The Rivers Run Dry Read online

  Lucia was sitting next to the bodyguard with the bleached hair. Next to her was an Asian girl introduced as Jonna. She wore a tank top with a yellow road sign advertising “Bad Girl on Board.” I sat at the other end of the table’s crescent.

  “Now, let’s talk money,” Kit Carson said. “One reason that Courtney plays this table so well is because whatever happens, it doesn’t change her financial status. If she wins $200,000, so what? She loses that much, big deal. Act like that, like the beloved sister of Bill Gates. Or maybe cousin. You’re too good-looking to be his sister.”

  Jonna laughed, exposing teeth like canine incisors. Kit Carson threw her a glance, silencing her before dealing a round. The cards sifted from her manicured hands and after two hits, I folded with a pair of threes. Jonna and the bodyguard remained. But Lucia finally took them out with a “wheel”—Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5.

  The skin on Kit Carson’s face relaxed, as much as it could after years of tightening. She dealt another game. None of my cards matched, and when I tried to bluff, the bodyguard called my hand.

  Kit Carson looked at Lucia. “Did you see it too?”

  Lucia turned to me. “You’re a terrible liar, Raleigh. You looked at your cards, hesitated, then made the bet.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “The hesitation means you don’t like to lie. After you made the bet, your hand went up, resting near your mouth. Women who don’t like lying always put a hand near their mouth when they’re forced to do it.”

  Kit Carson restrained her smile. “I’m glad you didn’t try to read it in her eyes. Half these guys are going to wear sunglasses all night. You’ll be forced to look for other tells.” She described the player whose pulse throbbed in his neck when he bluffed; the one who pretended to check his cards incessantly, but only when he wasn’t bluffing. “And if Pusan Paul starts to exaggerate, be careful. Like all male exaggerations, it’s about seduction. I bat my eyes, but the seduction doesn’t work on me.”

  The bodyguard nudged Jonna. Jonna grinned. Lucia’s expression remained implacable.

  “That’s what I thought,” Kit Carson said. “Seduction won’t work on you either.” She sighed. “I wish I could be there. It’s like sending Mona Lisa to the table.”

  The next day, after our late-night tutorial with Kit Carson, my nerves jangled as a half-dozen chairs scraped across the linoleum in the Violent Crimes conference room.

  At the front of the room Brian Basker, our SWAT team coordinator, stood like a bulky ninja, his black Kevlar armor and leather boots matching those of six more SWAT guys, all of whom stood along the back wall. Basker waited while the agents sat down at the conference room table, among them Lucia Lutini, Jack Stephanson, and Byron Ngo, who was part of the organized crime squad.

  Allen McLeod stood to my right, wearing his usual outfit of pious bureaucracy—white shirt heavily starched, dark slacks, red suspenders, red tie. But the expression on McLeod’s face showed focused concern and his eyes continually drifted toward the one person at the table I didn’t recognize—a lean, midthirties guy wearing a similar climb-the-ladder outfit. Nobody introduced him either, although he was taking notes, shielding his tablet from the agents around him.

  Basker, lantern-jawed and large, clasped muscular hands at his waist, a soldier’s version of “at rest.”

  “We sent Harford down to the warehouse with some business cards this morning,” he said, referring to one of the SWAT guys. “He posed as a carpet wholesaler and they gave him a tour of the warehouse. It’s standard-issue commercial space downstairs, concrete floor, twenty-five foot ceilings.” He turned to the white board behind him, picking up the marker that rested on the ledge, stabbing at a blue rectangle on the board. “Our biggest issue is the stacks of rolled carpet on the main level. They run in a north-south pattern.”

  He drew lines inside the rectangle that represented the carpet warehouse that was the front for the card game.

  “The rolls of carpet could easily conceal a shooter. Should a problem emerge, we plan to use this challenge to our advantage. But our hope is this will be a nonissue.”

  He glanced at Lucia. She looked fresh, rested, even though we’d left Kit Carson’s condominium sometime after 2:00 a.m., having played every version of poker that might get thrown on tonight’s table. After a restless night trying to sleep, I stumbled into the office to meet with McLeod, who told me management was assigning full SWAT and tech staff to tonight’s surveillance, along with the agent from organized crime. And the VanAlstynes offered to cover Lucia’s bets, no limit.

  “Lutini will be carrying a titanium briefcase with a hundred grand inside,” Basker said.

  Jack whistled.

  “The VanAlstynes provided the cash,” McLeod quickly explained.

  “I was wondering,” Jack said. “The Bureau gripes if I spend ten bucks on a good narc.”

  McLeod glanced nervously at the man taking notes. The man tapped his pen on the pad, offering Jack a stiff smile. Jack smiled back, the tan skin crinkling around his eyes.

  “Upstairs, two business offices,” Basker continued. “Harford got into the first one by asking about purchase orders. But that’s not where the poker game’s played. Harmon’s source says it’s the next room. They keep a game table set up in there.” He jabbed the white board with his marker, leaving a bat-shaped blue spot. “Players enter through an alley door, walk upstairs with one guy, then another guy greets them. I got that right, Harmon?”

  I nodded.

  “What did you call him?” he asked.

  “The brush.”

  “Yeah, the brush. The brush is a guy who walks the players over to the poker table, asks them what they’d like to drink, takes care of the money, so forth. A ceremony kind of guy. Harmon’s source said they also position two bodyguards at the office door and two more by the main entrance in the alley.” Two more jabs at the white board. “But there could be more. Radio if you see them.”

  Byron Ngo raised his hand. As usual, the organized crime unit wasn’t revealing why they wanted to join our surveillance, but my guess was they were interested in the Korean high roller named Pusan Paul. Kit Carson claimed he kept homes both here and across the Pacific and never talked about his work.

  “Ngo, question,” Basker said.

  Byron Ngo’s narrow face carried old acne scars and a wary expression, like he’d never gotten over being teased. “Where are you taping the wire on the UCA?”

  UCA, or undercover agent.

  Basker looked at Lucia. “Lutini, you got a preference?”

  She turned her sloe dark eyes, evaluating Ngo for one brief moment. “You’re wondering about the brush, when he escorts me to the poker table.”

  Ngo remained still, his eyes clouding.

  Lucia looked back at Basker. “The game takes place in a ware- house, but these people want an atmosphere of sophistication, even legitimacy. And I’m a woman. This means the brush will escort me from the door to the table, likely placing a hand on the small of my back. Agent Ngo wonders whether the brush will feel the transmitter taped there.”

  Basker glanced at Ngo.

  Ngo nodded, once.

  “I’ve already considered this,” Lucia said. “I’m wearing a black pantsuit with boots. The wire and transmitter will be taped to my lower leg. The boots will conceal both.”

  “What if they frisk you?” Jack interjected, glancing at Ngo for approval.

  “They won’t frisk me,” Lucia said.

  Ngo said, “What makes you so sure?”

  “Frisking a high roller would be a tremendous insult. An insult that might cause me to leave,” she said. “Furthermore, frisking would telegraph to the other players that the game makers didn’t know who I was. Fear restrains greed. They can’t have that.”

  Ngo and Jack were silent a moment.

  Then Jack said, “You’re, what, some high roller nobody’s heard of—in Seattle? Yeah, that’s plausible.”

  Lucia tossed her brown hair over her shou
lder. “My name is Maria Labello. I’m a wealthy Italian-American who inherited substantial reserves of money from my family. They live in the Midwest. My grandfather was a meatpacker in Milwaukee, my father went into beer distributing, and I’m an old friend of Ms. Carson, who vouches for my identity and my bank account. I live in Italy most of the year, no children, and I’ve come to Seattle for a wedding of family friends. Ms. Carson has developed a sudden case of flu and offered me her seat. Based on Ms. Carson’s reputation, the players agreed.”

  “What wedding?” Jack said.

  “There is no wedding,” she said.

  “Great, Lutini. They start asking questions about the wed-ding, what’re you going to say?”

  “They won’t ask questions,” she said.

  “They’re sharks, they’ll ask questions.”

  “Jack, men never ask for details about weddings.” She tilted her head five degrees. “But perhaps you do?”

  Basker coughed into his fist. “Back to the surveillance,” he said.

  In every single case, undercover surveillance was a strain on manpower. It meant long rotten hours and an astronomical number of x-factors because theoretically everything could go wrong. Devising contingency plans for each potential problem produced an anxiety that ran like an alternating current through every agent’s bloodstream. Tonight’s x-factors included disguising a surveillance van and several other vehicles full of FBI agents in an industrial neighborhood that was usually deserted.

  “Five vehicles,” Basker said. “Cars will rotate through the neighborhood. I want continual drive-bys on a five- to eight-minute interval.” The panel van with surveillance equipment would be parked at the end of the block, stationary unless something went wrong. “Phone number on the outside of the van goes to an electrical supply company. The line rings silently inside the van.”

  “Answering service?” Ngo said.

  “We want to know who’s looking at us. Answer the call ‘Basker Electric.’” He grinned. “Now, inside the van, we’ll have Harmon, Stephanson, Ngo, and the Tweedles.”

  The Tweedles were seated at the back of the room, looking as though they’d been captured by the SWAT guys. The twin brothers had small blond heads and pink skin and brown belts crossing their stout torsos like equators circumnavigating globes. They came to the Bureau from Microsoft, computer security experts who were soon dubbed Tweedledata and Tweedledump for their abilities at saving crashed hard drives and wiping out viruses. Surveillance tape failures happened, wrecking an entire case. The fact that the Tweedles were coming tonight meant the suits upstairs were very interested in what we found. That also explained the man with the notepad.

  “SWAT will be positioned at the following locations.” Basker pointed at various spots on the white board. “A sniper on the roof across the street with a read on the poker room. The UCA’s body recorder will be transmitting to all units. Keep the lines clear.” He looked at Lucia. “All we need is your code word, Lutini.”

  The code word was a prearranged emergency signal, something Lucia could remember under dire stress. If we heard it during the surveillance, it meant one thing and one thing only: “Come get me, now, weapons drawn.”

  “Danato,” she said.

  “Danato,” Basker repeated. “Everybody got it? Code word is Danato.” He looked around the room. “Any questions?”

  Nobody spoke. The gentleman writing notes clicked his pen closed.

  “Then let’s roll,” Basker said.

  A pungent smell filled the panel van, a strange combination of tar and unbathed skin, making the air feel close, stripped of oxygen. We had been in the van over an hour, parked across the street and down the block from Cosmi Carpet Warehouse, and the Tweedles were sweating.

  “All the money you two got from Microsoft, you can’t buy deodorant?” Jack yanked his black turtleneck, covering his nose and mouth. “You stink, both of you.”

  The Tweedles glanced at each other, the expression on their pink faces saying, what’s his problem? They sat on separate swivel chairs wearing gray cotton shirts already ringed with sweat. Over their ears they wore headphones tethered to a monitor board that showed levels of tone and pitch, while a digital recorder ticked along, keeping track of time elapsed. On the live feed, I could hear Lucia on the transmitter, talking to the driver who carried her in a black Lincoln to the alley behind the warehouse.

  “She’s going in,” Basker’s voice came from the handheld radio. “All units acknowledge.”

  The “10-4s” came back, including Jack speaking into the radio through his turtleneck.

  Ngo sat on a metal bench facing the computer monitor, bookended by Tweedles. Apparently the smell didn’t bother him.

  I heard Lucia greeting somebody, her voice perfectly inflected with a slight Italian accent.

  “Buona sera.”

  The hellos coming back sounded throat-choked. Ngo smirked. I imagined the men’s surprise when a woman as beautiful as Lucia walked in, the Giaconda in Armani, and I wanted to sigh with relief, but a sigh meant taking a deep breath and my nose was only accepting small pulselike pieces of what little air was available.

  The brush introduced the players—beginning with Maria Labello—and I wrote down three names that matched those Kit Carson had given me, including Paul Lee, aka Pusan Paul. But I did not recognize a fourth name and wrote down a phonetic spelling, circling the words as a sensation like déjà vu climbed along the back of my mind. Perhaps it was Tweedle fumes. Too little oxygen. But against every natural inclination, I took a full breath, repressing the gag reflex. When the brush introduced the dealer, a guy named Tony, the déjà vu sensation returned, stronger.

  “I know that voice,” I said.

  “No kidding, Harmon,” Jack said. “It’s Lutini.”

  I shook my head. The brush was explaining the night’s game—Texas Hold ’Em—and minimum raises and bids and how bathroom breaks worked, and his voice sounded pinched, the nasal tones of New Jersey sandpapering edges from certain words.

  “We got yer drinks, top-shelf only,” he said.

  “I’ve heard this guy before,” I said. “In the casino.”

  “What casino?” Ngo said.

  “The one off I-90.” I turned to Jack. “When I went looking for Felicia, this guy was the bar manager.”

  Jack yanked down his turtleneck. “What’s Felicia got to do with this?”

  “I don’t know, probably nothing. But the VanAlstyne girl’s roommate works for this guy. She’s a cocktail waitress. He’s her boss.”

  “Fill me in, now,” Ngo said. “I want all the details.”

  I told him about the roommate working at the casino, then described her reaction and how the manager ran me out of the place. “I swear it’s this same guy, the brush.”

  Ngo frowned. “You’re sure?”

  “I’d have to see him to confirm, but that voice is dead-on.”

  Jack kept his eyes on the light display. “Did you flash your credentials out there?”

  “No,” I said. “We were just talking. Then this guy told me to leave.”

  “Did he know you were with the Bureau?”

  “I didn’t give him my card, Jack. But the girl was rattled.”

  Tweedledata swiveled on his chair. “Will you please shut up? We’re having trouble hearing.”

  Ngo leaned in, whispering, “You have the guy’s name?”

  I closed my eyes. The voice was gone now and the transmitter was broadcasting a series of sounds I recognized from Kit Carson’s tutorial: cellophane crinkling off a fresh deck; cards slapping through a shuffling machine; papery clicks as the cards slid across the felt, falling into pairs. In my mind, I could see the man’s elongated torso, how he held his arms close, the small head perched like a meerkat’s. His name badge was pinned over his left shirt pocket and the small black plastic rectangle said . . .

  “Ernie. Ernie . . . something.”

  “Probably the fumes in here,” Jack mumbled.

  Ngo wrote
the name “Ernie” in his notebook. “Any letters on the last name?”

  Tweedledump swiveled, imperious. “Do you mind?”

  As a matter of fact, I did, because as much as the tape would provide, I had learned last night that poker was a game of body language and facial expression and no tape would ever match Lucia Lutini watching these guys call, raise, fold, bluff, and otherwise reveal themselves. Maybe that was what was frustrating the Tweedles—the minimal speech of this operation.

  “Try to get us a last name,” Ngo said.

  I nodded. And in the absence of anything to listen to, I stoop-walked across the van and slid open the black partition that connected to the cab. Through the windshield I could see amber halos around the street lights, a deserted road where one car was circling the block at a steady speed, stopping slightly longer than normal at the corner before disappearing again.

  The view in the rectangular side mirrors showed an unhitched flat-bed trailer languishing next to a chain-link fence. I turned my body sideways, flattening the bulletproof vest, and pulled myself through the narrow opening between the seats, dropping on the passenger side palms first. I slouched against the door, my forehead aligned with the panel, and flicked open the dashboard air vent. The cab smelled of motor oil and vinyl, perfume compared to the odors in back.

  Ngo stuck his head through the partition, his face above my left shoulder. “Don’t blow our cover, Harmon.”

  Several responses flickered through my mind. The wisest was, Don’t answer a fool according to his folly. The most practical was, Don’t argue with agents in organized crime. J. Edgar had grandfathered them into a secrecy that made the KGB look like it operated under the Sunshine Laws.

  I smiled at Ngo, patting the MP5, the machine gun’s muzzle pointed toward the floor. A white towel covered the gun’s butt.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said. “Thanks for your concern.”

  Ngo slammed the partition shut.

  I closed my eyes, drawing several deep breaths, searching for the name tag. Ernie . . . Ernie . . . I saw an S. Then a vowel. O? I? When my cell phone vibrated on my hip, his name slipped away and I yanked the phone off my belt clip, cupping my left hand over the light emitted by the LCD.