Astride a Pink Horse

by Robert Greer

  “Shit!”

  “You got that. And right now, I’d say you’re swimmin’ in it. Have you taken a look at what the hell you’re haulin’?”

  “I’ve checked it out a couple of times, but everything’s crated up.”

  “Then you need to uncrate somethin’, see what the shit you’re transportin’, and be prepared to call the cops. Hell, with Thurmond buyin’ it the way he did, and with him at one time bein’ a hotshot missile-warhead mechanic, you could be haulin’ around a damn nuke.”

  Silas shook his head. “I picked up my load from a hospital. Come on, OT.”

  “Who in the hell says you’re really haulin’ hospital equipment? Where’d you start your trip from, anyway?”

  “Ottawa.”

  “Canada. Well, hell. The last time I talked to Thurmond, he told me he was workin’ for some company up north of the border. Damn it, Silas, I’m thinkin’ you’ve got yourself caught up in somethin’ that’s hell-bent serious here.”

  Silas stood and started pacing the room. “Think maybe I should go pop one of those crates I’m hauling right now?”

  “I sure do, and I think you should call the cops. I’ve already had some air force OSI major and a reporter from a news outfit outta Denver called Digital Registry News talk to me about Thurmond.”

  “Have the cops called?”

  “No, thank goodness. But now I’m thinkin’ they probably will. Never figured you’d ever be tied in to any of Thurmond Giles’s messes. Damn.”

  “I’m not sure that I am tied to one of his messes, OT. As far as I know, I’m still just hauling a load of used hospital equipment.”

  “Well, make damn sure you are. Get your ass in gear and go open up one of them crates this instant.”

  OT’s commanding tone, the same authoritative tone Silas had been forced to live with for most of his life, triggered a rush of resentment. “I’ll handle this, OT, okay?”

  “You better, boy, or I’ll be callin’ the cops myself.”

  On the verge of yelling, I’m in charge here, Sergeant; butt the hell out! Silas instead said, “I’m headed to have a look at my cargo right now.”

  “Fine. Call me back and let me know what you find. You hear me?”

  “Will do,” Silas said, biting his tongue and hanging up.

  A carton containing a single half-eaten raisin roll sat on the coffee table in front of Cozy. His sweet tooth satisfied, he was sitting on the floor of Bernadette’s hotel suite, legs outstretched like hers, eyeing the raisin roll. The suite smelled strongly of sweet rolls and coffee past its prime.

  Bernadette was busy jotting notes on a yellow tablet and glancing back and forth between the dozen maps of deactivated air force missile-silo sites in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Montana, and North and South Dakota that she’d spread out on the floor. She’d been studying the maps for the past half hour as she and Cozy ate raisin rolls, drank coffee, and tried to come up with a connection between the events at Tango-11 and some eight hundred deactivated missile sites in seven states. With their thighs touching in a leisurely, unromantic way and their shirts untucked, they looked more like a couple of college students cramming for an exam than two people trying to solve a murder.

  Amazed by Bernadette’s dogged persistence as she continued to check off missile site after missile site, jotting each one’s code name, number, size, activation date, and decommissioning date down on her tablet, Cozy leaned forward and asked, “Think maybe we should move past the silo sites and on to something else? How about Sarah Goldbeck? What do you think about the idea that Buford might have killed her?”

  “No way. The man was devastated when he called me to say he’d found her body.”

  “Maybe he was faking it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then who killed her?”

  Bernadette flipped several pages of her tablet back and stared at a note she’d written a few minutes earlier. “Somebody who didn’t want Sarah spilling her guts to the authorities would be my guess. I’ve got a feeling she knew who killed Sergeant Giles.”

  “Maybe the killing involved a love triangle—between Sarah, Thurmond Giles, and Grant Rivers, perhaps. Didn’t you say earlier that Rivers and Sarah were once an item?”

  Bernadette shook her head. “No, I said that’s what newspapers hinted at back in the late ’70s when Sarah’s neurotic mother was busy dragging the poor girl around the countryside to missile-site protests. I hate to admit it, but thanks to Colonel DeWitt, I located a bunch of official air force photos of Sergeant Giles, Sarah, and her mother in a couple of old OSI files at Warren just before I left. Sarah couldn’t have been more than fifteen or so.”

  “So maybe Rivers liked robbing the cradle, and maybe for some reason after all these years he ended up being as mad at Sarah as he is at the government. He has a landing strip on his ranch, and that means he has access to rapid transit, you might say. He could’ve killed Sarah and been back home to Buffalo pretty quick.”

  “Okay, Mr. Love Triangle,” Bernadette said, nudging Cozy’s hip with hers. “I’ll make a note of your As the World Turns concerns. And just so you know, that preacher Wilson Jackson’s wife had an affair with Giles, too. Colonel DeWitt told me so himself. Wanna move on to Howard Colbain and the Takatas?”

  “Might as well,” said Cozy, briefly considering the new Wilson Jackson wrinkle. “First off, Colbain’s too far away to have dashed up here from New Mexico to kill Sarah. As for the Takatas, I’d need a motive.”

  “Too far away? I don’t think so,” Bernadette said with a sly smile. “Grant Rivers owns a plane; why not Colbain?”

  Eye to eye with Bernadette and with his face inches from hers, Cozy said, “No reason, and I’ve been told that like angels, they have wings.”

  “Yes, but angels—” The sound of Bernadette’s cell phone ringing cut her response short.

  Without looking at the caller ID, she flipped the phone open and said to Cozy, “Probably my dad.”

  “Is this Major Cameron?” came the uncertain response.

  Shaking her head to let Cozy know that the caller wasn’t her father, Bernadette said, “Yes.”

  “It’s Otis Breen, calling from Kansas City, and I’ve got sort of a problem on my hands.”

  “Which is?” Bernadette grabbed her pen and tablet and printed “Otis Breen” in bold letters at the top of the tablet’s first page.

  “I think my son, Silas, has gotten himself mixed up in that murder case you called me about.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because it turns out Thurmond Giles set Silas up with a job to haul somethin’ across country.”

  Unable to stand the suspense, Cozy leaned into Bernadette and turned the cell phone partially toward him to listen in.

  “Any idea when Giles hired him, and has Silas told you what he’s hauling?” Bernadette asked.

  “I know Giles set up the deal about seven weeks back, and Silas is supposedly haulin’ old hospital equipment. He started out headed for Amarillo. Now his destination’s Lubbock. He’s scheduled to make his delivery tomorrow.”

  “To whom?”

  “To someone named F. Mantew. I told him just a little bit ago to go take a look at what he’s haulin’ and if need be, call the cops.”

  “You mean he hasn’t seen what he’s hauling?”

  “Nope. He told me his shipment’s all crated up. I’m callin’ you because I figured you might have some inkling of what’s inside those crates.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” Bernadette said, feeling the warmth of Cozy’s breath on her neck. When he tapped her on the shoulder, mouthing, “Let me talk to him,” Bernadette shook her head and said to Otis, “So how long had Silas and Thurmond Giles known one another?”

  “Since Thurmond and I were in the service. Silas was just a kid when they first met. It was at one of our basketball games. I’m the one who told Thurmond when I talked to him last Thanksgiving that Silas had started his own truckin’ business. S
houlda kept my damn mouth shut.”

  “There’s nothing to suggest that Silas was involved in Sergeant Giles’s murder, Mr. Breen.”

  “I wasn’t thinkin’ he was. But knowin’ Silas like I do, I’m worried about the boy’s safety. He tends to run up against trouble a whole lot more than most.”

  “Why didn’t he tell you Giles had set him up with the job when he first got the offer?”

  “ ’Cause Silas just ain’t the kind that would’ve done that. The two of us ain’t always seen eye to eye, you see. Especially when it comes to dealin’ with where a person’s headed in life, if you know what I mean. For Silas, callin’ me and tellin’ me that Thurmond had set him up with a job would’ve been the same as tellin’ me that he couldn’t stand upright and get a job on his own.”

  “So when’s he going to call you back with word on what’s in those crates?”

  “As soon as he pops one open.”

  “After he calls, would you call me back?”

  “If I’m not busy makin’ a phone call to the cops first.”

  “Why would you call them?”

  Otis let out a long, deliberate sigh. “Because unfortunately, Major Cameron, that boy of mine don’t always do what he says.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meanin’ that since long-haul truckin’ money’s involved in this deal, he may very well head on to Lubbock, make his delivery, collect his cash, and never call the cops.”

  “I sure hope not. Any idea where his final destination is in Lubbock?”

  “No.”

  “What about a phone number for him?”

  Otis gave her the number. Hastily jotting it down, Bernadette asked, “What’s his truck look like?”

  “It’s a twenty-six-footer, one of those big U-Haul types. It’s painted shamrock green with ‘Breen’s Moving & Storage Company’ painted white in Old English script on the sides. Helped Silas pick the typeface out myself. Oh, and there’s one other thing about that truck. The number 18—that’s the number Silas wore when he played ball—is stenciled in thirty-six-inch-high screamin’ red on the cargo roof. I had him put the number there for what in the army we called ‘spy-in-the-sky’ ID purposes.”

  “Good thing to know if things get funky.”

  “Yeah.” Sounding disconsolate, Otis said, “Seems like no matter what, I’m gonna forever be lookin’ out for that boy.”

  “Anything else I should know about Silas or his truck?”

  “Nothin’ I can think of at the moment. Afraid I’ve gotta go. I don’t wanna miss a phone call about that cargo of his, and I sure as hell don’t wanna miss no phone call from the cops.”

  “Call me back when you hear something either way, okay?”

  “I’ll do that,” Otis said, hanging up.

  Bernadette snapped her cell phone shut, looked at Cozy, and said, “Damn!”

  “Yep!” said Cozy. “Think I’d better call Freddy, since we’re in the news business here.” He turned to face Bernadette and kissed her softly on the lips. The bitter taste of coffee mixed with raisin-roll sweetness filled his mouth as he penetrated the curvature of her lips with his tongue. Offering no resistance, Bernadette opened her mouth to enjoy a probing bittersweetness of her own.

  “Damn it, Cozy. I’m in bed, and for the record, I’m not alone.” Freddy Dames patted the woman in bed next to him on the rear, rolled over, and propped himself up on one elbow.

  “Hey, man, I wouldn’t be calling you at this time of night if it weren’t important,” Cozy said, enjoying the impromptu back rub Bernadette was giving him, which ended suddenly when Cozy said, “Bernadette and I need an airlift down to Amarillo. One that’ll have us there tomorrow morning without any airport hassle.”

  “Can’t do. Afraid I’m busy seven up to seven down tomorrow.”

  “Oil business?”

  “The very best kind,” Freddy said, grinning.

  “Damn it, Freddy. We just got a new lead on the Giles killing. Can’t you juggle your plans?”

  “We? I take it by ‘we,’ you mean you and Major Cameron. Thought you told me she was off the Tango-11 case.”

  “She is and she isn’t. I’ll explain it to you later. We need that lift, Freddy.”

  Freddy shook his head in protest as the woman lying beside him slowly ran her hand up his inner thigh. “So, what’s the new lead?” he asked, gently grasping the woman’s hand.

  “We just got word that before he bought it, Thurmond Giles set up a deal that involved trucking a load of hospital equipment from Ottawa to Lubbock.”

  “So what’s the connection to Tango-11?”

  “Bernadette and I think a man named Silas Breen might be delivering a load of radiation therapy equipment that’s bound for a Third World market to somebody named F. Mantew.”

  “Nothing illegal about that.”

  “There is if the equipment’s either stolen or has been deemed unsafe. I’ve checked. We know that Giles had the kind of contacts you’d need to access and move that kind of merchandise. Remember, Bernadette talked to a woman at a Seattle company a couple of days back who confirmed it.”

  “How big a news story are we talking about here?”

  “Big. Especially if the guy delivering the goods to Amarillo can lead us to Giles’s killer.”

  Freddy sat up in bed, thought for a moment, and said, “Put Bernadette on. Assuming she’s there, of course,” he added with a sly chuckle.

  “Freddy wants to talk to you.” Cozy handed Bernadette the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Late hours you’re keeping there, Major. Got a question for you. Think you can handle my Sugar?”

  “I’m certified to fly anything up to four-engine jet bombers, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “No offense intended. I’m just protective of my baby.”

  “Understood.”

  “Put Cozy back on, okay?”

  “Yeah?” Cozy said, taking the phone.

  “What time do you need to leave Denver in the morning?”

  “By ten at the latest, and that’s assuming we know the final destination for that truck, the truck’s ETA, and that the cops haven’t gotten to this guy Breen first.”

  “You mean the law could be in on this? Hell, that means our exclusive on the story could go up in smoke. Those blabbermouths are likely to tell the world.”

  “It’s news either way, Freddy.”

  “Guess so,” Freddy said, smiling as his impatient bedmate cupped his testicles in her hand. “I’ll have Sugar fueled and a flight plan filed by nine. Let’s hope you still have first dibs on the news story by then. And Cozy, when you get back from Texas, you can fill me in on a local story I seemed to have missed. The one about you having Major Cameron there to tuck you in at night. Talk to you tomorrow, and be sure Bernadette treats Sugar like a princess. ’Bye.”

  Shaking his head, Cozy snapped his cell phone closed. “We’ve got ourselves a plane.”

  “Sort of figured we did,” Bernadette said, wrapping her arms loosely around Cozy’s neck.

  “And for what it’s worth, Freddy said you should tuck me in.”

  “But we’re sitting on the floor,” Bernadette said, snickering.

  “That makes it all the more newsworthy.” Cozy slipped Bernadette’s arms from around his neck and kissed her passionately as he lowered her to the floor.

  The crowbar Silas Breen was using to open one of the crates he was hauling had belonged to his grandfather, a blacksmith and cobbler from Joplin, Missouri. The ten-pound, four-foot-long, eighty-year-old, hand-forged, crooked-cane-style piece of iron lacked any hint of rust. After three minutes of effort, Silas had the front of the crate open. Light from the three highway safety lanterns he’d hung from the truck’s ceiling flooded the inside.

  Taking a nervous step backward, he dropped his crowbar, stooped, slipped a flashlight out of the tool kit near the door, and aimed the beam at the crate’s contents, an oddly shaped object that reminded him of a giant shower arm a
nd nozzle. A metal strut the size of an old-fashioned barber’s pole rose from a shiny metal floor base to support the arm and “showerhead.” The support strut and the cream-colored arm and head were attached to one another by a metal arm with an elbow. When he reached out to touch the arm, it flexed at the elbow, and the head rose to the top of the crate, slamming into it with a loud bang.

  Startled, Silas grabbed the arm and pulled the head back down into position, thinking as he scanned the crate with his flashlight, What in the hell?

  He examined the odd-looking apparatus for another couple of minutes looking for markings, serial numbers, or a manufacturer’s name before poking around inside the musty-smelling crate for additional pieces of equipment or even maintenance records. Except for a burnished spot on the support strut where he suspected a hospital inventory label had once been, he found nothing. When he stooped and popped open a housing cover near the bottom of the support strut, he found a highway of wires and a stack of six-gun-gray metal boxes inside. The boxes were each about half the size of a laptop computer. He tried to pry the top one open with his pocketknife but couldn’t.

  Bewildered, he moved to flex the arm once again, but it failed to budge. He was certain that whatever he was looking at had been used for treating patients, but he wasn’t at all sure whether he was dealing with a piece of operating-room equipment, a portion of an X-ray unit, or something designed to look inside an expectant mother’s womb.

  What he did know was that he was indeed hauling hospital equipment and that at least one of his twenty crates was free of drugs, weapons, stolen goods, and jail-time-inducing contraband.

  He suspected, nonetheless, that there was a connection between what he was hauling and Sergeant Giles’s murder. Enough of a connection for him to drop everything and call F. Mantew, or whoever in the hell Mantew really was, pretty damn quick.

  Nudging aside the crowbar with the toe of his work boot, he stepped back to the tool kit near the door, retrieved a battery-powered screwdriver, stepped back to the open crate, shouldered its plywood face back into place, and started screwing it back down. As each screw sank into place, he thought about the possibility of his payday flying out the window. He sure as hell hadn’t killed anyone, but the man who’d gotten him the current job was dead, and he needed F. Mantew to clear the air. Deciding to send Mantew a fax from a twenty-four-hour FedEx Office, he put his tools away, retrieved his crowbar, and moved to get out of the truck. As he closed the cargo-bay door, he thought about what the fax to Mantew should say. Brief and to the point would work, he decided. Something like, Hey, asshole, what the hell am I hauling? You can tell me or tell the cops, seemed just about right.