"This is Paul Flatt," was, as always, the answer.
"Big Bro," I said.
"Little Bro! You come in out of the woods?"
"Too long ago. On a gig in Vegas right now. I need to pick your legal brain a minute."
"Shoot."
I gave him a condensed version of everything that had happened with the videos on the rape site, from finding them, to the argument with the client, to being blown off by the police. I wrapped it up with, "I need to know what my legal responsibility is. I went to the police, but I know that agency is compromised. What more do I need to do to be in the clear?"
"My first impression? Nothing. Not sure you were legally bound to do what you've already done. That said, I'm a civil attorney in Texas, Little Bro. I'm no expert on the criminal end, and I know zero about Nevada law. Let me research it a bit and I'll call you back, okay?"
"Roger that," I said, and the call was over. I looked at the phone and touched the icon to dial my daughter, then kept walking while it rang. No answer. When it went to voicemail, I left her a simple message: "Love you, sweetie. Let’s get together again soon."
AFTER A VISIT to my room for a quick shower, I headed to my workroom. A few minutes after I got there, Nichols showed up. I looked at him and said, "I didn't ping you. How'd you know I was here?"
He raised his right hand, exposing the bracelet on his wrist, gave it a little shake.
"You tracking me everywhere I go?" I said.
"No no," he said. "The system is set to let me know whenever you enter this room, since it's my job to be here when you're working."
It should have occurred to me earlier that the bracelet might be more than a simple guest ID tool. I wouldn't ignore that possibility again. "And how do you set the system to do that?"
"Don't know. Somebody else does it. Yours was set up that way before you got here. Didn't realize it myself until I got a text the first time I brought you in here."
I nodded. "Cool tech."
"How'd your excursion to the police department go?"
"They blew me off," I said.
He arched his eyebrows.
I said, "Yeah, really."
I WAS WADING through Gamboa's deep web activity again. I had been about two-thirds of the way through it when I hit the rape site earlier, and that had put my exploration on pause. Once more, I encountered a lot of sites that no longer worked, along with more hard porn. Then, when I loaded the third from last site on the list, everything changed.
CHAPTER 19
LAS VEGAS
CHRISTINE GAMBOA
CHRISTINE GAMBOA WAS ENJOYING a day off from work. Many of the whales she catered to expected her to be there 24/7, but Sasha insisted she take her day off. He was sweet like that, or at least had a little sweetness in him. As a result, she was on her couch, unshowered, unkempt, endlessly browsing Netflix and never choosing anything to actually watch. She was relaxed enough that she was slipping into sleep and didn't realize it, but that all came to a lurching halt—literally—when the klaxon alarm sounded on her iPhone. The sound of the klaxon might have been enough on its own, but it wasn't on its own.
That particular alarm tone meant only one thing: Someone had just accessed one of her trigger sites. They would look like dead sites on the deep web to anyone who loaded them, but each one was really an online tripwire, designed to notify her immediately if anyone was snooping on her online history. The problem was that she had never accessed any of the deep web sites from anywhere except her SPACE laptop, and she had thoroughly cleaned it before leaving. So how was that possible? It wasn't, but the klaxon was screaming. She killed the sound, then pulled up the encrypted spreadsheet that would tell her which site had tripped the alarm. While she was scrolling through the list and looking for the specific site, the alarm sounded again. She assumed she had touched SNOOZE instead of CANCEL, but when she looked at the phone, she saw that it was a new alarm. Shit. She killed it.
It didn't matter which site. Time to go. The alarm sounded again. She killed all sound on the phone and sprang from the sofa, any hint of relaxation long gone. She didn't walk to her bedroom. She ran. Into the closet, where she had a go-bag ready. To the bathroom for a quick pee. She looked in the mirror on the way out of the toilet closet; she looked like hell. No matter. No time. Back into the closet, where she grabbed a plain pink baseball cap and pulled it down over her mess of hair. Then she headed for the door.
CHAPTER 20
NORTH MISSISSIPPI
MAX SULTANOVICH
HE GAZED out the window of the sedan as his driver motored them south on Mississippi's Highway 61, the late afternoon sun flooding the flat farmland and its green crops with soft golden light. Max had never seen so many billboard signs on a rural highway. They never stopped. One bastard casino after another promising easy money to idiots who were stupid enough to believe it. He hated such people who believed they could seize wealth without work. Nothing would please him more than to walk through one of the casinos, killing them at random, just for being too stupid to live. Stab one. Shoot the next. Whatever he wanted. But that was useless dreaming.
"How long?" he said.
"Minutes," the driver said.
Six thousand miles he had come to deal with his own special idiot. He had often wished he could accuse his wife of spreading her legs to someone else when Mikail was conceived. He could not. From the moment of his birth, Mikail had looked like him. The same eyes, same Slavic features, same physique. Somehow a rotten glob of seed had spewed from his dick and produced this burden named Mikail Maximovich Sultanovich. It was a burden he had endured for too many years.
THE DRIVER TURNED RIGHT onto a narrow road that seemed to be more holes and bumps than paving. Max turned his gaze forward as the car lurched along toward the setting sun. After more turns, they were on a gravel road, sand and rocks pounding the bottom of the car as they drove. Soon they approached the face of a levee that seemed to go forever to left and right. The road continued up the face of the green hill, then down the back side, but was blocked by a closed gate that looked like it had not been opened in years. The car stopped and the driver said, "Sir? What to do?"
"Wait." Max already had his smartphone in hand, swiping through screens until he found what he was looking for. He touched an icon and a numeric keypad appeared. Once he touched in an eight-digit sequence, the gate swung open. "Go," he said.
The car moved forward with a violent shake as it crossed some kind of barred surface that rattled Max to his bones. Thankfully, it did not last long. They were back on the gravel road, the gate closing smoothly behind them. At the bottom, they turned right, drove for a kilometer or two, then veered left into thick woods. The road continued, and after a few curves, arrived at a long wooden building built on top of poles to elevate it from the ground. On the left end of the building, a garage was built at ground level, beneath the main structure.
"Stop," Max said, pointing to the left end of the building. "There."
The moment the car stopped, three men appeared from behind the building, all carrying weapons.
Max opened the door, stepped out, then stuck his head back inside the car to say, "Stay in car."
The driver nodded and Max closed the door.
When the men reached him, Max spoke, holding up a picture of Mikail. "Go. Bring him to me."
Not one of the three spoke. One nodded, and all turned and walked toward different doors of the building. Front. Rear. Garage.
THERE WERE NO GUNSHOTS, no sounds at all for the next five minutes. Then the men were back. The one who had nodded said, "He is not here. Just women. And some blood on floor."
Max sighed and wondered if his misery with Mikail would ever end. "Find him. Kill him." He got back into his car and motioned for the driver to go.
CHAPTER 21
SPACE
IT'S a rare occurrence for me, but the time had come. The rape site. The corporate mind-set that a company is more important than innocent women. Half-ass police. Things l
ike this pile up and feed a darkness inside me that I'd kept at bay for a very long time. I needed a break, needed to drown that darkness in strong drink. Tomorrow I would return to the job I was hired to do with a clearer mind and a more focused soul; and given what I'd found on Gamboa's computer at the end of the workday, I knew I was getting closer to the nut of the original issue, closer to finding out exactly who was stealing my client's money. I felt it. It was big and I was going to blow this thing wide open. Tomorrow.
"Jimmy Boy," I said to Nichols, "know any good places in this town to do some serious drinking?"
He looked at me, a bit blank-faced.
"What?" I said. "Surely you're familiar with the concept?"
"Oh yeah," he said, a little smile breaking out. "Just caught me off guard. You've been pretty…uh…I'll say 'work-centric' since you got here. Can I join you?"
"I insist. One condition, though."
He cocked his head and waited.
"I don't need an assistant, no SPACE escort. I need a drinking buddy. You up for that?"
His smile grew. "Hell, yes."
WE STARTED the evening in SPACE. I wanted to roam, check things out, really see the place. Nichols instantly went into tour guide mode and I stopped him a millisecond or two later. "You're not working, Jimmy Boy, so shut up and enjoy the sights as best you can."
"Got it," he said with a smile.
I love everything about space travel, so we got on one of the turbo people movers and got shot through a spoke to SPACE's space museum. After picking up a fresh round of drinks at the first bar we encountered, I headed toward the space shuttle in the middle of the atrium. The atrium was huge. I'm talking at least a half-million square feet, half the size of a typical modern mall. At first glance, the roof appeared to be a one-piece glass dome. It of course wasn't; it was really an assembly of thousands of curved transparent panels, fitted in a framework built from acrylic, also transparent. I stood for a while and looked up and around. The blue glow of the 'spacescape' outside, with the flashing of the tiny flying orbs, was enchanting. Just this thing would be worth a trip to see and behold, as a remarkable piece of engineering. And it was just one of countless marvels in this futuristic wonderland.
The space shuttle in the middle looked antique in this setting. She had flown a lot of missions and had the scars to prove it. Lots of mismatches among the tiles that formed her thermal skin. I'd seen several of the shuttles before, but this was the first time I'd seen one that you could walk up to and touch, walk underneath, study the old tiles scorched from reentry into Earth's atmosphere. I took a healthy sip of my drink and looked at Nichols. "Amazing machines."
"Bigger than I imagined," he said.
"You haven't been here before?"
He shook his head. "When I first started here, I was sure I'd be spending my evenings here for a month, just walking and looking."
"Like we're doing now."
"Exactly," he said. "But reality set in. I work hard, and when the workday is done, I bail."
"Yeah, I get that. I worked a few years for a big corporate consulting firm. Had an office on the fiftieth floor. New York branch. I had this fantastic view of Manhattan that took my breath, for about a week. Then I didn't even notice it anymore. It was just the office."
He extended a fist for a knuckle-bump. I complied. He looked up at the shuttle. "I don't see how it even flies. Looks like the wings aren't big enough."
"It's really more glider than airplane. Not a great glider at that—there's a reason they call it a flying brick—but it's good enough to get it on the ground in a controlled fashion."
"You an airplane nut?" he said.
"Wouldn't go that far. I do like to fly, though."
"You're a pilot?"
I nodded, took another drink of my Red Bull and vodka.
"Have a plane?" he said.
I nodded again.
"Jet?"
That was worth a laugh. "No, Cessna one-seventy-two. Little four-seater."
"Still cool. So, you don't own a house, you live in the woods with a horse named Bobby—"
"Johnny," I said. "Not Bobby."
"Excuse me, got it. You don't have a house, you live in the woods with a horse named Johnny, you don't own a car, but you do own an airplane."
I extended a fist and said, "Good job, you know everything there is to know about me."
He bumped my knuckles. "I have a feeling that's a long, long way from true."
I smiled and gave him a wink.
AFTER ANOTHER HOUR of wandering around SPACE, we decided to leave the future and head out to somewhere more conducive for both of us to relax. It was, after all, still Nichols's workplace. We ended up downtown at the Golden Nugget. It's old, but it's pristinely maintained and elegant with all its beautiful white and gold. We walked, drank, talked, drank, and were both well into a buzz when we decided to have a seat in a lounge area off the casino floor.
I had gathered all kinds of information on Nichols. He was thirty-two, never married, no kids, grew up in Reno and moved to Vegas about ten years ago. Started working the hotel side of the industry, then switched to dealing tables, on to the pit, and finally to the executive host gig, which he called whalesitting and didn't really like. He wanted to go back to the pit, but his whales liked him and management wanted him to stay put.
He said, "So, Sammy Flatt—you mind if I call you Sammy?"
"I like 'Sammy.’ Would have preferred that growing up."
"What was it growing up? Sambo?" He burst out laughing, well into the alcohol phase known as 'Unfunny Becomes Hilarious' and enjoying it.
"I wish."
"Uh-oh, I smell something grand. Spill it!"
"Jimmy Boy," I said, "you wouldn't believe me if I told you what my real name is."
"How bad could it be?"
"Bad enough that I filed the paperwork to legally change it on the day I turned eighteen."
"Come on, you gotta tell me now. What is it?"
I took another robust sip, smacked my lips. "My birth name, young James, is Unclavius Samuel Flattbush."
A good fifteen seconds passed with him just staring at me. Then he said, "Ho-ly shit," and took a big gulp of his own drink. "So what did your parents call you?"
I said, "You're kidding, right? My name was Unclavius Samuel. What do you think they called me?"
Then he got it and burst out laughing, spraying me with whiskey and Coke. "Uncle Sam! They freaking called you Uncle Sam, didn't they?"
"They were…very patriotic. And hey, I have siblings. I didn't necessarily get the worst of it."
CHAPTER 22
McCARRAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
LAS VEGAS
CHRISTINE GAMBOA
CHRISTINE'S HEART felt ready to leap out of her chest as she threw some bills at the cab driver and stepped out into the hot night. She had spent the past several hours hopefully creating the illusion of normal activity, running errands, a little shopping, all while trying to ascertain whether she was being followed. She hadn't seen anyone, but she wasn't naive. Yes, she was intelligent and had good, maybe even great, skills of observation. Two dressing room changes into new clothes should help. Using a different mall exit than entrance, and grabbing a cab while her car was parked on the far side of the mall could help. But being on the run and spotting clandestine pursuers wasn't exactly a skill set she possessed.
Her stride was quick and her path direct as she stepped inside McCarran International Airport. She was just one more traveler rushing to make a plane. She hoped. The cab ride had been quick, but it gave her enough time to get the new smartphone set up well enough to buy her ticket. The electronic boarding pass was on its screen and she was ten yards from the TSA podium at the entrance to the security checkpoint. She could hear her pulse in her ears as she held the phone against the scanner and handed her ID to the TSA agent. The agent gave her a perfunctory smile as he took the ID and squinted at it. Then the scanner flashed red and beeped. What the hell?
But
she knew. All her clever tactics had been for nothing. The electronic web of the modern world had tracked her. Someone would show up and haul her off and that would be that.
"Ma'am?" the TSA agent said.
Christine jerked her head up. "Sorry, what?"
"Please move ahead."
She looked down at the scanner and saw it had turned green. Oh, thank God. She stowed her ID and phone and moved into the security line. The crowd was light and she was through the security area in three minutes. Now she just had to make it to the gate. Maybe she'd make it after all. They could track her, figure it out soon enough, but if she could pull this off, at least she'd have a little time. She quickened her stride toward the gate.
FIVE MINUTES LATER, she was in the jetway, midway through the line as it crept forward. She was going to make it. When she reached the door and stepped into the plane, her body relaxed. She couldn't wait to get airborne so she could get a drink. As she was making her way through the first class cabin, her heart stopped. There, in the third seat on the right, sat Sasha Maslov, staring right at her. Smiling that smile.
He was in the aisle seat. When she drew even with him, he reached over and patted the window seat. "Come, kohona. This is much better seat than row twenty-seven."
CHAPTER 23
GOLDEN NUGGET CASINO
LAS VEGAS
WE SAT AT A BLACKJACK TABLE, just Nichols, a dour-faced Asian dealer who had to be in her seventies, and me. We were both beyond a little buzzed, and well into the blood alcohol levels at which guys slip into the maudlin lands of lost loves and such. I played basic strategy and knew it well enough that there were no decisions to make while playing. Just stand, hold, split, or double down, based on the combination of your two cards versus the dealer's up-card. Nichols played the same way, but with an impulsive move every now and then that varied from the strategy.
"Married?" Nichols said.
I shook my head and slipped my cards beneath my bet to signal a stand. "Not anymore."
"How long?"
"Married thirteen, divorced five," I said. "You?"
Unallocated Space: A Thriller (Sam Flatt Book 1) Page 7