Mike thought about all the retirees he’d seen out on the casino floor, tugging on slot handles and throwing down chips.
‘Indian gaming exceeds twenty-five billion annually – more than the combined gaming revenues of Las Vegas and Atlantic City put together.’ Graham’s face showed equal parts satisfaction and pride.
Mike’s jaw ached with tightness. ‘That buys a lot of influence.’
‘You don’t know the half of it. Indian casinos were the largest soft-money contributor in the last state election cycle. They practically greased the governor into office. Christ, Deer Creek alone bought thirty-five thousand dollars of tickets to Obama’s inauguration.’ Graham paused, wet his lips. ‘McAvoy started with a high-stakes bingo palace. From there he moved into lotto, punch cards, and unregulated slots. It wasn’t money like now – they were still fighting in the courts over slots and tables. Then the Supreme Court’s Cabazon decision blew it wide open in ’87. It was a whole new world. Remember when the California budget was overdue a few years back? The hundred-million-dollar shortfall?’
Mike nodded.
‘Deer Creek made it up. As in paid for it outright. It’s a pittance compared to what they’d pay in real taxes over the years, but they’ve been smart. They’ve made deals, spread less money around to the right people.’
‘How…?’ There were more questions than Mike could keep track of. ‘How did they pull it off on the back of a ninety-year-old woman at death’s door?’
‘How does anyone pull anything off?’ Graham said. ‘With clever lawyering. McAvoy dug up some ancient clause that said that all reservation land sales were invalid unless preapproved by the federal government. Well, guess what? When the original Deer Creek reservation was parted out and sold off, no one knew to get federal approval. So McAvoy threatened to throw thousands of property sales – and titles – into question. We’re talking two thousand acres of Northern California. We’re talking lawyers calling up influential landowners and commercial real-estate holders, telling them they might not own their property anymore. Land development shut down. Banks stopped approving new mortgages. Didn’t take long for McAvoy to get Sue Windbird what she deserved.’
‘And he secured his own interest by promising to hold everything in trust for the tribe,’ Mike said. ‘So once Sue Windbird died, he’d set up his own tax-free ATM.’
‘And why shouldn’t it be his? You think Great-Granny was gonna up and build a billion-dollar business on her own? When we found her, she was still picking berries and shitting in an outhouse. That woman lived her last years like a queen. They paraded her around in ridiculous tribal costumes to ground breakings and ribbon cuttings. She drank single-barrel scotch and ate chateaubriand.’
‘When did McAvoy find out she had a kid?’ Mike asked.
‘Everyone knew she had a kid. A drunk – typical full-blood Indian type. Died in a car crash in ’59. What everyone didn’t know was that he knocked up some white girl.’
‘You uncovered that when you were doing the genealogy charts? To prove Windbird’s stake on the land?’
Graham looked impressed. ‘Yeah. We thought we were outta the woods, then bam! Turns out there was a little girl, born in ’51. Took some searching, but we found her.’
‘We,’ Mike said. ‘You keep saying we.’
‘Like I said, I’ve been with Deer Creek from the gates. And even if I didn’t dip my snout in the feed bucket, who do you think bankrolls half our agency? McAvoy’s donated half the law-enforcement equipment in the state. So let’s not get prudish over the distinction between public and private.’
‘That’s how you own all the cops.’
‘I’m a director at the largest antiterrorist agency in the state. I don’t need dirty cops. I finger “people of interest.” That’s what I do. If cops help me, it’s not corruption. It’s them doing their job, following directives. I point and they track.’
‘The girl,’ Mike said, steering him back on course.
‘Danielle Trainor.’
‘My mother.’
‘That’s right.’
If Mike’s mother was half Indian, then Mike was a quarter.
And Kat one-eighth.
Graham ran a hand down his face, drawing his features into a droop, and for an instant Mike caught a glimmer of remorse in his eyes. But then Graham spoke hard, his words defensive, shoring up an argument it seemed he’d been making to himself for years. ‘With the money McAvoy had invested, he couldn’t leave a loose end like your mother out there. Just like he can’t have some foster-home rube show up now and get the keys to the kingdom. Or your daughter – what’s she, eight? – waltz in and stake a claim to the whole goddamned operation. I mean, can you really blame him?’
Mike just looked at him.
‘Okay, from your position, sure. Of course. But you have to understand, there’s a lot at stake.’
‘An Indian casino with no Indians.’
‘That’s right.’ Slyness bit into Graham’s voice. ‘We’re just holding it in trust, see.’
‘For an extinct tribe,’ Mike said.
‘Not so extinct, are you?’
Mike leaned forward, and again Graham’s eyes tracked the barrel of the.357. A bead of sweat worked its way down from Graham’s left sideburn. He held up his hands. ‘Listen, I can be your friend here. Proving your claim will be really tough-’
‘My claim?’
‘You won’t get shit without that genealogy report. That’s why McAvoy keeps it buried in his private safe with all his valuable dirt, behind a painting of an Indian healer in his office. No one knows about the safe except him and me.’ He mistook Mike’s stunned expression for disbelief. ‘I don’t have the combination, but I could smuggle you in there and you could force him to open the safe. With that genealogy report, you could claim the casino and all its assets. I could help you navigate-’
Mike’s voice was as cool and hard as the bullets he’d removed from Graham’s gun. ‘I don’t give a shit about the casino.’
Through the open balcony door carried the buzzing of cicadas.
Graham wet his lips. ‘Then why are you here?’
‘You’re the profiler. Look into my eyes and tell me why I’m here.’
Graham’s fingers fussed in the sheets nervously. ‘Your parents.’
‘They’re dead.’ Mike couldn’t bring himself to phrase it as a question.
Graham looked away sharply.
‘Go on,’ Mike said. ‘Give me all those facts you add up to make a person. Because that’s all I’m gonna get.’
Graham cleared his throat, still kneading that sheet. ‘They were high-school sweethearts. Your mother was in the music society. She won Best Smile senior year – I think it was the contrast with her skin. Your father was voted Most Optimistic. He came from more money than her. Not that he was rich or anything – his dad was an accountant – but Danielle was raised by a single mother in a one-room apartment, helped her clean houses on weekends, wore thrift-store clothes. She identified heavily with her father, though she knew him only fleetingly for her first eight years. She emphasized her Native American heritage, which fits with the idealization-’
‘Which instrument?’ Mike asked. Graham looked at him blankly, so Mike said, ‘She was in the music society. Which instrument did she play?’
‘Flute, I think it was.’
Mike’s throat was dry, so he gestured with the gun for Graham to keep talking.
‘They were married out of high school. John ran a fabric distribution center. He was fairly paid but didn’t love his work. He loved baseball, western movies, and Mexican food. Danielle worked as a manager at a clothing store until he made enough, and then she stayed home. Family folks. Picnics on weekends, had a Dasher and a Ford station wagon – one of the Country Squires with the fake wood paneling?’