by Gulvin, Jeff
‘Si.’ Boese straightened, and, shielding his eyes with one hand, tried to get a look at the speaker.
‘Y’all wanna move it for me. I need to get my horse trailer down here in a while. Wanna run some beasts in the lake there.’
‘Si. No problem.’
‘Obliged.’ The cowboy touched his hat and wheeled the horse away.
Boese drove further along Eastlake Boulevard, almost to where it curved at the head of the lake. A pair of red-tailed hawks fanned the air as they settled in the upper branches of a white-barked cottonwood tree, close to the water’s edge. Boese turned right on Pintail Way, past an unfenced property: a single-storey house and corrals where a number of horses grazed on hay that had been dumped for them in truck tyres laid sideways in the dust. A cowboy, with red hair and sunglasses, his jacket loose at his shoulders, was hauling more hay into the corral. Boese drove the length of Pintail Way, almost to the lakeside itself, and slowed when he came to the ten-unit trailer park. Mail boxes lined the fence at the entrance in a single rack. He turned the truck so the driver’s side was close to them, and carefully inspected the names. He paused at number 9, and a cruel twist worked the line of his lips. A copy of USA Today protruded from the open flap, Teniel Jefferson’s name on it.
19
SWANN WOKE UP WITH Logan in his arms, and lay for a few moments staring at the ceiling. Logan was still sleeping, the warmth of her body wrapped in his. He touched her face, easing away the fallen strands of hair, and kissed the lids of her eyes. She was beautiful; tough, yet as feminine as he had known a woman to be. He felt easier, lighter than he had done for a long time. Then he thought of Harrison and his mood soured a fraction. It was barely six-thirty and only just struggling to get light outside. He would have to do something about Harrison, but quite what, he did not know. His grudge was very deep indeed and he was in no hurry to bring it to a head. Again he looked at Logan. This had been bound to happen. He had known it since she first agreed to meet him in Washington, and fly with him down to New Orleans.
She stirred and he wondered what her reaction would be when she came to. As soon as Harrison had gone, they both, perhaps, knew that it would end up like this. She stirred again and flicked one eye open, saw him, smiled and lifted a silky thigh over his, pressing her breasts against him. The telephone rang and she sat upright, covers falling back. She sat half naked and swept a hand through her hair. ‘Better let me get it, honey.’ She leaned over, away from him, the sheet slipping so he could see the curve of her buttocks.
‘Logan,’ she said, and moved closer to the table. The sheet slipped away completely now, and Swann let his fingers wander the flesh of her bottom.
‘What did you say?’ She sat upright and looked back over her shoulder at him, her eyes bright all at once. ‘OK. We’ll be there. What time’s Harrison getting back from New Orleans? Right. See you later.’ She put the phone down and rested the spread of her fingers against Swann’s chest. ‘That was the Atlanta field office,’ she said. ‘The picture you found, Mary Greer and two gals—Gabby and Oko?’
‘Yes?’
‘Gabby is the a.k.a. for Camilla Christina Hall. She was a member of the SLA in the 1970s.’ She paused for a brief moment. ‘Oko was also a member of the SLA. Right now, she’s serving fifty-five years for conspiracy to murder. Her real name’s Leona Boese.’
They sat in one of the interview rooms at the FBI field office in Atlanta, a thick, heavily stapled file on the desk between them. The report had been prepared by the Los Angeles Police Department and was entitled ‘The Symbionese Liberation Army in Los Angeles 1974’. Swann was reading about Gabby: Camilla Christina Hall, born 24 March, 1945. She had been active with the SLA in Los Angeles and was killed during the LAPD SWAT raids at 1466 East 54th Street on 17 May, 1974, an attack which all but ended the activities of the SLA. Logan tapped her finger at the top of the following page. Leona Boese a.k.a. Oko. She and her husband Pieter had been active throughout the history of the SLA, which had its roots in the Venceremos movement which was prevalent on the Berkeley campus between 1972 and 1973. Swann then cross-referenced against the file that the GBI had furnished them with, which confirmed that Mary Greer had been around the Berkeley campus at that time. The file mentioned nothing about any revolutionary activity, however.
Pieter Boese (Ismael’s father) had been involved closely with Joe ‘Bo’ Remiro, who was subsequently arrested for the murder of Marcus Foster, the superintendent of Oakland school, and the attempted murder of his assistant, Robert Blackburn, in November of 1973. Pieter Boese was also suspected of involvement in those shootings, but was not apprehended until May of 1974. He and his wife took part in the robbery of a sporting goods store in Inglewood, Los Angeles, before planting an improvised explosive device at the county courthouse, where two other SLA members were being held. Both the Boeses were taken into custody before the SWAT team’s attack on 1466 East 54th Street. Logan put down the file and looked up at Swann.
‘Nothing about Mary Greer,’ she said.
‘On the fringes, maybe.’ Swann sat back in the chair. ‘There’s always lots on the fringes, Chey. You know that. Especially on a university campus.’ He picked up the file again and flicked through the pages. It documented every known SLA member, including the infamous Patty Hearst, and listed the number of LAPD and FBI personnel who took part in the main raid on 1466 East 54th Street. ‘We need to talk to Leona Boese,’ he said. ‘She and Mary Greer were obviously friends. Why would Boese have one of his mother’s college friends killed?’
‘I’ll find out where she’s serving her time.’ Logan again looked at the file. ‘She got fifty-five years, Jack. That was twenty-five years ago. She’ll be due for parole soon. Maybe she’ll want to talk to us.’
Logan updated Kovalski’s team as well as the fugitive unit in Washington. They were busy trying to co-ordinate all supposed sightings of Boese with police departments around the country. The Ford that he had stolen in Meridian had been found abandoned west of Amarillo, Texas, but the search by state police and the Texas Rangers could find no trace of the driver. Logan also linked the phone line up to New Orleans, where Harrison was preparing to rejoin them. She arranged for an intelligence analyst to set about trying to locate Leona Boese’s whereabouts with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Swann phoned London and told Webb what they had discovered.
‘That’s a result, Jack,’ Webb said.
‘We think so. I’m waiting to find out which pen’ she’s banged up in, then we plan to go and visit her.’
‘How’s it going with the UCA?’
Swann gazed out of the window. He could see Highway 85 splitting the city in two, with the buildings looming like great concrete sentinels on either side of the road. ‘He’s been in New Orleans the last couple of days, some deal he’s got with his partner, so that’s been fine. But he’s intent on winding me up, Webby. There’s not much I can do about it.’
Webb was silent for a moment. ‘Keep your hands in your pockets, Jack. Sounds like he wants a confrontation. Don’t give him the pleasure.’
‘I’m not planning to. What’s happening back there?’
‘We’ve got sound in the clubhouse.’
‘You have?’
‘Yeah. We did a mean old sneaky beaky, got the gas board out and everything. Worked like a dream. We’re going to apply a little pressure through a snout that SB are trying to suborn, so we’ll see. I don’t think it’s going to be easy, though, Jack. You know what these gangs are like, and this one’s tighter than any I’ve seen before.’
‘The discipline of ex-soldiers,’ Swann said. ‘Makes a hell of a difference, eh.’
‘We’ve got other irons in the fire.’ Webb told him about the visit to the US Secret Service agent and then Swann put the phone down.
Webb returned to his desk. He had taken Swann’s place in the squad room, but was still officially attached to the exhibits office and his desk remained there. He spoke to the duty sergeant looking after the Bomb Data Cent
re and asked him again for everything they had on Storm Crow. Boese’s words were on his mind: We have been betrayed.
He looked again at the information they had collated. Some of it had been updated from Louis Byrne’s files at the FBI, and there was the odd anecdotal incident that had been given to them by Ben Dubin. He had been in Israel when the first recorded attack by Storm Crow occurred. A triacetone triperoxide grenade thrown at the US Ambassador’s motorcade. Webb looked through the other listed events and tugged at his lip.
‘Jesus, I can hear the wheels turning.’ He looked over his shoulder and saw Colson standing half in, half out of the door. ‘What’ve you got, Webby?’
‘Storm Crow stuff, sir. Bits and pieces I pulled from bomb data. Movements, activities, normal kind of thing.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Why would the baddest man in the world allow himself to get caught, even if he knew he could escape?’
‘Vanity.’ Colson looked at him over the rim of his glasses. ‘Ten years of anonymity, then on to the world scene with the worst chemical incident in Western peacetime history. It put him in the papers, George, and, as you said, with an escape plan whenever he chose to use it.’
‘But the message to Tal-Salem, Guv. “We have been betrayed.”’
‘Who could betray him?’
‘Member of an escape team maybe, somebody in the background or something.’ Webb lifted his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Then what’s he doing in America?’
‘That’s another good question.’ Webb looked again at the papers in front of him. He was searching for clues to something, but he didn’t know what it was.
Boese watched Teniel Jefferson working in the autoshop, on the Fallon Road in Carson City. He had taken the Nissan in for an oil change, and right now Jefferson was checking the suspension, shining a flashlight up from the pit he was standing in. Boese was a long-haired Mexican, his skin slightly darkened, with a latex nose, bigger and more hooked than his own. He leaned against the office wall and watched Jefferson sweating his way through the work. He was a big man, bigger than Boese had thought, broad-shouldered with a squat, square trunk and thighs like small trees. His blond hair was shaved up his neck like a grunt; he was forty-two years old and clearly hated beaners. He had been polite enough when Boese drove in, but the eye contact was minimal and the sentences short and stunted.
Boese considered his IQ to be reasonably high, but he was uneducated and his bulk was probably some form of over-compensation for other inadequacies. Jefferson came through to the office, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘You’re all set,’ he said. ‘You wanna watch the rear offside suspension, the shock’s on the way out.’ He shifted a lump of chewing tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other. Boese paid him and climbed behind the wheel of his truck. As he backed out of the garage, Jefferson was on the phone, sipping from a pint of peppermint-schnapps.
Back at his motel, two blocks off Main Street, in a quieter section of Carson City, Boese took his make-up case from his bag and prepared another latex mould. He sat before the mirror, enjoying himself. He had learned the art of stage make-up in college, as a side study to his more conventional curriculum. It had served him well over the years. Now he applied the liquid rubber and worked the dye into a paste. When he was finished, two hours later, he was as black as the ace of spades: face, neck, hands. His nose was thick and rubbery, lips heavy and the colour of a summer storm. He put fresh ID in his wallet and stowed the PSS pistol in his waistband holster, before stepping back into the night. Across the street a Ford 250 pick-up truck was parked, and, as Boese walked to his Nissan, somebody inside struck a match. Boese did not see him, or if he did, he did not show as much. The man lifted the match to his face as if to light a cigarette. He wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat.
Boese started the Nissan and headed out of town towards Gardnerville, driving as far as the turning for the Indian Correctional Center. Behind that was the Nevada Highway Patrol training facility; and further still, nestling amid the foothills, Stallions whorehouse.
He parked his truck next to a big grey Dodge with a blue flash running the length of the sides. Carefully, he locked his doors and watched the road for a moment. A set of headlights were coming up the hill, some distance back on the highway. Boese heard the soft peal of laughter coming from behind the drapes, which only half covered the lighted windows in the single-storey building. He walked through the wire gate and up to the front door, where a burly man with no hair stood in a penguin suit. He stared at Boese for a long moment, eyes dull and suspicious. Boese had gold about his neck, and gold on his negroid wrists. He looked the man in the eye and, taking his wallet from his pocket, ran his thumbnail over the stack of bills before peeling off a twenty. He stuffed it in the breast pocket of the penguin suit, patted the man on the shoulder and went inside.
The front door opened into a small lobby where an older woman was seated behind a desk. She smiled at him. ‘Good evening, sir. How are you today?’
‘Just fine, thank you.’
‘Can I take your coat?’
Boese looked down at the heavy winter sports jacket he was wearing and shook his head. ‘You know what, I think I’ll keep it on. I don’t guess I’ll be staying a whole lotta time.’
‘Just here for a drink, sir?’
‘I think so.’
‘Bar’s right through in back.’ She smiled at him again. ‘You know what, though, I bet you change your mind.’
He went through the bead curtain into a bar area with couches and armchairs set around drinks tables that were knee-high to the floor. The bar was dimly lit: soft, pale lampshades hung at eye level from the ceiling over the bar. A blonde girl, wearing a leather waistcoat which forced her breasts together, was serving cocktails.
‘Sir,’ she said, as he sat down on a stool. ‘What can I get you tonight?’
Boese looked at the array of bottles behind the counter and caught sight of himself, unrecognizable in the mirror. ‘I’ll have a Tom Collins and take one for yourself.’ He peeled off another twenty and looked to his right. Two whores dressed in lace and silk were seated together on the couch against the far wall. One of them was black and she smiled at him. He returned the smile, but concentrated on his drink. Teniel Jefferson, wearing an open-necked shirt that revealed matted hair on his chest, sat with his arm about a young Mexican woman on the couch in the far corner. He was laughing at some private but raucous joke. Clearly, he had been here before.
Boese stared at his strange reflection in the mirror and sipped the gin. He could see Jefferson’s reflection in the glass further down the counter. Jefferson had been here before, many times in fact. He could afford it, not because he worked as a mechanic for the autoshop, but because he was an ex-Carson City prison warder who sold cocaine on the inside. He was careful, not drawing attention to himself, and he lived modestly in the trailer park by Washoe Lake. He had two vices that Boese knew of, both of which were expensive—the blackjack tables in Reno and here at the cat house. Boese looked up as the black whore left the couch and slid on to the vacant stool next to him.
‘Hi, honey.’ She laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘What can we do for you tonight?’
Boese looked sideways at her. ‘You know what, baby doll,’ he said. ‘I’m feeling kinda tired right now. Maybe I’ll just sit a while and have a few drinks.’
She stroked his nappy hair with slim, long-nailed fingers. ‘OK, hon. You just holler when you want something.’
The door opened then and a cowboy walked in. He wore black jeans and pointed boots and a high-necked purple shirt, buttoned down at the cuffs. His hat was faded and dusty and he took a seat two stools from Boese, and ordered a Coors Lite and a shot of Jagermeister. Boese glanced sideways at him and the cowboy touched his hat. ‘Howdy,’ he said.
Boese nodded, sipped his drink and watched Jefferson rise from his seat. He stretched, then curled his index finger at the Mexican whore who sat next to him. They disappeared into a back room and Boese half close
d his eyes. Next to him, the cowboy toyed with a book of matches in his left hand, easing it in little somersaults between his fingers, like a cardsharp does with a deck. He sipped at the beer, then swallowed the shot in one, and wiped his beard with the back of his hand.
The same girl who had approached Boese approached him, and, like Boese, he declined. For a moment their eyes met and Boese caught the cold, hard stare, and for the first time in as many years as he could remember, he felt a little uneasy. The cowboy drained his beer glass and looked at the whores lining the couches behind them. All of them were young and firm, all of them were pretty. He looked again at Boese, the same cold stare. Then he slipped the matchbook into his shirt pocket, paid his tab and left. Boese finished his drink and sat for a while longer. Again the girl approached him and again he sent her away. He ordered a glass of 7Up, drained it and walked back outside.
He parked the Nissan in the shadows by Washoe Lake and closed his eyes, listening to the water lapping at the broken cottonwood limbs that lined the shore. Two hours later, he heard the rumble of Jefferson’s grey Dodge with the blue flashes on the sides, and he eased himself more upright. Jefferson, he decided, was one of those professional drunk drivers who make an art of riding home after drinking too much: never running a stop sign and keeping exactly to the speed limit. He’d check his taillights on a daily basis, to make sure there was no reason for a cop to pull him over.
Boese slipped lower in his seat, then lay crosswise as the headlights shone full against the windshield. Jefferson swung into the park with a bump against the kerbstone, then trundled the length of the road to his trailer. Boese opened his truck door, adjusted the handgun that was settled against his spine, and then walked the length of the park with silent, expert footsteps. Now his eyes were still, cold and glinting in the fragment of sickle moon that crested Slide Mountain. He could hear Jefferson moving about and grunting to himself, like a pig, inside the trailer. Boese had his hand on the screen door; the inner door stood open. He could see Jefferson just inside, TV remote control in one hand, an empty glass in the other, with a bottle of Black Velvet whisky crooked under his elbow. Boese pulled back the screen door. Jefferson turned, gawped, and Boese pressed the muzzle of the gun against the sweaty skin of his forehead.
