"Wilson-ThanksDiaz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ilson Robin)

ROBIN WILSON

THANKS, DIAZ

The worst thing about the robbery, the biggest one in our little town's history,
was that it came when I was just a couple of weeks on the new job, when I knew
everyone was still wondering, can the black guy hack it? But it wasn't just me
who was on the spot: Robberies of banks with federal charters don't stay local,
and this got everyone in the department uptight, eager to get it cleared fast,
or at least handed off with real clean site work to the Feds.

The best thing was that nobody got hurt, although Mrs. Symonds, who's the head
teller at the Modoc County Federal Savings & Loan on Elvis Street, said she was
sure it had cost her a couple of years off her life.

"Scared the livin' shit outta me," she said and then covered her mouth with
embarrassment and gave a sidelong glance over my shoulder at where Tani
jefferson, standing just outside the yellow crime scene tape stretched across
the tellers' counter, was covering the story for Channel 12.

"Oops," said Mrs. Symonds. "Better watch my tongue, the media here and all."

We were in the corner of the bank where people wait to talk to one of the bank
officers, get a car loan, straighten out some payment hassle. Mrs. Symonds was
sitting in the middle of the green Naugahyde couch, fanning herself. I stood in
front of her, bending my six and a half feet over so as not to loom too much,
which the Chief had warned me about when I shucked the blue and became the
department's sole detective. "Looking like a Lakers guard is great, Linc," he
had said. "That is, when you're in uniform, breaking up a Saturday night fight
over at the Wet Spot. But working in civvies, questioning people, eliciting
information-- you gotta be a little less -- ah -- imposing."

It was ten o'clock in the morning when I started in with Mrs. Symonds, the first
Thursday of the month. Outside in the warm April sunshine, two uniforms-- the
entire day watch in our little town-- were canvassing the merchants up and down
the street. A guy from County Criminalistics was dusting around the tellers'
stations and over around the front of the vault, although what he thought he'd
find was a mystery to me.

"Don't worry about the reporter, Mrs. Symonds," I said, making a mark in my
notebook to let her know I was ready to record her answers. "Just tell me what
happened. How many of them were there?"

"There was two of them, detective," she said. "Is 'detective' right; Or should
it be officer?"

"'Detective' is fine. Or Mundy. Or jeeze, Mrs. Symonds, you've known me since I
was a little kid. How about Linc?"

When I was old enough to be aware of adults outside my own household, and they
of me, I'm sure Mrs. Symonds had known me as that little colored kid down the
street. In our part of northern California, Negro and colored didn't become
"black" until I was a school kid, back in the late '70s. Now, four months into
the new century, African-American still hadn't made the local lingo, which was
okay with me.

"There was two of 'em," said Mrs. Symonds again. "The one guy, he came in the
bank and waved that big old gun around. Some kind of black thing with a big
curved whatchamacallit sticking out of the bottom ..."

"Magazine," I said.

"Yeah. Whatever. He's the one scared the--uh --you know outta me. Scared Milli
pretty good too, both of us layin' on the floor in front of the counter with our
eyes closed like he told us. Milli cried some, she was so scared.."

"Okay, then what happened."

"Well, I peeked. I could see the other one, the one out in that blue van that
was across the street? Headed toward Kenton? It had those smoky windows but I
could still see this man kinda bent over on the driver's side, calm as you
please, just gunnin' the motor a little. Vroom! Vroom! Over and over again,
regular as clockwork."

"And?" I had learned patience after nearly eight years in harness, but Mrs.
Symonds was pushing the envelope on it. Which was amusing Tani Jefferson, who
quit sighting through her hand-held and gave me a crooked grin, a raised eyebrow
on a face as brown and beautiful as my craziest teenage dream.

"And," said Mrs. Symonds, "the fellow inside musta known we got the armored
truck delivery that time on most Thursdays, 'cause he knew just where the bags
were in front of the vault, waitin' for us to inventory, put 'em away. Musta
known that was the morning Mr. Cleary would be at that Kiwanis thing. Musta
known that was the morning Mr. Hapwell had to take his kid to the orthodontist,
which is costing him a bundle, let me tell you, and on his salary ..."

"And?" My impatience showed this time. "Come on, Mrs. Symonds, what happened."

"Well, I'm tryin' to tell you. This little guy could hardly carry two of them
bags at a time, which believe you me they are very heavy. Took him three trips
out the front door to that van, carrying all that. People walking by and all,
but nobody paid him any attention. Three trips with me and Milli scared to death
on the floor, and then they was gone."

"Can you estimate the take?"

"Got the receipt here from Loomis. It was all bills, our big makeup after the
first of the month check cashing, the plant bein' on three shifts and all. Boy,
we been busy last couple of days. Not like it used to be before everybody went
to using plastic, but still ..."

"How much does; it say," I said, reaching for the receipt..

"It was a bunch," Mrs. Symonds said, hanging on to the receipt. "$993,320 to be
exact, mostly in twenties and hundreds. That's what people want nowadays."

Of course, mostly all we did was the crime scene stuff, and the Feds moved right
in. And to give the arrogant bastards credit, it only took them about a week to
break it, or at least most of it. We had a pretty clear picture on the bank's
surveillance camera which we circulated around the area, got a hit from a woman
in personnel out at the plant who recognized one Edward Ellsworth Gaffney from
when he had worked as some kind of computer geek in payroll out there. So the
Feds put out a wanted on the NCIC, and some smart beat cop turned up Gaffney
where he'd gone to ground in San Francisco. No sign of the million bucks,
however.

"One down, one to go," I said to the Chief the morning I got back from Treasure
Island, where I'd taken delivery of Gaffney from the SFPD. We would hold him for
a local lineup and then ship him off to the county slammer to await trial. I was
feeling kind of good, even though it had been the bank's camera, the FBI's
National Criminal Intelligence Network, and the sharp-eyed woman out at the
plant along with the patrolman in Frisco that'd solved the crime, made the
collar.

"Ah, the Feebs'll have the other guy in no time," said the Chief, nodding his
head and sticking out his lower lip the way experienced people do when they are
by-God sure. "They got Gaffney solid, two eyewitnesses, both made positives.
Prosecutor'll cut him a deal if he'll plead and roll on his buddy. First
offense, he'll maybe do half of a seven-to-ten,"

Which is just what happened. I sat in on the interrogation after the lineup, and
it didn't take much to get Gaffney to give up the name of the guy he said had
masterminded the whole thing. He had met this Fernando Luis Diaz in a bar two
nights before the robbery and they'd gotten drunk together. When Diaz had
proposed the robbery, Gaffney had gone along with it.

"It was a dumb thing to do," Gaffney said. "Real dumb. It was kind of a crappy
time for me. I was ready for anything. I didn't give a shit." He shook his head,
sitting at one end of the table in our little cage, a pale, overweight young guy
with long greasy brown hair, something kind of doughy about him. "I hope you
guys find Diaz and hang him higher'n a fuckin' kite," he said. And then his
anger turned to a whine. "Now I'm gonna do time for goddamn nothin', and it was
that Diaz talked me into doing all the heavy lifting and then he never showed up
the next morning at the parking lot out back of the 7-Eleven, where we was
supposed to make the split."

So the prosecutor cut his deal and they shipped Gaffney off on the fast road to
San Quentin. The Feds had Diaz' name and the make and model of the van he had
rented, and when it turned up on the recovered vehicle list, they had that too,
wiped clean of useful prints but still containing eleven empty canvas bags
marked "LOOMIS ARMORED DELIVERY." And of course then they had the Avis lease
agreement with Diaz' California driver's license number.

And that got them a ton of information on Diaz. They had his Social Security
number, the physical description on his driver's license (SEX: M HAIR: BLK EYES:
BR HT: 5-'07 WT: 155), his last known address, 'where he banked and when he :had
made his last deposits and withdrawals, and his Visa card account. They knew
when and where he'd been born (Alta, Louisiana, November 4th, 1979), when and
whom he had married (Bernadette Rae Jacks, 3/15/98) and when she divorced him
(2/27/00). They knew his shoe size (from a Visa charge) and the fact that he was
nearsighted (+1 diopter in each eye), from the records at Lenscrafters. It is an
information age and the more they dug here and there, the more they turned up.
Diaz had apparently had a pretty active Internet account through one of the
national providers, and he'd ordered stuff on the Visa account and signed up on
a bunch of those upgrade notification lists and joined a couple of porno clubs,
and all that's like throwing a rock in a big pond: The ripples go on and on.

They had all that, but after three months of the Feds searching nationwide, and
our little department -- for which read me -- checking out every local
possibility; nobody could find Diaz. None of the people I talked to who lived
anywhere near the last address we had for him admitted ever knowing the guy, and
every other lead turned up cold.

It was like he had dropped off the face of the earth, taking the million dollars
with him.

In the meantime, Gaffney had done his part of the deal, and even if it hadn't
led us to Diaz and the loot right away, the judge gave him a fairly gentle three
to five. And in a way, it satisfied everyone. Someone was doing time for the
crime and 'without the expense of a jury trial; the FBI had got their man, or at
least one of them~ our dinky little police department looked pretty
professional, which pleased the Chief and the mayor, and the Federal Banks
Insurance Corporation ate the million dollars, which didn't particularly set the
local citizens' teeth on edge. And who knew? Diaz might show up anytime,
although without any kind of a photograph or even an eyewitness to what he
looked like --Mrs. Symonds's description of who she saw in the van would have
just as well fit the Chief or ex-president Clinton, practically any guy in town
but me -- there was no way he'd show up on post office walls or appear on
America's Most Wanted. A million bucks and no casualties probably wasn't enough
to qualify him for show business anyway.

But I wasn't satisfied, probably because I was so new at the business. I
couldn't shake off the feeling that something wasn't quite right about the
robbery. Then one Sunday afternoon, maybe six months after Gaffney took up
residence at the Big Q, Tanisha and I had been talking trash and making
leisurely love when she rolled a little away from me on the new four-poster we'd
gotten when we moved in together and asked me that toughest of all lovers'
questions. "What's eatin' at you, Linc baby? I don't think you are all the way
with me this afternoon."

"You complainin'?"

"Aw no, sugar. It's just that it seem like you be somewhere else, you know what
I'm sayin?"

Now understand. Tani's got a degree from Berkeley in journalism, I've got one
from Sac State in criminal justice, and everywhere outside the bedroom and when
we're, you know, fighting over something or getting it on together, or making
some kind of serious decision, we speak pretty much white. It's second nature
for us. Only sometimes, like this, when it's first nature, our words come out
black. I guess it's what they used to call Ebonies there for a while, although
it's just the way some people grow up talking, the way they talk when they're
not on duty, not on stage, not mindful of who they are supposed to be rather
than who they way down deep inside really are. A question of identity, I guess.

"I bet both the Queen of England and the Pope have one time or another said,
'shit,'" is the way Tani put it to me once when we were laughing about what we
called our "indahouse" language.

"What do you suppose that is in Polish?"

"I don't know."

Anyway, this time, I said, "I can't put that bank robbery we had outta my mind,
can't let go of it."

"Maybe that's just cause you so new at the detective business. That was your
first real case."

"Maybe," I said. "But I can't see how that Diaz just sorta evaporated, like some
kinds bad dream. I don't mean got away. I can see how he might be hiding out
somewhere, maybe down in Louisiana where he was born. But it's like he never
existed in the first place. We haven't got any physical evidence -- no prints,
no pictures, no hair or nail clippings or pieces of fabric. Nothing. And so far
the Feds haven't even turned up anybody remembers ever knowin' the guy."

"Hey," said Tani, stretching herself out catlike beside me, her voice now again
languorous, truly her, "maybe he the little man tha' wasn't there. But you the
big man tha' was there, or at less' you was jus' a while ago. Any chance you
gonna be again soon?"

I think it was about then that I began to suspect the truth about the Modoc
County Federal Savings & Loan. robbery, but for a long time it was too
implausible to tell anybody about and I was still too full of doubt about myself
to risk voicing any wild theories. And then time went on and the case slipped
back into one of those closed filing cabinets everybody has in the back of their
mind. Closed, not locked.

Tani and I got married, adding one more to the fifty or so black families still
floating a little uncertainly in our white county. I got promoted to lieutenant
and spent more time with paper and less with perps. Tani got a new contract as
lead anchor with the six o'clock desk even though she was more than six months
pregnant and had stopped doing standups. The town got a new mayor, who was a
pretty good woman, and life sailed along as smoothly as life ever does.

And then, after thirty-three months, Gaffney was released on good time and
reported in as he: was ordered to by the county parole officer. I took the
interview in our little cage, where I'd last seen him during his. initial
interrogation. This time, Gaffney sat there fit and cheerful, looking at me
across the Formica-topped table with a grin on his face. Prison had cleaned him
up considerably, like the dough had been baked.

"So, Mr. Gaffney, you planning to settle in back here?"

"No, officer. I'm gonna handle a little business I got here, some stuff I left
in a friend's basement, and then I'm, like, outta here."

We knew about the stuff in the friend's basement. It had been thoroughly
searched and inventoried. "Job lined up somewhere?" I said.

"Yeah. Down in the Bay area."

"Doing what?"

"I had a chance to sharpen up some of my computer skills, there in the Q. Gotta
job cuttin' code, little place in Cupertino."

I stared at him a moment, noted the smug expression of the successful con
artist, and said to myself, to hell with it.

"Mr. Gaffney," I said. "I have this theory. I think you got an idea from all
those computer hackers stealing people's identities, cashing in on their
plastic, all that. I gotta hunch there never was any Diaz. I think you had a
dummy of some kind there in that van, had something wired onto the accelerator
linkage made the engine rev like that. I think you had a whole fake identity for
this Diaz built up in people's files, the social security, the banks, VISA, the
DMV, all those agencies, and once you got it started, it kinds grew on its own,
people puttin' those whatchmacallems, those cookies? Things that let Internet
vendors know what you're interested in? Putting them on this phony Diaz's web
account, and so the name and all his vitals, they just sort of began to expand
all across the country, wherever anybody had certain kinds of computer files,
this Diaz identity would eventually show up in them."

Gaffney was looking distinctly uncomfortable but he grunted a laugh. "What a
load of shit, Lieutenant. Why'd I wanna do something like that?"

"So's you could have someone to rat out, give up to the prosecutor, cut a deal.
Just like you did."

"That's bullshit. What you been smokin', man?"

"Yeah. It may be bullshit and maybe I'm overestimating you, but I don't think
so. You're out in thirty-three months, which you divide that into almost a
million bucks, makes about thirty-some grand a month salary for doing pretty
easy time. And tax-fucking-free."

Gaffney stood up, smiles and smugness gone. "You done with me?"

"Yeah, Gaffney. I'm done with you. But I'll be keeping an eye out and I'm gonna
alert your parole officer down there in the Bay area, we hear you suddenly
spending money, investing a million bucks in something, I'm gonna come looking."

It was an empty threat and Gaffney knew it, and in fact if he did spend some
money, I was unaware of it. I never heard anything at all about Gaffney against
except once.

It was seven years later -- our oldest kid, Richard, was in second grade, I'd
been Chief for a year, and Rome had a new Pope, London a new monarch M when I
was noodling around one evening with Richard's little beat-up netbook, which by
then, of course, every school kid in the country was carrying. Even though they
were new and a little crude then, it was a nifty little thing, whole lot lighter
than the ragged old books I carried in grade school and the kids could reach
anything in the world the netnanny'd allow, which was pretty much anything that
wouldn't make your old maiden aunt blush.

Anyway, both kids were tucked in for the night and I was just surfin' around,
waiting for Tani to get home from her evening broadcast, and just for the hell
of it, I dug out some old notes and punched in FIND: DIAZ, FERNANDO LUIS, and
added his Social Security number. In retrospect, I realize I wasn't just idly
horsing around, that the mystery surrounding the Gaffney-Diaz robbery still
rankled. Maybe Tani had been right, what she'd said those years before..Maybe it
was because it was my first case as a detective: I'd gone from. being submerged
in my blackness to being nameless in my blues. Then I had a shot at being
someone a little different and I couldn't bear the threat of failing at it.

I tapped the ENTER key and I got a hit right away. The little five-inch
bubble-gas screen lit up with one short sentence in 24 point bold.

WHOEVER YOU ARE:

DON'T' FUCK WITH DIAZ.

-- DIAZ

I thought, oh my God, that Gaffney's still playing around with this phony
creature he built, still playing mind-games.

And so I punched in FIND: GAFFNEY, EDWARD ELLSWORTH and his SSN.

The screen came back with a bunch of references, mostly newspaper stories and
court files from. the time of the robbery and his plea and sentencing. The most
recent entry, however, was a brief excerpt from a three-year-old story in the
Southport Evening Post, which is I guess an Australian newspaper, on the death
of "American expatriate and bon vivant E.E. Gaffney" who had died in a hot tub
with two young women, apparently the victim of accidental drowning after too
much alcohol or drugs.

So, I thought, that's where the million went.

But if Gaffney had been three years dead, was no longer manipulating the
electronic identity of Fernando Luis Diaz, who was? Who or what the hell was
Diaz? Was it some kind of joke Gaffney had arranged to continue after his death?
I supposed that it was technically possible. But why?

It was more mystery than I wanted. I had a good job, great wife, kids. I no
longer needed to solve the first mystery of my detection career. In an antic
mood, smiling a little ruefully at my own unsettled psychology, I clicked up the
URL for the Diaz note and typed in,

SCREW YOU, DIAZ, AND THE SERVER YOU RODE IN ON.

-- LINC MUNDY

I had almost forgotten the matter the next morning when a casual query from my
bank led me to a frantic half hour on the telephone and -again--the net,
discovering that every electronic trace of Lincoln Eugene Mundy had been wiped
from every file I had time to examine: bank account, credit cards, Benevolent
and Protective Order of Police, NAACP, and so on.

I was thunderstruck. It was clear that Diaz had taken his revenge.

I called up Tani at home just before she was to leave for the station, and
before she could say a word, I told her in one long breathless rush what had
happened, ending with, "Everything, Tani, everything's gone! I'm kind of an
unperson!"

There was silence on the line for a moment and then she said, "Who'd you say
this was?"

My heart stopped.

And then Tani laughed, that deep-in-the-middle-of-intimacy rumbling, throaty
laugh, and said, "It's all right, baby. It's all right."

And then for the first time I truly knew who I was, and to hell with you Diaz.

But thanks, too.




ROBIN WILSON

THANKS, DIAZ

The worst thing about the robbery, the biggest one in our little town's history,
was that it came when I was just a couple of weeks on the new job, when I knew
everyone was still wondering, can the black guy hack it? But it wasn't just me
who was on the spot: Robberies of banks with federal charters don't stay local,
and this got everyone in the department uptight, eager to get it cleared fast,
or at least handed off with real clean site work to the Feds.

The best thing was that nobody got hurt, although Mrs. Symonds, who's the head
teller at the Modoc County Federal Savings & Loan on Elvis Street, said she was
sure it had cost her a couple of years off her life.

"Scared the livin' shit outta me," she said and then covered her mouth with
embarrassment and gave a sidelong glance over my shoulder at where Tani
jefferson, standing just outside the yellow crime scene tape stretched across
the tellers' counter, was covering the story for Channel 12.

"Oops," said Mrs. Symonds. "Better watch my tongue, the media here and all."

We were in the corner of the bank where people wait to talk to one of the bank
officers, get a car loan, straighten out some payment hassle. Mrs. Symonds was
sitting in the middle of the green Naugahyde couch, fanning herself. I stood in
front of her, bending my six and a half feet over so as not to loom too much,
which the Chief had warned me about when I shucked the blue and became the
department's sole detective. "Looking like a Lakers guard is great, Linc," he
had said. "That is, when you're in uniform, breaking up a Saturday night fight
over at the Wet Spot. But working in civvies, questioning people, eliciting
information-- you gotta be a little less -- ah -- imposing."

It was ten o'clock in the morning when I started in with Mrs. Symonds, the first
Thursday of the month. Outside in the warm April sunshine, two uniforms-- the
entire day watch in our little town-- were canvassing the merchants up and down
the street. A guy from County Criminalistics was dusting around the tellers'
stations and over around the front of the vault, although what he thought he'd
find was a mystery to me.

"Don't worry about the reporter, Mrs. Symonds," I said, making a mark in my
notebook to let her know I was ready to record her answers. "Just tell me what
happened. How many of them were there?"

"There was two of them, detective," she said. "Is 'detective' right; Or should
it be officer?"

"'Detective' is fine. Or Mundy. Or jeeze, Mrs. Symonds, you've known me since I
was a little kid. How about Linc?"

When I was old enough to be aware of adults outside my own household, and they
of me, I'm sure Mrs. Symonds had known me as that little colored kid down the
street. In our part of northern California, Negro and colored didn't become
"black" until I was a school kid, back in the late '70s. Now, four months into
the new century, African-American still hadn't made the local lingo, which was
okay with me.

"There was two of 'em," said Mrs. Symonds again. "The one guy, he came in the
bank and waved that big old gun around. Some kind of black thing with a big
curved whatchamacallit sticking out of the bottom ..."

"Magazine," I said.

"Yeah. Whatever. He's the one scared the--uh --you know outta me. Scared Milli
pretty good too, both of us layin' on the floor in front of the counter with our
eyes closed like he told us. Milli cried some, she was so scared.."

"Okay, then what happened."

"Well, I peeked. I could see the other one, the one out in that blue van that
was across the street? Headed toward Kenton? It had those smoky windows but I
could still see this man kinda bent over on the driver's side, calm as you
please, just gunnin' the motor a little. Vroom! Vroom! Over and over again,
regular as clockwork."

"And?" I had learned patience after nearly eight years in harness, but Mrs.
Symonds was pushing the envelope on it. Which was amusing Tani Jefferson, who
quit sighting through her hand-held and gave me a crooked grin, a raised eyebrow
on a face as brown and beautiful as my craziest teenage dream.

"And," said Mrs. Symonds, "the fellow inside musta known we got the armored
truck delivery that time on most Thursdays, 'cause he knew just where the bags
were in front of the vault, waitin' for us to inventory, put 'em away. Musta
known that was the morning Mr. Cleary would be at that Kiwanis thing. Musta
known that was the morning Mr. Hapwell had to take his kid to the orthodontist,
which is costing him a bundle, let me tell you, and on his salary ..."

"And?" My impatience showed this time. "Come on, Mrs. Symonds, what happened."

"Well, I'm tryin' to tell you. This little guy could hardly carry two of them
bags at a time, which believe you me they are very heavy. Took him three trips
out the front door to that van, carrying all that. People walking by and all,
but nobody paid him any attention. Three trips with me and Milli scared to death
on the floor, and then they was gone."

"Can you estimate the take?"

"Got the receipt here from Loomis. It was all bills, our big makeup after the
first of the month check cashing, the plant bein' on three shifts and all. Boy,
we been busy last couple of days. Not like it used to be before everybody went
to using plastic, but still ..."

"How much does; it say," I said, reaching for the receipt..

"It was a bunch," Mrs. Symonds said, hanging on to the receipt. "$993,320 to be
exact, mostly in twenties and hundreds. That's what people want nowadays."

Of course, mostly all we did was the crime scene stuff, and the Feds moved right
in. And to give the arrogant bastards credit, it only took them about a week to
break it, or at least most of it. We had a pretty clear picture on the bank's
surveillance camera which we circulated around the area, got a hit from a woman
in personnel out at the plant who recognized one Edward Ellsworth Gaffney from
when he had worked as some kind of computer geek in payroll out there. So the
Feds put out a wanted on the NCIC, and some smart beat cop turned up Gaffney
where he'd gone to ground in San Francisco. No sign of the million bucks,
however.

"One down, one to go," I said to the Chief the morning I got back from Treasure
Island, where I'd taken delivery of Gaffney from the SFPD. We would hold him for
a local lineup and then ship him off to the county slammer to await trial. I was
feeling kind of good, even though it had been the bank's camera, the FBI's
National Criminal Intelligence Network, and the sharp-eyed woman out at the
plant along with the patrolman in Frisco that'd solved the crime, made the
collar.

"Ah, the Feebs'll have the other guy in no time," said the Chief, nodding his
head and sticking out his lower lip the way experienced people do when they are
by-God sure. "They got Gaffney solid, two eyewitnesses, both made positives.
Prosecutor'll cut him a deal if he'll plead and roll on his buddy. First
offense, he'll maybe do half of a seven-to-ten,"

Which is just what happened. I sat in on the interrogation after the lineup, and
it didn't take much to get Gaffney to give up the name of the guy he said had
masterminded the whole thing. He had met this Fernando Luis Diaz in a bar two
nights before the robbery and they'd gotten drunk together. When Diaz had
proposed the robbery, Gaffney had gone along with it.

"It was a dumb thing to do," Gaffney said. "Real dumb. It was kind of a crappy
time for me. I was ready for anything. I didn't give a shit." He shook his head,
sitting at one end of the table in our little cage, a pale, overweight young guy
with long greasy brown hair, something kind of doughy about him. "I hope you
guys find Diaz and hang him higher'n a fuckin' kite," he said. And then his
anger turned to a whine. "Now I'm gonna do time for goddamn nothin', and it was
that Diaz talked me into doing all the heavy lifting and then he never showed up
the next morning at the parking lot out back of the 7-Eleven, where we was
supposed to make the split."

So the prosecutor cut his deal and they shipped Gaffney off on the fast road to
San Quentin. The Feds had Diaz' name and the make and model of the van he had
rented, and when it turned up on the recovered vehicle list, they had that too,
wiped clean of useful prints but still containing eleven empty canvas bags
marked "LOOMIS ARMORED DELIVERY." And of course then they had the Avis lease
agreement with Diaz' California driver's license number.

And that got them a ton of information on Diaz. They had his Social Security
number, the physical description on his driver's license (SEX: M HAIR: BLK EYES:
BR HT: 5-'07 WT: 155), his last known address, 'where he banked and when he :had
made his last deposits and withdrawals, and his Visa card account. They knew
when and where he'd been born (Alta, Louisiana, November 4th, 1979), when and
whom he had married (Bernadette Rae Jacks, 3/15/98) and when she divorced him
(2/27/00). They knew his shoe size (from a Visa charge) and the fact that he was
nearsighted (+1 diopter in each eye), from the records at Lenscrafters. It is an
information age and the more they dug here and there, the more they turned up.
Diaz had apparently had a pretty active Internet account through one of the
national providers, and he'd ordered stuff on the Visa account and signed up on
a bunch of those upgrade notification lists and joined a couple of porno clubs,
and all that's like throwing a rock in a big pond: The ripples go on and on.

They had all that, but after three months of the Feds searching nationwide, and
our little department -- for which read me -- checking out every local
possibility; nobody could find Diaz. None of the people I talked to who lived
anywhere near the last address we had for him admitted ever knowing the guy, and
every other lead turned up cold.

It was like he had dropped off the face of the earth, taking the million dollars
with him.

In the meantime, Gaffney had done his part of the deal, and even if it hadn't
led us to Diaz and the loot right away, the judge gave him a fairly gentle three
to five. And in a way, it satisfied everyone. Someone was doing time for the
crime and 'without the expense of a jury trial; the FBI had got their man, or at
least one of them~ our dinky little police department looked pretty
professional, which pleased the Chief and the mayor, and the Federal Banks
Insurance Corporation ate the million dollars, which didn't particularly set the
local citizens' teeth on edge. And who knew? Diaz might show up anytime,
although without any kind of a photograph or even an eyewitness to what he
looked like --Mrs. Symonds's description of who she saw in the van would have
just as well fit the Chief or ex-president Clinton, practically any guy in town
but me -- there was no way he'd show up on post office walls or appear on
America's Most Wanted. A million bucks and no casualties probably wasn't enough
to qualify him for show business anyway.

But I wasn't satisfied, probably because I was so new at the business. I
couldn't shake off the feeling that something wasn't quite right about the
robbery. Then one Sunday afternoon, maybe six months after Gaffney took up
residence at the Big Q, Tanisha and I had been talking trash and making
leisurely love when she rolled a little away from me on the new four-poster we'd
gotten when we moved in together and asked me that toughest of all lovers'
questions. "What's eatin' at you, Linc baby? I don't think you are all the way
with me this afternoon."

"You complainin'?"

"Aw no, sugar. It's just that it seem like you be somewhere else, you know what
I'm sayin?"

Now understand. Tani's got a degree from Berkeley in journalism, I've got one
from Sac State in criminal justice, and everywhere outside the bedroom and when
we're, you know, fighting over something or getting it on together, or making
some kind of serious decision, we speak pretty much white. It's second nature
for us. Only sometimes, like this, when it's first nature, our words come out
black. I guess it's what they used to call Ebonies there for a while, although
it's just the way some people grow up talking, the way they talk when they're
not on duty, not on stage, not mindful of who they are supposed to be rather
than who they way down deep inside really are. A question of identity, I guess.

"I bet both the Queen of England and the Pope have one time or another said,
'shit,'" is the way Tani put it to me once when we were laughing about what we
called our "indahouse" language.

"What do you suppose that is in Polish?"

"I don't know."

Anyway, this time, I said, "I can't put that bank robbery we had outta my mind,
can't let go of it."

"Maybe that's just cause you so new at the detective business. That was your
first real case."

"Maybe," I said. "But I can't see how that Diaz just sorta evaporated, like some
kinds bad dream. I don't mean got away. I can see how he might be hiding out
somewhere, maybe down in Louisiana where he was born. But it's like he never
existed in the first place. We haven't got any physical evidence -- no prints,
no pictures, no hair or nail clippings or pieces of fabric. Nothing. And so far
the Feds haven't even turned up anybody remembers ever knowin' the guy."

"Hey," said Tani, stretching herself out catlike beside me, her voice now again
languorous, truly her, "maybe he the little man tha' wasn't there. But you the
big man tha' was there, or at less' you was jus' a while ago. Any chance you
gonna be again soon?"

I think it was about then that I began to suspect the truth about the Modoc
County Federal Savings & Loan. robbery, but for a long time it was too
implausible to tell anybody about and I was still too full of doubt about myself
to risk voicing any wild theories. And then time went on and the case slipped
back into one of those closed filing cabinets everybody has in the back of their
mind. Closed, not locked.

Tani and I got married, adding one more to the fifty or so black families still
floating a little uncertainly in our white county. I got promoted to lieutenant
and spent more time with paper and less with perps. Tani got a new contract as
lead anchor with the six o'clock desk even though she was more than six months
pregnant and had stopped doing standups. The town got a new mayor, who was a
pretty good woman, and life sailed along as smoothly as life ever does.

And then, after thirty-three months, Gaffney was released on good time and
reported in as he: was ordered to by the county parole officer. I took the
interview in our little cage, where I'd last seen him during his. initial
interrogation. This time, Gaffney sat there fit and cheerful, looking at me
across the Formica-topped table with a grin on his face. Prison had cleaned him
up considerably, like the dough had been baked.

"So, Mr. Gaffney, you planning to settle in back here?"

"No, officer. I'm gonna handle a little business I got here, some stuff I left
in a friend's basement, and then I'm, like, outta here."

We knew about the stuff in the friend's basement. It had been thoroughly
searched and inventoried. "Job lined up somewhere?" I said.

"Yeah. Down in the Bay area."

"Doing what?"

"I had a chance to sharpen up some of my computer skills, there in the Q. Gotta
job cuttin' code, little place in Cupertino."

I stared at him a moment, noted the smug expression of the successful con
artist, and said to myself, to hell with it.

"Mr. Gaffney," I said. "I have this theory. I think you got an idea from all
those computer hackers stealing people's identities, cashing in on their
plastic, all that. I gotta hunch there never was any Diaz. I think you had a
dummy of some kind there in that van, had something wired onto the accelerator
linkage made the engine rev like that. I think you had a whole fake identity for
this Diaz built up in people's files, the social security, the banks, VISA, the
DMV, all those agencies, and once you got it started, it kinds grew on its own,
people puttin' those whatchmacallems, those cookies? Things that let Internet
vendors know what you're interested in? Putting them on this phony Diaz's web
account, and so the name and all his vitals, they just sort of began to expand
all across the country, wherever anybody had certain kinds of computer files,
this Diaz identity would eventually show up in them."

Gaffney was looking distinctly uncomfortable but he grunted a laugh. "What a
load of shit, Lieutenant. Why'd I wanna do something like that?"

"So's you could have someone to rat out, give up to the prosecutor, cut a deal.
Just like you did."

"That's bullshit. What you been smokin', man?"

"Yeah. It may be bullshit and maybe I'm overestimating you, but I don't think
so. You're out in thirty-three months, which you divide that into almost a
million bucks, makes about thirty-some grand a month salary for doing pretty
easy time. And tax-fucking-free."

Gaffney stood up, smiles and smugness gone. "You done with me?"

"Yeah, Gaffney. I'm done with you. But I'll be keeping an eye out and I'm gonna
alert your parole officer down there in the Bay area, we hear you suddenly
spending money, investing a million bucks in something, I'm gonna come looking."

It was an empty threat and Gaffney knew it, and in fact if he did spend some
money, I was unaware of it. I never heard anything at all about Gaffney against
except once.

It was seven years later -- our oldest kid, Richard, was in second grade, I'd
been Chief for a year, and Rome had a new Pope, London a new monarch M when I
was noodling around one evening with Richard's little beat-up netbook, which by
then, of course, every school kid in the country was carrying. Even though they
were new and a little crude then, it was a nifty little thing, whole lot lighter
than the ragged old books I carried in grade school and the kids could reach
anything in the world the netnanny'd allow, which was pretty much anything that
wouldn't make your old maiden aunt blush.

Anyway, both kids were tucked in for the night and I was just surfin' around,
waiting for Tani to get home from her evening broadcast, and just for the hell
of it, I dug out some old notes and punched in FIND: DIAZ, FERNANDO LUIS, and
added his Social Security number. In retrospect, I realize I wasn't just idly
horsing around, that the mystery surrounding the Gaffney-Diaz robbery still
rankled. Maybe Tani had been right, what she'd said those years before..Maybe it
was because it was my first case as a detective: I'd gone from. being submerged
in my blackness to being nameless in my blues. Then I had a shot at being
someone a little different and I couldn't bear the threat of failing at it.

I tapped the ENTER key and I got a hit right away. The little five-inch
bubble-gas screen lit up with one short sentence in 24 point bold.

WHOEVER YOU ARE:

DON'T' FUCK WITH DIAZ.

-- DIAZ

I thought, oh my God, that Gaffney's still playing around with this phony
creature he built, still playing mind-games.

And so I punched in FIND: GAFFNEY, EDWARD ELLSWORTH and his SSN.

The screen came back with a bunch of references, mostly newspaper stories and
court files from. the time of the robbery and his plea and sentencing. The most
recent entry, however, was a brief excerpt from a three-year-old story in the
Southport Evening Post, which is I guess an Australian newspaper, on the death
of "American expatriate and bon vivant E.E. Gaffney" who had died in a hot tub
with two young women, apparently the victim of accidental drowning after too
much alcohol or drugs.

So, I thought, that's where the million went.

But if Gaffney had been three years dead, was no longer manipulating the
electronic identity of Fernando Luis Diaz, who was? Who or what the hell was
Diaz? Was it some kind of joke Gaffney had arranged to continue after his death?
I supposed that it was technically possible. But why?

It was more mystery than I wanted. I had a good job, great wife, kids. I no
longer needed to solve the first mystery of my detection career. In an antic
mood, smiling a little ruefully at my own unsettled psychology, I clicked up the
URL for the Diaz note and typed in,

SCREW YOU, DIAZ, AND THE SERVER YOU RODE IN ON.

-- LINC MUNDY

I had almost forgotten the matter the next morning when a casual query from my
bank led me to a frantic half hour on the telephone and -again--the net,
discovering that every electronic trace of Lincoln Eugene Mundy had been wiped
from every file I had time to examine: bank account, credit cards, Benevolent
and Protective Order of Police, NAACP, and so on.

I was thunderstruck. It was clear that Diaz had taken his revenge.

I called up Tani at home just before she was to leave for the station, and
before she could say a word, I told her in one long breathless rush what had
happened, ending with, "Everything, Tani, everything's gone! I'm kind of an
unperson!"

There was silence on the line for a moment and then she said, "Who'd you say
this was?"

My heart stopped.

And then Tani laughed, that deep-in-the-middle-of-intimacy rumbling, throaty
laugh, and said, "It's all right, baby. It's all right."

And then for the first time I truly knew who I was, and to hell with you Diaz.

But thanks, too.