Free Dragonfly Bones by David Cole Page B

envelope again, stared at what he was doing, stopped abruptly, and smiled.
    â€œYou’re on to that one, aren’t you? I don’t have many tells. I play high-stakes poker, I’m very good at keeping signals from other players. Now you’ve got me wondering if I play with cards in front of me like this when I’m a little nervous.”
    â€œIf I meet this woman,” I said. “If she talks to me, I’m out of it then? This envelope thing is kinda dumb, anyway. Like a Hollywood spy movie without any logic. So what’s really inside?”
    â€œYeah. We peeked. Sealed it back up again. It’s just a long, detailed list of financial transactions using stolen credit cards. But we don’t know how they were stolen exceptthrough some prison 800 number call center. Lots of prisons in this country, even private prisons that have a bottom line to earn money. You talk to Ms. Dominguez, she gives up the specific prison.”
    â€œDon said it was Florence.”
    â€œJust a guess. She teased us with a list of fifty prisons.”
    â€œBut why me?”
    â€œDon’t you want to find out?”
    Sure I did. But not that I cared about the identity thefts. I always wanted to know about people who knew my name, knew what I did. It’s supposed to be a private thing, hacking into computers, supposed to be done through cutouts, although I’d been doing it long enough to have an international reputation.
    â€œCan we go there right now?”
    â€œIn my car, I’ve got something you have to wear. They’re expecting two people. U.S. Marshal, somebody from Aquitek. Don’s cleared the way. But you’ll have to put on a uniform.”
    â€œDo I get a red beret?”
    At the time, I thought all of this was getting to be a lark. Wheeeee! Some fun in the Phoenix sun. Of course, a handsome Navajo man will blind me to the truth all the time. Not this time, I thought.
    â€œSo you’re Navajo,” I said, mouth way ahead of my brain.
    â€œMother was from the Biihtsoh Dine’é clan. Big Deer People. Father was Deeshchii’nii clan. Start-of-the-Red-Streaked People.”
    â€œFrom where on the rez?”
    â€œMedicine Water. You? Which Hopi mesa?”
    â€œHotevilla. Look, uh, I so don’t want to talk about this.”
    â€œNo problem. Ready to go?”
    And how strange, to feel so…conflicted about the difference between this man and Rich Thompson.
    No. I won’t go there.
    8
    H e didn’t have my size quite right.
    The black khaki uniform trousers fit tight in the crotch, the shirt molded around my shoulders and biceps, layered on like paint, like a second skin. I refused the holstered Smith & Wesson nine, but snugged the red beret against my shoulder-length dirty-brown hair. It would take more than a beret to give me helmet hair. I liked the cool black band around the bottom, hated what the beret signified, marveled at how far I’d come to working with Law instead of against it.
    â€œWhat’s your color?” he said when I swiveled his rearview mirror around so I could see myself with the beret, adjust its fit. I liked that. Most men would have a cow if you even touched their mirrors while they were driving, but his only physical reaction was to snuggle against the left door, steer with his left hand while he looked me over at seventy miles an hour.
    â€œColor?”
    â€œYour hair. What coloring, what brand of coloring do you use?”
    â€œThat’s not flattering, you know. That I’m old enough to cover the gray.”
    â€œI do. So, what do you use?”
    â€œL’Oréal.”
    â€œHey. Use it myself.”
    He stretched a fist to me, we knocked fists. And again, I had to check him out, I’d been doing this ever since we’d met, but not obvious, keeping up my part-angry, part-frustrated, part-I-don’t-care image. Unlike most older men who fixate on total black coloring, Brittle’s