Tall Man in Ray-Bans (A John Tall Wolf Novel)

by Joseph Flynn

  “None whatsoever,” Darton said.

  “Good. Let’s go see if there are any Red Hawk fans in town.”

  Chapter 15

  Santa Fe, New Mexico — June 5, 1997

  “I won’t work on a reservation,” John told Marlene Flower Moon first thing.

  His job interview had taken place at The Pink Adobe. It was lunchtime, but he didn’t want to make even an implied commitment by ordering a meal. He ordered the Chocolate Denise, a mousse with fresh whipped cream, the house specialty.

  Marlene had a salad. John saw how she could keep her figure eating light like that, but he’d bet the lady liked her protein, too. Something cooked blood rare.

  John had kept his voice down when he made his declaration. Some of the diners were Native American. He wasn’t looking to put any noses out of joint; he was just making a point.

  Marlene spoke quietly, too, but her tone was sharp.

  “What’s the problem, Mr. Tall Wolf? Third world poverty right here in the USA disturb you?”

  “You didn’t just find me on the street, Ms. Flower Moon. You checked me out, didn’t you?”

  She nodded, keeping her face impassive.

  “Then you know my story. You know Bly Black Knife tried to take me away from my parents and bring me back to the rez.”

  She surprised John by saying, “I first heard of you by visiting the rez.”

  “What?”

  “I spoke with your grandmother.”

  John had heard of Maria Black Knife but he’d never met her.

  Then Marlene pushed things a step further.

  “If you’re interested, your birth mother died last year.”

  It was a rare day when John thought of the woman at all … but he was curious.

  Not that he came out and asked for details. Marlene told him anyway.

  After filling him in on some other points of interest.

  “The tribal lawyer, a Mr. Fuentes, if I remember right, wanted to appeal the decision that awarded you to the Wolfs. But Bly said if he appealed she would testify on behalf of your adoptive parents.”

  That was another jolt, and Ms. Flower Moon was watching to see how he responded.

  “Why would she do that?” John asked in a flat voice.

  “Depends on who’s asking. The outside world would hear that she didn’t want to go through the torment of another trial. I was told privately by a shaman that Serafina Wolf y Padilla sent a dream to Bly that terrified her so badly she couldn’t go through with the appeal.”

  John did his best to keep a smile of pride off his face.

  “So she got scared.”

  “Terrified. That was the exact word I was given.”

  John got the feeling Marlene wanted him to tell her about a woman with such power.

  He declined to share any information about his mother.

  Marlene continued her story. “Shortly after that, having fallen out of favor with her family, Bly left the reservation. She went to Flagstaff and found work as a waitress. The son of the restaurant’s owner fell in love with her and they married. They had a good life, until a gas leak in their house asphyxiated both of them. The fire department found them in bed with their arms around each other. Tragic but peaceful.”

  John thought about that. Wondered if someone had arranged the leak.

  Did Coyote know HVAC?

  John said, “So you just happened to be on the rez and heard all this?”

  “Part of my job is to scout young Native American people with talent.”

  “And Bly’s mother knew all about me?”

  Marlene said, “You and your grandmother live near each other. You go about your life openly.”

  “I didn’t know anyone was spying on me.”

  Marlene smiled. “Well, you know how stealthy Indians can be.”

  John knew Marlene was mocking him. He ignored it. “What’s Maria’s interest in me?”

  “She wants to make sure you don’t upset her plans.”

  “What plans?” he asked.

  “Bly’s brother, Cesar, was supposed to be the coming power among his people, but he died in an accident, too. His Jeep went off a mountain road.”

  Latin was one of the languages John had studied at St. John’s College. Among the phrases he’d learned was cui bono? Who benefits? Lawyers liked to use it.

  “Did that work out for anybody,” he asked, “Bly and Cesar dying.”

  “Well, in Cesar’s place, his son Arnoldo seems to be doing well. Your grandmother is grooming him for a long run in a position of power. She wants to make sure you never intend to return to the reservation and become a rival to your cousin. What she didn’t say, but what she really wants, is for you to return and Arnoldo to vanquish you.”

  John laughed. “Did she ask to hear from you after we had this little talk?”

  “She did.”

  “Okay, here’s what you tell Granny: Don’t worry about a thing. I’m never coming back.”

  The main purpose of the BIA was to facilitate government-to-government relations between the United States and 565 federally recognized tribes with a combined population of just under two million American Indians and Alaska natives. The people of those tribes, in recent years, had placed an increasing emphasis on self-governance, but they still looked to the BIA for assistance with such things as social services and natural resource management of trust lands.

  In some of the most economically disadvantaged places, economic development programs were provided.

  The BIA also helped with law and order: cops, jails and tribal courts.

  John’s official role, as a federal agent, was to act as a liaison between Native American cops and those in the larger society. When major crimes against persons were committed by one side against the other, it was his responsibility to see that resolution, if not justice, was achieved without wholesale bloodshed.

  Given his upbringing and his insistence, John was an outside man.

  Outside the rez.

  Other cops worked as inside men.

  That hadn’t been the usual way of things, but Marlene had taken the lemon John had handed her and made lemonade.

  Had John been limited to his official duties, he would have turned down Marlene’s job offer. But he had another responsibility, not listed in his job description, that intrigued him. While he worked for the BIA, he was an unacknowledged shadow agent for the EPA.

  Native Americans believed fervently that they were the stewards of the earth. They wanted to be sure that when Great Spirit restored the land and the buffalo to them the planet would be a healthy place.

  “Restored?” John had asked Marlene.

  “Our ancestors,” she said, “yours and mine, have been in this land for at least twelve thousand years and maybe as long as twenty thousand years. You really think the white man will last that long?”

  John knew there were some Native Americans who believed their ancestors had always lived in North America. That immigration from Asia stuff? Forget it. That story about Africa being the cradle of humanity? No way.

  At the time, John simply shook his head and told Marlene, “In case you haven’t noticed, there are plenty of black, brown and yellow people in the country these days. Are all of them transients, too?”

  “If they’re white inside.”

  “Like me,” he said.

  “Like you think you are.”

  John’s mother had warned him about women who might try to save him from himself.

  He said, “If I help prevent environmental damage, that’ll be good for everyone, not just one group of people.”

  “If that’s how you want to see it,” Marlene said, showing him her unsettling smile.

  John refused to either be seduced or to lose his temper, but he took the job.

  After he negotiated another ten grand in starting pay — and the freedom to pursue his cases as he saw fit.

  Marlene had asked with a laugh, “You want a license to take scalps, too?”
/>   “That’d be good,” John said.

  The BIA sent John to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia where none of the male feds had hair long enough to be worth taking.

  All the trainees took the same curriculum: interviewing, surveillance, criminal case management, legal training, physical conditioning and self-defense techniques, tactical training, firearms proficiency, vehicle handling skills and physical evidence collection.

  After becoming proficient in those skills, John was sent back to New Mexico for more training: back country tactics and tracking. The course lasted five days. John paid attention and learned all he could — all the while thinking Marlene was cosseted in Washington laughing at him, thinking she’d made an Indian of him after all.

  What she didn’t know — at least he thought she didn’t — was that John had taken more wilderness trips with his parents than he could remember. He’d learned things that neither the BIA or anyone else in the federal government had ever dreamed of.

  Except for maybe a few of the wizards at DARPA.

  The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency.

  The Pentagon’s version of Hogwarts.

  Chapter 16

  Austin, Texas — July 12, the present

  Detective Darton Blake had engaged in serious understatement when he’d said Austin was really big in music.

  The town called itself The Live Music Capital of the World. Had even trademarked the name. There were two hundred live music stages in town. You wanted rock, blues, jazz or country, there were clubs and venues for you. You were feeling in a classical mood, the city had its own symphony orchestra. The center of the music scene was Sixth Street, but adjacent neighborhoods were not to be overlooked.

  John and Darton lost count of all the clubs they’d visited looking for Jackson White, as he’d styled himself as a musician. Almost everyone they talked to either remembered Jackson or had heard of him, but no one could recall seeing him for years. That was a real shame, too, many people said, because the guy was talented. Had the whole package musically: could write, play and sing.

  Of the people they’d talked to, most of them asked John and Darton to give them a call if they found out what Jackson was up to these days. Four club managers said they’d be happy to book him, if he was still in the game.

  Hours into their search, they caught a break by stopping into a diner on Fourth Street for lunch and John whimsically asking their waitress if she knew where Jackson White was hanging out these days.

  She asked the obvious question, “He a musician?”

  “Virtuoso,” Darton said.

  The waitress gave him a squint. “That Spanish?”

  John said, “Italian. Means he’s really good.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Have to remember that, virtuoso. Anyway, if the fella was all that good, the guy you want to ask is Larry Taggart. Used to cover the music beat for the American Statesman for about a hundred years. Now, he’s got his own Internet site.”

  “How do we find him?” Darton asked.

  The waitress cocked her head. “His office is that last booth next to the kitchen. Larry likes his food hot.”

  John, who’d agreed to buy lunch for Darton, tipped the waitress one hundred percent of their check, including the tax.

  Larry Taggart was willing to have the lawmen sit down with him, and once he heard they weren’t interested in anything to do with the personal use of marijuana he agreed to listen to their story.

  “Jackson White?” Taggart said. “That young man was something special, had himself a real generous muse and a loving relationship with his six string, could make that guitar shout and whisper, cry and laugh.” The music writer looked at John. “Never figured he’d have done anything to bring federal attention to himself.”

  John said, “He didn’t. His father was a bad guy. We’re looking for Jackson to help us clear up a few things.”

  Darton nodded in agreement.

  Weighing the character of the two cops facing him, Taggart said, “Hope I don’t regret telling you fellas this, but if there’s anyone who might help you it’s Coy Wilson.”

  “And Coy Wilson is?” John asked.

  “She was Jackson’s special lady. Played co-lead guitar, rhythm guitar and keyboard in Red Hawk. Sang harmony and wrote some of their songs with Jackson. Does studio work now is what I hear.”

  “She live in town?” Darton asked.

  Taggart took an iPad out of a leather courier’s bag on the seat next to him. He tapped its screen a few times and slid the tablet over to John and Darton’s side of the table.

  “There you go,” he said. “Still listed in the phone directory.”

  Darton copied the information.

  John bought Taggart’s lunch, too.

  Back in Darton’s car, the detective told John, “That was a pretty good play, asking that waitress about Jackson White.”

  “I get lucky sometimes,” John said.

  “My favorite kind of person to work with,” Darton said.

  Coy Wilson lived on a quiet block of single-family homes within walking distance of the University of Texas campus. No one answered the doorbell after three increasingly lengthy rings, but a peek through a front window showed the house still looked occupied and furnished by someone with financial means and an artful eye.

  Darton took out a business card and wrote a please-call-me note on it.

  He was about to drop it into Ms. Wilson’s mailbox when a next door neighbor stepped halfway out of his house and asked, “Something I can help you gentlemen with?”

  The man was at least in his sixties, judging by the gray in his hair, but he still looked fit and was smart enough to be able to duck back inside if he didn’t like their answer.

  Darton took out his badge. “I’m Detective Blake with the Austin PD, and this gentleman is a federal officer. We’d like to speak with Ms. Wilson. Is there anything you might do to help us?”

  “My name’s Lloyd Rucker, and I can tell you Coy’s working in L.A., but she’s supposed to be home tomorrow — if the recording session doesn’t run long.”

  John asked, “Have you ever seen a man called Jackson White at Ms. Wilson’s home?”

  “Sure, Jackson lived there with Coy, but not for quite some time.”

  “You knew him?” Darton asked.

  “In a neighborly way. He’s a talented young man. Handsome. Great personality. He and Coy would bring beer and barbecue over to my house. I’d keep an eye out for their place when they were on the road.”

  Darton asked, “He and Ms. Wilson ever rehearse in her house?”

  John added, “If they did, was the music ever too loud for you?”

  Rucker laughed. “What they did was write their songs in that house, and my only complaint about the volume was I had to ask them to turn it up, my hearing not being what it used to be.”

  “They were that good?” John asked.

  “Yes, they were. Coy still is, I imagine, but I don’t hear her play or sing at home anymore. Must do all her music in the studio these days. A real shame from my point of view.”

  “She and Jackson break up?” Darton asked.

  Rucker sighed. “I tried as gently as I could to ask about that one time. Coy just gave me a sad smile and I didn’t ask again. Anything else I can do for you?”

  Darton gave Rucker the business card he’d inscribed for Coy.

  “If Ms. Wilson doesn’t come home tomorrow, I’d appreciate a call.”

  “You bet.” Lloyd Rucker went back inside his home.

  John and Darton looked at each other.

  “Love and heartbreak?” Darton asked.

  John shrugged. “Life imitating art, maybe.”

  Chapter 17

  Treaty Oak Park, Austin, Texas — July 12, the present

  Unable to find Jackson White or talk to Coy Wilson, John and Darton stopped by the Whole Foods Market on the corner of Lamar and Sixth and got something healthy to drink. Darton had a Cherry V
anilla Cream All Natural Soda; John went with a Republic of Tea Cranberry Blood Orange tea. They walked to nearby Treaty Oak Park.

  The ground on which the park was set once served as a sacred meeting place for the Comanche and Tonkawa tribes. The Treaty Oak was estimated to be five hundred years old. Darton did not do the tourist guide bit and inform John of the park’s history. Nor did John ask if Darton had chosen the setting for any reason other than a park bench in the shade of a tree beat sitting in a hot car as a place to work.

  Each of them used his laptop to check the law enforcement databases to which he had access. Entering the names Lily White Bird and Lily Red Hawk, John came up with no returns. Darton didn’t find anything under those names either. But he did find a Lily White.

  He told John, “I figured if Jackson used the name White, maybe he got it from mama.”

  “Good thinking. What’d she commit a misdemeanor or a felony?”

  “Neither,” Darton said. “She’s on record for committing good deeds not bad ones. Ms. White made annual contributions to the Austin Fallen Officers’ Fund. Our widows and orphans charity.”

  John authored a thin smile. “Either the woman has a guilty conscience or she likes her irony.”

  “You think she regrets the death of Daniel Red Hawk?” Darton asked.

  “That or she’s trying to atone, set herself up for a better spot in the next world.”

  Darton nodded. “Some do get religion, if they’re able to tell right from wrong.”

  “Is Ms. White current in trying to make amends?”

  “No, last donation was four years ago.”

  John thought about that. Frowned.

  Seeing his expression, Darton asked, “What?”

  “I’m wondering if maybe that was about the time Jackson stopped playing Austin.”

  Darton bobbed his head. “Just because we haven’t said it doesn’t mean we both haven’t thought it: Jackson White is dead.”

  “That’d give his mother another regret to occupy her mind.”