Hoax

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Hoax Page 39

by Robert K. Tanenbaum


  “Yep, I don’t envy you…well, except that you get to sleep with the divine Ms. Ciampi,” Newbury said. “But isn’t that why you get paid the big bucks? The tough decisions I mean, not Marlene.”

  “I get paid big bucks?” Karp asked, glad that he could count on V.T.’s humor to calm him down.

  “Well, maybe not, but there’s that job satisfaction speech you give all the rookies,” Newbury said. “Or is that just for the cannon fodder?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Karp sighed. “I may not have a job to be satisfied with when this is over. By the way, speaking of jobs, what have you got for me on Pentagram Records?”

  “I was getting to that,” Newbury said. “I may have boasted a little too soon about how easy it would be to find out who owns the company, at least without them knowing that I’m trying to find out. But I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that ownership is hidden behind so many layers of talking-head executives and sham corporations—most of them legal if suspect—that I’m still not at the end of the line. Even my spies who’ve managed to infiltrate some of the dummy corporations say that no one really seems to know who they are working for other than their immediate bosses.”

  “What’s the good news?”

  “The good news is the same thing. Anybody who goes through this much trouble to disguise owning a small record label has to have something worth hiding. But what I don’t get is how all of this is tied to the No Prosecution files.”

  “Me either, V.T.,” Karp admitted. “But keep digging; hopefully we’ll find out.”

  Karp hung up and turned back to Fulton. “Clay, I want you to send your most trusted guys to go back over all the evidence in this case. That includes taking that limo apart to see if anything was missed. And take a drive to the Bronx and see if Mrs. Paglia has anything to add. Express your condolences, but ask if you can look around for any suicide notes or whatever.”

  Fulton stood to go, but Karp stopped him at the door. “And Clay, let’s keep this between me, you, and your guys. Leave Flanagan out of it.”

  “You know a lot of people think of him as a hero,” he said. “And the department is still hurting from our losses, as is everyone in this city.”

  “You think I should forget this?” Karp asked.

  Fulton shook his head. “No, I’m just hoping that this isn’t going where it seems to be going. And that maybe the Jumain Little thing was a big mix-up, and it went down like he said it did.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “What else? You do what’s right.” With that the detective turned and left the room.

  26

  JOHN JOJOLA OPENED THE OLD ARMY DUFFEL BAG AND PULLED out a moth-eaten, long-sleeved black turtleneck and loose-fitting black pants—or at least they had been thirty years earlier. He had to strain to button the pants and looked ruefully in the mirror at the way the turtleneck bulged around his middle.

  Then he remembered why he was standing in a room at the Sagebrush Inn the night after nearly being killed by an assassin masquerading as a lawman, and the anger returned.

  The scars of the betrayal in Deming had never completely healed in New Mexico. In fact, they’d been torn open again when the stories about the pedophile priests in the big cities back east began getting a lot of attention in the media. The press in New Mexico had, of course, dredged up the memories of Deming to make a connection to the day’s breaking news. They’d interviewed the victims about their experiences a decade and more earlier; even talked to the psychiatrist who ran the Deming retreat, which he admitted still treated “troubled priests” but, he assured the press, the men would never be allowed to return to public service as had occurred in the Boston archdiocese.

  Jojola’s anger wasn’t just directed at the priests who betrayed the trust given to them—he believed that there would eventually be justice in this world and the next for them. It was the church hierarchy’s ignoring or covering up these outrages that troubled him more. He especially hated the excuses made by sad-faced cardinals and bishops that priests were merely human and subject to the same pitfalls and urges as the rest of humanity. Yes, he thought, but the rest of humanity is not entrusted with such a precious gift. There is a higher standard for people who choose such professions, just as there should be for police officers and presidents.

  Jojola knew that these betrayals didn’t lie just within the Catholic clergy. Protestant ministers, Buddhist monks, Hindu yogi, and Islamic mullahs had predators among them. Men who used their positions of trust, even the supposed concurrence of God, to sexually assault their constituents.

  He’d heard that among the tribes there were those who left the reservations and went to the cities, where they billed themselves as medicine men, whether they were recognized as such by their tribes or not. Complaints were common that these so-called medicine men used their so-called spirituality to seduce gullible white women who thought that they were being shown “the Native American way.” According to what he’d heard, some of these women at first felt, or were told, that they should feel honored by these special favors, only to realize later that they’d been used when the medicine man moved on to his next victim.

  Most American Indians he knew were deeply ashamed of these men, who were often shunned when they returned to the reservation. But right now, his anger was focused on the Catholic Church, which seemed to have created a culture of tolerance and secrecy surrounding these criminal acts. And if his run-in with Tobias was any indication, that culture had now gone so far toward the far end of the spectrum as to protect a man who raped and killed little boys.

  Jojola breathed deeply and let the air pass out slowly. He knew he needed to let the anger dissipate, so that he could think clearly.

  He was tucking his hair up under a black stocking cap when Marlene came out of the bathroom wearing a similar getup. Seeing her lithe, athletic body, he was suddenly self-conscious about the roll around his waistband.

  “Not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he lamented.

  “Cuter with a better accent,” she laughed. “Look, I’m no Charlie’s Angel either, but we’re all we got.”

  “And Lucy,” he pointed out.

  “Yes,” Marlene sighed. “And Lucy.”

  • • •

  The day before, Marlene had screamed as her daughter fell toward the abyss, but her voice was drowned out by the thundering of what she at first believed was the breaking of her heart. Then she became aware of the large, brown, two-headed animal next to her. A horse, she realized, and on it sat a rider in blue denim swinging a rope above his head. The animal was planting its hooves to stop from going over the edge as the cowboy threw his lariat.

  As the truck plunged past the dangling tree, Marlene watched the hoop circle down as though in slow motion around Lucy. Then the tree, truck, and girl fell out of sight below the outcropping. Quick as a rattlesnake striking, the cowboy cinched his rope twice around the saddle horn, then held on when the rope went taut.

  Down below, Lucy fell hard against the cliff, bruising her face and scraping her arms. She would have screamed but the rope was too tight around her chest.

  Ned Blanchet gave a short whistle and Sally, his best roping horse, began to back steadily away from the cliff. Lucy, a bit bloodied and shaken, appeared at the top of the outcropping where she was able to crouch and climb to the top of the slope with the help of the rope and the horse. At the rim, she reached out and was grabbed on one side by Jojola and the other by her mother, into whose arms she collapsed as both women cried.

  As soon as he saw that Lucy was safe, Ned was out of the saddle in a single motion as smooth as the pouncing of a cat, and running toward them, his chaps flapping and spurs jingling like tiny bells. Lucy turned to meet him and he picked her up in his arms and swung her around.

  “Ow!” she exclaimed. “You’re squeezing the rope burn you gave me, you dolt!”

  Ned immediately set her down and began apologizing profusely. He stopped, confused, when Lucy started laughing.
A moment later, he was blushing red as a chili pepper when the girl of his dreams grabbed his face with her two hands and planted a long, wet kiss on his mouth. For a boy who’d happily dreamed of the day he would get more than a peck on the cheek, he thought he’d done died and gone to Montana.

  “My hero,” Lucy gushed, which made him blush even pinker. He was scratching at the gravel with his boot and hiding his face beneath his hat when Marlene added to the praise and his embarrassment. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I wasn’t there to see it,” she said, giving him another kiss, fortunately this one on the cheek or he might have fainted. “That was better than the movies.”

  Ned shrugged and waved his hat toward his horse. “It was Sally did all the work,” he said. “I just threw the rope.” He explained how he’d heard the first shot and started to move in that direction, concerned that someone was poaching one of the steers he was supposed to be watching.

  “Then I come over the rise a half mile back and heard the second shot and was just in time to see you go over the edge. After that, Sally and I went hell-bent for leather to get here, especially after I saw that fella shoulder his rifle like he was going to finish you off. But then there was a couple more shots and he fell in.”

  “That fella was Sheriff Asher,” Marlene said. “I shot him. He’s dead.”

  Ned looked at her hard for a moment, then nodded his head. “Well, I expect he needed shootin’ then, ’cause he was sure takin’ aim at you. And unless I miss my guess, he fired those first two shots.”

  “The first one was at me,” Jojola said.

  “The second took out our tire,” Marlene added.

  “Well, I can see that there’s more goin’ on here than I know,” said the young cowboy. “But I knowed that I needed to get here pronto. I saw John haul Marlene up and figured Luce needed help. Still, I can’t say I had much of a chance to think about what I was doing when I saw…when I saw…” he started to choke up and looked up at the sun to stop the tears, “when I saw her falling. I just threw. It was luck.”

  “Luck schmuck,” Lucy interrupted, kissing him again. “You’re my hero whether you like it or not.”

  Alarmed that Lucy might think that he wasn’t pleased to be her hero, he quickly responded, “Oh, I like it, I jest don’t rightly know what I’m supposed to do now.”

  “Why ride off into the sunset, dummy,” Lucy said in mock exasperation. “Don’t you know nothin’, you darling cowpoke?”

  Ned looked even more confused. “Well, I know it’s only an hour or so after sunrise,” he pointed out. “And between now and sunset, I’m ’sposed to move fifty head over to the south pasture and mend that fence by the highway where that tourist went off the road and took out a section. I guess I might be able to ride into the sunset after I get all that done. Why? You want to go for a ride this evening?”

  “Ned…”

  “Yeah, Luce?”

  “Shut up and kiss me again. But be careful of the rope burn.”

  Ned did as he was told, carefully. He even remembered to remove his hat this time like he’d seen John Wayne do once in an old movie.

  • • •

  Jojola and Marlene moved away from the young couple and over to his truck where he radioed for help. “Larry,” he said, addressing Officer Small Hands, “this was on reservation property, so call the FBI. But do it on the telephone. Tell them there’s been a shooting and Sheriff Asher is presumed dead.”

  “Sheriff Asher is dead?” Small Hands repeated. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Jojola replied. “Now no more questions, just do it.”

  With that accomplished, he turned to Marlene. “You figure we were maybe getting too close for somebody’s comfort?”

  Marlene had grown quiet now that the adrenaline from her daughter’s rescue had subsided but she nodded. Another one for the village, she thought. It’s going to be more crowded.

  Jojola noticed the mood change and knew what it meant. “You did what you had to do, Marlene,” he said, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Your life and your daughter’s life were at stake.”

  Marlene wiped at her eyes. “I know,” she said. “But why do I have to be the executioner everywhere I go?”

  “I don’t know,” Jojola replied. “We can’t always see where the path ends, but we have to keep walking to find out. Maybe things happen to cause an ending we can’t know yet. Now back to business—are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

  Marlene looked up and managed a small smile, grateful for the psychological slap across the face to stop the swan dive into self-pity. “Yeah,” she said. “I think we need to take a look around St. Ignatius. Somebody put Asher up to this, and it wasn’t just because he didn’t like our looks. We need to figure out who and why. And if your hunch about the missing boys and the retreat are correct, why they would be protecting a killer. This whole little gambit seems…oh, I don’t know…desperate?”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Jojola said. “The good thing is desperate people make mistakes.”

  “The bad thing is,” she reminded him, “desperate people are more dangerous.”

  • • •

  It took only an hour before an FBI agent showed up at the scene. A local search-and-rescue team was rappelling down the cliff to retrieve the body of Sheriff Asher, which had hung up on a ledge five hundred feet below the rim, when Lloyd Bear walked up to Jojola and identified himself as an FBI special agent on an undercover assignment for the bureau.

  “You work for the feds?” Jojola said with a scowl, after he and the others gave their accounts of Asher’s attempted ambush and subsequent death.

  Bear nodded. “Yeah, sorry about the subterfuge,” he said. “They recruited me right out of college. This was my first undercover assignment.”

  “And exactly what were you supposed to be uncovering?” Jojola asked.

  “Well, I’m not really supposed to tell you this, but we’ve been working on a tip that priests who’d committed sexual assaults on children in New York were sent to St. Ignatius in an attempt to cover up the commission of the acts. As you know, interstate flight to avoid prosecution is a federal crime, and the rest of it falls under racketeering statutes.” He looked over to where the rescue team was using a winch to pull a stretcher containing Asher’s body onto the edge of the canyon.

  “We figured Asher might be connected. Every time we tried to ask him anything about St. Ignatius, we got the runaround and the usual local jurisdiction/anti-fed crap. But we didn’t have enough for a case yet. Of course, I’m telling you this in confidence and in the spirit of cooperation with your agency. Now, how about a little give-and-take. Does this morning’s little adventure have something to do with St. Ignatius and the disappearance of the kids from the pueblo?”

  Jojola thought about the question for a moment, and thought about telling Bear what he knew. But first he answered the agent with a question of his own. “Why’d you ask for a boy to help you with cleaning out at the retreat?”

  Bear shrugged. “Better cover,” he said. “Easier to look around while the kid was doing the work.”

  “You used my son as part of an FBI undercover operation without asking me, his father?” Jojola asked. “And what’s more, took him to a place where the clients make a habit of sexually assaulting children?”

  Bear held his hands up and chuckled nervously. “Hey, no worries. I had my eye on him the whole time. Sometimes you have to risk a little to gain a lot, and I—”

  The agent never finished his sentence. In fact, he hit the ground before he could utter another word because Jojola’s fist had shut his mouth for him. Bear rubbed his jaw. “Okay, guess I deserved that,” he said.

  “Damn right you did.”

  “So now you want to tell me why the sheriff wanted you and two women dead?” the agent asked, getting back on his feet.

  Jojola shook his head. “I could tell you,” he said, “but it’s a secret so I’d have to kill you. And as you probably kno
w, killing an FBI agent is a federal offense.”

  With that Jojola stalked off toward his truck where Marlene and Lucy were waiting. “You get a chance to let Ned in on what we need?” he asked the women. Lucy nodded. “He’s game. A little before midnight tomorrow.”

  • • •

  Jojola told the women to take his truck and head back to town. He was going to stay and help the sore-jawed agent Bear, and the men who’d arrived in a federal crime-scene van, go over the truck Asher was driving.

  “Looks like Leroy Cinque’s truck,” Jojola noted. “Wonder where he is?”

  He found out two hours later when he stopped in the pueblo police office and heard someone singing a Tiwa death prayer from the small holding cell in the back of the building. “Who’s that,” he asked Officer Small Hands, who was on duty.

  Small Hands looked toward the door leading to the cell with annoyance. “It’s that damn Leroy Cinque,” he said. “He’s driving me nuts with his chanting, says he’s going to die soon. Some geologist found him wandering around out in the desert west of the gorge, half out of his head and smelling like he took a bath in tequila. He claimed Sheriff Asher got him drunk last night and then dumped him out there. Says he was visited by an evil spirit who told him that death was coming for him…. And that’s just the junk you can understand. In between prayers, he’s also spouting a bunch of other nonsense that sounds like stuff out of the Bible.”

  A high keening interrupted the officer, who shuddered. “We were going to let him go but got the message you were looking for him. Sorry but I guess I forgot to get on the horn and tell you he’d showed up.”

  “That’s okay, I was busy,” Jojola said. He grabbed keys off a peg on the wall and unlocked the door leading to the holding cells. He walked to the end of the semidark corridor and peered in the last cell.

 

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