Astride a Pink Horse

by Robert Greer

  What he did know about the person who’d hired him was that only their first communication had been by phone. Every contact since then had been by fax, including the one telling him he’d been hired. He’d been paid half down for his services: $3,100 in cash that had arrived at his apartment in Buffalo, New York, in a padded, heavily taped ten-by-thirteen-inch manila envelope one day before he was to start the job. The envelope had borne a Las Vegas postmark and no return address. The only other things he knew for certain were that the name F. MANTEW always appeared in capital letters on his correspondent’s faxes and that F. Mantew wanted his shipment delivered within three days.

  When he’d picked up his load three hours earlier from a warehouse in Ottawa, most of the seven-ton shipment had been crated. He hadn’t paid serious attention to his primary cargo, twenty heavily banded eight-by-four-by-four-foot crates, other than to marvel at their stoutness, and since he wasn’t about to look his gift horse in the mouth, he’d attributed that stoutness to OSHA shipping regs.

  The combination of his cash down payment and F. Mantew’s secrecy had, nonetheless, put him in an inquisitive mood, and he’d made certain that the twenty crates matched up exactly with what was printed on his shipping documents and bill of lading. He’d also decided to take a more thorough look at his cargo when he stopped for the night in South Bend, Indiana, to pay homage to the Notre Dame campus and the Fighting Irish.

  Now on the outskirts of Syracuse and cruising along comfortably at sixty-five after a forgettable trip down I-81 from Ottawa, Silas had a feeling that although he wasn’t necessarily headed for trouble, he might be headed for a surprise. Trying his best to convince himself that concern about his shipment was unwarranted and that he had three full days ahead of him to ride his current wave, he slipped a Muddy Waters disc into his grease-stained dashboard CD player and began humming along to the old blues master’s four-minute-long lost-love lament. Reminding himself that he, not F. Mantew, was in the driver’s seat for now, he hummed a little louder.

  He had half the money due him in his pocket, and, more importantly, he was in possession of F. Mantew’s goods. Leaning down and feeling beneath his seat for the crowbar that had once belonged to his grandfather, he forced a smile. He’d never liked surprises, even as a child. So if any surprises were in store, he might as well be ready with a surprise of his own. And if Granddad’s crowbar wasn’t enough to handle that surprise, the .32 in his glove compartment certainly was. His reluctant smile turned into a grin as he sat back up to focus on the road. The grin became broader as he hummed along with Muddy and fantasized about what would be his first trip ever to Notre Dame.

  Bernadette left Cheyenne for Hawk Springs, Wyoming, an hour and a half ahead of Cozy’s departure for the same windswept community. She’d stopped outside the tiny community of LaGrange to have a look at two decommissioned missile sites, Bravo-10 and Bravo-11, a little before four p.m., hoping to see for herself just how secure the sites were. She also hoped to ferret out any possible link between those two sites and the murder that had occurred at Tango-11. A rainstorm had followed her most of the way from Cheyenne, petering out just before LaGrange and leaving behind a massive arching rainbow.

  After rummaging around the abandoned Bravo-10 and -11 sites for fifteen minutes each, looking for linkages and clues to the Giles murder, she decided that, aside from the lingering post-thunderstorm wind howl and the half rainbow that remained, there was little to suggest that she wasn’t traipsing around some barren moonscape in search of nonexistent clues.

  She had received one piece of additional information about Thurmond Giles before leaving Warren that she thought might ultimately prove helpful. The information had come by way of the pesky, persistent, never-take-no-for-an-answer Sergeant Milliken, who’d told her that Giles had been an interservice league basketball star for at least five of his twenty years in the air force and that he’d had friends in high places who’d used his hardwood skills to wave the air force flag. She planned to follow up on that information once she returned to Warren. Now, with her clothes sticking to her, her hair curling up from the humidity, and not one shred of helpful information gleaned from Bravo-10 or -11, she slipped back into the comfort of her air-conditioned air force–blue Jeep and headed for Hawk Springs. As she gained speed, she thought that although it was unlikely, it was entirely possible that Sergeant Giles’s death and the security breach at Tango-11 had nothing to do with Giles’s ethnicity, with nuclear missiles, or with revenge, and she wondered what she might be overlooking.

  The trail of dust rising from behind Bernadette’s Jeep caused Buford Kane to get up from his chair on the front porch of the log home he’d built almost single-handedly and mutter, “Who the hell?”

  As he stood clutching the ice pack that had been resting in his lap, he spotted the air force emblem on the Jeep’s door, shouted, “Damn it!” and slammed the ice pack to the porch floor. Mumbling, “Shit,” he stroked his ratty-looking beard; stared down the winding gravel road leading uphill to his house; and hobbled, testicles throbbing, into the house to return with a Remington 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun. He aimed the gun squarely at the nose of the approaching Jeep, following it with the barrel as it snaked its way toward him. Less than a minute later, Bernadette stopped the Jeep twenty yards from Buford’s front porch, slipped out of the vehicle, and walked cautiously toward him, stopping at the foot of the porch steps.

  Recognizing her, with his shotgun still aimed at the Jeep, he thought about the pain and humiliation she’d caused him. “Can’t you read, lady? There’re no-trespassin’ signs tacked to every damn fence on this place. And just for the record, just so I don’t say somethin’ politically incorrect, mind tellin’ me if you’re one of them don’t-ask, don’t-tell lesbians the military seems intent on recruitin’ these days?” Buford snickered for a second before the look on his face turned deadly serious. “Why in the hell are you here, Major?”

  Sounding and looking unintimidated, Bernadette said, “I’m hoping you might help me a little more with my Tango-11 investigation by answering a few follow-up questions. I’d like to get more information on any other antinuclear people who might not have been with you last night, and I’d appreciate what you can tell me about Reverend Wilson Jackson. I’d also like it if you’d set that shotgun you’re holding aside. I’ll only take a few minutes of your time, and Ms. Goldbeck’s, of course. Is she home?”

  “No, she ain’t. As for me, I’ll give you your frickin’ few minutes.” Aiming his shotgun at the nose of the Jeep, he squeezed off two rounds. Moments later, lime-green antifreeze started dripping onto the ground. “Think you’re gonna need a tow,” Buford said, grinning.

  “You’re using very poor judgment, Mr. Kane,” Bernadette said, unflinching.

  “You’re the one using poor judgment, lady. Let me share a little somethin’ with you. Twenty-five years ago, before I hooked up with Sarah, I was a biker. And not just any old kinda biker, either. You ever heard of the Outlaws?”

  Bernadette nodded, aware from years of living in the Golden State that the California-based Outlaws had once battled the Hells Angels for American biker-gang supremacy.

  Still grinning, Buford said, “Bet you thought that since my old lady’s a pacifist, I’m one, too. Well, I ain’t, sweetie, and her bein’ antinuclear sure as hell don’t translate into me bein’ antigun.”

  Eyeing the porch steps and suspecting that in three to four quick strides she could be on top of him, Bernadette said, “Why don’t you put the shotgun down, Mr. Kane.”

  “And if I don’t? What then? You got the balls to disarm me?”

  “I won’t be leaving until we talk, sir.”

  Looking suddenly less sure of himself, Buford took a long, deep breath. “Okay, then. You can stand there in the sun and sweat because we won’t be talkin’ about nothin’ anytime soon.”

  “Then we can both sweat,” Bernadette said, smiling and relaxing into a parade-rest stance.

  A rusty no-trespas
sing sign swung lazily from the top wire of the fence that represented the western boundary of Buford Kane’s thirty acres. Staring at the sign, Cozy briefly stopped the dually before continuing across a cattle guard that marked the property entry. A hundred or so yards later he stopped again and slipped his binoculars out of the glove compartment to take a better look at the house at the end of the winding gravel lane. When he spotted the frustrated-looking man Bernadette Cameron had taken out of commission the previous evening holding a shotgun on her, he whispered, “Oh, shit!”

  Slipping a baseball bat from beneath his front seat, he stepped out of the truck and took off in a sprint through knee-high timothy grass toward the house. Halfway there his left leg began to throb. Forced to jog, he suddenly found himself thinking, Pick off. He slowed to a walk and finally slipped out of the tall grass and behind a line of cottonwoods that bordered a dry creek bed just west of the house. With the cottonwoods obstructing any view that the man with the shotgun might have of him, he worked his way toward the house. Realizing that he wasn’t simply sweating but huffing and puffing, he told himself he’d be spending a little more time in the gym.

  Stepping from behind the last of the cottonwoods, he headed for the porch in a half crouch. His leg had started to tingle, a sure sign that any second it might give out on him. Wondering why he hadn’t simply driven up to the house, he reminded himself that if he had, the shotgun-toting man might have opened fire on the major. As he duck-walked his way along the length of the house’s three-foot-high cinder-block foundation toward the front porch, he thought, Hope the major’s as quick on her feet as she was last night. Huddled safely below the top of the foundation, he glanced up toward the porch’s safety railing, took a deep breath, popped his head just above the porch floor, and slipped his bat between two railing support struts. Leveraging the bat firmly against one of the two-by-two struts with enough force to pop it with a loud crack, he yelled, “Pick off!” and dove for the ground, leaving the bat behind on the porch.

  The shotgun blast that followed took out two more support struts. Then Cozy heard a thud, followed by the telltale gasping sound of someone who had had the wind knocked out of him.

  He rose to his knees to see Bernadette, up on the porch, standing over the shotgun-wielding man’s outstretched body. She was holding Cozy’s baseball bat, the fat end of which she’d shoved into Buford Kane’s belly, in her right hand and watching Kane roll around on the porch clutching his midsection and sucking air. The intense look on Bernadette’s face shouted anything but air force–friendly.

  Staring at the bat and then at Bernadette, knowing full well what it was like to have the business end of a thirty-five-ounce piece of hickory jammed into your stomach, Cozy said, “Looks like you’re two for two with your friend there.”

  Nudging the shotgun out of Buford Kane’s reach with the toe of her shoe and tossing the bat aside, Bernadette said, “And I hope that ends it.” It was only when she knelt to check on Kane’s breathing that Cozy realized her hands were trembling.

  Sarah Goldbeck arrived ten minutes later to find Buford strapped to a straight-backed chair on the porch and Cozy and Bernadette sitting in rocking chairs on either side of him. Buford’s forearms were free, and he was awkwardly sipping water, but with Cozy’s belt tightly looped around the subdued-looking redheaded ex-biker’s torso, Buford was still having trouble breathing.

  In response to Sarah’s “What on earth!” as she bounded up the porch steps, Buford wheezed, “I’m not sayin’ nothin’ till the sheriff gets here.”

  Glancing at the shotgun lying beside Cozy’s rocker, then at the damaged porch railing, Sarah looked disappointedly at Buford and said, “Well, somebody better explain what happened—and right now!”

  Bernadette’s description of what had occurred was punctuated by wheezes and intermittent apologetic looks from Buford. Bernadette also introduced Cozy as a reporter from Digital Registry News who was there to do a follow-up on the Tango-11 break-in.

  Teary-eyed and doing her best to come to grips with what she’d just been told, Sarah looked pleadingly at Bernadette. “Please don’t file charges, Major Cameron; please. Buford’s been in trouble with the law before. Serious trouble. I didn’t mention that to you this morning down at Warren. I figured if I did, it would surely buy us more trouble. He was a biker before we met, and he’s got a criminal record. Please don’t call the sheriff. If you do, his past will catch up with him, and I’ll lose him for sure. He’s been such a decent man for so many years.”

  The graying, stringy-haired, owl-eyed woman’s pleas reminded Bernadette of those she’d once heard uttered by her own mother, a woman who’d spent most of her married life trying to get her hard-drinking husband, whom she dearly loved, to stop drinking.

  “I’m not here to press charges against your husband, Ms. Goldbeck,” Bernadette said. “As I told you this morning, my responsibility is to investigate the Tango-11 security breach. I can’t, however, speak for Mr. Coseia.”

  “I’m just here to report the news,” Cozy said, surprising everyone.

  Looking relieved and nodding excitedly at her common-law husband, Sarah said, “We can help you with both those things, can’t we, Buford?”

  Buford aimed a reluctant “Yes” in the direction of the approaching twilight.

  “Good,” said Bernadette, as she tried to gauge exactly how upset Colonel DeWitt was going to be at having an air force vehicle disabled by a shotgun blast, not to mention the minor issue of Cozy being on the scene. Locking eyes with Sarah, she said, “Now that we’re all on the same page, what more can you tell me about those protesting friends of yours from last night? Something you may have forgotten to mention when we talked this morning, perhaps? Anything about the real size of your group?”

  “Nothing more. And that’s the truth,” Sarah said adamantly. “Most of those other people who were yelling and chanting were simply high school or college kids out for a night of excitement. Wilson Jackson, that preacher I told you about this morning, paid them twenty dollars each to come to the press conference and disrupt it.” Looking over at Buford, who was still wheezing, she said, “Can’t you unstrap him from that chair?”

  “If he agrees to sit still and be cooperative.”

  “He will.” Sarah shot the deflated-looking former biker a look that said, Sit still, and don’t you dare move a muscle.

  “Might as well unstrap him,” Bernadette said to Cozy.

  Rubbing the circulation back into his arms, the burly redhead let out a grunt of relief and said to Sarah, “Why don’t you tell the major about Kimiko not showin’ up last night?”

  “Why drag her into this?”

  “Because she and that ivory-towered nutcase of a nephew of hers said they were comin’, and they didn’t. Left you holdin’ the bag, as usual. I never have understood the connection between the three of you anyway.”

  When Cozy pulled a stubby pencil and a small spiral-bound notebook out of his back pocket and began writing, Buford said, “That’s K-i-m-i-k-o. It’s Japanese. And her nephew, the nerd’s name is Rikia. Their last name’s Takata.”

  “So who exactly are they, and why would either of them have had any reason to break into Tango-11 or kill Sergeant Giles?” asked Bernadette as Cozy hastily took notes.

  “They’re friends of ours, and they wouldn’t have had a reason,” Sarah snapped.

  Bernadette entered both names into the BlackBerry she’d slipped out of her pocket without offering a response.

  Sounding eager to finger-point, Buford said, “They live in Laramie. Rikia’s an egghead math professor with a card or two missing from the deck, over at the University of Wyoming, and just so you know, they’re both first-tier nuke haters, even more so than Sarah.” Looking Sarah’s way, he said, “The cat’s out of the bag. Might as well give ’em the whole nine yards.”

  “I’m afraid Buford’s always been a little uncomfortable with Kimiko and Rikia,” Sarah said. “I can assure you, they’re both very decent
people. And for the record, Kimiko’s not Rikia’s aunt. They’re actually second cousins. As for her hatred of nuclear weapons, she has every reason to hate them. Her father was at Hiroshima when we A-bombed the place. He’d sent Kimiko from Japan to live with relatives in San Francisco less than a month before the war began. She might have actually fared better in Japan because within six months of her arrival here, our hypocritical government rounded up Kimiko and her American-born relatives, packed them off to Wyoming, and imprisoned them at Heart Mountain. That place was nothing more than America’s own Rocky Mountain version of Auschwitz, as far as I’m concerned.” Sarah shook her head in disgust.

  Vaguely aware that the Heart Mountain Relocation Center east of Yellowstone had been a World War II–era internment camp for Japanese Americans, Cozy looked quizzically at Bernadette. Realizing from the look on her face that she knew the place as well, he continued taking notes as Bernadette entered “Heart Mountain survivor” next to Kimiko Takata’s name in her BlackBerry.

  “That place is a permanent black eye on this country, just like nuclear weapons are,” Sarah said, her voice rising.

  Tugging at Sarah’s shirtsleeve and hoping to stop her before she launched into one of her antinuclear tirades, Buford said, “None of us were even born then, Sarah.”

  “Doesn’t matter. God never intended for us to be beasts.”

  “There was a war goin’ on, Sarah.”

  “Let’s not start down that road, Buford, please.”

  “Yes, let’s not,” Bernadette said. “Do you have phone numbers and addresses for the Takatas?”

  When Sarah didn’t immediately answer, Buford said, “Yes.”

  “I’d appreciate having them.”

  “I have that information inside the house,” Sarah said, heading for the front door.

  “I’ll go in with you,” Bernadette said, rising from her chair, intent on making certain that the common-law wife of the man who’d earlier tried to shoot her wasn’t going for another weapon.