The Homecoming

by Carsten Stroud

  The anti–Sam Elliott effect of this was diminished a bit by the fact that he was wearing a clean white shirt and a pair of boot-cut jeans faded by the actual sun and he had on the battered bloodstained old navy blue Lucchese cowboy boots that he was, in his own eccentric circle, notorious for.

  The noon hour of this lazy Thursday was passing, sliding into the west—and the sun was putting a hazy autumn glow on the Belfair Range behind him and on the black hides of the six Tennessee Walker–Morgan crosses that he was letting run wild down the hill. A lovely sight, marred only by the tan-colored County Sheriff’s Department car that was rolling along the Cullen County side road about a mile away.

  Danziger eased himself forward in the old wooden chair he was sitting on, groaning as he did so since the bullet hole in the right side of his chest still smarted a bit, even after all these months. Perhaps if he’d had the slug taken out by an ER doctor instead of an Italian dentist named Donny Falcone it wouldn’t be smarting quite so much.

  However, since he’d acquired the chest wound by getting himself shot by a guy who had, just two hours before, helped him rob the First Third Bank in Gracie, Danziger took the view that going to a real ER doctor instead of Donnie Falcone would have been a bad decision.

  Danziger bore the guy who shot him no grudge since the guy, a decent enough fellow named Merle Zane, had only shot him because Danziger had shot Merle Zane first, and in the back at that.

  Danziger leaned forward in the chair, poured himself a fresh glass of wine, watching the distant dust trail of that County car as it got closer and closer. It was slowing now, getting ready to make the turn into the long gravel drive that curled and wandered its way up the quarter-mile-long grassy slope to Danziger’s place.

  It was too far away to make out the markings. Could just be a social call. Danziger, ex–State Patrol, was on good terms with local law enforcement, good enough to go fishing down in Canticle Key with Marty Coors and Jimmy Candles and Boonie Hackendorff, all of them members of the same National Guard unit.

  Still …

  He reached down beside him and picked up the Winchester carbine that was leaning on the wall. He didn’t have to rack it to put a round in the chamber. That was movie stuff, done mainly for the sound effect.

  If a gun isn’t loaded, it’s a paperweight, his sainted mother used to say, usually when she was getting loaded herself.

  He cocked the hammer back, sighed heavily, got to his feet with a groan, and walked to the edge of the porch, setting his glass down on the railing and holding the Winchester muzzle down along the seam of his pants.

  He squinted a bit against the glare of the sun on the patrol car windshield as it made the final turn and rolled up the grade, coming to a stop in the middle of the turning circle.

  At this range, Danziger ID’d the car by its numbers. It was Coker’s official ride. He was a staff sergeant in the County Sheriff’s Department.

  Coker was from Billings. Danziger was born in Bozeman. They were a year apart in age, Coker fifty-two, Danziger fifty-three. They’d met in the Corps a long time back and were about as tight as two cranky twice-divorced cops could manage. Danziger kept the Winchester in close and waited.

  Coker shut the engine down, popped the door, and got out slowly, six feet of ropy muscle with skin tanned copper brown. He leaned his left hand on the roof of the cruiser and smiled across it at Danziger. Danziger figured his right hand was resting on the butt of his service Beretta.

  “You gonna shoot me with that carbine, Charlie?”

  “Depends on why you’re here, Coker.”

  “Guess you’ve heard the news?”

  “Deitz is out.”

  “Yes.”

  Coker ran his left hand through his bristles, set it back on the roof.

  “Sorta complicates things a bit, I guess.”

  Danziger nodded, cracked a big smile.

  “Got that right, my friend.”

  A silence.

  “Well, you gonna offer me a beer, or what?”

  “Outta beer. How about a glass of wine?”

  “Jeez,” said Coker, wincing. “That Dago cat piss all you got?”

  “Might have a lime cordial back there.”

  Coker laughed, a short sharp bark, pushed himself off the roof of the cruiser, and came around the front. He was in his patrol uniform, tan with brown flashes, his six-pointed gold sheriff star glittering in the afternoon light. He came to the foot of the stairs, looked up at Danziger.

  “I guess we need to talk.”

  “I always hated that phrase. Whenever Barbara used it, I knew I was in deep shit.”

  “Well,” said Coker, grinning up at him, “I believe that about covers the situation.”

  Danziger went inside and brought out the bottle, frosty from the cooler, and a heavy glass tumbler for Coker. Coker was sitting in the other ancient wooden chair, tilted back against the boards, his boots up on the railing. Danziger, looking at him, got that classic image of Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine.

  He handed him the tumbler, sat down in the other chair, tilted it back against the wall. Boots on the railing. His bloodstained blue cowboy boots. Coker sipped his wine, cradled the tumbler in his hands, and nodded at Danziger’s boots.

  “Them’s what did us in, my friend. Those damn blue boots.”

  “Them’s?”

  “Okay. Those. If you hadn’t worn them to the fucking robbery, then that Thad Llewellyn banker guy wouldn’t have told Deitz that one of the gunmen was wearing blue cowboy boots and Deitz wouldn’t have put you and them—those—boots together.”

  “I wore them because they’re my lucky boots.”

  “So you keep telling me. Only reason Deitz hasn’t told the cops yet is they haven’t let him off the Raytheon beef. If they had cut that deal when they still had him, we’d be playing out the last part of your favorite movie right now.”

  “The Wild Bunch?”

  “Yeah. At the end, where they fight the whole Mexican army and they all get killed.”

  Coker was right.

  Coker was the best police sniper in this part of the state. They called him in for all the really bad ones. Coker was also the guy waiting in the Belfair Range when those four cops came barreling up the defile, right on their asses, he and Merle Zane with the black Magnum.

  Coker had taken out the two media types in the news chopper first and then all four of the pursuit cars. Five rounds from the Barrett .50 he had borrowed from Armories.

  Six dead.

  The take had added up to two million one hundred and sixty-three thousand dollars, plus random jewelry from the safety-deposit boxes.

  And one stainless-steel box with a Raytheon logo on it. Inside that, the disk-shaped guidance module that Coker had named the cosmic Frisbee.

  If you had asked either of these men why they did that, robbed the bank, took the cash, killed four cops—being cops themselves—well, both of them would have looked at you for a long while and then one or the other of them would have said something along the lines of who is this asshole and how did he get in here?

  Coker sipped at his drink again, and they sat there for a bit, watching the stud horses gallop on the hillside.

  “So,” said Coker, after a while. “Got any suggestions?”

  “I been thinking about it, ever since I heard. Coupla things come to mind.”

  “And …”

  “You could shoot me out of hand, right now, tell everybody you just dropped in and found me counting the cash, and then we slapped leather.”

  “Slapped leather?”

  “You know. Had a gunfight.”

  “Slapped leather?”

  “It’s from the movies, dammit.”

  “What was the movie? Cabaret?”

  “Okay. Forget that,” said Danziger. “Where’s the cash now?”

  “It’s not cash anymore. Got it into the Mondex system.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Boxed it up and
FedEx’d it to our guy at that limey bank in the Channel Islands.”

  “Boxed it up? Boxed it up? Are you fucking nuts, Coker? What did you say it was?”

  “Tax records. Nothing bores the shit out of people more than tax records.”

  “Did it get there?”

  Coker reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out two navy blue cards, each with a large gold chip embedded in it. Embossed on the front side, in holograms, were the letters PNG BANK. He held the cards out to Danziger.

  “Pick a card. Any card.”

  Danziger took the one on the left, flipped it over. There was no signature line. Just a small square of dots made for a scanner.

  “What’s the PNG Bank?”

  “Papua New Guinea. Based in Port Moresby. Our guy says Qadaffi was one of their clients.”

  “Well, if they’re good enough for Muhammar … this one of those, what you call ’em …?”

  “Used to be called Mondex cards. These are sorta like those, but all the data is triple encrypted. They can be traced, but it’s not easy, especially if they get churned by the holding bank.”

  “What’s churned … no, never mind. I could give a shit. What’s on them? I mean, how much?”

  “Little over a million on each. That includes the money we took from Deitz for giving him back his cosmic Frisbee.”

  “That was five hundred thousand. Plus two million one hundred and sixty three thousand from Gracie—”

  “Minus the one hundred thousand you stuck in the back of Deitz’s Hummer when you were putting the Frisbee in the glove box.”

  Danziger was quiet for a time, doing the math.

  “We’re short maybe four hundred thousand.”

  “Cost of doing business.”

  “With the limey?”

  “Yeah. He had to clean a lot of currency. Sixty pounds of it. I say four large for a service like that is dirt cheap. Anybody we could have taken it to in Atlanta or Vegas would have asked for fifty percent.”

  Danziger studied the card for a while.

  “Is this safe to use?”

  “It’s not like a credit card or an ATM card. It’s more like a computer and a cell phone. You can send cash over the phone, you can use any kind of currency, and if the guy you’re dealing with has a Mondex card too, then you can just transfer cash back and forth right there on the street. No bills no coins no receipts. No stores, no banks with security cameras—”

  “So it’s just like cash?”

  “Yeah. Only it’s all on that computer chip there.”

  “What if I lose it?”

  “Like I said. It’s cash. You’d be fucked.”

  Danziger nodded, slipped the card into his shirt pocket.

  “You okay with this?” Coker asked.

  “Hell, I’m fine with it. But it kills Plan B.”

  “Which was?”

  “Plant the cash somewhere where Deitz controls the facility, and then rat him out. Not even Deitz could talk his way out of actually having all the stolen cash in his possession.”

  “Wouldn’t have worked.”

  “Why not?”

  “The Feds went all over everything Deitz owned, home and office and his beach house. Deitz cooperated, because he knew damn well he didn’t have the cash. It turns up later, someplace they already looked, not even the Feds would buy it.”

  Danziger had nothing to say to that.

  “Besides,” said Coker, pouring himself more wine, “there’s Twyla.”

  Twyla Littlebasket was Coker’s girlfriend. She was a Cherokee dental hygienist, formerly employed by Donnie Falcone. She wore tight-fitting powder blue dental hygienist smocks that buttoned all the way down the front, and white stockings. Her father had been Morgan Littlebasket right up until six months ago, when he flew his plane into the side of Tallulah’s Wall. Twyla had brown eyes and long black hair as shiny as a crow’s wing. A figure that could cause heart palpitations in a yak.

  Due to an oversight, Twyla had stumbled on the cash one day shortly after the robbery, mainly because Danziger had left it lying out on the counter at Coker’s place.

  They had talked about shooting her but neither of them could bring himself to shoot a sexy dental hygienist in a baby blue dress that buttoned all the way down the front.

  So they’d cut her in for a share instead, which she took, smiling sweetly even though it made her part of the conspiracy and therefore as guilty as they were, which didn’t really bother her because, deep down, she had larceny in her the way crocodiles have teeth.

  “What about her? She worried about Deitz?”

  “She’s fretting. I told her we’d come up with something. She said it was too late for stratagems and schemes. She said there was only one sensible thing to do.”

  “What was it?”

  “We go find Deitz and kill him.”

  “Did she? My, my. Our Twyla continues to amaze. Well, I’m game. The field is going to be a bit crowded. Every law enforcement guy in the state is thinking exactly the same thing. Plus remember that guy, the guy who found out Twyla’s dad was taking pictures of her in the shower, got ahold of them and e-mailed them to Twyla?”

  “Tony Bock.”

  “Yeah. Him. Remember what he said, when you and Twyla paid him a call?”

  “After he pissed himself and fainted, or before?”

  “Didn’t he say that Deitz’s IT guy, Andy Chu, was blackmailing Deitz? That he had film of Deitz meeting with the Chinese?”

  “Yeah. I put that fact in my back pocket, figured we could use Chu for something, down the line.”

  “What was he blackmailing Deitz with?”

  Coker turned it around in his mind.

  “Chu probably knew about the deal with the Chinese.”

  “Wasn’t there something about four guys in Leavenworth?”

  “Yeah. You’re right. Mafia guys, if I recall. Heavy hitters. Bock said that Chu found out Deitz had fucked them on an inside job back when he was with the FBI. When it went south and the Feds were closing in, Deitz cut a deal in exchange for testimony. They let him resign, and the four Mafia guys went to Leavenworth.”

  “Where they still are?”

  “Far as I know,” said Coker, patting his tunic for a cigarette, pulling out a pack of Camels, offering one to Danziger.

  “You figure they got a TV in Leavenworth?”

  “Sure.”

  “You figure they saw Deitz on it, getting busted for taking down a bank and walking away with a couple of million?”

  Coker inhaled on the cigarette, blew it out, grinned through the smoke at Danziger.

  “Charlie, I do believe you’re not just a pretty face after all.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Mafia guys have long memories. If they think Deitz has money—”

  “They’ll send somebody.”

  “Maybe already have.”

  “Could be.”

  A silence, while they worked out the angles.

  “Okay. Crowded field,” said Coker, “but we gotta do it. Law is one thing, but if a mob enforcer gets to Deitz and puts real voltage through his nuptials—”

  “We’ll be next. Guy won’t give a shit about due process or evidence. He’ll come right at us. Come to think of it, that’s probably what Deitz is planning to do right now, wherever he is.”

  “Be nice to know who this mob enforcer guy is.”

  Another silence. Danziger broke it.

  “Who was this guy Edgar Luckinbaugh was going on about?”

  Coker took a sip of his Pinot Grigio, silently wished for bourbon, set the glass down.

  “The guy who checked into the Marriott?”

  “Yeah. Orville Hender-something.”

  “Harvill Endicott.”

  “Edgar said he had a shitload of heavy metal in his case. A Sig, couple of boxes of ammo. Some gear looks like an interrogation kit. Rented two cars. Caddy and a shit-box rice burner. Think he’s the guy from Leavenworth?”

  Coker thought it over.


  “Edgar said he looked more like a dying minister on the run with the poor box. Tall skinny guy, old as dirt, sort of a pale blue-looking guy, according to Edgar. Bloodless. Sound like a Mafia shooter to you?”

  “Yes,” said Danziger, with feeling. “He does.”

  Coker glanced over at Danziger, nodded.

  “Duly noted. We get a moment, let’s go look him over. From a distance. Sound good?”

  “No. We get a look at him and maybe he gets a look at us looking at him. If he’s a smart guy, he’ll know why we’re tailing him. I say we put Edgar on him. He used to be an investigator with the county. A pretty good one. He’s got the street smarts, and he’s done surveillance before.”

  Coker wasn’t sold.

  “Single-man surveillance is a bitch. And what if he gets burned and the guy turns around on him?”

  “Better Edgar than us. Besides, he could use the money. Being a bellhop pays poorly.”

  Coker thought it over.

  “Okay. Works for me. Will you put him on it? Tell him we’ll pay five hundred a day.”

  “He’ll have to call in sick at the hotel.”

  “Five hundred a day ought to cover that.”

  “Okay. I’ll call him today.”

  “Tell him to be careful, will you?”

  “I will. So Twyla says we gotta kill Deitz?”

  Coker nodded absently, watching the horses wander, thinking about Harvill Endicott.

  “Twyla have any suggestions on how we were supposed to find Deitz? I mean, everybody in the state is looking for him, but they haven’t got him yet. That means somebody’s helping him.”

  They both sat and watched the horses. Danziger was thinking that if there was such a thing as reincarnation, it wouldn’t be so bad to come back as a stud horse.

  “I got a theory about how we find Deitz,” said Coker, after a pause. “We wait a while, he’ll come barreling right up that road, guns a-blazing.”

  “I thought about that, and we can’t let that happen.”