Astride a Pink Horse

by Robert Greer

  “Something wrong?” the waitress asked, quickly returning.

  “My eggs. They’re cold.”

  “Sorry, I’ll have them scramble you up a new order.”

  “Thank you. And while you’re at it, maybe you can warm up the disposition of the man sitting across from me.”

  The two women smiled at one another before the waitress walked away, but their smiles were lost on Grant Rivers. Stroking his chin, he asked, “What if Rikia and Kimiko end up tellin’ the sheriff, that lady OSI major, or Coseia somethin’ different from what you and I have been tellin’ them?”

  “They won’t.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “As sure as I can be. But if they do, I’ll make certain to have Buford nudge them a little.”

  “Your knight in shinin’ armor to the rescue once again,” Grant said sarcastically.

  “I’ve already told you: don’t go there, Grant.” Sarah slammed her right hand down on the tabletop, causing the couple at the next table to look up.

  “Sorry,” Rivers said, aware that no matter how wistfully she may have looked at him earlier, when Sarah Goldbeck said she was finished with an issue, she meant finished.

  After driving Colorado and Wyoming for two straight days, Cozy was happy to be back home even though he hadn’t slept well the previous night. Just past two in the morning, the dream that had haunted him for years had kicked in full bore, and he’d once again found himself riding a motorcycle into a misty haze. He’d finally drifted back to sleep around four, awakened late for work at nine, showered leisurely, and headed for the office, just missing Freddy and Thaddeus Richter.

  Red-eyed and yawning, he now stood in the sparsely furnished Digital Registry News front office, leaning his butt against the front edge of Lillian Griffith’s desk. Lillian had stepped out for her midmorning vanilla latte, and as he absentmindedly sorted through his mail, looking for Colorado Rockies tickets he’d ordered, he found himself wondering why, despite all the disappointment he’d had in association with the game, he still loved baseball.

  Had he been standing at anyone else’s desk, he would’ve let the voice messaging system that Freddy constantly complained about do its job when the phone started ringing. But knowing how much the compulsive, multitasking Lillian disliked having to return phone calls, he lifted the receiver and said, “Digital Registry News.”

  The no-nonsense-sounding man on the other end of the line said, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Dames.”

  “He’s not here. Can I take a message?”

  “Yeah. Tell him Otis Breen called from Kansas City and that I’ve got the name of that company Thurmond Giles went to work for after leavin’ Seattle. He called here last night at close to midnight askin’ for the name. And as strange as this may sound, first thing this morning, some air force OSI officer called here to ask me the same thing. You Dames’s secretary?”

  “No, just one of the reporters who works here.”

  “Guess it’s okay for me to give you the information, then. Anyway, the company Thurmond went to work for was Applied Nuclear Theratronics of Canada Ltd. Took me a while to find the business card Thurmond sent to me. Finally found it in one of my sock drawers this mornin’.”

  “Do you know what Giles did for the company?”

  “Nope. Just give Mr. Dames my message, okay?”

  “I certainly will, and thanks. Here’s my cell-phone number if anything else comes up.” He recited the number, hung up, and headed for his workstation. For a change, his computer was up and running and he quickly Googled Applied Nuclear Theratronics of Canada Ltd. What filled the screen turned out to be the computer equivalent of a television infomercial, a lavishly produced, three-minute, praise-filled piece detailing the lengthy history and landmark achievements of the first company in North America to successfully develop and manufacture radiation therapy equipment for treating cancer. The testimonial credited the work of a Canadian medical physicist, Harold Johns, for his invention of the cobalt-60 teletherapy machine in the early 1950s and stated that although the machine had run its course in Western medicine, having been replaced by the more efficient, less tissue-damaging linear accelerator, the cobalt-60 machine had nonetheless remained a low-cost workhorse in Third World markets.

  As he scrolled through the references at the end of the piece, Cozy found himself wondering whether Thurmond Giles’s nuclear-missile savvy might not have earned him a shot at peddling an outdated product to an unregulated Third World market. Although he didn’t know one thing about the rules regarding the sale and transport of radiation therapy equipment, he did know that anything nuclear and American had to be regulated by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and that he was going to put a call in to Applied Nuclear Theratronics immediately. He also understood that black-market sales of Western goods to Third World countries was big business, whether those goods were two-hundred-dollars-a-pair sneakers or outmoded radiation therapy machines. What mattered in the end, no matter the product, was profit, and he’d learned enough about Thurmond Giles to know that making money was one of the things that had made the man tick.

  The human resources department at Applied Nuclear Theratronics of Canada Ltd. didn’t provide Cozy with any more information about Thurmond Giles than he’d gotten from Otis Breen, and aside from affirming that Giles had once worked there, in response to Cozy’s concocted story about running a background check because his company was considering hiring Giles, the person fielding the call wasn’t of much help.

  Cozy disappointedly hung up and walked from his living room, where he’d been stretched out on the couch while talking on the phone, into his kitchen to retrieve the ham and cheese on rye he’d made for his lunch before calling Canada.

  Plucking the larger of two Golden Delicious apples from an antique fruit bowl on the kitchen counter, he polished the apple with a shirtsleeve, took a bite, and thought about where to head next with his Thurmond Giles murder investigation.

  At least he knew more about the murdered man than he’d known three days earlier. Knew for sure that Giles hadn’t been any old nuclear-warhead maintenance man but a military-brass-connected, ego-charged, down-home, slick warhead expert and an athlete. Giles had also womanized his way from base to base over his twenty-year military career. The question that needed to be answered, it seemed to him, was which of all those attributes had triggered Giles’s murder.

  Deciding that his next course of action would be to powwow with Freddy, he took another bite of apple, sat down at his kitchen table, and stared down at the burnished nicks and bruises in the hundred-year-old table’s patina. He suddenly felt alone. It had been two years since his grandmother’s death, and for much of that time he’d been spinning his wheels. He was pretty much the same small-market, web-based reporter he’d been a couple of years earlier, and although he had a decent job and had inherited a house that was paid off and filled with valuable antiques, he felt somehow bogged down. He had no real reason to gripe. He enjoyed what he did, his boss was his best friend, and he even had a little money in the bank. What he didn’t have was a life that had real meaning or existed outside the sphere of Freddy Dames. Everything he did revolved around Freddy. His friends, even most of his acquaintances, were also Freddy’s. The women he went out with, made love to, and occasionally argued with always seemed in one way or another to be connected to Freddy. He had the sinking feeling that if he weren’t there already, he was rapidly becoming anything but his own man.

  He’d lost a shot at his lifelong dream because of hotheaded, competitive stupidity—linked to whom else but Freddy—and although investigative journalism seemed to be a good fit for him, in spite of its increasing reliance on computers, cell phones, BlackBerries, modems, and other assorted technocrap, he wasn’t sure that Digital Registry News was where he wanted to be in five years.

  Finishing his apple and thinking that if his career as a journalist ever began to crumble, he’d best have an exit strategy, he decided that after the T
ango-11 investigation was finished, he’d spend some time putting together just that. For the moment, however, he planned to finish his lunch, then head back to the office and call Bernadette, tell her about the stonewalling he’d gotten from the people at Theratronics, and see what she had that was new. He had to admit that the exotic-looking major had rubbed against the edges of his lonely circle of one, and although Bernadette Cameron seemed to be the kind of thoughtful, feminine, self-assured person that Freddy typically labeled Too good to be true, Freddy wouldn’t be the final judge on the matter for a change—he would.

  The vein that ran along Colonel Joel DeWitt’s properly trimmed, regulation-length right sideburn bulged in anger. Bernadette, who’d seen the odd-looking phenomenon before, tried not to stare.

  Slapping a hand down on his desktop, DeWitt shook his head in disgust. “I never would’ve ever expected that I couldn’t trust you, Major.”

  Standing at attention in front of DeWitt’s desk, eyes locked straight ahead, Bernadette said, “I’m not certain I’ve done anything to lose your trust, sir.”

  “Major, please. You talked to the very people I ordered you to stay away from. Are you aware that by speaking with Dames and Coseia you may very well have compromised the integrity of our Tango-11 investigation and, even worse, cast a shadow on my command?”

  “Sir, all I was trying to do was determine whether Coseia and Dames had information that might be helpful to us.”

  “By meeting with them for a clandestine midnight huddle in a private corporate jet? Come on, Major. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to defend your actions to my superiors.”

  “Our meeting wasn’t clandestine, sir, and as it turns out Coseia and Dames provided me with information about several individuals who may have been involved in the Tango-11 security breach and perhaps even Sergeant Giles’s murder,” Bernadette said, relaxing and widening her stance.

  “And while they were at it, did either of them outline a plan for you that might prevent break-ins and future security breaches at other decommissioned silo sites? Did Dames promise to polish up our image here at Warren after raking OSI over the coals in that last internet story of his? Have you found out, like I have, that Reverend Wilson Jackson’s wife once had an affair with Sergeant Giles? And just by chance, did Dames or Coseia tell you who murdered Sergeant Giles?”

  “No, sir,” Bernadette said, caught off guard by the information about Jackson’s wife.

  “Then as far as I’m concerned, your meeting was worthless.” DeWitt cleared his throat as if that might bring extra clarity to what he had to say next. “Two men, one of whom happens to be exceedingly wealthy and somewhat of a playboy, I’m told, and a female air force officer hunkered down under the cover of darkness at an airport in some corporate jet. Now, I’d say that’s an image that sends out terribly bad vibes, Major.”

  Incensed, Bernadette said, “I beg your pardon, sir.”

  “Your actions wouldn’t look at all prudent to middle America, Major Cameron. That meeting of yours has put us all in a compromising position.”

  Struggling to maintain her composure, Bernadette said, “I find your insinuation offensive, Colonel.”

  “What you find offensive is immaterial to me, Major Cameron. Besides, I have it on good authority that you topped off that whole unsavory airport situation by leaving in the company of Mr. Coseia.”

  Her face flushed with anger, Bernadette asked, “Did Captain Alvarez happen to supply you with any other juicy tidbits?”

  “I’ll ignore your attempt to defame Captain Alvarez and pretend I never heard it. The issue here is your behavior, not Captain Alvarez’s. You disobeyed my orders, Major.”

  Her teeth clenched, Bernadette said nothing.

  “Fortunately, your missteps haven’t inflicted any major damage on our investigation of the Tango-11 matter. While you’ve been out there, quite possibly exposing this office to additional ridicule from the press, I’ve been able to clarify several important issues. For starters, I’ve gathered more than a dozen photographs of Kimiko Takata and a young Sarah Goldbeck talking with Sergeant Giles at several antinuclear protests at missile sites during the late ’70s and early ’80s. Most of the photos were taken at a single silo site in Nebraska. A site that was constructed on land formerly owned by a rancher named Grant Rivers. Were you aware of that information, Major?”

  “I’m aware of Kimiko Takata and Sarah Goldbeck’s involvement in the antinuclear movement, of course,” Bernadette said, feeling the bottom drop out of her stomach.

  “And Rivers?”

  “I’ve been gathering information on him.”

  “With the help of your reporter friends, I suppose. Did you know that thirty years ago Mr. Rivers made a vow to get even with the air force and the federal government for supposedly stealing his land?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you haven’t said a word about that to me!”

  “I haven’t had the opportunity, sir.”

  “And you won’t, Major. I’ve decided to temporarily assign another OSI officer to the Tango-11 investigation.”

  “Captain Alvarez?” Bernadette asked, disappointed.

  “Another officer, Major. That’s all you need to know. In addition to the problems you’ve caused me by playing patty-cakes with the press, I’ve had Reverend Wilson Jackson in my office twice today complaining that the air force doesn’t appear to want to look into the possibility of the Giles murder being a racially motivated hate crime. To say nothing of the fact that Professor Rikia Takata called to complain about your unprofessional conduct and abrasiveness during a visit you made to his office. And to top things off, Sarah Goldbeck is threatening to lodge a complaint against this office, claiming that you and your reporter friend, Mr. Coseia, assaulted her husband the other night.”

  All but speechless, Bernadette said, “I wasn’t abrasive to Dr. Takata, and I certainly wasn’t unprofessional. And I can assure you that no one assaulted Buford Kane. The man leveled a shotgun on me, for God’s sake.”

  “It’s your word against each of theirs, Major, and since your friends at Digital Registry News seem intent on continuing to show the air force, and this office in particular, in such a negative light, I’ve stepped in to manage damage control.”

  “I think you might be overreacting, sir.”

  “No, Major. What I’m doing is reacting. Reacting to your mishandling of this entire investigation, and to the fact that General Preston summoned me to his office this morning to rap my knuckles. My knuckles instead of yours, Major, and that’s a very serious problem for us both. So here’s a suggestion that I’m thinking will help,” DeWitt said, smiling. “Take a week of leave—maybe even two. Put a little distance between yourself and the Tango-11 investigation while I right the ship and handle the damage. Head down to Denver or over to Salt Lake, relax, enjoy a spa treatment, do some shopping.”

  “What!”

  “It’s only a suggestion,” said DeWitt, watching a look of absolute anger spread across Bernadette’s face. “I can order you off the investigation altogether, and we both know that wouldn’t look good on your record. Take the leave, Bernadette. It’ll turn out to be a win-win for both of us. Ten days from now, things will have settled down. I’ll have our Tango-11 security-breach problems resolved, and the Giles murder investigation will be fully in the hands of civilian authorities, where it belongs. Think of it as a cooling-off period. By then no one will be looking to scapegoat anyone.”

  “And if I don’t take leave?”

  “Then your temporary absence from the investigation will turn into a permanent assignment off it. And then, who’s to say? You could conceivably end up at a new duty station.”

  “I see. And how long do I have to mull over your suggestion?”

  “Until this conversation ends.”

  Bernadette suddenly found herself thinking about every single bad and improbable thing that had happened to her in just two short years. She’d lost her ability to fly; she’d been r
eassigned to a job she tolerated rather than enjoyed; she’d had to fend off the unwanted advances of more than just Captain Alvarez; and she’d been forced to carry out her duties under the watchful, what’s-in-it-for-me eye of a colonel who had but one objective: earning a general’s star. Instead of shouting, “Take this job and shove it,” she thought about something her father had always told her to remember when things weren’t going her way. Something that had served her well over the years: Inhale before you yell, baby, and always exhale before you scream. Inhaling deeply, she said, “I’ll take the leave,” then slowly exhaled.

  “Good. You’ll be happy you did, and when you come back to work, I can pretty much assure you, our Tango-11 problem will be water under the bridge.”

  “Anything else, sir?” she asked, taking another long, deep breath and holding it.

  “No. I’ll have Sergeant Milliken get your papers ready for my signature. And Bernadette, don’t take it too hard; we all run into obstacles now and again.”

  Bernadette smiled without responding and pivoted to leave. She made it to the first-floor fire-door exit before exhaling, and she’d slipped behind the wheel of her Austin-Healey and cranked the engine before she finally screamed.

  Jimmy “Jackknife” Cameron was dripping sweat in Scottsdale, Arizona’s 102-degree heat and sizing up the nine-foot putt that he had a thousand dollars riding on when his cell phone began ringing. Shouting, “Damn it!” and shaking his head, he slipped the phone out of his shirt pocket. Recognizing the number on the screen as Bernadette’s, he dropped his putter and took the call.

  “Who the hell’s calling you now, Jackknife?” the sandy-haired retired three-star general standing beside him groaned.

  Jackknife grinned and pressed the phone to his ear. “Nobody but Bernadette or the president. And as you know, I haven’t been taking calls from the White House for years.”

  Laughing at a remark that only Jackknife would make in earnest, his three companions simply shook their heads.