[Alex Vane 03.0] The Mockingbird Drive Read online

  I ordered a double espresso and scanned the TVs mounted over the bar. Half of them were on sports channels, the rest on news. One of the news channels was local, and was covering something about a shooting in Las Vegas. But I didn't pay any attention to it because I was taking in the scene.

  Until a few years ago, I hated Vegas. But that was because I didn't know what it was really like. I had an outdated view borrowed from books, movies, and probably some anti-gambling after-school-special I'd seen as a kid. If you haven't been to Vegas in a while, close your eyes and picture it. What do you see first? The Rat Pack, Bugsy Siegel, fat Elvis? Or maybe showgirls, cheap buffets, and cheesy slot machines? Don't get me wrong, you can still see some of those things. But now there's much more.

  In 1957, Vegas made 70% of its revenue from gambling. In 1987, it was 65%. Today, it's only 30%. But Vegas is booming, so where does all the money come from? Shows, clubs, shopping, food, booze, and rooms. And now that gambling is just one of Vegas's many attractions, you'll find a more diverse class of tourists in high-end resorts like The Wynn. To my left, a table of Asian men in nice suits talked loudly on cellphones. In front of me, a beautiful young couple watched soccer on an iPad while trying to corral a sticky toddler. To my right, three men with matching biceps ate burgers and talked MMA. Behind me, a table of gorgeous young women glanced at each new man as he walked in, looking for someone to buy them drinks. A bro in flip flops was doing shots at the bar, about to become that someone. And then there was me. Another forty-something guy whose business-casual attire got nicer over the years as his belly got softer, eyes dancing from TV to TV, praying that the magic of Vegas would make him cool again. At least for a night.

  I was pulling out my phone when Innerva slid into the chair across from me. She wore a black turtleneck and blue jeans as always—her Steve Jobs look—but she didn't make eye contact as I expected.

  I looked around the bar. "Where's James?"

  "Dead."

  Innerva never lied. I'm not even sure she knew how. But at first I didn't believe her. "Seriously, where is he?"

  "James was killed. This morning."

  I didn't say anything. Just stared at her. Her hair was wet, her eyes were puffy and dark, and her voice was barely audible. I kept hearing his name in my head, repeated over and over like when I was a kid and I'd repeat a word to myself until it lost all meaning.

  "Alex, this is real. He was killed."

  "James was…Are you sure? I mean…are you okay?"

  "I don't know how I am. I'm in shock."

  So was I, and I didn't know what to say. The phrase was killed flashed in my head like a neon sign. He hadn't been hit by a car or died of a heart attack on the treadmill. He was killed.

  James had always been vague with details, but over the years he'd led me to believe that he and Innerva were behind some huge stories. There was the oil spill IMG Oil didn't want you to know about, for example. James and Innerva managed to get their hands on all the records, including IMG's efforts to cover it up. Or the time the Prime Minister of India tried to sell seats in Parliament and Innerva leaked recordings of his phone calls. They'd even leaked the emails of a Major General who'd had six women dishonorably discharged after they accused him of sexual assault. The bottom line: any number of people would have wanted James dead.

  I leaned to the side to try to meet her eyes, but they were fixed on one of the TVs. She pointed at the screen without looking at me. "James was there. The Gazette."

  I'd ignored the shooting earlier. Like a lot of people, I went numb after Sandy Hook. But now I read the segment bar at the bottom of the screen: Six Dead in Mass Shooting. The TV showed a talking head on the left and video footage from a helicopter on the right. The scene was a one-block strip mall with parking in the front, an alley in the back, and one of those large, back-lit plastic displays by the street that lists the six or eight businesses in the strip. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but my first instinct was to open my phone, to distract myself with a little Angry Birds or Plants vs. Zombies. Maybe scroll through my social media feeds. I turned my phone face down on the table.

  According to the scroll on the bottom of the screen, police were confirming that there had been only one shooter. He'd killed all five people who were at The Gazette at the time, then taken his own life. So far, no survivors or witnesses had been identified. That was when I started to form my mental picture of the shooting.

  "How can you be sure he was there?" I asked. "It says the names of the victims and the shooter haven't been released."

  "He was there."

  Innerva never spoke without knowing she was right, but her news didn't feel real. Five minutes ago, I'd expected James to slide into the booth, hug me awkwardly, then drink six Cokes or six Diet Cokes—depending on whether he was dieting or not—while telling me the CliffsNotes version of their latest info grab. Two minutes ago, I was imagining which of his stories had gotten him killed. Now Innerva was telling me he'd been killed in a random mass shooting. Like I said, it didn't feel real.

  Then I remembered something. "When you emailed me this morning, why'd you say that James had a story for me? Why didn't you tell me he was dead?"

  Innerva said nothing, but I could tell she was concealing something by the way she was biting her bottom lip.

  "It's because you don't think he was killed by a random gunman. And you didn't want to say that in an email." Innerva's emails bounced between ten countries and six levels of anonymization before landing on my laptop, but she was still cautious about what she put in writing.

  She reached across the table, took my hand, and met my eyes for the first time. "Look, Alex. I probably shouldn't even be here. I don't know for sure what happened. I really don't. I'd tell you if I did."

  "Were you and James involved in anything especially dark lately?"

  She was quiet for a full minute as I glanced back and forth between her and the screen, feeling like she both wanted and didn't want to tell me something. Finally, she pulled a cheap red backpack from under the table, unzipped it, and swung it onto my lap. She said, "This was our most recent side project."

  Inside the backpack was a plastic case that reminded me of the food dehydrator Greta used to make salmon jerky and chia crisps.

  Innerva said, "It's a hard drive. We got it about a week ago. James was at The Gazette to meet with Benjamin Huang."

  "He's the editor there, right?"

  "Was the editor. He's dead, too." She paused a beat, then said, "James took it to see if Ben could get the data off it. I'm good with code and security, but I don't know old hardware like he did. He knew computer collectors and was tied into the local maker community."

  I took out the drive, which was heavier than it looked. Ten pounds, maybe. "If he took it to The Gazette, how am I holding it?"

  "We had two. Sent James with one just to see if Huang could get the data off."

  "Do I want to know any more?"

  "No, but here we are."

  "Have you spoken to the police?"

  "If the police knew who I was, I'd be one of the most wanted women on earth."

  "So, no."

  "Right. No."

  "And you think this drive had something to do with the shooting?" I pointed up at the TV. The segment bar at the bottom now read: Domestic Terrorism or Deranged Loner?

  "Probably not. I don't know for sure. But I know I'm leaving town and I'm leaving the drive with you."

  "And you don't know what's on it?"

  "No. Very few people have the parts to get readable data off a hard drive that old. We were hoping Ben would."

  "Where'd you get it?"

  "From a guy."

  "Where'd he get it? I mean, where's it from originally?"

  "We're not sure."

  "But you have a hunch?"

  "James and I had some educated guesses."

  I like to get to the point as quickly as possible, and Innerva usually did as well. But her vague answers were starting to piss me off. I retu
rned the drive to the backpack. "I don't want it. If you thought it was important enough to send James with a decoy, then—"

  "Alex, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I know James is dead. I know it probably has nothing to do with this drive, but it might. Either way, there may be something interesting on it. In a minute I'll be gone and it will be sitting on your lap. Throw it away if you want, or leave it here. Whatever. But you may be able to get a story out of it. This could be your chance to be a journalist again."

  She said it without judgment. As if it were a simple matter of fact that I was not a journalist. I'm sure James had been pushing the "Alex is a sellout" narrative for years, and I couldn't exactly argue the point.

  When James and I split up, I kept News Scoop going and James kept me honest by feeding me serious stories from time to time. But do you know what happened when we ran pieces revealing the media's worst shenanigans? Unless they involved sex, racial slurs, or public drunkenness, no one clicked. After a while, James started giving the best stuff to the big, international papers and throwing me the leftovers, the stories he was too embarrassed to give anyone else. They were still big news, but not the nation-shakers he gave to the people he actually respected. Six years ago, News Scoop had become The Barker. And as James grew more radical and I grew more shallow, we lost touch. He stopped calling me to Vegas, and his old email addresses stopped working. I'd taken our baby and turned it into one of the most successful websites in the world, but journalistically just one rung above The National Enquirer. I was a sellout. A dealer in listicles. A clickbait whore. I'd become the guy we'd started News Scoop to investigate in the first place.

  So, what do I do all day?

  Remember the story about the granite-jawed NFL quarterback cheating on his wife with the babysitter? Or the video of the A-list actor running over a prostitute in the parking lot of a bodega in east L.A.? I was behind those stories. I run the stuff real news outlets refuse to cover until it goes viral and they can swoop in with their condescending meta story: "Internet Goes Crazy for Celebrity Scandal, Journalism in Peril."

  Our biggest winner last year was a video of Dusty Price—the actor who does the voices on that Laughing Dinosaur show—calling some poor valet parker a "faggot" outside the Windswept Club in San Diego. You probably watched it at work before deleting your browsing history. To create the video, I'd purchased the silent footage from a security camera and an audio-only recording from some random guy's cellphone. Then Bird had spliced them together. We even hired a lip reader for the day to help out. Maybe Price is homophobic, maybe he's not. I don't especially care. When I bought the video, I cared about only one thing.

  Clicks.

  In my business, clicks equal ad sales and ad sales equal money. Within twelve hours, every entertainment show in the country picked up the Dusty Price story. Eight million people shared the link on social media. Eighty-million watched the video. The Barker made more money. Plus, a bunch of parents got to learn that the hilarious dinosaur their kids adore is played by an asshole. The point is, the story took over the world for a few hours, and I made it happen.

  Sure I feel crappy about some of the stories we run, but it's not like we're the only ones. Take Vanity Fair, for example. They've run some of the best investigative pieces over the last decade: AIDS in Africa, The Secret Life of Kim Jong-Il, Inside Guantanamo. But can you guess their best-selling issue ever? It was "Call Me Caitlin," which might as well have been titled "C-List Celebrity Sex-Change Shocker!" Eighteen extra printings. Four billion impressions on social media. So before you join the truth-crusaders like Innerva and James on their high horse, check your browser history. You like gossip as much as I do. Well-written, deeply-investigated news is great, but I'm not a snob about it. I'm as happy watching Friends as I am watching Fellini. To Greta's dismay, I'd stop for Chicken Nuggets on the way home from a $200 sushi dinner. If people don't click on Fellini, I give them Friends. They're scrolling past sushi? I sell them a damn Happy Meal.

  I didn't say any of this to Innerva, of course. What I said was, "If you don't know what's on the drive, and if you don't know if it had anything to do with the shooting, why are you saying it's my chance to be a journalist again?"

  Innerva stood up. "Two reasons. First, I have a feeling there's something good on this thing. James thought so, too."

  "And the second?"

  "Because I can't do it. I'm disappearing. Today."

  "Where are you going?"

  She just stared at me.

  "Will you contact me again?"

  "Possibly."

  "Can you at least tell me why you're disappearing?"

  "I don't usually need a reason."

  "But you have one this time."

  I studied her face until I was sure she wasn't going to tell me anything else, then said, "Okay, I'll look into it." I didn't know if I actually would, but it seemed like the thing to say. I zipped the backpack closed and slid it to the floor near my feet.

  Innerva stood, tossing an index card across the table. "You can find a hardware expert back in Seattle, but if you want someone local, tell The Overclocker I sent you. She's who we would have asked if Huang couldn't help. She's a little odd, but you can trust her."

  I looked down at the card. An address on some Las Vegas street I'd never heard of. "What's an Overclocker?" I asked.

  When I looked up, Innerva was walking towards a row of slot machines.

  My mind darted between panic, despair, and blankness. James was dead. I understood this intellectually, but it hadn't actually hit me yet. I didn't want it to, so I picked up my phone.

  The shooting was already trending on Facebook and Twitter. By this point, Captain Shonda Payton had issued a generic statement to the press and the old man who'd called in the shooting was doing the rounds on TV, enjoying his five minutes of fame. But the names of the victims and the shooter still hadn't been released, and a motive was not yet being discussed. The posts I read followed the pattern of most other mass shootings: thoughts and prayers, rants about thoughts and prayers not being enough, memes blaming guns and the NRA, memes defending guns and the NRA, infographics of gun deaths in the U.S. compared to Europe, and dozens of comments expressing sadness, horror, and confusion.

  One Facebook post from an anarchist news site showed a screen-capture of The Gazette offices surrounded by police tape with the caption: "Newspapers are Finally Dead." Even on a page that supported the overthrow of all forms of government, the commenters mostly agreed, "Too soon."

  I shot back my double espresso, now cold, then waved down the waitress and ordered a vodka and soda. The TV was on a commercial for dog food so I let my eyes roam around the bar and the casino floor. Under normal circumstances, I would have loved to watch the evening crowd pour into The Wynn. But the conversation with Innerva was floating through me like a dream, and the scene looked surreal. Lights flashed, beautiful people walked around with purpose, a slot machine rang with the sound of a jackpot. Everything looked and sounded far away. It all felt far away. I stared down at the table and traced the wood grain with my pinky finger. James is dead. James is dead. I tried to make it sink in, but I was coming unglued.

  My chest was heavy, my head spinning, my arms and legs tingling with a new, horrible sensation. Each cell in my body felt like a fingernail scraping a chalkboard. It was one of those times Greta had told me about: I could choose to be present in the moment, to meet my feelings head on, or I could slink out the back door without looking them in the eye.

  I was counting the lines in the wood grain, trying to decide what to do, when the vodka arrived. I squeezed the lime wedge until I'd extracted every drop of juice, then mashed it into my drink with the little red straw. I drank it in two long sips, then I did what I usually do when I'm feeling things I don't want to feel.

  I made plans to eat.

  Chapter 4

  Cafe Gil isn't actually a cafe. It's a secret restaurant hidden behind an unmarked door in a low-traffic corner of The Wynn. Named fo
r celebrity chef Alvaro Gil, it serves a farm-to-table Spanish tasting menu of twenty-one courses over three hours. Gil doesn't do any of the cooking, of course. He's too busy overseeing his food empire and winning Iron Chef, but they serve the style he's known for. Avant garde tapas halfway between fine dining and experimental carnival food. You can only get a reservation if you know about it, and most people don't.

  The dining room was no more than 200 square feet and adorned with Cubist art and strange knick-knacks, like wine bottles filled with marbles and shoes wrapped in red lace. I took one of the nine seats at the brass bar that framed a single workstation of gray marble, behind which a red velvet curtain hung from brass hooks.

  I'd eaten at most of the top restaurants in the country, and I'd been meaning to try Cafe Gil for a year. Under normal circumstances, I would have been excited. But I immediately felt out of place surrounded by the happy diners drinking cocktails and sangria. I was thinking of bailing when three young chefs appeared from behind the curtain. The tallest of the three had short cropped hair and heavily-tattooed forearms. He stepped in front, gave a brief introduction, then reached into a hidden fridge under the marble counter and began spooning caviar onto white crackers. A minute later he slid a plate in front of me. The "cracker" turned out to be dehydrated Asiago cheese and the "caviar" was something he called "beef tartare molecules." A single leaf of micro-arugula sat on top. A diner to my left asked him a question about the molecules, but I wasn't listening. I'd already popped the bite into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed it without pleasure.

  I know what you're thinking. James was dead and my response was to shell out $300 for a fall-of-Rome level culinary extravagance. I'm not proud of it, but we all have our ways of coping with pain. Some turn to drink or weed, some zone out in front of the TV, some call their friends and gossip, some exercise obsessively. When something terrible happened when I was poorer, I inhaled an extra-large pizza and a six-pack of Miller Lite, then played Words with Friends until I passed out. Now I eat gourmet meals. The purpose is the same. It's the price tag that's different.