Overturned Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  Dan Harris was not an Uber driver. He was my dad’s latest and greatest attorney from the law firm of Cheap Suit, Bald Spot & Smoker’s Cough. Since we left Vegas, he’d chattered endless nothings straight from the small-talk handbook as if angling for five stars and a tip. Stuff like “It sure is hot today, huh, Nikki.”

  Dude, we live in the desert.

  Or “UNLV’s looking good this year.”

  Were they? He probably meant football, which wasn’t my thing. Not that kind of football. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Lady Rebels soccer team had gotten off to a mediocre start this season with a 4–5 record. I didn’t say that because if Harris knew anything about soccer, we might end up in a real conversation. I was a little too anxious for that.

  My mom, sitting next to me in the backseat, was more accommodating, nodding and uh-huhing at the right moments. But her eyes and hands gave her away. She never stopped staring at the browns and grays outside her window, scrolling north from the city perimeter to barren sands, and her fingers tapped an endless nervous rhythm on the leather next to my thigh.

  It was a strange thing, picking up your dad from death row.

  When Harris started talking politics, I knew I couldn’t deal with all our nerves tangled in one big vibrating bundle for the entire four-hour drive to Ely State.

  Uncoiling the wires in my bag, I screwed buds into my ears and dialed up a long and hearty playlist usually reserved for the game I cared about more than soccer. Eyes closed, my forehead resting on the cool window, careful not to mush my big poofy hair, I zoned, then dozed. Constellations filled my dreams, all the pinpricks in the sky Dad showed me when I was little, before “Uncle” John’s murder interrupted us.

  A firm squeeze above my knee pulled me from the cosmos. I said, “Wha—” Or maybe I just vampire-hissed.

  Mom plucked a bud from my ear. “Wake up. We’re close.”

  Groggy, I smacked my lips, my tongue sour with the notes of afternoon breath. My Altoids tin rattled when I fished it from my bag. I chewed a handful of chalky mints into paste.

  Harris got us off Route 6, drove the all-too-familiar streets lined with pool halls, trailer parks, and ice-cream stands that also sold beer. In the distance, snowcapped mountains made the horizon ragged. Dad once told me in a letter that he could see those mountains from his cell. For years I hoped it wasn’t just a lie to make me feel better.

  When we turned onto the final street before the prison, the change from our last trip was clear. What was usually a desolate strip of faded asphalt bordered by a set of odd businesses was crowded with vehicles. Rental cars and news vans with satellite dishes on extendable arms.

  The last tenth of a mile to the prison’s entrance was a slow crawl through reporters and protesters and fans (every death row inmate had them). There was a dull buzz in the parting crowd, like driving through a swarm of bees.

  “I suspected we’d get some attention,” Harris said, moving beyond small talk, “but I certainly didn’t expect this much.”

  Why not? I did. The news had been going crazy over Dad ever since his release went from lofty goal to undeniable certainty. Not the big national morning shows where they mix terrorism with celebrity guests and recipes. Locally, though, it’s been kind of a big deal. Black man wrongly convicted on shady circumstantial evidence, officialdom’s long, hard stance on admitting no wrongdoing whatsoever because, hey, reasons. People picking sides based on as little real information as possible. Vegas loved its homegrown horror stories.

  “You two okay?” Harris asked.

  Mom glanced at me before answering. I nodded, and she said, “We’re fine.”

  Neither of us were strangers to noisy packed crowds, nothing different from an average weekend at the casino. I was even dressed for it in my black Saturday night hostess dress. I’d considered buying something new, but a stylish black dress was a stylish black dress, even if a longer swath of brown thigh extending from the hem indicated a much different fit from when fourteen-year-old me bought it two years ago. There’d be time for better clothes and a generally better life than that of a hostess leading drunken oglers to dinner tables if I had my way. For the time being, I was on a budget.

  Not like anyone was going to pay me much attention anyway. This was Dad’s day. If I didn’t already get that, the potbellied poker fan holding a “Welcome Home, Nathan” sign clued me. That poster board greeting, done up in fat Sharpie letters and punctuated with a bad drawing of a royal flush, was pleasant. Though it couldn’t match the painstaking detail of a sign on the opposite sidewalk. “Whoever sheds the blood of man,” the sign read, “by man shall his blood be shed,” followed by the Bible chapter and verse. The wicking fire and white-hot brimstone coals on that one was a nice touch.

  Fifty yards from the prison entrance, sawhorses formed a perimeter that the groupies and haters couldn’t cross. Guards waited behind the line. One stone-faced, refrigerator-sized correctional officer stepped to Harris’s window. Harris explained who he was, who Mom and I were, and why we dared approach the border the prison so thoughtfully erected between his world and ours. Harris’s lawyer thing satisfied the CO enough to swing one sawhorse aside and let us through.

  We pulled into an empty parking space, and the guard appeared in his window again. “Is everything ready?” Harris asked.

  Checking his watch, the guard said, “It’s time.”

  I’d stowed my music but heard a drum. In my chest. My hand found the door handle, and I waited for seconds that felt as long as the last five years.

  A Klaxon sounded and a yellow light spun in a bubble over a massive steel-and-concrete door. I expected the huge entrance to trudge open and unleash some giant tank or humanoid battle-armor suit thingy from the sci-fi video games my Bestie #2 Gavin sometimes forced me to play, while Bestie #1 Molly reminded him we weren’t that kind of girl. The big doors didn’t part. All that drama for a smaller door set in the larger one. It was from there that Ely State Prison s
pit my father out.

  He wore the gray suit Mom and I bought him, guessing at the measurements. It almost fit.

  Erupting from the backseat of Harris’s Cadillac, I sprinted despite my heels and flung myself at him like the earth was falling away beneath my feet and it was either his arms or oblivion. He caught me, and I buried my head in his chest, ugly-crying and soaking a patch of his suit coat to a darker gray. Mom was there a minute later sliming my bare shoulder with her tears. Dad squeezed us so tight.

  Faintly, a dozen camera shutters clicked and whined. Ready to confirm to the world, to all our friends and enemies, that three-time High Roller magazine player of the year, two-time World Series of Poker finalist, and one-time wrongly convicted murderer Nathan “The Broker” Tate was back.

  Mom and I stayed in the backseat. After five years in a cage, no reason Dad shouldn’t get shotgun.

  On the highway, a safe distance from the news crews and crazies, Mom passed a box to the front. A lady at a Downtown Summerlin kiosk had wrapped it for us, taking extra care to puff the silver ribbon so it looked more like fireworks than tinsel. Mom offered it to Dad the way I might’ve offered a crayon drawing back in the day—Please like it!

  He squinted and flexed his jaw. A blatant tell. After a second’s hesitation, he manufactured a smile and took his gift. It fooled Mom, so it was a good enough recovery. I recognized his suspicion, though.

  What was it like when people offered you things in prison? Was there always a hidden cost?

  “What is it?” Dad asked, turning it over in his hand like someone working a Rubik’s Cube.

  I touched his shoulder. “It’s cool. Open it.”

  Conceding, he undid the wrapping with care, peeling away the tape instead of just ripping the paper, revealing the white box underneath.

  “It’s an iPhone,” I said.

  “Oh. I remember those.” He sat the box between his legs, never touching the actual device.

  “Maybe later, then,” Mom said, so chilly I was tempted to crack a window and let in some desert air.

  Never one to let an awkward moment fade quietly, Harris said, “Look, Nathan, I know your head’s spinning right now and I don’t want to rush anything, but we probably need to make some sort of public statement soon. Capitalize.”

  Dad checked the rearview as if the prison was in pursuit.

  “I’m thinking we should do it at Andromeda’s,” Harris continued. “Let the world see you back where you belong.”

  Andromeda’s Palace. Niche casino and hotel “in the heart of Downtown Las Vegas!” Aka home.

  Harris kept going, despite my dad’s curled lip and narrowed eyes.

  “It’s not every day a capital case gets overturned,” Harris said. “There could be a lot of opportunity here beyond our lawsuit against the district attorney’s office and the police department. You know how things are around the country now. The brutality cases. The shootings. I mean, that’s not what happened to you—and we’re grateful for that—but people are fed up and won’t stand for another black man getting the shaft from the system.”

  I watched my father closely, a habit he’d taught me when he was still around to teach me things. The annoyed head tilt, the way he clutched the silk at his knee like it was either grab fabric or Harris’s neck.

  “Mr. Harris,” I said, an attempted intervention launched too late, “maybe we should let him relax.”

  “For both of us, right?” Dad said.

  The car went quiet. None of us sure how to respond.

  “Opportunities,” Dad said, “for both us. The wronged black man and his white knight attorney.”

  Harris’s pasty complexion went scarlet. “For all of us.” His voice trembled when he waved a hand toward me and Mom, trying hard for nonchalance.

  Say something, Mom!

  She only pursed her lips, maintaining her habit of leaving hard stuff to me.

  “Can we listen to some music?” I leaned between the seats like I had permission and tapped the satellite radio button, letting some oldies R&B singer croon about love and happiness we couldn’t quite manage on our own.

  So, how did we get here?

  Ask one of the corny discount comedians we sometimes booked as part of the Saturday night lounge act and you’d get “Southbound on 93!” Ba-da-BAH!

  Ask me and you’d get a murky, confusing story told by someone who didn’t understand it fully herself. Because there’s no normal route to a dad on death row.

  John Reedy was my dad’s best friend, or something. When we opened our casino and I wore myself out daily racing around the place like I had wheels, he’d told me to call him “Uncle” John. Insisted on it. I don’t have actual uncles, but I still didn’t take to the charity of that artificial title. John Reedy was not very uncle-like.

  He was a scruffy redhead, with eyes that often matched his hair. I only ever saw him at the casino bar. Or bothering dealers on the gaming floor. Or having heated, deep-voiced conversations in Dad’s office with other adults on speakerphone before Mom caught me spying and ushered my nosy butt away.

  The last time I saw John Reedy—alive, anyway—he’d been sitting down for a poker game with Dad and others. That was also the last time I had a conversation with my dad that didn’t involve a reinforced glass partition or a recorded phone line.

  The arrest I didn’t see, and Mom didn’t take me for visits right away. It was as if she thought the whole thing would blow over so there was no need to tarnish my childhood unnecessarily. In all her efforts to protect me from the reporters and the TV and the Internet, she did the thing a lot of people did. She forgot about the newspaper.

  The Las Vegas Review-Journal was delivered to our home daily, in several huge bundles, and it was my job to drop those papers in front of every occupied hotel room door. Of the hundreds of times I performed the task, there was only one headline I’d never forget.

  “Local Man Bludgeoned to Death; Casino Owner Charged”

  Every single one of those papers were damp with tears as I laid them at our guests’ doors.

  I’d learn more things. Foggy things during the trial. Exaggerated and wrong things from my classmates. None of it meant much beyond the certainty that my dad didn’t kill anyone. I held on to that. Thankfully, it was true.

  Now, the business of next.

  It was full night by the time we got back to Vegas, but the city’s electric gleam made 8:00 p.m. seem as bright as 8:00 a.m. Harris steered us downtown and onto Stewart Avenue, where cab lines formed and weekend foot traffic thickened, bringing us home.

  Andromeda was a curvy, fifty-foot silhouette rimmed by several hundred cerulean LCD bulbs. She greeted us with a thrust hip and a dainty beckoning arm that made it seem like she threw the red neon dice on top of the Binion’s parking deck two blocks down.

  On our sign, it appeared she was floating, her nonexistent feet lost behind the golden block letters that read Andromeda’s Palace. Each character flared a buttery gold until the entire sign was a fully lit beacon. It flashed three times before going dark, then repeated the sequence.

  Dad was stiff and grumbly the whole ride. Until he saw her. He sagged in his seat at the sight.

  “Home, sweet home, right?” I touched his shoulder.

  He gripped my fingers lightly in his callused hand. “That it is, babygirl.”

  That name. He hadn’t called me babygirl in years. Not even in letters. What glowed inside me felt bright enough to blind the lady in lights above our door.

  So, of course, Mom ruined it.

  “There’s a lot to catch you up on, Nathan. A lot you missed,” she said.

  Her first words in a hundred miles. Dad stiffened again, leaned forward so he was just out of my reach. The slicing look I swung Mom’s way was as sharp as a Fruit Ninja sword.

  “Sure,” Dad said. “Of course.”

  “New processes, procedures. Half the staff may not really know you. We should set a meeting for early next week.”

  Really, Mom?
This on his first night back? How romantic.

  “Absolutely,” Dad replied. “I imagine it’s been tough for you handling all this by yourself.”

  “She hasn’t been by herself,” I chimed in, my irritation fighting its leash. Half of those new processes and procedures, I wrote. While maintaining my three-point-seven GPA, extracurriculars, and a secret side hustle.

  “Nikalosa,” she warned.

  Dan Harris may not have been an Uber driver, but he was smart enough to know when he should act like one then. “We’re here!”

  He drove under the canopy beneath Andromeda, into the hotel’s arching drop-off lane I called Andromeda’s Loop.

  We got sandwiched between a cab dropping off an elderly couple and a Hummer limo picking up some already wobbly Woo Girls. You know, packs of girls a little older than me, known for randomly throwing up their hands—especially when holding frothy drinks—and squealing, “Woooo!” They roamed Vegas like feral cats.

  “Nathan! My friend! Welcome back!” The jubilant voice belonged to Mr. Héctor, Andromeda’s head valet and most senior employee, who spotted us and left the ushering of guests to his underlings.

  When Dad recognized his old friend, he just about dive-rolled from the car. “Héctor!”

  The two of them collided in a hug, and Mom didn’t push our budding argument. I sensed we’d reached the end of family night. Just in time for everyone’s sake. She exited the backseat, tossing Harris a quick thanks. I did the same and thumbed a text to my crew.

  Me: it’s on.

  Dad held Héctor at arm’s length, patting his shoulders. “I’m surprised you don’t own this place by now, old man.”

  “I’m saving, Nathaniel. My mattress is stuffed.”

  Harris leaned into the passenger seat, tried siphoning some of Dad’s attention from Mr. Héctor. “Nathan. We’re going to talk about our plans, right? Soon?”

  “Okay.” Dad’s tone wasn’t convincing, and the accompanying nod felt dismissive.

  “Okay,” Harris repeated, snatching the handle on Dad’s still-open door and slamming it shut before gunning the engine back into city traffic.

  Dad watched the car go, practically sneering. The whole vibe between those two was so weird. I didn’t dwell on it—I had my own stuff happening and was running short on time. “It’s good to have you back, Dad.”