Wild Horses (7 page)

Maybe their mom had overdosed on calcium supplements during that first pregnancy. Derek’s arms and legs had grown and grown — long, massive, clublike. His spine was a birch trunk, his rib cage the size of a whiskey barrel. His skull looked as big and hard as an iron kettle, seeming to stretch the skin painfully tight. For the past eight years he’d owned a discount stereo outlet on East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, Boyd wondering if his success was less a factor of price than sheer physical presence. Some poor music lover walks in to browse, sees Derek ambling over like a shaved lowland gorilla, and fears that if he tries to walk out without buying anything, his arms will be torn from their sockets.

So Derek was tall. So Derek’s shadow could cause bladders to spontaneously void. Boyd looked over the whole package deal, what could have befallen him in the facial department, and felt none too bad about standing a mere five foot seven. One consolation — he fit into his Daytona more comfortably than Derek.

“What happened to your car?” Derek pointed at the spiderweb of cracks down the windshield.

“Suitcase blew off somebody’s luggage rack on the highway. I guess they didn’t have it tied down tight enough. I see that thing coming, bam.” He shook his head. “I was so cool under fire. Didn’t even swerve half a lane’s width. I should be a stuntman out here.”

“Uh-huh,” said Derek. Just sitting there with that gigantic head of his, staring through the damage. “Boyd? Do I look like I’m suffering from a bullshit deficiency?”

Boyd rolled his eyes. Just no slipping one past big brother. Derek had watched him grow up from a five-year age advantage, and learned all Boyd’s tricks when they were boys lucky enough to have parents who’d believe black was white, if the point was argued persuasively enough.

“Allison,” he confessed. “Allison and a big-ass flowerpot. So listen, while we’re at it? Don’t go punching my right shoulder, whatever you do.”

Derek laughed, the taunting and delighted laugh that only an older brother could deliver. “Allison, still?”

“And a big-ass cactus.”

Derek laughed again, relishing his miseries. “And she sounded so even-tempered and sweet, the way you described her. Me, I’d’ve guessed it’d been that real ballbreaker you told me about. Your pit boss from the casino, what was her name again?”

“Madeline. Madeline DeCarlo.” A shudder. Los Angeles in early September, sidewalks that could fry eggs, but with one mention of Madeline the temperature plunged forty degrees. “I deserve combat pay. And medals. And an Academy Award. God have mercy, that woman could make Rambo cry.”

No wonder she was all alone. Most men probably took one look at her and foresaw imminent castration. Divorced four years ago — this much he knew about her, and she had a teenage daughter who’d opted to live with her father up in Lake Tahoe. The only thing Boyd wondered was what had kept them from fleeing any sooner.

He still found himself puzzled by that initial desire he had felt for Madeline when she’d lured him from Cactus Dirk’s to the Ivory Coast. Dozens of other dealers and change girls and waitresses had been more his type: younger, cuter, less traveled. Maybe it was the way she’d moved — legs whose stride hinted at some ripened potency that years and mileage could not erode.

Admittedly, he’d not been free of self-interest. Madeline was, after all, casino brass, and her favor would do his career no harm. Then she’d put forth the suggestion that they skim the take from his table. It was a win-win situation, really.

As Boyd drove, Derek directed him along freeways and local mains, down into the heart of East Hollywood, where Derek said he could purchase the raw ore of a new identity. Big business down here, catering primarily to the illegals up from Mexico, in need of documentation for work and benefits and phony citizenship.

Boyd eyeballed the lay of the land — bodegas and liquor stores with barred windows, shabby storefronts and skeletal remnants that had been burned out years ago in the riots, and cars that didn’t appear to have been running for at least that long. Music thudded, each bass note pounding hard as a railroad spike, while lowriders banged up and down along the streets on hydraulic chassis. And everywhere, on every wall, graffiti demarcated asphalt into boundaries. He looked at all the brown faces, began to feel pale and obvious, positively Scandinavian.

“Just let me do the talking,” said Derek. “And you listen to me, I
know
you — you want to poke some guy’s sister, you keep it to yourself, hear?” Derek motioned him toward a curbside roost, went on as Boyd wheeled over: “Long as everybody respects each other, it’s cool down here, these guys’ll give you no grief. The cholos, the marielitos … basically honorable guys, I’ve found. A lot more chilled out than most of the blacks, and nobody’s holding you personally responsible for four hundred years of slavery.”

“What are you saying, you’ve done some sort of business with these guys before?”

“These barrios down here, everybody went riot-crazy after the Simi Valley verdict, but how many do you think really gave a shit those cops got off for playing stickball with Rodney King? It was just an excuse to loot.” Derek shrugged. “Some stereos got looted, some looters needed a place to move them, I sell stereos … you do the math, little brother.”

Boyd nodded with admiration. Urban wartime profits were to be made, and where had he been? Up in Seattle trying to sell swimming pools and spas to people who’d just as soon finger him as one more multimillion-dollar defendant should their clumsy kids drown.

The new ID process couldn’t have gone more smoothly, and offered curbside service. An entrepreneurial teenage gang-banger in Air Jordans served as a runner between the car window and one of the scabby buildings. Twenty-five minutes and $120 later, Boyd had a new Social Security card and birth certificate. The kid said he could throw in a green card, too, for that base price, although Boyd declined. With the two new documents, the kid explained, he now had all he needed to obtain a new driver’s license, sign up for government benefits … all the same advantages of life he had enjoyed as Boyd Dobbins, but with none of the entangling legal baggage, should any come back to haunt.

“Well worth it, of course,” Boyd said minutes later, back on the freeway, “but this new name, I don’t know. Look at me, I don’t look like a Peter Wackermann. Do you think I look like a Peter Wackermann?”

“What’s a Peter Wackermann supposed to look like, anyhow?”

“Wears glasses. Was a fat kid who got beat up a lot. Probably Jewish. A chronic masturbator for sure, but he feels guilty about it. Not one of these things applies to me.”

Scowling, Boyd began stabbing a finger at the radio presets; sombrero music, that’s all he could find all of a sudden. A cosmic joke had just been played, he was sure of it. It made him think of something Allison had once told him, about this playwright who scripted people’s lives as comedies, as tragedies. He’d not quite grasped the concept then, had needed more time for it to sink in; thought he finally understood now.

“Peter Wackermann … this is really starting to feel hinky. Those beaners, they’re having me off, I know they are! Back me up on this, Derek, I’m turning this car around and making them give me a real name.”

Derek reached over to seize the steering wheel with one giant monkey’s paw.

“No. No, you’re not. We’re gonna go get you your new driver’s license now, and you’ll sit there marveling at what a wonderful Caucasian name Peter Wackermann is.” When Boyd reluctantly nodded, Derek released the wheel. “You go back there, assuming your mouth doesn’t get you killed, you know what’ll happen? They’ll send you on your way, and from then on you’ll be spending the rest of your life trying to explain to people why Pop named you Juan Valdez.”

He had a point. Huge ugly head like that, and Derek could score points on a wide variety of subjects.

“Besides, I’ll tell you what Peter Wackermann is like,” Derek went on. “Peter Wackermann’s a guy who’s got over seven hundred thousand dollars coming to him, and he’s got a very patient big brother who’s only requesting a token thousand-dollar finder’s fee for connecting him with the guy who’ll help him get his hands on it. Now, does Peter Wackermann sound like such a bad guy to be?”

Boyd smiled. He was centered again, calm, seeing the big picture. “Okay, now who’s this guy you’re taking me to tomorrow?”

“His name’s Wayne Chang. Except people call him Wang Chung. You know … that band? Everybody have fun tonight…?”

“Everybody Wang Chung tonight, yeah! I love that song.”

“Guy’s a top-shelf hacker. Just sits in front of his computer day and night, exploring, tinkering, covering his tracks. What he’s really living for is the day some neural interface system comes along so he can jack directly into his brain, never have to leave the chair again. Just fall right into the whole Internet.”

“Sounds like the model of mental health. How much does he want for doing this job?”

“A five percent commission on the gross.”

“
Five percent?
That’s over thirty-six thousand dollars!” Boyd moaned, profit margins being cannibalized before his eyes. “I thought he’d just charge a flat fee, a few grand at most. It’s only one afternoon’s work.”

Derek was laughing again. “Listen, you’re just lucky he’s not your agent. Then he’d be skimming ten to fifteen off the top.”

Boyd relented. Sacrificing five percent of something was better than retaining a full hundred of nothing. A complicated business was embezzlement in this befuddling age of computers and international banking. Gone were the simpler days of the classic after-hours raid on the boss’s safe, then heading for the border.

“Speaking of skimming,” said Derek, “you’ve got to tell me how you pulled this thing off. I’m dying to know.”

“Well, to understand that,” Boyd began, “you have to first understand that the beauty of the casino business is that nobody knows what the exact cash flow at a table is at any given time. I start my shift with an empty drop box and a rackful of chips, and this is the simplest it ever gets, because of the different kinds of exchange mediums we deal with. And how fast it all changes. I get cash whenever somebody buys into the game, but I also get foreign chips from other casinos, credit slips whenever I send any chips back to the vault, plus markers from gamblers playing on credit, and, the best part for our purposes, the fill slips that report the chips coming in from the cashier’s cage all night.”

Derek nodded. “I can see how this system begs for abuse.”

“And I answered the call. Accounting scrutinizes everything to make sure it balances out, and it damn well better, but that’s after the fact. While the table’s active there’s no way in hell of knowing how much of what is supposed to be there.”

He went on to explain the importance of the fill slips, made out in triplicate by four signatories as a control measure so the amount of the chip fill was verified. Boyd himself was required to sign them, as dealer, as was Madeline, the pit boss; and they were also signed by the cage cashier and a security runner. The system was employed to keep everyone honest, and generally it did, except when all four participating signatories conspired to tinker with the numbers: say, signing for large amounts, but delivering small ones, and clandestinely pocketing the difference.

“So you had four people in on this instead of just you and Madeline?” Derek asked.

“Wouldn’t have worked, otherwise. But the other two weren’t in on the take. They only went along with it because Madeline had made a video of these two guys going at it during some employees’ party. This was before I ever started working there. I’m not even clear on what was on the tape. Myself, I have no problem with two guys with the hots for each other. Whatever two or more people feel like doing in the privacy of a toilet stall, that’s their business. But apparently this was some pretty kinko stuff.”

“You weren’t even curious enough to watch the tape?”

“I gathered it involved a copious exchange of bodily fluids. But the kicker was, the cashier’s a Mormon. Really uptight group. Loads of Mormons in the casino industry, but the church won’t let them work at the actual games, just the management and credit end of things. I don’t understand the logic myself, but who am I to judge? So Madeline, she threatens to not only send a copy of this tape to the guy’s family, but his church, too. That first night when she called us all together to tell those two how it was going to be? They cried, Derek. They broke down and cried.”

“Ugly scene. That’s cold, man. That is
cold
.”

Boyd explained that when their shift was over, with the chips converted back to cash, he and Madeline would take the skim to the night depository of a bank, where they had an account in the name of a dummy company they’d set up on paper.

“Back up a minute,” Derek said. “Who was converting it back for you? Because for sure none of you four could walk up to the cash-out windows.”

“Yeah, you definitely need an outsider for that. I’m not sure who it was, though. Madeline told me I didn’t need to know, it’d be safer that way. She just let him keep a little of the take each night. Easy money for him. So I never met him, just saw him from behind in the casino a time or two. Big blond guy.”

“Uh-huh.” Derek was sounding less impressed all the time.

On most afternoons, Boyd went on, he ran by Madeline’s condo for carnal jubilee, then with his laptop computer and its built-in modem, they would access their bank’s PC services and have the money deposited the previous night or two wired offshore into an account at another bank in the Cayman Islands. He kept electronic records in the laptop, and Madeline received the bank statements in a post office box she’d rented for the dummy business.