Death on the Greasy Grass

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “What’s going on?” Manny asked.

  Stumper held up his hand. “Make sure Jerry doesn’t share the interview room with anyone else.”

  “What?”

  Stumper closed his cell and floored the Tahoe, setting Manny back against the seat. “Some CI that’s been working with DCI tipped our guys off that Jerry One Feather was heading to Billings with an ounce of crank. My guess it came from a cook in Denver. I’m going to interview Jerry while he’s fresh.”

  “Mind if I sit in?”

  Stumper laughed. “Like you’re going anywhere until I’m done with him? Not that I’m going to get anything out of him.”

  “You don’t sound too optimistic.”

  “Jerry’s a tough nut. Been around the horn. He’s been a suspect in a jail homicide in Rawlins, and another in Sioux Falls, but never proved up on any of them. Spent time in Leavenworth, and a bunch of jails across this part of the country had the Jerry One Feather memorial jail cell in his honor. We used to joke that he was trying all the lockups in the country so he could write an article for a travel magazine, like those guys that go around the country sampling restaurants. Until he started dealing meth. Then the joking stopped.”

  They pulled in to the justice building and Stumper grabbed his notebook as he led Manny past the dispatch center to the interview room. Jerry One Feather stood bent over a garbage can brushing ashes into the round file. “You guys got a real pigsty here, Stumper.”

  Jerry towered over them, scarred fists clenching and unclenching, the picture of unchained anger begging for release. Manny recognized the swollen knuckles, the nose set at an off angle, one cheekbone that protruded more than the other when it didn’t heal right. His joint body, bulging muscles developed by someone with little else to do besides work out eight hours a day, showed through his white T-shirt. Manny recognized Reuben in Jerry One Feather.

  “Anytime I was in stir, I kept my house immaculate. Always.” He slapped the tabletop with his bandanna to clean the ashes off. “And you expect cooperation from me in this room?”

  “Just sit, Jerry.”

  Jerry dropped into a metal chair chained to the floor. He crossed his arms and chin-pointed to Manny leaning against the door. “Who’s your chubby partner?”

  “FBI Senior Special Agent Tanno.”

  Jerry’s eyes narrowed. “You federal bastards railroaded me six years ago. What you say to that, chubby?”

  Manny reached his arm above his head as if pulling on a steam valve release, and did his best imitation of a train whistle.

  Jerry started to stand, but Stumper put a hand on his shoulder and eased him back into the chair. Not that Jerry couldn’t have stood if he wanted to. He continued staring at Manny until Stumper opened a file and laid out the field test. “An ounce is what you had in your hot little pocket when you were stopped.”

  “So?”

  “You’ve been dealing.”

  “I don’t deal . . .”

  “Like those quarter-gram Baggies were going to some charity? You’ve been drugging long enough to know . . .”

  “I said, I don’t deal . . .”

  “. . . when you’ve been cheated.”

  Jerry’s eyes narrowed. “How so?”

  Stumper filled his lip with Copenhagen and offered Jerry a dip.

  He shook his head. “Tobacco’s bad for you.”

  Stumper pocketed the can. “If you bought an ounce—like our information had—you were cheated out of four grams.”

  Jerry’s grin faded.

  “Unless you smoked it yourself.”

  Jerry stood. The table groaned under his weight as he leaned over, veins in his neck throbbing. “You know I don’t use that shit.”

  Manny came off the door. “But you don’t mind ruining other people’s lives with it.”

  Jerry chin-pointed to Manny. “Tell your chubby friend to stay out of this, or he’ll get more than he bargained for.”

  Manny walked to the table and stood looking up at Jerry, inches from his face, smelling the odor of the steak and onions he had recently eaten. “You’ll get more than you bargained for, too. This is a felony, and we hold the future of your ass in our hot little hands.”

  Jerry laughed nervously and felt for the seat. His eyes remained locked with Manny’s as he eased himself into his chair. “Okay, little man. We’ll do it your way. For now.”

  Stumper turned the chair around and sat across from Jerry. “Who you getting your shit from?”

  “Stumper, you’re dumber than I thought.”

  “The dummy is the one with three strikes hanging over his head. Looking at life being some other guy’s wife in the slammer.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Three felonies. You made a home run on this one. This makes three, and you’ll be tried as a habitual criminal. Mandatory life.”

  Jerry came off his chair and it fell over as if playing dead. “What the hell you mean, three strikes? This would be only my second felony: the carjacking in Billings and that stop and rob in Sheridan. The others happened before that habitual law was passed.”

  Stumper shuffled through the file and slid a court disposition across the table. “You seem to have forgotten about that bum check to the car dealer three years ago.”

  Stumper turned to Manny as if Jerry wasn’t in the room. “Dumb shit tried to leave the state with a car paid for with a no account check.” Stumper laughed. “Nothing in the universe travels faster than a bum check.”

  “I spent misdemeanor time for that,” Jerry sputtered.

  Stumper grinned. “No, that stay in the county turned into felony time. Only if you abided by the plea agreement would it be considered a misdemeanor. Which included the probation appointments you failed to make. As per the plea.”

  Jerry wiped his forehead with his bandanna and paced the room. “I only missed one.”

  “You only made one.” Stumper winked, enjoying Jerry’s predicament. “And the conviction went back to grand theft. Felony. Sit down.”

  Jerry righted the chair and slumped into it.

  Manny sat in a chair next to Stumper and leaned his elbows on the table. “Stumper’s right. Judges got no wiggle room on this. It’s mandatory life.”

  “Shit.”

  “Sure you will, in an open toilet shared by some other schmuck. Maybe you’ll work yourself up from prison laundry to book server,” Manny explained, slowly as if educating a Boy Scout troop. “Maybe even get your jailhouse lawyer license. Help other inmates file for appeal, maybe sentence reduction. Help everyone except you, ’cause no habitual ever gets out early.”

  Jerry seemed to shrink in his chair. “What you guys need to know?”

  “Jerry,” Stumper said, shaking his head. “Now who’s dumb? You know I need your supplier’s name here on Crow Agency.”

  Jerry rubbed his stubble. “You know I can’t snitch on my supplier.”

  “Even though you were cheated out of those four grams?”

  Jerry looked down at the floor, but said nothing. Stumper shut his notebook and stood, while Manny held the door for him.

  “Wait,” Jerry said. “Can’t we make a deal here?”

  “Who do I look like, Monty Hall. What door you pick depends if you’re the girlfriend or the wife when you go up the river.”

  Jerry nodded to the door and Manny shut it. “I’ll talk about dope, but I can’t talk about my supplier.”

  “What, like the meth fairy just drops it into your lap once a week?”

  Jerry kept silent, and Stumper motioned to the door.

  “Wait,” Jerry said. “You’ll put in a word for me, right? That’s only fair.”

  “Life’s not fair, Jerry.” Manny leaned over the table. “Life’s like a shit sandwich—the more bread you have, the less shit you gotta eat. The more you give, the less you�
��ll get.”

  Stumper looked to Jerry. “What I recommend to the prosecutor depends on what you give up.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Stumper took out his notebook again. “How much crank comes onto the rez every week?”

  “A quarter pound.”

  Manny whistled and scooted closer to Jerry. “Every week?”

  Jerry nodded.

  “How’s it coming in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Stumper started closing his notebook again when Jerry held up his hand.

  “I honestly don’t know. All I know is I take delivery of an ounce a week from . . .” Jerry kicked an imaginary rock on the floor with the toe of his boot.

  “Jerry,” Stumper said, leaning over and looking at him. “Now’s not the time to test our newfound friendship.”

  “The guy I get my shit from is not the one who hauls it from Denver. Understood?” Jerry’s foot started tapping the floor and he fidgeted in his seat. “This guy’s just small potatoes, like me. After . . . the big guy picks it up in Denver, he hauls it to the rez and gives it to the guy I get it from. Understood?”

  Stumper nodded.

  “Okay,” Jerry muttered. “When my guy gets it, he gives me a call and we meet. Slips me an ounce. Sometimes an ounce and a half.”

  “Who, Jerry?”

  “Little Dave Night Tail.”

  Stumper scooted his chair back. “You have got to be shitting me.”

  Jerry held up his hand. “No shit. Little Dave’s got a thing for the ladies. Likes buying them nice things. And he’s got expensive tastes himself: clothes, jewelry, new trucks. Last year he bought a damned Shetland pony just to give to one of his girlfriend’s boys living in downtown Billings.”

  Stumper nudged Manny. “Oh that must have been a hit with the neighbors.”

  “That information should be enough to keep me locked up in here, right?”

  “What you mean?” Stumper closed his notebook. “You can make bond as soon as I talk with the magistrate.”

  “I don’t want to make bond, Stumper. I make bond, the guy bringing the load up from Denver will slit my throat.” His foot started tapping again, and he wrung his hands. “Just let me sit in jail and wait for trial. Think you can swing it?”

  Stumper shrugged. “What are friends for?”

  “Take Jerry over to Detention,” Stumper told Moccasin Top as he passed out of the interview room.

  Stumper led Manny to his truck and hit the remote. “He was damned afraid of being cut loose,” Manny said.

  Stumper started the cruiser and backed out of the lot. “I’ve never known Jerry to be afraid of anything. The main supplier must be one tough bastard to get him riled like that.”

  “Degas?”

  Stumper nodded. “As good a suspect as any.”

  Stumper started onto I-90 and half turned in his seat. “Guess Della Night Tail wasn’t just imagining Little Dave teepee-creepin’, though I’d have rather found out Little Dave was getting stray on the side rather than dealing meth. Makes a lot of sense, all the times he was gone. I’ll go back to the records and cross-reference those days Della reported him gone to shipments of meth coming onto the rez. Now all we got to do is round up Little Dave.”

  Manny popped a PEZ and let the bittersweet candy dissolve under his tongue. “You said she reported him missing what, four days ago?”

  Stumper nodded.

  “And you haven’t found him?”

  “Not a sign.”

  “Maybe he left for greener pastures. Maybe someone gave him an all-expenses-paid lift off the rez.”

  Stumper looked sideways at Manny. “What you getting at?”

  “Wilson,” Manny said. “If Little Dave was making deliveries for Degas, it wouldn’t be such a stretch that Degas would want him whisked away before the law got to him first.”

  “And maybe he was the one you saw climbing into the front of Wilson’s plane right after takeoff.”

  “Maybe.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Loud banging on Manny’s motel door woke him with a start. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and cursed as he stubbed his toe against the nightstand. “Who is it?”

  “Me. Stumper.”

  He brushed past Manny and closed the door. Stumper squinted as he smiled at Manny standing beside the closed door clapping. “I really didn’t need any applause.”

  Manny ignored him, and his last clap turned the light on. He walked to his bed and bumped his head on the low-hanging chandelier.

  Stumper smiled when the light came on. “Red skivvies with pink hearts FBI issue?”

  “Gift from Clara,” Manny said as he hunted for his socks and boots. “What the hell did you wake me at six o’clock for? I thought you were going to get me after you talked with Jerry One Feather again.” Manny crow-hopped, one leg stuck into his trousers as he fought to stick the other one in before he fell over.

  “Better sit down for this.”

  “That amazing?”

  “No,” Stumper laughed. “But you better sit down before you fall down.”

  Manny sat on the edge of the bed and managed to wrestle his other leg into his trousers. “What’s so important?”

  Stumper waved a manila folder in front of him. “Completed autopsy report from the Billings ME came early this morning. He finally got Sam’s military records.”

  Manny slipped the socks on and the material dangled over his toes. The only ones at Last Stand Western Wear were the 12–16 size. “So we’re back to twenty questions. Just tell me what it says.”

  Stumper pulled up the only chair in the room, an occasional with, by the looks of stains on the seat, only occasional cleaning. He flipped the folder open on the bed. “The crispy critter in Sam’s house wasn’t him.”

  Manny stopped mid-sock. “If it wasn’t Sam, who was it?” Manny dropped his sock and grabbed the medical examiner’s report. He snatched his reading glasses off the Cosmopolitan lying open on the nightstand.

  Stumper nodded to the magazine. “Another FBI issue?”

  Manny looked over his half-glasses. “Clara’s idea of getting in touch with the feminine perspective.”

  Manny flipped the cover page and read where the ME had estimated the victim as being between five five and five nine, based on long leg bone measurements. “The victim’s left arm had healed at an odd angle from an early break,” Manny said aloud.

  Stumper propped his feet up on the table and flipped through the Cosmo. “The ME compared Sam’s Marine medical records with the victim’s. Sam never broke his arm like the victim. And Sam’s right foot was shattered when he stepped on a personnel mine in Vietnam. Victim had no such breaks.”

  Manny closed the folder. “And Sam picked up a nasty skull fracture in a tunnel when an NVA frag detonated close by.” He held up the report. “So who is this?”

  “Wish I knew.” Stumper tossed the Cosmo on the bed, and it flipped open to an “Eight Ways to Make Him Scream” article.

  Manny dropped the ME’s report on the nightstand and went back to putting on his socks and boots. “This burn victim had Degas written all over it. Several scenarios come to mind.”

  “Me too,” Stumper said. He’d flipped open his pocketknife and begun picking his teeth. “The intended victim might have been Sam.”

  “Killed by mistake?”

  Stumper nodded. “Maybe over drugs?”

  Manny shook his head. “Sam didn’t sound like the kind to deal. Or use.”

  “Then the journal,” Stumper said. “Maybe it was Sam that tried to squeeze money from Chenoa.”

  Manny stood and tucked his shirt into his trousers. Like his socks, the shirt was several sizes too big, as if the only men buying clothes in Hardin were giants. “Possibility. Itchy said Sam had read the journal, and that Harlan locked
it in his safe afterward. As good friends as they were, Sam could have known—probably did know—the combination to Harlan’s safe and taken it after the reenactment.”

  “Which leads us back to the Star Dancers.” Stumper closed his knife and stood. “I liked it better when we thought Sam was a drug dealer connected to Degas. Now we have to tiptoe around the Star Dancers again. Cubby called the tribal office the last time we were out there and bitched to Chief Deer Slayer.”

  Manny caught a look at himself in the mirror listing to the starboard on a wall stenciled with a cavalry-Indian scene. He looked silly and sloppy in the overgrown outfit. “We need to ID the burn victim. Get out a BOLO for anyone missing . . .”

  “Including Little Dave?”

  “Including him. And anyone else that may have failed to show for home. And”—Manny smiled at Stumper—“we’d better drive out and give Chenoa the good news about Sam.”

  Stumper groaned. “You mean bad news. Now she’s back to needing Sam’s signature on ranch business. She’ll be madder ’n hell.”

  Now it was Manny’s turn to smile as he tossed Stumper the Cosmo. “Look at the bright side—we’ve got the drive to Lodge Grass for you to figure out how to give her the news.”

  * * *

  On the way to give Chenoa the news that her brother wasn’t the victim in the house fire, Manny called Rapid City Regional. Willie had lapsed into a coma, and Clara said the doctors feared the worst. Miraculously, Doreen insisted Willie would fight through it. “I don’t know what you said to her the other night,” Clara whispered into her phone from the waiting room, as if Doreen could hear from inside Willie’s room, “but she’s thumbing through bridal books. Planning their wedding while he’s lying there. Something we should be doing, too.”

  “Losing cell service,” Manny said, and hastily closed the phone.

  By the time they pulled onto the Star Dancer ranch, work trucks stood in a row by the bunkhouse like horses tied to a hitching rail. Manny thought how every truck in the Star Dancer fleet must be there, except for Cubby’s fancy red Lincoln.

  Jamie Hawk stood blocking the doorway even before they’d climbed the steps. “The missus and Mr. Eagle Bull are just finishing lunch.”