Dirty White Boys

by Stephen Hunter

  “I hope it lasts,” said Tippahoe. “And I hope it ain’t a goddamned wild goose chase. We sure don’t do things like this in Texas. What you gonna do, Lieutenant, track down all the cars in Oklahoma?”

  “Oh, I may have a card or two up my old sleeve,” said C.D. and hawked another gob of phlegm into the wind.

  He looked back at the track in the dust, which seemed to lose another millimeter of distinction. Was it the second piece of evidence, he wondered?

  The agent sent to build the windbreak was now struggling with sticks and a blanket. It looked hopeless.

  Come on, boys, he thought. Come on.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “They’re telling me the army’s going to detail a chopper to pick your team up in Oklahoma City.”

  “Well, praise the Lord and pass the bourbon, son.”

  Bud was changing the oil on his truck when Jen came out and told him the colonel was on the phone. It was Tuesday afternoon, about two. He’d gotten back from Wichita Falls the night before last, not even bothering to call Holly.

  Then he had slept late, had had bad nightmares, awakening in a foul mood, no good to man or beast, wife, son, or girlfriend. He had laid low the whole day, grouchy and forlorn, like an old cougar in its cave.

  Now he was trying to make himself something human again.

  He wiped Valvoline off his hands and went in the house.

  “Sir?”

  “Bud, I figure if you’re well enough to go bouncing out to Wichita Falls on your lonesome, you might be well enough to do some real work. Am I right?”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No uniform necessary, Bud. You can go in plainclothes. I’d carry, though.”

  “I always carry, Colonel.”

  “You use your truck. Write the mileage, we’ll reimburse.”

  “Got it.”

  The colonel then explained what had happened.

  Around ten yesterday morning, two Rangers had discovered the abandoned Camaro and the Volvo that Lamar had stolen on the Texas side of the Red River. A print team lifted some good latents, which were quickly made as Lamar, Odell, and Richard’s. Also discovered was a hundred yards of green No. 7 rigger’s rope, which could have been bought in any hardware store between Dallas-Ft. Worth and Oklahoma City. It had been stretched across the river. The team had evidently used it to get across.

  “Don’t that beat all, Bud? That Lamar, he’s a goddamned genius. We got the bridges covered and helicopters with infrared, and he still beats us. Bud, he’s smarter than that even. The shell that was ejected from the shotgun that killed that lady probation officer? There was a print on it. Lamar’s! He loaded his buddy’s gun, because he knew we already had his prints!”

  “He’s a goddamned smart boy, all right,” said Bud, wondering where he fit into the operation.

  “Well, maybe Lamar done slipped up just a bit,” said the colonel. “On our side of the river, we found tracks of the car they had stashed to take them out of there. Old C. D. Henderson threw a goddamned red-ass tantrum and got them to make a cast. We faxed the tread to the FBI and we got a make just like that: It’s the pattern for a Goodyear 5400-B, a low-end nonreinforced radial made entirely for Japanese cars with sixty-inch wheelbases and six-inch tire wells. Goddamn if that old drunken coot didn’t hit a jackpot. Only three varieties of car can wear it—your Hyundai Excel, your Toyota Tercel, and your Nissan Sentra, from the years 1991 on. Moreover, two of the companies changed their design last year. So it can only be three model years of the Hyundais and the Toyotas and four model years of the Sentras. The last getaway job’s got to be one of those, you follow?”

  “Got you,” said Bud.

  “We shook out about forty-two hundred cars registered in South Oklahoma that can wear that set of tires, Bud. About two hundred of them are registered to people with felony convictions. We’re fixin’ to raid on them, just to be sure, because C.D. is dang sure they’ll run to kind.”

  “I could—”

  “No, Bud. Your raid days are over. We’re going door-to-door on the other four thousand. It’s going to take a heap of manhours, Bud. It ain’t the glory route, that’s for sure. I got five other ex-detectives and retired patrolmen working the job. You get the address, you find the car, you lookiesee the tires and if you get the right set of tires on the right car, you call in the license number and we see what we shake out. Maybe we stake out, maybe we raid, depending. Bud, you can imagine, there’s a lot of goddamned public pressure on this one. That’s why we’re working so damned hard.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The colonel told him the Joint States Task Force was headquartered at the old City Hall Annex near the police station in downtown Lawton, where he’d show up to get his list, and Bud said he’d leave right away. The colonel said he appreciated it, but he knew he could count on Bud.

  “Oh, and Bud?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “That other matter?”

  Bud didn’t say a thing.

  “Bud, you still there?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “That other matter. That’s in hand, ain’t it, Bud? Ain’t going to be no big scandal, a heroic patrol officer caught in a love nest with his partner’s widow, nothing like that?”

  “No sir,” Bud said.

  “Good. Knowed I could count on you, Bud.”

  Bud went back outside. He tossed the empty oil bottles and the used filter into the trash can, and poured the used oil into a couple of Zerex containers. Then he picked up the two Craftsman wrenches he’d used and tossed them onto the clutter of his workbench. He felt a flash of shame: he could find time to sneak away and fuck Holly a couple of times a week, but he couldn’t take time to clean up after himself at home.

  He went back inside and showered and changed into a good pair of Levi’s, his best Tony Lamas, and a white shirt. He went down to the gun safe, took out the Colt Commander and pinched the slide back to make sure it was loaded, then snapped on the safety and slipped it into an inside-the-pants holster, which he then inserted into the waist of the jeans and hooked on his belt. He had two extra magazines in a belt mount next to the Colt. Last, he put the Beretta .380 with the thirteen-shot double-stack clip inside his shirt behind his belt buckle. It would hurt like hell after a while, but let it. Better to have too many guns than not enough.

  “Bud?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You come here a second now.”

  Now what the hell did she want?

  “Jen, I don’t have time. I have to—”

  “You come here.”

  That was Jen’s no-nonsense voice. Shit! She sounded loaded for big game. Was he going to have one of those bitter explosions, where her sense of isolation from him and his lack of passion for her lashed out at him? It seemed to happen all the time.

  “Jen, this is no goddamn time—” he started to bellow as he walked into the kitchen, but what stopped him short was finding her and Jeff looking like they’d just swallowed a whole flock of canaries.

  “Bud, what have they got you doing?” asked Jen.

  “They got me knocking on doors as part of some combined state task force, that’s all. It won’t be nothing, that I guarantee you. Now what’s going on?” he said.

  “Remember, Dad. I was asking you about the 9-millimeters?”

  “Yes, I do.” Bud remembered his lies to Jeff in the car on Sunday.

  “Well, sir,” said Jen, “maybe this’ll help with Lamar, just in case. I called my mother and asked for a loan.”

  “Jen!”

  “Six hundred dollars against my share of the farm profits this year. And so Jeff and I went down to Southwest Pawn and Gun this morning. This here’s to get you out of that low mood. And so you don’t have to use those speedloaders anymore.”

  She held out a blue plastic box, and Bud knew in a second his wife and son had just given him a big Beretta 9-mm automatic. A sense of shame hit him. He swallowed, felt himself blushing.
r />   “Jen, that’s so … nice.”

  “Dad, I got you this. It’s a shoulder holster for the Beretta,” said Jeff, holding out a plastic package with the name Bianchi on it. “Now you go anywhere, you go in style.”

  “Jeez,” said Bud. “I sure as hell don’t know what I did to deserve y’all.”

  Eagerly, they helped Bud mount up. With a box of 115-grain silver-tips that Miss Edna at Southwest had thrown in to aid the cause of law and order, Bud soon had the new Beretta stoked with seventeen rounds and had another magazine of sixteen on the counter. It was a black brute of a pistol, a kind of inflated version of the .380 inside his shirt. It fit his hand like a handshake from a brother, and when he brought it up to a Weaver grip, he found its sight picture clear and vivid.

  Next issue was getting into the X design of the rig, not the easiest thing, but eventually, with everyone helping, they got it done. The spare magazine went in a pouch that hung under the other arm, as a kind of counterbalance to the heavy automatic. When he slipped on his sports coat, it would be hard to see he had become a three-gun man. But the thing felt like a brassiere, or how he imagined a brassiere would feel. The gun hung underneath, tight in its holster but loose enough to slap him if he turned quickly; a quick grab presented it neatly enough, but it was a move he’d have to work on, until it was smooth as silk.

  Goddamn, he figured, counting it up, no wonder I’m walking slow these days. Got fifty-eight rounds of ammo stowed on me. That ought to be enough for anybody.

  Bud went back to the safe and took out an old .30-30 carbine he’d hunted deer with as a young man. It always helped to have a long gun along; you never could tell. With a box of twenty .30-30 softpoints, he walked to the truck and put the long gun in its case behind the seat. Jen brought out his sports coat, a light tan cotton thing, and his hat, a white Stetson. He pulled on his Ray-Bans.

  “You look like a Texas Ranger,” she said.

  “You’d best hope not. They’re the meanest boys that ever walked the planet. Oh, wait, forgot something.”

  But she had it. His briefcase. Full of Richard’s lions.

  “Your damn lions.”

  “While I’m looking for this tire, I’ll do some thinking about the lions. Maybe I can figure what he’s got going.”

  There was an awkward moment and then he embraced Jen.

  “Thank you,” he said. “It was damned sweet of you.”

  But she pushed him away, brusquely, as if the gift was what any woman would give her husband.

  “You run a hundred rounds or so through that, Bud. You know they jam more in the first fifty rounds than they do in all the others.”

  “I will, hon.”

  “That gun ain’t supposed to jam ever,” Jeff said. “I read all about it in Guns & Ammo.”

  He gave her another hug.

  “Go on, get out of here. Earn us some money so we can feed these damn boys,” she said, turning.

  Bud drove away, into Lawton, but not yet toward downtown, instead veering east into the first strip mall that boasted a pay phone. Quickly he dialed Holly’s number.

  The phone rang and rang and rang.

  Where was she? Probably met someone. Good for her.

  He was about to hang up when, at least fifteen or so rings into it, the phone came off the hook and he heard her tired voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Are you all right? Were you sleeping? I was worried.”

  No answer, only her heavy breathing.

  Then finally she said, “You were going to call two nights ago. I was up all night waiting.”

  “Holly, I went to Wichita Falls, the robbery? You hear?”

  She had not. He told her.

  “So you couldn’t call? In all that, you couldn’t call just once?”

  “Holly, I’m sorry. There was no time down there and by the time I got back, it was really late. I just—I didn’t think.”

  “And you didn’t call yesterday.”

  He was contrite.

  “No. I had a bad night. I’m sorry, I didn’t do nothing yesterday.”

  “Bud, look what you’re doing to me.”

  “Holly, this business has come up again. They want me to do some work for them.”

  He explained briefly what would happen, how he was going back on duty, searching for cars with a certain set of tires over the southern half of the state.

  The Beretta was so heavy under his arm.

  “Bud, you make all these promises, then you sort of fade. You like the sex great, but when it comes to making plans, then you fade. You’re not there. You’re off somewhere.”

  “I’m sorry, Holly. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yes, dammit. I have to move. I can’t stand this place. We have to find some new place. Will you look for it with me?”

  It seemed excruciating to him. It would be horrible. He hated the new-marrieds aspect of it—checking for shelves and views—and he felt so indecent. But he said, “Of course I will. Sure I will.”

  “Oh, Bud,” she cried. “I knew you would. Oh, Bud, I knew you would.”

  “Now, sweetie, I got to go.”

  “When will I see you?”

  “Soon, I swear. We’ll start looking soon.”

  “Oh Bud, I love you so much!”

  Feeling relieved, Bud drove over to the City Hall Annex, an old office building, hastily reconfigured to its new purpose. On the first floor, in a wide-open bank of rooms, a few Texas Rangers hung around. There was a phone bank and a slew of operators, and a radio receiver, just like at the highway patrol shop, and a filing cabinet, as well as the by-now regular complement of computer terminals with civilian clerks. And who seemed to be running the show but his old friend Lt. C. D. Henderson of the OSBI, who looked spryer than Bud had ever seen him. For once, the whiff of booze didn’t cling to him. A smile even came across the creased old face.

  “Howdy there, Bud. They told me you was coming back on as an emergency investigator.”

  “Yes sir, I am,” said Bud. “Figure I can pound on doors as well as anyone.”

  “Well, there’s many a door needs pounding. Bud, we’ve already got ’bout six men out there, but with close to four thousand names, the more the better.”

  “So where’m I heading?”

  “Well, let’s see, many of ’em are in Lawton, where we’ve sent most of our men, and another hotbed is way out in Ardmore: But let’s work you in from the country side. You won’t get as much done, since there’s some space between ranches, and you may get sick of looking at cattle, but it’s got to be done.”

  “Great,” said Bud.

  He was issued a stack of computer printouts bearing addresses and car registration data for Tillman, Jackson, and Cotton counties, in the southeast sector of the state, about two hours’ ride. He was told he’d probably end up heading out to Greer and Harmon and Kiowa counties, too, in the next few days.

  “Your truck got a two-way?”

  “No sir, it don’t.”

  “Okay, we’ll issue a Motorola portable unit, you won’t have no problem. It’ll be pre-set to our net, forty-four point nine. You ten-twenty-three each stop and ten-twenty-four afterward, just in case. We always want to know where you’re at. I hope you ain’t lucky again.”

  “I hope I ain’t either.”

  “You got it, right? You just tell ’em we’re doing a criminal investigation involving a motor vehicle and investigating is elimination and we want to check them off the list. You find the car, then you check the tires. If you get the right tires on the right kind of car, then you call it in, wait for what the computer kicks out, and sit by until we decide to raid or stake out. That’s all. If you should bump into anybody nasty, you do not want to be in it without backup. You‘re even more on your lonesome now.”

  “I get that. I’m looking at cars and tires, not to make arrests. I told you, I don’t want to cross with old Lamar again.”

  “We got a heavy-duty SWAT team—Rangers, troopers, and an OSBI su
pervisor sitting out at Fort Sill airfield, with army pilots. Anybody gets in a jam, we can have twenty men there in a few minutes.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Ten-four, Bud.”

  Bud picked up his radio unit and a map, and headed back to the truck. It took him a few seconds in the cab to get the electronic gear set up. Then it crackled to life.

  “Dispatch, this is six-oh-five, I am ten-seven, outward bound to Tillman county.”

  “Ten-four, six-oh-five.”

  Bud took 44 south of town, followed its straight shot south to the toll plaza at Oklahoma 5, then got off to follow 5 into Tillman’s vast and empty flatness. It took him about two hours to find his first stop.

  “Dispatch, this six-oh-five, I am ten-twenty-three at Loveland, Route 5, the Del Rio farm, looking for a 1991 Red Tercel, that’s license plate Oklahoma One-fiver-niner-niner-Roger-Mike.”

  “Ten-four, six-oh-five.”

  Bud got out at a decaying farmhouse and began what would become his routine for the next two days. He knocked on the door, showed his badge ID, introduced himself, and went into his song and dance. It was amazing how cooperative people could be. Most Americans just love to help the police.

  “Why, sure, Officer, it cain’t be me or mine,” they’d say, or some variation thereof.

  In Loveland, a gnarled Hispanic grandfather took him out back and showed him the car; it hadn’t been driven in a year, and rested in rotten splendor atop a quartet of cinder blocks. And so it went: Sometimes the cars were clean, sometimes beat-up. Sometimes they’d been recently sold, and the name of the buyer or the dealership was gladly provided. Sometimes Bud had to wait for a man to come home from the plant or the bar; sometimes it was a boy, returning from town or chores or the Dairy Queen. But sooner or later, the car would turn up, he’d examine it, steal a look at the tires, and pass on it.

  Twice, in the first two days, he found the right set of Goodyear radials on the right car, itself no crime. One was down near Cookietown in Cotton County, owned by the town’s Southern States Grain and Seed branch manager, a florid redhead with blemishy skin and a belly as large as the outdoors. It seemed unlikely, but maybe the man’s son or brother or something had some connection with … Bud called it in, but the computer produced no evidence of previous criminal activities associated with Mr. Fuerman or his wife, no other family members in existence according to records. Then, on the Cherokee reservation near Polk Lake in Tillman, he came across a run-down one-story government tract house, half its shingles flapping in the dry wind, and as he walked to it, he felt a hundred eyes on him. Cops always have a feeling for such a thing but don’t let it go too far, or it just plain flat ruins them. Bud conquered the little whisper of fear and knocked on the door to find a woman with a face that looked as if it had aged in lava for a century or two, as if she had worn away all her teeth gnawing on bones. Finally, after he explained in English what he wanted, she said for him to go out back. He found the thing, a beat-to-shit Hyundai Excel, once yellow, now nearly rusted out. And only one of the tires was a Goodyear 5400-B, and it was as bald as a rock. Maybe that one and only that one had been the track the detectives had picked up near the Red.