On Location

by Elizabeth Sims

  Slouching Man did not introduce himself.

  The slight man said, "I'm Alger Whitecloud," so Gina understood that he was Native American. His eyes were bottomless, black and quick.

  Slouching Man gave him an irritated look.

  Alger Whitecloud ducked into one of the tents, a blue nylon dome spattered around the bottom with duff kicked up by the rain, and came out with a striped wool blanket. He sat Gina and Lance on a log in front of the campfire, put the blanket around them, and kindled a second fire behind them. This was an amazing strategy. The second fire leaped to life, and within minutes their fronts and their backs felt warm, and soon they were warm through and through.

  Alger's vibe was palpably better than Dendra's and Slouching Man's. He was not high status in this group, but somehow his own inner status glowed out from him.

  The smoke from the fire rose and mingled with the low-hanging mist.

  Lance came back to himself. "Thank you guys." He smiled at each one.

  None of them replied. Lance helped Gina up. Alger pushed the small fire into the bigger one.

  They stood swinging their arms near the fire.

  A chipmunk dashed across the clearing, chittering.

  Slouching Man came over and told them, "You all can go head and get warm here, and eat something, but then you can go head and move on. We'll help you find your way down to the highway."

  "OK, great," Gina responded, standing squarely in the smoke of the campfire. She didn't care; the warmth felt good and the smoke smelled savory.

  Finding people willing to share their fire was good.

  Why, then, did Gina feel uneasy? The vibe here, aside from that emitted by Alger Whitecloud, was simply not friendly. Grudging, that was the word that occurred to Gina.

  She felt a sudden need to be extra-nice, to make up for their unfriendliness and to appear nonthreatening to these people. Why, though? Why would she feel uneasiness off of these recreational hikers? Gina had heard of feral individuals. Feral tribes? Were these people feral?

  "So you guys are camping here," said Gina, standing awkwardly near Lance and the fire. "Pretty spot."

  "Yeah," said Dendra, watching her.

  Smoking seemed to be something that Dendra did to claim some space and to occupy herself: keep the cigarettes dry, shield the lighter's flame from the wind, cup the fuming butt beneath your hand against the rain.

  Gina understood something about outdoor smoking right then: it's a triumph of you over the elements. That little flame is so elemental. She almost wanted one.

  Gina smiled warmly. "We're Earth Puppets!"

  The group was silent. Gina felt like an idiot standing there smiling.

  At last Slouching Man said, "We're Earth Puppets too."

  "Yeah? No kidding!"

  "Yeah," asserted Dendra, "we help the trees."

  "Yeah," said Slouching Man. "We take care of the trees."

  "That is so great! Lance, isn't that great?" Gina felt tremendously relieved. "Kindred spirits!"

  These campers had brought with them some interesting-looking climbing equipment, cables and rigging and hasps, hung on pegs driven into the trees. The trees were so magnificent and so alive that Gina took for granted they felt pain when the pegs were driven. A big-ass Coleman cooler hunkered like a closed casket beneath another tree. Its white plastic lid had been painted with poorly adhering olive-green paint.

  How had they carried that thing all the way into these woods?

  "We do trail maintenance," ventured Alger, and Slouching Man cut him a look. "I see you noticing our tools is all," he added.

  Lance said, "I hadn't really noticed anything."

  Simultaneously, Gina said, "Well, that's funny; we sure didn't see any trails to here!"

  "We're volunteers," said Slouching Man, as if that explained it. Then he said, "Do we have something for his hand?"

  Alger Whitecloud, smooth of chin and black of ponytailed hair, squatted to Lance and inspected his torn palm. He picked away the bloody moss that clung to the wound and said with a look of concern, "We use kerosene, OK?"

  "Yes," said Lance without hesitation.

  "Because this needs to be closed. It's cheap, and it kills whatever."

  Gina made a sound when she realized.

  Alger motioned Lance to come into the shelter of the green tarp, where he pulled some stuff from a duffel on the ground.

  From Lance's body language Gina saw that he was bracing himself as much to show fearlessness as to absorb the shock-pain of the kerosene.

  Lance held out his hand, and, gently, cupping Lance's hand in his, Alger Whitecloud poured a small stream of liquid from an aluminum bottle into his palm.

  Lance clamped his jaw and stood rigid as the chemical hit his open wound.

  Beads of sweat popped out all over his face.

  Alger took a piece of white cloth and blotted Lance's hand until the bleeding stopped altogether. He then pushed the edges of the wound together and squeezed a line of Super Glue along the line. "Works like a charm," he said.

  Lance held up his palm for Gina to marvel at.

  Alger finished by placing a piece of duct tape over the wound. "By the time this falls off, you'll have new skin under there."

  Lance gave Gina a quick smile as his color came back.

  In a few more minutes he really was OK, curious and upbeat like normal. He thanked Alger. "You're a good medic, dude."

  Alger Whitecloud's face was broad and exquisite: wide cheekbones, round eyes with a graceful, upslanted crease at the outer corners. His forehead was low, the pulled-back hair smooth.

  Lance was studying Alger too. He seemed about to say something.

  Gina got a sudden vibe.

  Recognition dawned between the two men.

  Gina saw this clearly, but Alger shook his head quickly at Lance before turning away.

  Lance put a chipper expression on his face.

  "What's going on over there?" said Slouching Man.

  "Nothing, Bonechopper," said Alger.

  "Nothing always means something. You always say the opposite of what you mean. Do you guys know each other?"

  "So that's your name, Bonechopper?" said Gina, extra-friendly. "Bonechopper what?"

  The men ignored her and gravitated toward the campfire. They stood in a triangle around it, the flames becoming a sort of primeval barrier between them.

  "I think it's a case of mistaken identity," Alger said. "People are always thinking they've met me before, I'm such an average-looking guy."

  "You?" said the tall man they now knew as Bonechopper. "You're a full-blood, and with that hairdo? You look like a fuckin' werewolf homecoming queen."

  Dendra laughed harshly. Alger, Gina now saw, was Dendra and Bonechopper's pet that they kicked when they felt like it.

  Dendra smoked constantly; Bonechopper and Alger smoked too. The camp brand appeared to be Marlboro Reds. Alger's blue jean jacket, wet about the shoulders, steamed from the fire. With his sleek ponytail and a cigarette in his lips Gina thought he looked vulnerably sexy. Bonechopper, who badly needed a barbering, just looked sloppy.

  Gina, wanting to ameliorate things, said, "Well, I'd be surprised if one or two people around here didn't know Lance, or somebody in his family! De Sauvenard's practically a household name in this state!"

  Lance's shoulders slumped ever so slightly, and he gave her a level look that she had never received before.

  Dendra and Bonechopper stared at Lance.

  "You're a de Sauvenard?" asked Bonechopper.

  Lance shrugged.

  "Well," said Bonechopper. "Well."

  "Your family's done one hell of a lot of logging around here," said Dendra. "I mean, my gosh, all this land—" She stopped.

  Lance said carelessly, "Oh, the family really doesn't do much logging anymore. Hardly any, in fact."

  Oh, hell, Gina thought.

  Here we are, miles from nowhere, at the mercy of these people, these ecology people, and now, finding out he's a de
Sauvenard! De Sauvenard's a dirty word to ecology people! Unless they know about the Great Plains Ungulate Initiative and so forth. Dear God, would these people chop our bones first and ask questions later? Why hadn't she thought before she spoke? Not every Earth Puppet cell was totally peaceful; she'd learned that in meetings, when people talked off to the side.

  Actually, she didn't fear Alger; he seemed like a pretty steady person. Didn't Native Americans, by and large, have good holistic values? And she could probably take Dendra if push came to shove.

  Gina thought of saying something about how much she and Lance loved the books of Carson Plover. Yes, she'd talk about that next. She and Lance would do well to give the impression that Lance was not really part of the dark, tree-decimating side of the family.

  But suddenly Bonechopper's face changed. His beard opened, and a harmonica-wide grin broke from it. Thoughts Gina could not read raced across his features.

  "Whaddaya know? Lance de Sauvenard, then." He lunged around the fire toward Lance. She flinched, but Lance did not. The tall man shoved out his hand. "Bonechopper Bjornquist."

  Lance shook his hand with his good one.

  Alger Whitecloud looked on impassively.

  Then Bonechopper Bjornquist started talking, and he kept on talking for a very long time. Relaxed and excited, he began with his own birth, which was in the bed of a pickup three hundred miles northeast of Skagway, Alaska, "which actually makes me Canadian, but Dad just kept driving until we got to Alaska."

  Dendra got some beers out of the cooler and passed them around. Everyone sat on the logs in front of the fire and ate awesome steaks and fried potatoes, cooked by Dendra and Alger on a Coleman stove beneath the tarp. Bonechopper said the steaks were bear. Gina did not believe him.

  How did they hump all this stuff out here? And why?

  Dendra got out some pot and a long pipe. The already dim day faded into night. They sat around the fire and stared into its bright aliveness, passing the pipe. Bonechopper talked the whole time about his life in Alaska and then here in Washington, working in fish canneries and as a snowplow driver and bar bouncer. "The last thing you want to do is put a move on a guy, more like you want to convince him how much money he's gonna have to spend to deal with an assault charge plus a DUI. But if I was drinkin' myself, my judgment stopped being all that great."

  It was a peaceful, good time. Gina was relieved at how Bonechopper's mood changed when he learned who Lance was. Local names still carry weight in a lot of places. Slowly it dawned on her that these people were probably growing marijuana around here. That was it. She knew lots of it came from the Northwest. That served to relax her too, now that it was clear what was going on.

  A wind came up, blowing away the fog, and the forest shook drops from every branch tip, but due to the canopy of the huge spruce, they stayed fairly dry. Gina didn't want to imagine the night without a fire ever again. Where there was fire, there was safety.

  "This pot is mellow," said Lance.

  "Super-mellow," echoed Gina.

  "This is the life," said Lance, as the mist again engulfed the campsite, making the fire a golden bubble of light and warmth. Alger, from time to time, left the bubble and came back with split pieces of wood to feed the fire.

  Lance and Gina spent the night rolled together in a couple of thick blankets beneath the tarp. Bonechopper had said, "Good night. In the morning you all have breakfast here with us, then we'll show you the way to the road."

  Bonechopper's and Dendra's voices from the fire droned Gina into semi-consciousness.

  But, later, as she drifted in the warmth of sleep, Gina was roused by a strong burbling sound, like a creek, above the steady dripping of the rain. They were near a branch of the Harkett, Alger had told them that, but she'd been aware of no creek so close by. Glugga-glugga, went the noise steadily, like water coursing through a culvert pipe. But there could be no culverts here, deep in the woods, could there? Glugga-glugga!

  Eventually she went to sleep, her head pillowed on Lance's biceps. He stroked her hair and kissed her as she slept.

  She roused again in the middle of the night to more gluggas, only now they seemed to be coming from a different direction. A strange place, these woods. Then, when a gust of wind brought the thrumming drops heavier, she felt what must have been a small earthquake. Just one bounce, like she'd felt at times in California. If she'd been in a regular bed off the ground, she thought, she probably wouldn't have felt it at all.

  Chapter 10 – Rowe Displays That Flair

  George Rowe sat in his underwear typing furiously into his laptop. Bertrice de Sauvenard had gotten him the information he wanted, and now he was checking the validity of the Thai bank that had received her $3 million.

  The bank was real, he found by checking its ratings online, as well as doing some triangulation using the names of its president and board of directors. They had legit reputations, none of them under investigation for anything; all he found were a few old corruption charges, but no convictions. Par for the course.

  He crunched into the second half of his wheat-oat bagel upon which he'd spread peanut butter. He drank his coffee. Hotel rooms were always depressing in the morning unless you could open the window. He didn't like his sleep smells to mingle with his food smells.

  Here at the business travelers' hotel in Renton, he had defeated the window's Perma-Bar Safety Unit with the largest of his lock picks and a drop of shampoo as a lubricant, plus a strong shove.

  He breathed the cool, moist air, looking down at the parking lot, gridded with white stripes, a few cars hunkering in the steady rain like patient bugs.

  Next he turned to the company that had received the check, Dashwood-Choudry Enterprises. This was a more complex thing.

  He found references to a British businessman named Jonathan Dashwood who had done real estate deals in Malaysia and Indonesia, and another named A. N. Choudry who seemed to have connections with the Thai government, but he could find nothing about Dashwood-Choudry Enterprises. The company did not have a Web site. It could employ one person or thousands, as far as Rowe could tell.

  He sought more information on the principals, and finally hit a vein when he searched on "Jonathan Dashwood sealed."

  Bribing a government—a mayor, some minister—to seal potentially incriminating documents from courts and the press was a common enough trick. Sometimes, of course, sealing was done for legitimate reasons.

  So Rowe got this one hit, a story in the International Herald Tribune to the effect that an Indonesian court had sealed plea and sentencing documents in a fraud case involving Mr. Dashwood four years ago. Two other principals in the case were Ivan Platonov of Irkutsk, Russia, and a Chinese gun merchant who had been, and still was, in prison in Egypt on an unrelated conviction.

  Rowe used the same search on A. N. Choudry but got nothing further.

  He went back to the name Ivan Platonov, because it was ringing a bell.

  Indeed. Platonov was a post-Gorbachev sleazeball, he learned, who'd made a killing when the Soviet Union fell, from his position as a provincial magistrate by simply deeding the region's three best copper mines to himself.

  "Copper?" Rowe said out loud.

  He phoned Mrs. de Sauvenard at the special number she'd given him.

  "Do you," he asked, "have any connections in Siberia?"

  "Well, in a way," she answered, not surprised by the question. "I have a man who covers Eastern Europe and Russia for me."

  "Does he speak Russian?"

  "I believe he does."

  Rowe told her what he'd found so far. "If Dashwood-Choudry Enterprises is a front, this Ivan Platonov could be the key guy. Would Leland Harris have had any dealings on your behalf, involving Siberian copper or, to your knowledge, this guy specifically?"

  "Gosh, I don't know. That would've been while Big Kenner was alive. I do know the name Ivan Platonov: he helped himself quite plentifully to the treasures of northern Russia, as I see you've found out. I would have thought he'
d have gone into retirement by now. You say he's linked to this Dashwood-Choudry company?"

  "Well, he's linked to Dashwood, anyway. Seems the two have committed some fraud along the way. I don't know what kind."

  Rowe wanted to get in touch with Silver Coast's Eastern European agent himself, but due to Mrs. de Sauvenard's caution, he had to settle for instructing her to do so. He told her what questions to ask, exactly what information to get. She rang off excitedly.

  He turned his attention back to Leland Harris's personal finances, and the question of the expensive Gene Delwaukee painting Kitty Harris had gloated over.

  He researched the picture online and was beginning to think that pursuing this avenue would be more trouble than it could possibly be worth when he came across a catalogue from an art auction house here in Seattle that listed the painting in a group offered two months ago.

  Phoning such an auction house to discuss pictures would have been awkward, and it's much more difficult to gain trust over the phone. It can be done, but your odds are always better in person. He got dressed in his nice suit and drove downtown.

  ——

  Seattle was socking in for an early winter. All but the diehards had winterized their boats or taken them out, and the waters of Puget Sound were slaty and ominous. Mt. Rainier, the empress, had receded behind the clouds. The knowledge of her being here, so majestic and so hidden—the identity of the city—made some people feel comforted, and others uneasy. Ferries blasted their foghorns, and the gulls cried like lonely garbage-pickers.

  Leaving his car in a street spot in the design district, Rowe got out and walked, enjoying the drizzly city streets. He dodged one puddle only to land in another. He laughed at himself and walked on disregarding puddles.

  A young man dressed in chic black with metal glasses greeted him at the auction house, two floors in one of the sleekly renovated warehouses. The glasses looked like something Rowe might have made in shop class, only he was sure they must have cost a mint. The man was clearly an assistant, from his slight swagger to his clammy handshake, exactly the level of employee Rowe wanted. Glancing beyond the outer office into the empty main one, he saw that the bosses had gone to lunch. Just right.