“Hundreds of thousands. All you need is a couple of dozen, here and there.”
“And you set it up through the Internet.”
“Six or eight guys in Michigan, up in the You Pee. Six or eight in the Southwest, Albuquerque, El Paso. Another six or eight in Montana. You keep the distribution small. You keep it separate, compartmentalized, like a spy cell.”
“We bust Ike, we're only scratching the surface.”
“Doesn't make a dent in the traffic.”
“Ike's small-time. He's a druggie. Meth has burned his brains out and probably cost him his teeth. He doesn't have the chops to put this together.”
“Agreed,” Child said.
“What's the common denominator?”
“Tribal lands, Indian country.”
“Is it going to do us any good to talk to Ike?”
“Can't do us any harm,” Child said.
* * * *
They sat him down in Ab's substation, just off the interstate at the Reedpoint exit. Hector took first licks.
“Guy blew himself up in a trailer in the Absarokas. He was an ex-G.I., name of Lloyd Threadgill.”
Ike stared at his hands, unresponsive.
“I'm curious to know how you made his acquaintance,” Hector said. “Doesn't seem like he would have run with your crowd.”
“I don't have no posse,” Ike said.
“What about Gulf War vets?” Child asked. “Guys who were in the sandbox?”
Ike fidgeted. He was coming down with the shakes.
“You miss your wake-up shot today, Ike?” Ab asked him.
“I got worms under my skin,” Ike said.
“It'll get worse before it gets better,” Ab said.
“I want a lawyer,” Ike said to them.
Ab grinned. “I want a nine-inch dick,” he said.
“You've been Mirandized,” Child said.
“I don't have to give you nothing,” Ike said.
“You go in the slam, you'll get nothing to ease your pain,” Ab said. “I got something for you, might take the edge off.”
Child cut him a sharp look.
“This ain't Quantico,” Ab said.
The FBI agent obviously didn't like the direction they were taking.
“Make you a deal, Ike,” Ab said.
“You can't,” Child said.
“Ike's choice, not yours,” Ab said.
“I'm crawling inside,” Ike said.
“Who put you together with Lloyd Threadgill?” Hector asked.
“Just a guy.”
“How'd you hook up with him?”
“Cut me some slack, hey.”
Hector glanced at Ab. Child looked away.
“Buy you a cup of coffee?” Hector asked the FBI agent.
They left Ab alone with Ike.
“I'm not going along with this,” Child said.
“Nobody asked,” Hector said.
“Your pal, there, gets Ike jacked up? Nothing the guy says is going to be admissible. We'll never secure a conviction.”
“I've got no interest in putting Ike away,” Hector said.
“Why, because he's walking wounded?”
“No, because he's a means to an end.”
“A judge might call it subornation of perjury.”
“With all due respect, don't preach the law to me.”
“The law's all we've got between us and the Stone Age.”
“Frank, for Christ's sake, this is the Stone Age.”
Child had never heard Hector use profanity before, and in fact it was uncharacteristic. Hector was usually courteous, but it was obvious he was pissed off about something.
“Sorry,” Hector said. “No reason to take it out on you.”
Child had cooled off, seeing Hector get hot. “What is it?” he asked.
Hector rubbed the bridge of his nose. “History, maybe,” he said. “Benign neglect.”
Child waited him out.
“Ira Hayes drowned in three inches of water,” Hector said. “Fell facedown in a puddle. He'd won the Medal of Honor in the Pacific, but when he died, he was just another drunken Indian.”
"You're not a loser, Hector,” Child said.
“Ike is,” Hector said.
“Ike's past saving.”
“Pretty much,” Hector said. “That's my point.”
“You can't change his history, or yours.”
“They say the victors write the history,” Hector said, “but tell me, Frank, who exactly are the winners here?”
“Okay, you're right,” Child said. “I shouldn't preach the law. You save just one kid, it's a minor victory. But you want to lose your self-respect in the bargain?”
“I'll take the trade,” Hector said.
“Your call,” the FBI agent said.
Ab came out from the back room. “Got a name,” he said.
* * * *
The one name led to others. Dropping a pebble in the pool, ripples spread outward. Federal warrants executed in eighteen states targeted network user databases, although the service providers dug in their heels and fought back against giving up individual account information. Many of the warrants were later ruled invalid because they cast too wide a net.
Still, there were results. They popped cookers and distribution as far east as Illinois and upper New York state, even if most of it was out west, Arapahoe, Apache, Flathead, Ute, Navajo. Closer to home, for Hector and Lame Deer, were the Rosebud and Wind River.
“Bad medicine,” Lame Deer said.
Hector nodded.
Burgers and beers at the Hitching Post. Lame Deer had come up from Wyoming. They'd invited Frank Child.
“It's a good bust, Hector,” Child said.
“Small fish in a big pond,” Hector said.
“Just like us,” Lame Deer said.
“You guys,” Katie remarked, smiling.
“All due respect, Doc,” Lame Deer said, raising his glass.
“Okay, it's a good bust,” Hector admitted. “We shut down a half dozen cookers. There's an end to it?”
“You take what you get,” Lame Deer said.
“Evil sufficient to the day thereof,” Child said.
“You a Bible-thumper, Agent?” Lame Deer asked him.
“The devil quotes Scripture when it suits him,” Child said.
“So do I,” Lame Deer said.
“We'll never find the guy who set it up,” Hector said.
“Don't be so sure,” Child said.
“He's a predator. He lurks around the waterhole. The prey comes to drink.”
“You're giving him too much credit,” Child said.
“He's not an abstraction.”
“We'll nail him, in the end.”
Hector's cell phone burred in his pocket. “Excuse me,” he said to the others, and picked up, turning away slightly from the table. He listened. “Roger that,” he said, and thumbed his phone closed. “Gotta go,” he said to Katie, standing up.
“What?” she asked, knowing it could only be bad.
“Ab Enterprise just got gunned down in a trailer park, far side of the interstate,” Hector said. “Twelve-gauge full in the chest, but he took the shooter with him. Fifteen-year-old meth head, both of them DOA.” He looked at the FBI agent. “You were saying?” he asked.
Copyright © 2012 David Edgerley Gates
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Fiction: TIGHTENING OF THE BOND
by R. T. Lawton
“It seems our friend the copper is in trouble.”
Cletis Johnston, the proprietor of the Twin Brothers Bail Bond Firm, sat forward in his executive leather chair with his elbows resting on the mahogany desk, and his ebony hands tented at eye level. Facing him from the other side of the polished mahogany top stood his executive secretary, Moklal Feringheea, and the firm's solitary bail agent, Theodore Oscar Alan Dewey.
“You're referring to the station captain?” Theodore ventured.
“The only
copper we have in our pocket,” replied Cletis.
Theodore thought he detected a slight amount of sarcasm in that reply, a somewhat disconcerting situation for him to be in. Undercurrents in conversation always left him slightly queasy, causing large beads of sweat to pop out on his pink, bald head. When he thought no one was looking, Theodore used his left hand, the one with the once broken and improperly set little finger that now stood permanently straight out like a wayward flagpole, to squeegee off some of the moisture.
News such as this meant the office would be in turmoil until circumstances had been remedied to the satisfaction of the proprietor. As the proprietor did not like loose ends, Theodore frequently found himself being the person designated to ensure that all endings were tied up with finality, no comebacks. And with the way things had gone the last several years, Theodore sometimes wondered how he hadn't completely dehydrated through excessive perspiration during one of these problem-solving sessions in the bail firm's Inner Sanctum.
“May I inquire what the captain's problem is?”
Cletis paused in reply as he untented his hands and straightened the sleeves of his light tan suit coat of Shantung silk. The cuffs of his dark cranberry shirt now displayed the proper amount of exposure, according to his personal tailor based in Hong Kong. As he reached for a document lying near at hand, soft light from baby spots in the ceiling glistened off his twenty-four karat gold cufflinks which were inset with polished ebony stones. His dark eyes barely skimmed over the sheet of paper before he spoke.
“According to this note delivered to our office a few minutes ago by an anonymous messenger, our friend the captain has been charged with the crime of murder.”
“Who'd he kill?” asked Theodore.
“The deceased appears to be an Internal Affairs detective looking into alleged corruption within the department.”
“Oh,” was all that Theodore could say in reply. This was definitely not good. He then tried drying the wet palm and damp fingers of his left hand by wiping them on the left pant leg of his brown slacks. Didn't work. A small dark spot now showed in the cheap cloth, which meant the sweat on his balding dome would get worse unless he switched hands. Some days, nothing seemed to go right.
“To protect our asset within the police department,” continued Cletis, “we must take immediate action before the situation worsens.”
Theodore wondered how the situation could possibly evolve into circumstances worse than a murder rap, but knew better than to inquire on that subject. He had asked similar questions over the years about other situations, and had found to his dismay that circumstances could always get worse than they first appeared. He decided to stay with the action part of the proprietor's statement.
“What type of action did you have in mind, sir?”
“First,” said the proprietor, “we must run our own investigation to determine what really happened.” He turned his attention to the firm's executive secretary. “Moklal . . .”
At the mere mention of the Hindu's name, Theodore felt his upper body inadvertently withdrawing from the immediate vicinity of the tall cadaverous man descended from generations of Thuggees in northwest India. At least that was part of the information listed in the background report that the proprietor had received from his connections at Interpol when Moklal had been taken on as executive secretary.
Of course, in his own defense, Moklal claimed said data produced nothing more in fact beyond a short reference to an alleged Thuggee family. He preferred to consider the situation as a family reputation smeared by frightened officials from the old British Colonial Empire during a turbulent time long past, a time when the English held sway over the subcontinent.
But Theodore knew better. He had observed the Hindu's long muscular fingers sometimes twitching as if they longed to be massaging someone's throat. And once, while rummaging through Moklal's desk, Theodore had accidentally discovered a yellow silk scarf with a knot tied securely in each end. Curious, he conducted a search on Google and found that according to the official records of The Thuggee and Dacoity Department of the 1830s, plus information from their reputed expert, one Captain Sleeman, this particular type of item was known as a rumal, or strangler's scarf. On the following morning, the scarf had disappeared from Moklal's desk drawer. However, there were certain subsequent times when Theodore swore he caught a glimpse of yellow silk barely showing from inside one sleeve of the executive secretary's suit coat. Theodore figured he didn't need to end up strangled in order to convert that referenced Thuggee allegation into an engraved fact. Nope, if he knew how to work a hammer and chisel, he'd put it into stone himself.
“Moklal,” continued the proprietor, “will go to the county jail as a representative of our bail firm and proceed to interview the good captain to see what he knows about this charge of murder against him.”
The Hindu nodded.
“And me, sir,” inquired Theodore. “What do you want me to do?”
The proprietor made notes on a small square of paper and slid it across the desk.
“You, Theodore, will meet with a certain secretary for Internal Affairs at this address. She will provide you with an envelope containing all reports typed up so far that concern this case. In doing so, you will make no attempts to see her face, or to identify her in any way.”
The bail agent bobbed his head up and down in understanding of the order he'd received.
“Do I need to pay her?”
“That will not be necessary, Theodore. There are other ways to engender one's cooperation under these circumstances. I have already taken care of the matter.”
Theodore bobbed his head again. He knew all too well how these matters worked. He now switched hands to surreptitiously run his right fingers and palm over the top of his perspiring head, especially since conditions now appeared to be getting even more slippery.
The proprietor went back to his paperwork.
Theodore took this as his clue to leave and get about his own business. When he turned to go, he noticed that the Hindu was already nearing the doorway leading out into the front office, therefore Theodore hurried to catch up and pass him.
“Tough luck for the captain, getting crosswise with Internal Affairs,” he murmured, trying to maneuver through the doorway first. “Them guys are going to make our work much more difficult.”
Moklal effectively hip blocked any quick exit by the bail agent and moved his own body first into the doorway. His head inclined slightly forward as if to speak in confidence.
“As the master Mahatma Ghandi tells us in his sayings, ‘Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fall into the clutches of the wolf.'”
Theodore came up short. His brow furrowed.
“Wait a minute. Which one are you calling the wolf? I've seen the results of some of the captain's actions, and he didn't act like no sheep to me.”
Moklal grinned. “And who is the one getting caught here?”
Theodore contemplated the image of a white woolly sheep, and then one of a black wolf with red glaring eyes and long white fangs. The two images slowly morphed into a dark wolf covered in the purity of a white sheepskin. Their bent captain had definitely played both sides quite well. Or had, up until now.
* * * *
Theodore had been in the process of paying for his sandwich and something to drink at the food court in the mall when he was rudely bumped on his left shoulder. He turned quickly in that direction to see who had committed this infraction to his person, but there was no one beside or behind him. When he finally faced forward again, he noticed a woman hurrying away off to his right, but from her backside he didn't recognize anything about her other than she appeared to be dressed for office work. Not wanting to give up his almost purchased lunch and possibly be late for his pending meeting with the Internal Affairs secretary, he let the woman go. Some people just never apologize for their transgressions was his thought.
It was only a few seconds later when Theodore reach
ed into his right side sport coat pocket for enough change to pay the cents portion of his food bill that he realized there was something more than just coins in that pocket. His stubby, almost webbed-fingered hand drew out a locker key with a white number on its red plastic handle. He stared. He'd known he would be contacted, but not how. The bump-and-run sleight of hand by the office-dressed woman was evidently it.
“Excuse me, sir,” said a snide young male voice on the opposite side of the order counter, “you're holding up the line.”
Theodore glanced behind him for the second time. Oh, there were several people lined up there now. He hadn't been paying attention.
“Plus,” continued the voice, “you still owe me seventy-nine cents.”
Theodore counted out the proper change right down to the penny, careful not to lose the key in the process, took his bagged lunch, and hurried away. Holding the bag with one hand and feeding four salty French fries at a time into his mouth with the other hand, he searched for any lockers there might be in the mall. He could only hope that the key wasn't for lockers at a bus or train station somewhere. Seemed airports had already removed all lockers in their buildings as a safety precaution in these terrorist times, so that option wasn't feasible.
Finally, in the last place he wanted to look, near the mall security office, he located a long corridor with a wall of bright yellow lockers where shoppers could store their coats in cold weather or even extra bags of purchases while continuing to shop in comfort.
There it was. Number 23.
Theodore inserted the key and turned.
The door dragged open with a slight creaking sound.
Suddenly remembering the airport scene with John Travolta playing Chili Palmer in Get Shorty, Theodore held the door only partially open while he quickly peered in both side directions to see if anyone was paying attention to him and locker 23.
At the far end of the corridor, a door to the ladies room opened. Metal banged on metal as the door swung shut.
Theodore flinched.
But it was only an elderly lady in an electric, three-wheeled vehicle with a single, rubber-tipped handle for steering and a small red, triangular flag flying from atop a long whip antenna which stuck up from one corner of the cart's rear bumper. Its driver appeared to be attached to a green oxygen cylinder by means of a clear plastic tube which ran from the cylinder strapped in the rear of the vehicle to a clear plastic line under her nose. She breathed heavily and motioned frantically at Theodore, as if he had committed some unknown sin just by being there.
AHMM, July/August 2012 Page 15
