by Thomas Zigal
He was beginning to sound like an angry brother.
“I came around,” Nighthawk said firmly. “I walked the floor with that child when he had colic. I changed his diapers and rocked him to sleep chanting the old songs of the Bear Dance. Come daybreak I was always gone. It worked out better that way.”
Kurt placed the bronze frame upright on the desk. “Hunter needed a father who was there for him. Especially after Marie was killed.”
Nighthawk peered down at him, his small dark eyes set fiercely above the crooked septum. “That pretty lady you saw out in the gallery is my daughter, Muller,” he said. “I’ve got three of them, all grown up now, on their own. Me and their mother have been trying to stay married for thirty years and believe me, it’s been a dogfight. I’ve done near everything a bad drunk could do to ruin that poor woman’s life. But things have been fairly decent between us for the past three or four years and I don’t want to hurt her anymore. If she knew I’d sired a son with a white woman, her and the girls would hang my nuts from a tepee pole. Which is why this information will not leave the room.”
Kurt had no intention of telling anyone about this. “Did Ned know you were Hunter’s father?”
Nighthawk nodded. “Marie must have told him,” he said. “That’s why he got in touch with me, I suppose. He knew how much I cared about his daughter. And our son.”
He explained that Ned had asked him to look after the boy’s interest in the shit storm that was coming, to find somebody worthy and reliable who was experienced in mine management and who wouldn’t be intimidated by Ned’s other partners.
“When I told him about SPIRITT he nearly busted a gut laughing. He thought it was the greatest idea he’d ever heard. Indians running a mine in Aspen.”
“Did he say why he was pissed at his partners?”
“He thought they’d double-crossed him. The way it shook out, he’d gone to Metcalf for legal help and ended up giving them a piece of his action as a loan payback. He didn’t count on them bringing in a big South African corporation to run their end of the business. You know Ned. He didn’t trust foreigners and he didn’t like committees and corporate boards and he sure as hell didn’t want anybody telling him how to mine.”
“And you think Metcalf had Ned killed because it looked like he was going to sabotage their deal?”
Nighthawk nodded again. “He went right ahead and told Metcalf he was bringing in SPIRITT to manage Hunter’s majority share. Fucking lawyer must’ve filled his shorts every time he pictured a bunch of wild-eyed Indians dancing around his precious platinum strike. Wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.”
A phone rang somewhere under the mounds of paperwork. Nighthawk glanced at his watch. Before he could find the knob to the answering machine, a female voice began speaking: “Hello, Jesse, I’m here at the airport and—”
Shuffling aside lading bills, he finally located the volume switch and killed the voice. “I’ve got someone in my office,” he said into the phone receiver. “Can you call back in ten minutes?”
Although Kurt had heard only a few words, the voice sounded familiar. Did he know the speaker?
“Yeah, fine,” Nighthawk said, listening to the line. “Good. Ten minutes.”
He hung up and checked his watch again. “You gonna shoot me,” he asked, pointing at the .45 on the desk, “or can I get back to work now? My youngest is still in college and I’ve got bills to pay.”
Kurt stood up and holstered the pistol. “Sounds like you’re a busy man,” he said. “Do all your clients fly in to see you?”
“Only the rich ranch wives who think their husbands are down here sleeping with Mexican girls.”
He led Kurt through the darkroom and workshop back into the white-walled gallery, where he introduced his daughter as a grad student in art history at the University of Arizona. The young woman showed less animosity when she learned that Kurt was the sheriff of Pitkin County and not some scumbag wife beater buying motel photographs from her father.
The two men stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the gallery. “How’s all this going to play out, Jesse?” Kurt asked.
“You tell me,” Nighthawk said. “You’re the cop. I’m just a blood with some snapshots in a can.”
Kurt thought about Bill Gillespie. If they could sweat him out, this prom was over.
He slipped on his sunglasses. “Be seeing you, Jesse. Come visit your son,” he said in a quiet voice, “before Nate Carr shows up and takes him back to Seattle.”
Nighthawk looked stunned. The way he must’ve looked thirty seconds after his nose was broken.
“Nothing I can do about it,” Kurt said. “It’s in the will. Ned wanted Hunter to live with Marie’s brother.”
The man’s face had collapsed. He was devastated by the news. “Seattle?” he said weakly, his stricken expression showing the true measure of his feeling for the boy.
Kurt reached in his jacket for the department evidence Baggie he had brought with him. “Here,” he said, emptying out the eagle-bone choker. “I believe this is yours.”
Nighthawk held the choker in his hand, absently fingering the beads, his thoughts distant and troubled. He seemed neither surprised nor especially grateful for the return.
“You’re his father, Jesse. Show the boy you love him,” Kurt said, “before he’s gone for good.”
He rambled off down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and an inexplicable anger welling in his chest. He was three blocks away, standing in front of an old-time hobby shop, studying the model airplanes behind the plate-glass window, when he realized how much he missed his own father. How much he missed those things that had vanished from his life forever.
Chapter forty-two
Kurt sat nursing an iced tea in a crowded sidewalk café across the street from the gallery. His table was shielded from public view by a boisterous kayak club from Farmington, New Mexico. It was a good place to watch the entrance to the gallery, the only way in and out, if his observation was correct. The woman’s phone call had made Jesse more nervous than he ought to have been. Kurt was still struggling to place that voice when a taxi rolled up to the curb, the same model of mellow-yellow Suburban from the early ’80s that had been a popular cab in Aspen during the funkier years. So this is where all those junkers went, he thought, leaning forward to see who would step out of the passenger door. The taxi pulled away, leaving a woman standing alone on the sidewalk. She was wearing tight-fitting jeans, a faded denim jacket, designer cowgirl boots. One of the young kayakers at the next table noticed her and whistled, stirring some attention. She turned and smiled appreciatively, giving him a coy wave before slinging a canvas tote bag over one shoulder and striding for the gallery door. Although she had tried to disguise herself with oversized sunglasses and a Dallas Cowboys cap tucked low on her forehead, it was impossible to conceal that remarkable smile, still melting boyish hearts after all these years. This woman wasn’t a ranch wife here to expose an infidelity. Jesse had lied again. It was Meredith Stone.
Kurt wondered how these two had come together. Had Meredith hired him to take photographs in Colorado Springs, her own private attempt at surveillance of the Free West antigreens? Or was she using him for some darker purpose?
Nearly an hour later the gallery door opened and two figures shuffled into the sunlight. Nighthawk was carrying a gym bag. He took Meredith’s arm and escorted her across the street to a narrow parking lot wedged between two buildings. They stopped to talk to the Latino attendant and then disappeared from view. Kurt dropped bills on the table and hurried to his rental Jeep a half block away.
He had no problem picking up the tan Wrangler as it swerved out of the lot and cruised down Main Street, retracing the same route Kurt had taken from the airport. Soon they were speeding along out in the scrub-brush desert, veering off toward the small terminal shimmering in the midday heat. He suspected that Meredith had flown here in Lee Lamar’s personal Lear, and that she was transporting Jesse back to Aspen with
her.
The Wrangler entered a gate leading to the hangar where private aircraft were serviced, a prominent sign warning AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY. Kurt lagged behind and returned the Jeep to its rental space in an adjacent lot. He found Wing Taylor polishing off his third beer at a hot dog counter, flirting with the Native American girl forking wieners on a grill. By the time the two men had boarded the Turbo Commander with traffic-control permission to fly, Meredith’s jet was already airborne.
“I’ll find out where they’re headed,” Wing said, flipping switches, the engines kicking on with a shuddering roar. His face was flushed from the expectation of a chase.
“My guess is back to Aspen.”
“Let me confirm that.”
He grabbed the mike and contacted the tower. Kurt was confused when he learned the Lear’s destination. He thought perhaps there was a mixup in transmission and asked the pilot to double check, but Wing’s old buddy in the tower repeated the information with absolute certainty. The Lamar Learjet was on its way to Las Vegas.
Chapter forty-three
Wing had them on the ground in less than two hours. As they taxied toward the hangar, heat wavered off the desert floor like gasoline fumes, a glaring white afternoon in the early days of a Nevada summer. To the south and west, flintlike ridges jagged the horizon, barren mountains hewed out of hard stone.
“They’re here,” Wing said, pointing toward a row of private planes where the Lamar Lear was being refueled. When Kurt didn’t respond he said, “You all right, son? You look a little peaked.”
For the duration of the flight Kurt had felt weak and somewhat disoriented. Now his wounded arm ached from wrist to shoulder and his head began to spin when he unfastened his seat belt and tried to stand up. Wing gripped him around the waist and walked him over to a passenger seat.
“You better rest a spell,” the old pilot said, helping him sit down. “I don’t like the way you’re acting. Might have a touch of air sickness.”
Kurt closed his eyes and immediately blanked out, then jerked awake, gazing around the plane, staring at the man beside him, trying to remember where he was. He checked his watch and saw that it was almost three o’clock.
“We need to get some water in you,” Wing said. “You’re probably dehydrated.”
Kurt’s head was filled with cotton. “Let’s go see why we’re here,” he said.
In the hangar they stopped at a maintenance crew’s water cooler and Kurt drank until a cold shiver coursed through his body. He knew he had a low-grade fever but he couldn’t let it slow him down.
“How the hell you going to find them?” Wing asked, watching him guzzle another paper cup of water. “They could be holed up in a hotel room making whoopee for three days.”
“I’ll find them,” Kurt said.
In the passenger terminal hordes of shaggy young people wearing tie-dyed T-shirts and tattered jeans were milling about with backpacks humped over their shoulders, and in his feverish state Kurt wondered if he’d stepped through a time warp, or was having an acid flashback, until two impish girls with rings in their eyebrows asked if he had a car and he learned they were all in town for a Grateful Dead concert. Finding his way to a telephone was like a walkabout in a Bedouin camp, clusters of ragtag worshipers huddled on the ground around their meager possessions, chanting the music of some arcane tribal rite, waiting for the miraculous. Up the stairs in a mezzanine area, polyester retirees were emptying their last change into the slots and video poker machines, one final spasm of hope before boarding their planes back to the ranch-styles. Kurt stuck a finger in his ear and dialed long distance to Miles Cunningham’s cabin. Watching an elderly lady in a bad blonde wig dump coin after coin into the same slot, he realized he was no different from her, another fool in Vegas playing the long odds, stacking all his chips on one big pass. If he didn’t make contact with Miles, Kurt knew he might have to cut his losses and join the lines of disappointed seniors on the next ride out.
The answering machine played its usual recording, a piece of the Nixon resignation speech. After the beep, Kurt began to babble, making no sense even to himself, eventually demanding that Miles inform the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department of his whereabouts. He was halfway through his parting string of expletives when a voice interrupted him.
“Jesus, Muller, get a grip. Next time try the decaf.”
“Miles, you asshole, I need some information. I’m in Las Vegas tailing Meredith Stone.”
“Nice assignment. Say hello to Jimmy Hoffa for me. Last time I saw him he was swimming in the foundation of the Tropicana.”
Kurt sighed. The dinging noise from the slot machines was driving him mad, the trapped air smelled like hair spray and cigarettes, and he was sweating through his cotton sport jacket. “Listen, man,” he said, “I’m in no mood for bullshit. I know you and Kat split up in Utah. Did she come to Vegas? Is that why Meredith is here?”
A long pause, the hum of telephone wire. “Meredith is worried about her,” Miles said. “Guilt trip over the break-in. She knows somebody’s trying to kill Kat, so she hired a private dick to help find her. Wants to set the girl up in a safe little condo in Malibu. Ahh, the rich are different from you and me.”
“What happened in Utah?”
“She’s wired tight, Kurt. I’ve never seen her like that,” Miles said with unexpected concern. “The crazy woman stole my Land-Rover while I was asleep and left me to die among Mormons.”
“Why did she leave?”
“We had a fight. She wanted to go through Vegas and stir some shit at the Free West convention, but I said no way. I didn’t want her anywhere near those swine. They’re the ones trying to blow her away.”
A Free West convention in Las Vegas. Of course.
“There’s dynamite in the Rover, Kurt. Plus two handguns and her hunting rifle.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said, blowing out a weary lungful of air.
“She was seriously deranged over what happened to Randy. And speed-rapping about her dead husband. I didn’t like the look in her eye. Tombstones and calaveras, man. The chick was beginning to scare me.”
“Where is the convention?”
“The Sahara,” Miles said. “Same place they have the Soldier of Fortune bash every year.”
“Meredith is there looking for her?”
“With the gumshoe. Some big Indian dude. Things could get gnarly.”
Kurt knew what was different about this conversation. It was late afternoon and Miles Cunningham sounded stone-cold sober. “Okay, man. Thanks,” he said. “I’ll go get Kat out of there.”
“Kurt,” Miles said, holding him on the line for one last word. “Katrina is tribe. La gente. Don’t let anything else happen to her. The shitbirds have already pecked a large hole in her life. That’s got to stop.”
Chapter forty-four
As his taxi approached the Sahara Hotel at the north end of the Strip, Kurt counted a half-dozen people suspended from ropes on the outer wall of the aging edifice, making their way down from the rooftop to the pool area ten stories below. He thought perhaps they were window washers engaged in a marathon cleaning effort until the driver laughed and said, “Look at those maniacs! Bunch of badasses called the Green Briars. It’s their protest against the convention. The cops and firemen are waiting for them with a big butterfly net.”
The driver stopped his cab in the parking lot behind a phalanx of police cars. “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “This is as close as I’m getting. These people are gonna kill each other.”
Outside the main entrance to the hotel, a scuffle had broken out between a band of protesters and some good old boys wearing gimme caps. The police were dragging people apart, leading away one disorderly bush hippie in handcuffs, a stout, bearded man Kurt recognized as the volatile founder of the Green Briars. The two sides were shouting at each other, exchanging insults. Uniformed VIProtex security guards had formed a column at the lobby doors and were trying to contain the angry Free West mob inside the bui
lding. Kurt walked over to search for Meredith and Jesse Nighthawk among the placard-wielding greens. There were at least two dozen of them, and except for the graying hair and more sensible footwear, these protesters had the anger and narrow-eyed intensity of another era, an earlier movement.
“Is Meredith Stone here?” he asked a gaunt middle-aged woman with a salt-and-pepper braid down her back.
“Meredith Stone the singer?” the woman smirked, bending over to retrieve a mangled sign that said EVERYBODY LIVES DOWNSTREAM. “You must be lost, man. The concert’s out at the stadium.”
“I’m an old friend of hers from Aspen,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the din. “I was supposed to meet her here today.”
“Try the piano bar at the Sands,” she said, stumbling backward as the police and security guards began forcing their group farther away from the lobby doors.
“How about Katrina Pfeil? Have you seen her around?”
The woman gave him a quick, suspicious look. “You some kind of undercover cop, mister?”
“Sheriff in Aspen.”
Her eyes wandered over him, then toward the policemen barking orders. “I’ve heard the Aspen sheriff is one of the good guys,” she said. “Why don’t you tell your cop buddies to lighten up?”
Kurt was shoved in the back. “Keep moving, pal,” the VIProtex guard told him. “Out to the sidewalk. This is private hotel property here.”
Kurt spun around and faced the tall guard, nose to nose. The fever had put him in a foul mood. “Go ahead and push me again, asshole,” he said, ready to believe that this pencil-necked rent-a-cop was one of the Night Clubbers who had firebombed the Pfeil cabin.
The woman with the braid grabbed his arm and pulled him along. “Chill out, Aspen Sheriff,” she said. “Not used to taking orders, are you?”
Reluctantly he retreated across the parking lot with the protesters. A beer bottle splattered near them, hurled from a passing van. In spite of police containment, more conventioneers had spilled out of the lobby and were screaming threats. A green with a bloody lip strode out to challenge somebody to a fistfight, but three comrades rushed over to restrain him.