Pretty smart, I’m thinking. Take the money and keep it.

“Oh!” I exclaim, struggling to keep my voice low. “The bald guy with the eyes like eggs!”

“Salvatore Popkin. You see him?”

“In the area between gaming rooms there’s like a high-priced food court, except with sit-down restaurants? Oh look, they’ve got a Wolfgang Puck pizza joint! What am I saying, they have those in airports,” I add, rambling on, just an excitable girl and her cell.

“Popkin’s in a restaurant? Where are the others?”

“No, no. Sorry. He seems to be guarding an unmarked door in a hall between the restaurants. Or maybe it is marked, I can’t tell from here. Looks like the whole wall area behind him is smoked plate glass. Lots of dark, smoky accents in here.”

“Has he spotted you?”

“There are hundreds of people wandering around.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No, he hasn’t spotted me. Relax, I’m fine.”

“Don’t get any closer,” Shane warns, husky in the receiver. “Just keep an eye on him. Just a glance, don’t look directly at him. Even from across a crowded room, a direct look will get your attention.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Exasperated, the voice in my ear goes, “Don’t move, damn it!”

I have absolutely no intention of obeying—where the egg man goes, I’ll follow—but for now Mr. Salvatore Popkin is glued to the door. Dressed in the same sort of shapeless nylon, soft-shell sports gear he was wearing when we confronted him at the airport. Sport stripes running down the baggy legs. The Nike version of Tony Soprano. What I hadn’t mentioned to Shane, the egg man is actively eyeballing the crowd, giving off a Jersey bouncer vibe, like better steer clear, little people, the VIPs are doing important VIP things. Like bullets would bounce off his cast-iron skull. Didn’t look quite so imposing when Shane bounced him off the concrete. No obvious sign of the injury to his collarbone, but he does appear a bit stiff on one side. Trendy little headset and earpiece may explain why he appears to be talking to himself.

I’m thinking about sidling closer, determining if the smoked-glass doorway he’s guarding is in fact unmarked, when something tugs at the hem of my blouse. Whirling around with hand raised, ready to take a slap at whatever lowlife is trying to cop a feel, I find Shane sitting in a casino wheelchair, wearing a floppy sunhat.

“Are you sure about this?” I ask, trying to shield him from view, not any easy task, considering the difference in size.

“Best I could think of on short notice,” he says, leaning to get a line of sight on the egg man. “You said it yourself, they remember my height.”

“At least let me tear the price tag off the hat. You look like that old lady on The Grand Old Opera.”

He chuckles. “Grand Ole Opry, and she was before your time.”

“Whatever. You know who I mean.”

“You’re right about this place being crowded,” he observes. “That helps.”

Shane’s scheme is, my opinion, totally whacked. I’m supposed to push the wheelchair, keeping the crowd between us and the egg man, and we’ll get a closer look. Shane has a theory that Manning is in the business office getting cash for a payoff. Either that or dealing directly with some casino employee or associate implicated in his son’s disappearance.

“The guy is a billionaire,” I say, grabbing hold of the wheelchair. “Why would he need cash from the casino?”

“He’s a fund investor. He doesn’t deal in cash, and criminals prefer folding money. It’s just a theory. Roll me up to the next casino entrance, we’ll work our way back.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m pushing but you’re not moving.”

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry.”

With him pushing the wheels, all I have to do is steer, or pretend to steer, and we’re moving along, keeping pace with the shuffling gamblers. What I find amazing is that no one is making or seeking eye contact. Even in the most crowded mall people tend to check each other out, maybe smile if the impulse strikes. Not here. The vibe is that everyone has his or her own bubble and none of the other bubbles really exist, they’re just background, like the continuous chiming of the slots, the whisper of the air-conditioning, the dreamy lighting that makes the blinking machines look more alive than most of the players.

We’re up to the entrance of Sachem’s Cave—more slot machines but bigger payoffs—and have made the turn, sneaking up on the egg man, when Shane urgently announces, “Look at Popkin. Something is going down.”

The egg man, Mr. Popkin, is apparently reacting to something he’s heard in his earpiece. Shaking his head and looking furtively around as he talks, as if he’s not sure what to expect. All nervous and jumpy.

Does he know about us? Have we been spotted, and the message relayed?

The weird thing is, the egg man looks scared.

“I’ll be damned,” says Shane, rising from the wheelchair.

Coming through the entrance, moving quickly with almost military precision, is a band of black-haired men, unmistakably Native American, and from the similarly dark, high-cheek-boned look of them, all sharing the same blood. Brothers and cousins, uncles and nephews, moving as one. They carry M4 carbines slung over lithe shoulders, not bows and arrows, and their uniform blouses are matching white guayaberra shirts with tribal police emblems, but there is no doubt about who they are.

A war party, ready for battle.

16. The Absolute Zero Of No

It’s an amazing sight, really, totally out of sync with the sedate atmosphere at the casino. The tribal security squad marches in, shoves aside the egg man—no resistance there—enters through the smoked-glass door, and emerges less than a minute later carrying Edwin Manning in an office chair.

A chair to which he is obviously clinging, having refused to move. Looking like a deposed king being borne away on his throne, he appears to be both livid with anger and frightened out of his mind.

“This all goes away!” he shouts, making a gesture that takes in the whole casino complex. “Think about it! Money, success, all gone! Just talk to the man, that’s all I’m asking! I’m begging you, please talk to him! Make him give me back my son!”

The men carrying him have eyes like chips of black ice. They betray no expression, pay no heed to their lively burden, hustling him out the casino as he clings awkwardly to the prison of his chair.

What really gets me, what puts the cold fear in my guts, is what happens next. Up in the chair, carried by those he cannot buy or influence, Manning seems to surrender himself to madness, a lunatic in suit and tie. He begins to scream wordlessly, saliva spraying from his mouth, tears leaking from his eyes. As if anguish and fear and frustration have made it impossible to communicate in words, and from now on only screams will do.

I find myself clinging to Randall Shane like Mr. Manning clings to the chair, because it’s either hold on or fall down.

The big guy senses my distress, squeezes my hand.

“Kind of like watching a patient undergo surgery without anesthesia,” he says softly.

“He’s falling apart. Something terrible has happened since we saw him. Something truly awful.”

“We don’t know that,” says Shane consolingly.

“I do.”

Bless the man, he does not argue, but instead decides to take action.

“Be right back,” he assures me, and then strides into the crowd on his long legs.

Be right back? No way am I missing this. So I’m right behind the big guy when he corners the goggle-eyed egg man and goes, “Sal—do they call you Sal?—we have to talk.”

To give him credit, the egg man looks more lost than frightened, although he does catch his breath and shrink back as Shane approaches.

“What are you doing here?” he demands, protuberant eyes rolling around like big white marbles in a jar of oil. “Are you nuts? You want to wreck everything, is that it?”