as the difference between price movements over one year and two years.
Because market patterns appear to be fractal, a growing number of observers believed market behavior could be predicted. Nobody claimed fractal geometry could be used to predict market performance with precision, but many felt it could provide guidance as to trends. To make it work, you need vast amounts of data showing every trade on your chosen market for several years, a library of past patterns, and a computer program to compare the geometry of the data with the past patterns. You also need a device to compare your data with your theory to find the coincidences—a neural network.
Underwood had written about neural networks. I hadn’t considered it significant at the time, but I was beginning to see a pattern of my own. I bid Wanda and Zeke farewell, then drove home.
It was unusual for my message light to be flashing at eight A.M., but I played the message, then phoned Scott.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You want the great news or the good news?”
“Start with the great news,” I said.
“I think I found our boy.”
“What’s the good news?”
“He lives about six hours away.”
“He responded to my message using the name Karl Gauss. He highly recommended a series of articles by Thomas Tobias.”
“That would be Karl Gauss of Mora, New Mexico?”
“Yeah.”
“Might as well head down there and get his story,” I said.
“You want company?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“When do you want to leave?”
“How about this afternoon? We’ll spend the night with Crazy Uncle Ray and visit ‘Karl’ first thing in the morning.”
19
WE GOT A LATE START Tuesday, and that meant we’d be approaching Crazy Uncle Ray’s shack at night. Probably unannounced. I’d left a message at the store in town, but there was no way to know whether he’d received it. My mother’s youngest brother lives five miles out of Blanca, Colorado. Population 272. About four hours southwest of Denver. Not far from where Jack Dempsey grew up.
Ray is fifty-nine years old. He spent forty of those years as a drunk, but sobered up five or six years ago and bought five acres on a land contract. He pays $75.00 a month. The property is located in the shadow of scenic Blanca Peak; the view is wonderful, but the only vegetation consists of cacti and yucca plants. There’s no water, no electricity, and no phone.
“You think this is it?” Scott asked. It was dark out, but the outline of a shack was visible in the distance off to the right. It looked familiar.
“I think so,” I said. We were stopped on what might charitably be called a dirt road. I let the dogs out one last time because we’d be leaving the road and there would be no place they could romp without risking stickers in their paws. After a few minutes, I got them into the truck, then shifted into four-wheel drive and guided the vehicle over the scrub until we were fifty yards from the structure. Ray had built a “cabin” out of plywood. A former merchant seaman, he had always dreamed of owning land and being self-sufficient.
I gave the horn two long bursts, climbed out of the truck, and yelled his name. A flashlight beam moved inside.
“Who dat?” he yelled.
“It’s Pepper,” I shouted.
“Pepper, dat you?”
“Yeah, Uncle Ray, it’s me.”
“C’mon up he’yaw,” he shouted. I climbed back into the truck and drove toward the shack. Ray had spent most of his life in New Orleans, so “here” sounds like “he’yaw.” As we neared the shack, I saw him holding a large-gauge shotgun.
I exited the truck and shook hands with my uncle. I didn’t smell any booze. My mother likes me to check up on him once in a while. “You remember Scott, don’t you?” I asked.
“Why sho I do,” said Ray. They shook hands. “Son, how you doin’?” Ray’s about five-seven and might weigh one-forty dripping wet. His hair is gray and he always sports a bristly crew cut. He hadn’t shaved in a day or two and his face was covered with stubble.
“Real well,” said Scott. We followed Ray inside. It has never been my dream to live in an eight-by-twelve plywood shack, but if I had to, I’d want Ray to build it. He’s a magician with tools. His place is airtight, which keeps the snakes out, and he’s even got a wood stove. He lit a lantern and offered water. His water supply consists of a few dozen gallon jugs he fills in town. We accepted the water and sat down. Scott and I took the folding chairs; Ray sat on the bottom bunk.
“What you boys up to?” he asked. He has a scratchy voice, the result of having smoked Camels most of his adult life. I told him we were on our way to New Mexico to interview a potential witness in a murder case and gave him a thumbnail sketch of the case. There was no point in confusing him with details about such things as fractal geometry.
“Dis fella’s prob’bly a drug dealer,” he said. “Dat’s why he don’t want no one to find him.” In Ray’s world most people fall into one of two categories: drug dealers or devil worshipers.
I asked how things were going, and he said pretty fair. Some “Mexkins” had stolen his bicycle, but he’d finally gotten his privilege to drive reinstated and didn’t need it anymore. After a while he started talking about the Bible, and that’s when we decided to call it a night. He planned to stay up and read the good book awhile. He insisted we sleep on the bunks. “I’ll lay me a sleepin’ bag on the flo,” he said, “and be just fine.”
With no mountains to the east and no trees to provide shade, the morning sun hits Ray’s shack early. We were up before six. Ray made coffee on the wood stove and offered some tiny cans of franks and beans, but we said we’d get breakfast on the road. “Y’all be careful,” he said. “These drug dealers’ll kill ya for five dollahs.” That’s one of his favorite expressions. In Ray’s world, pretty much anyone would kill ya for five dollahs.
We’d been on the road an hour. Moving along in silence at a pretty good clip and sipping coffee. “Who the hell was Karl Gauss?” I asked after we had crossed into New Mexico.
“He was like the John Elway of math and science two hundred years ago,” Scott said. “He invented number theory. He applied mathematics to gravitation, electricity, and magnetism. He helped build the first telegraph. He even predicted the path of an asteroid that was hidden behind the sun. You ever hear of the Gaussian distribution?”
“I went to law school to avoid learning such things.”
“He basically invented the bell curve.”
“And the bell curve does what?”
“It describes any random process. If you flip a coin a hundred times, it may come up heads two or three times in a row and it may come up tails two or three times in a row, but by and large you won’t see many runs like that. The flat tails of the curve represent those rare extremes and the bell portion represents the more typical occurrence.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” I said.
“Don’t make fun of statisticians,” he said. “They’ll kill ya for five dollahs.” I smiled and guided the truck off I-25 and onto State Highway 120.
Mora sits thirty miles north of Las Vegas, New Mexico. It’s in the mountains, on the edge of the Santa Fe National Forest. Most of the buildings on the main street were adobe structures. My map indicated a population of 4,264, but the streets were empty. We found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and had an early lunch. We were the only non-Hispanics in the place. We appeared to be the only non-Hispanics in town.
Our address for Gauss was Route 1, Box 66. That didn’t help much, so we stopped at the post office and asked directions. The postmaster, an older Hispanic man with a laid-back manner, drew a map and wished us a nice visit.
“So what’s the plan?” Scott asked as I drove out of town. “We just gonna stroll in there and ask him if he killed three people?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I think I’ll take old Betsy with me.” He began loading his .45 automatic. My Glock was already loaded. I don’t have a name for it.
Gauss lived in an old adobe place about two miles south of town. A quarter mile off the main highway on a dirt road. The nearest neighbor a quarter mile away. I slowed down as we neared his home. Nobody visible in the yard or in the house, no cars in the driveway. One mountain bike on the porch. The front yard small, but manicured. A ceramic donkey pulling a cart filled with flowers stood in the center of the closely cropped lawn. To one side was an enviable vegetable garden protected by chicken wire, but the rest of the land wasn’t being used. A shallow irrigation ditch ran along the edge of his property on the side where the garden was. I continued past his house for about a mile, then turned the truck around and brought it to a stop beside a field where cattle grazed.
“This place is so tranquil,” Scott said.
“It is,” I agreed. I put my shoulder holster on, then donned a light jacket so my Glock wouldn’t be immediately visible. Scott had no holster. I put the truck in gear and headed back. When we were within three hundred yards of the house, I stopped the truck, killed the engine, retrieved my binoculars
from behind the driver’s seat, and scanned the residence.
“See anything?” Scott asked.
“Just one guy walking back and forth inside the house a few times. Too far away to say for sure whether it’s him.” We sat there for forty-five minutes. When it was apparent there was only one man in the house, we decided to get it over with. I fired up the truck, put it in gear, slowly drove the final three hundred yards, and guided the truck into the gravel driveway.
I stepped out of the truck and Scott did likewise. He tucked his pistol into his jeans, at the small of his back. We were dressed casually, but looked as respectable as might be expected given that we’d spent the night with Crazy Uncle Ray and hadn’t showered that morning.
The front door was a solid slab of dark wood. I knocked. Two strong knocks. I heard footsteps. The door opened. “May I help you?” the man asked. He matched the description of Tobias. Early thirties. Just under six feet. Much thinner than I’d expected; one-forty at the most. I took one look at him and knew he wasn’t the killer.
“Mr. Gauss?”
“Yes.” He had stringy brown hair and a pale complexion. He wore chinos, a white polo shirt, and old penny loafers. No socks.
“My name’s Pepper Keane,” I said as I handed him a card. “This is Scott McCutcheon. We’re private investigators. May we come in?” He studied my eyes and realized I knew his true identity.
“I suppose you’d better,” he said. I scanned the room, but there didn’t appear to be anyone else in the house. He gestured for us to enter. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked. “I can offer water, tea, or lemonade.” He was soft-spoken and deferential.
“No, thanks,” I said. The living room boasted a hardwood floor, but a large Navajo rug covered much of it. The matching sofa and chairs had been constructed from aspen logs and the cushions were covered with a bright Southwestern fabric. Jayne Smyers would’ve loved it. I sort of liked it myself.