Astride a Pink Horse

by Robert Greer

  Still rubbing his leg and staring at the wedge of sunlight knifing its way between the room’s partially opened drapes, Cozy sighed and ran his other hand through his always unruly mop of coal-black hair. Realizing that he was badly in need of a haircut, he waited for the circulation in his leg to catch up with his scalp massage.

  Missing most of the calf and without a fibula, Cozy’s left leg had been bone-grafted twice. With a third of the girth it had had during his baseball-playing days, the leg was now functional but quick to give out. A frown crossed his face as he thought about the fact that just about everything below his left knee had come from a cadaver. He stared at the leg’s puckered skin for a couple of seconds before finally rising from the edge of the bed and limping across the room to the shower.

  A shave and a chin nick later, as warm water streamed over his shoulders and down the middle of his back, he found himself wondering how Freddy had slept and whether or not Freddy, a baseball natural who’d turned down the big leagues and the son of a wealthy, reclusive Oklahoma oil tycoon, ever had bad dreams.

  Forty-five minutes later, Cozy sat bleary-eyed across the table from Freddy in a drafty restaurant a short drive up the street from their motel. As he listened to Freddy talk with his mouth full, he found himself wondering how on earth someone with Freddy’s silver-spoon upbringing could have developed such bad table manners.

  Freddy, who’d mockingly taken to calling the four antinuke protesters from the previous evening “the Gang of Four,” took a sip of coffee and, in response to Cozy’s question about how they should proceed with their investigation, said, “So we’ll doubleteam our Gang of Four.”

  “Or three if Mr. Redhead ends up behind bars.”

  Freddy laughed. “I’m still thinking that OSI major somehow mistook the man’s jewels for a soccer ball. Makes you wonder whether all the military’s female special investigation types are stone-cold ass-kickers like her.”

  “You’ve got me, but I can tell you this—she hasn’t always been OSI. She was sporting pilot wings on her uniform.”

  “Damn, my man. Sounds to me like you were looking pretty close. And they call me a womanizer.” Freddy forced back a chuckle. “Well, since the major seems to have caught your eye, I’m thinking you should be the one to drive down to Cheyenne and talk to her. See if she’ll give us anything newsworthy. And while you’re at it, take a look into the racial hate-crime angle. I’ll stick around here and try to finesse what I can out of our Gang of Four and Sheriff Bosack.”

  Cozy looked perplexed. “You don’t think any of those warmed-over peaceniks from last night are going to implicate themselves in a murder, do you?”

  “Who’s to say? Maybe their brains are a little on the overdone side after all their years of protesting. I can tell you this, though. The person I got that anonymous tweet about yesterday, Sarah Goldbeck, was one of the two women protesters last night. And believe me, she’s the thread to our story. She was the one standing to my immediate right just before she chained herself to that bench. Pulled her photo off the internet.”

  “The mousy-looking woman sporting ’60s-style wire-rims? That sad, lost-looking wretch orchestrated last night’s fiasco?”

  “I’m not sure whether she orchestrated it, but she got the disruptive ball rolling, didn’t she? Let’s say we quit guessing about all the whys and wherefores and who’ll talk and who won’t for the moment and head over to Sheriff Bosack’s office to find out how far along the law is with our Gang of Four’s arraignment.” Freddy glanced at his watch. “Eight forty-five. My guess is not a whole lot moves around this burg before nine, so I’m thinking we’ve got ourselves a little time before our gang’s free and we can start with the questions.”

  “Your call,” said Cozy.

  “You’re damn sure agreeable this morning. You must’ve slept like a baby. Better than I did, I’m betting. Damn I-25 truck noise kept me up half the night.”

  Cozy smiled and winked at his friend. “It’s a natural Caribbean siesta kind of thing, mon,” he said, deciding to keep his restless nightmare of a night to himself.

  “Must be genetic for damn sure, since your lanky butt grew up in Pueblo, Colorado.” Freddy stood and eased his way from behind the table.

  Cozy nodded as he thought briefly about the blue-collar southern Colorado steel town he’d grown up in after moving to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic at the age of six to be raised by his maternal grandmother, dead two years now. Iron-willed but loving, Andrea Delaney had come to the States with her husband, an American sailor she’d met while he’d been on leave in Bermuda and she’d been on vacation there. They’d ended up in Colorado when he’d left the navy to take a better-paying job as a steel worker in Pueblo, only to die in a mill accident a couple of years later.

  “Must be,” Cozy said, tossing a twenty onto the table, rising, and thinking as they left that, unlike the extravagance of Freddy’s fifty the previous night, there’d be just enough change left to make a decent tip.

  A few minutes later, with Cozy standing at his side ready to restrain him, Freddy Dames stood in the waiting room outside Sheriff Bosack’s office, fuming. “What the shit do you mean they left for Cheyenne!” he said to Wally Sykes.

  “I told you, the judge arraigned them a little after eight this morning. We don’t like to let our problems fester around here.” Tiny droplets of spittle accompanied the deputy’s response. “The arraignees paid their disorderly conduct fines, or arranged to have them paid, and an air force van shuttled all four of them down to Warren Air Force Base a little over twenty minutes ago.”

  Freddy eyed Cozy, then Sykes, and finally the wall in front of him as if he were looking for something or somebody to blame. “So where the hell’s the sheriff?”

  “He won’t be here till around ten.” Freddy took two steps backward and plopped down on a narrow bench that hugged a wall in the windowless room. “I’ll wait.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Sykes, stepping back from what had been a nearly toe-to-toe stance with Freddy.

  Two of a kind, Cozy thought, shaking his head.

  Adjusting himself on the bench and looking as if he were prepared for a long siege, Freddy looked up at Cozy. “I want you to get on down to Warren and start digging. I’ll deal with the lunkheads here in Wheatland.” He glanced back at Sykes. “What a fuck-up!”

  “Watch your language, Dames, or you’ll do your waiting outside.” Sykes eased his left hand toward the butt of his gun. Thinking, Uh-oh, Cozy stepped over to Freddy, grasped him firmly by the right arm, and walked him through the front door and out onto the sidewalk. “You need to stand out here for a while and calm the hell down, Freddy.”

  Upset by Cozy’s intervention, Freddy said, “And you need to head down the road to Cheyenne, Elgin.”

  “Stay out here or go back to the motel, but don’t take your stupid-acting ass back into that office until the sheriff arrives. Do you hear me, Freddy?”

  After several seconds of silence, Freddy leaned back against the whitewashed clapboard building and said to the only person in the world besides his father who could get away with calling him stupid, “I’ll try.”

  Satisfied that Freddy would do as he’d asked, Cozy turned to leave. “I’ll call you from Warren,” he said, heading for his truck.

  As he limped toward the dually, he suddenly realized that he was leaving Freddy without any means of transportation. “How’ll you get back to the motel?” he asked, turning back to Freddy.

  “Walk.”

  “That’ll work,” Cozy said, thinking that after Freddy talked to Sheriff Bosack, a two-mile cooling-off walk might be just what the doctor called for.

  Cozy’s job generally required him to pack around a laptop, cell phone, and voice-activated recorder. But unlike Freddy, who always traveled with half-a-dozen new age electronic devices, Cozy, old school to the core and suspicious of gadgets, preferred a spiral-bound notebook and a fountain pen. He’d been ordered by Freddy six months earlier to get an i
Phone, but he’d ignored the request.

  When he made a nine thirty a.m. call to Bernadette Cameron, told her who he was, and asked if he could drop by for an interview later that morning, he was surprised that his temperamental, call-dropping cell phone operated perfectly for once. Bernadette was professional and polite, suggesting that eleven thirty would work for a meeting.

  He offered a quick “See you then,” hung up, and turned back to his laptop to do some background checking on the nation’s ballistic missile history, the country’s current nuclear strength, and Major Bernadette Cameron. Ten minutes later he knew that the statuesque, green-eyed major had been a UCLA tennis star, an Essence magazine cover girl, and a swimsuit model during college, but he’d found little about her military career except that she’d been an air force officer for nine years.

  A half hour later he found himself self-consciously glancing into the dually’s side mirror to check on the state of his hair after gassing up in Wheatland for the drive to Cheyenne. Now, as he pulled onto F. E. Warren Air Force Base, he found himself thinking, A kickboxing black supermodel—damn!

  Warren, the largest military installation in Wyoming, occupies a vast, flat, former hay meadow just west of I-25 and sits directly across the highway from the stadium and rodeo grounds used for the historic Cheyenne Frontier Days.

  Although he’d spent twenty-six of his thirty-two years in Colorado and considered himself a Westerner through and through, Cozy found the contrast between the three alabaster-white, non-payload-bearing nuclear missiles that sat just outside the base’s fence and the folksy “Daddy of ’em All” rodeo grounds just across the interstate a little strange. Thinking, Only in America, he pulled his truck to a stop at the guard gate, rolled down his window, flashed his press credential at the MP airman manning the booth, and said, “I’m here to see Major Bernadette Cameron. She’s OSI.” Uncertain why he’d added the OSI except that it sounded like a more reasonable descriptor than “swimsuit model,” he waited for an okay to proceed.

  When the boyish-looking MP asked, “Is the major expecting you?” instead of waving him on, Cozy said, “Yes.”

  The guard stepped back into his booth, checked a computer screen, and returned with a driver’s-license-sized plastic base pass and a small black-and-white map of the base. “The major’s office is in Building 246, sir.” He handed Cozy the pass and pointed to a spot near the bottom left-hand corner of the map. “Just follow the road you’re on, take a left at the second stop sign, and take that road until it dead-ends. Building 246 will be the last building on your right.”

  “Is everything on base so easy to access?” Cozy asked, unable to curb his reporter’s instincts.

  The MP, who’d obviously been asked the question before, responded with a smile. “We’re air force–friendly here at Warren, sir.” He snapped off a salute, pivoted, and returned to the guard booth.

  Thinking that air force–friendly or not, any American military installation whose primary mission involved the handling, deployment, and activation of nuclear weapons must of necessity be armed to the teeth, Cozy pulled away from the guard gate and continued down Randall Avenue, scanning the roadsides for the high-tech deterrents and armaments he knew had to be there even though they couldn’t be seen.

  Building 246 turned out to be a nondescript two-story redbrick structure that sat by itself in what was still a hay meadow. A cluster of twenty-foot-tall piñon trees rose from the native Wyoming buffalo grass surrounding the building, and a small blue sign with white lettering near the front steps read simply, “Building 246.” Four slightly off-kilter cement steps led up to the heavy-looking metal entry door.

  Cozy parked on the street, got out of the dually, and walked up the steps through the front door into a short stub of an entryway. The entry led to a hallway that ran north and south. A sign that was too busy for its size, with arrows pointing in every direction, was tacked to the hallway wall. Spotting “AFOSI 805” near the middle of the sign and a stubby arrow below it that pointed left, Cozy shrugged and headed in that direction.

  Halfway down the hallway he passed a woman dressed in civilian clothes. The woman offered him a brief inquisitive look, and they both continued walking. Major Cameron’s office, the last at the end of the hall, had a substantial-looking oak door with a tarnished brass nameplate at eye level that read, “Bernadette Cameron, Major, USAF.”

  Cozy knocked several times before Bernadette swung the door partially open and asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Hope I’m not interrupting. I’m Elgin Coseia,” he said, realizing that up close, Major Cameron’s dark brown hair was much curlier than it had looked from a distance. A thin, barely visible three-inch-long line of what he suspected were acne scars ran along the right angle of her jaw almost to her chin. Her skin was youthful-looking, on the dark side of café-au-lait, and as he stared at her in the dull light, it was easy to see that she was indeed striking enough to have been a model.

  Avoiding his stare, she said, “No, no. Just swamped with paperwork. Come on in, Mr. Coseia.” She swung the door back, extended her right hand, and offered Cozy a firm handshake. “Bernadette Cameron. Pleased to meet you.”

  Cozy slipped his hand out of hers to step into an orderly but confining fourteen-by-fourteen-foot room furnished with a desk and chair, a single straight-backed teakwood visitor’s chair with a matching side table, a credenza, and an institutional-looking four-drawer lateral file cabinet that hugged the back wall. An expensively framed black-and-white photograph of the Eiffel Tower hung above the file cabinet, and a photograph of a smiling, flight-suited, slightly younger-looking Captain Bernadette Cameron, clasping a fighter pilot’s helmet to her side and with a jet fighter in the background, sat on top of the cabinet. Next to that was a photo of a man in air force dress blues. A brigadier general’s star was visible on each of the man’s shoulder epaulets, and although he looked pleasant enough and was smiling, Cozy had the sense that behind the smile was someone who could be unforgiving.

  Bernadette took a seat behind her desk and motioned for Cozy to pull the guest chair up to the desk. Pointing to the photo of her on the file cabinet and scooting his chair forward, Cozy asked, “You’re a fighter pilot, too?”

  “I used to be.” There was clear regret in Bernadette’s tone.

  “So what kind of plane are you standing next to in the photo?”

  “An A-10 Warthog. They’re designed for close air support.”

  “Ugly-sounding name.”

  “As they say, beauty’s in the eye of the beholder.” Bernadette sat forward in her chair and forced a smile. “But we’re not here to talk about my flying days, Mr. Coseia.”

  Sensing that he’d touched a raw nerve, Cozy said, “You’re right. We’re here to discuss a murder investigation.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you if that’s why you’re here, but the investigation into the murder that occurred at Tango-11 isn’t part of my assignment. That investigation’s the purview of civilian authorities. My office is purely and simply involved in addressing the security breach.”

  Thinking that the major’s response sounded rehearsed, Cozy said, “Okay. So you’re investigating a security breach and not a murder. Either way, I’d sure like to know why the air force was so quick to whisk those four antinuke protesters from last night out of Wheatland and down here to Warren.”

  “For questioning.”

  “Seems to me that Sheriff Bosack would’ve been the one to have first crack at them.”

  “There’s no special order to the investigative process, Mr. Coseia. The sheriff needed to talk to the protesters, and so did we.”

  “Yeah. But from what I’ve heard, he got all of twenty minutes, while you folks down here at Warren got a lot more.” Realizing suddenly that Bernadette Cameron’s eyes were the same deep shade of green as his late grandmother’s, Cozy found himself staring at her once again. “So where have you stashed the protesters, and when do we in the press get a crack at them?” he asked.


  “They aren’t stashed. They’re simply being interviewed. They’ll be off this base and on their way home by early afternoon, I can assure you.”

  “I see,” said Cozy, still hoping to make contact with Sarah Goldbeck before day’s end. “Is Sarah Goldbeck their ringmaster?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t provide you with any more specifics about the protesters, Mr. Coseia.”

  “Fair enough,” Cozy said, not wanting to remain stuck in one gear. “Let’s move on to the dead man, Thurmond Giles. Retired master sergeant, veteran of the Cold War and America’s silo wars, and African American. Any chance we could have a hate crime on our hands, Major?”

  “Anything’s possible, Mr. Coseia.”

  “You’re sounding less and less forthcoming, Major.”

  “I’m only stating fact.”

  “So you are,” Cozy said, trying his best not to sound exasperated. “Can you tell me if there were any serious blemishes on Sergeant Giles’s military record?”

  “I can tell you that Sergeant Giles was discharged honorably after twenty years of service.”

  “Major, please. You’re sounding like a windup doll. We both know that I can dig up what’s in Sergeant Giles’s service record. I just want to know whether or not Giles butted his head up against any air force rules during that twenty years.”

  “What I can tell you is that Sergeant Giles was a skilled technician and that his fitness reports indicate that he was always one of his missile detachment’s best.”

  “Glowing reference,” Cozy said, sarcastically. “Mind telling me what his job assignment was?”

  Bernadette hesitated briefly before responding, “For most of his air force career, Sergeant Giles was assigned to missile maintenance squadrons.”

  “So his job was servicing nukes.”

  “If that’s the terminology you prefer, yes.”

  “Did he have any special technical expertise?”

  “The sergeant’s specialty was missile-warhead maintenance.”