Judas Horse

by April Smith

  “It’s for everyone’s protection.”

  “What if those tapes wind up on the Internet? Or maybe this whole operation is some kind of a setup.”

  “Setup for what?”

  “Maybe you’re working for the cops.”

  “Why would I?”

  “To destroy the movement from the inside. They pull that shit, you know.”

  Dick Stone rubs his forehead, shiny from the warmth of the night.

  “No need to freak, little sister. I came up here just to say ‘Right on.’”

  What is that in his amber eyes—besides middle-aged fatigue, glazed by the lateness of the hour? Something I haven’t seen before:

  Amusement?

  He lays a heavy arm across my shoulders.

  “Darcy, I would have done the same damn thing. Looked through Daddy’s drawers when the folks weren’t home. You know, I did that once when I was a kid, and guess what I found? In my father’s nightstand? A heap of condoms and a huge fucking kitchen knife he kept right by the bed. That was a shocker.”

  “Which? The condoms or the knife?”

  “The knife, man. What was he thinking?” Stone shakes his head.

  “Protecting the family, just like you.”

  “We lived in suburban Connecticut.”

  “Gotta watch out for those serial stockbrokers.”

  Dick Stone snorts with laughter. “You’re not far wrong. He was a competitive old bastard.”

  “You’re not mad about the cabinets? I see a lock, I can’t help thinking there must be something righteous inside, worth protecting.”

  He nods. “I dig it. You’ve got skills, girl.”

  “Used to be a pretty good thief. Got busted for stealing data, served my time, but a regular padlock—that’s just too tempting.”

  Dick Stone’s face is now so close, I can see the tiny bristles on his cheeks.

  “One question. Where did you hide the tools? You can’t just pick a lock.”

  “Have you been going through my stuff?”

  “Regularly.”

  “That’s why I kept moving them.”

  I reach under the bed, pull out a small bundle that was duct-taped to the frame, and toss it over.

  This open display stops him. Could anyone actually be so guileless?

  I’ve pasted on a casual smile but I think I’ve stopped breathing. For several long seconds I watch Dick Stone waver, like a high school coach who discovers his best starting pitcher smoking weed in the locker.

  Screw it. He likes the kid.

  “Darcy,” he says slowly, “you’re okay. You’re the same as me. All you want is to have some fun. You like to start little fires, don’t you?”

  I rest for a moment in enormous relief. He hasn’t made a move on me, hasn’t doubted my story. And there is truth in what he says—sitting butt-to-butt on the edge of the bed, seemingly at ease in the heart of the night like father and daughter, or supervisor and agent, we recognize something inside the other that is the same.

  A paradox is unfolding. The longer I stay under, the larger Dick Stone becomes. Rather than working his way into ordinariness through everyday contact, he grows more vivid, and my own sense of self-cohesion fades. The boundaries between Darcy and Ana seem inconsequential, not worth defending, as we are swept toward the Big One by some inner momentum of Stone’s that the meticulous procedures of the Bureau are powerless to stop. Donnato’s voice on the Oreo phone and my former life in Los Angeles dwindle and disappear like radio signals moving out of range.

  The first time I drove through the Marine base at Quantico as a new agent, there was that orgasmic surge of ecstasy: This is what I’ve always wanted! Now, out of this cozy intimacy with Stone, the same words echo, but with a newly ominous tone: This is what I wanted, going undercover, isn’t it? To forget the past and my mistakes and the larger-than-life figures who dominated, even as the realization creeps at the edge of my mind that I have replaced one despot with another.

  There is no retribution here. Dick Stone believes what he has said—that he and I are somehow the same—and now that he is done saying it, he simply gets up and leaves.

  And the Darcy part of me experiences a rush of feeling for the old bandit that Ana, still the FBI agent, could never admit:

  Affection.

  Twenty-four

  The panic in Donnato’s voice brings Ana Grey back instantly.

  “You breached Stone’s security system?”

  “I was looking for the sniper rifle.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “He laughed.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “He likes me, or he’s nuts.”

  “Or he’s made you and is playing for time.”

  My stomach flips. “I have no way of knowing, do I?”

  Neither of us speaks. I am up in the hazelnut trees again, fussing with the traps for moths, and not liking the symbolism one bit.

  “This is not a disaster,” Donnato muses, as if to assure himself. “We can piggyback on his wireless signal. Hear everything going on inside the house.”

  “If he made me, he wouldn’t let you do that,” I remind him.

  “Tell me this—where does he go every morning?”

  “He started running and lost fourteen pounds. I told you, it’s a new ritual. I think he’s preparing for the Big One.”

  “Does he always go by the front door?”

  When I first came to the lost farm, the agent in the cherry picker who was dressed like a repairman, aside from wiretap devices, installed cameras on the telephone poles. Command center in Portland can see everything that comes and goes.

  “Because we don’t always get a visual until he’s a quarter mile away from the house,” Donnato says. “How does he get out? Suddenly he pops on-screen, heading north. We don’t know how he gets there or where he’s going. Find out.”

  At 7:45 a.m. the next day, Stone, wearing a fluorescent yellow Grateful Dead T-shirt, running trunks, and a belt holding a water bottle, heads out through the kitchen door. No big mystery about that. I watch from the second-floor window—careful to stay beyond the range of the camera installed in the German clock—as he jogs twice around the soft track of the orchard, then veers into the wooded parcel behind the house.

  I’m out the kitchen door, across the overgrown garden, and on the trail, keeping a hundred yards between us. As we move through the woods, I can see his shirt flashing up ahead. Then I lose him, but he has to stay on the trail or run through scrub. When we come out at the cottonwood trees, I duck below the wash. Now he’s in open territory, looking like any other fitness runner, tuned in to his iPod, dark stains on the T-shirt, churning muscular calves. The music keeps him focused—eyes ahead, not even thinking of watching the rear—so I stretch out and match his pace as we come up to the muddy tracks of the wildlife sanctuary.

  Against the sky, the matrix of power wires becomes more defined as we draw close. To my right is the plain where the blind foal was found. As Stone keeps on moving through the maze of manzanita, an epiphany of logic breaks over me like a cold shower: He’s heading for the shooting range where I found the .50-caliber shell.

  This is where he practices shooting his weapons. Including the sniper rifle that killed Sergeant Mackee.

  I am getting excited now. I wish to call Donnato, but I know there is no cell phone service here. The hard-furrowed roads are hazardous for turned ankles, and Stone is slowing down. No shots echo—it’s too early for your ordinary amateur shooter. I take a spur trail and circle around to where I suspect he’s going, accelerating to beat him and duck into a concealed position behind the Dumpsters overflowing with trash and flies.

  He stops in the center of the firing range, heaving and throwing drops of sweat. He swigs water and spits it out while turning around in a 360, checking the perimeter.

  Where does he hide the guns? A chest buried somewhere? A cave in the wash?

  Now he slides a black-and-silver phone from the belt
holding the water bottle and glances up at the sky, moving until there are no power lines above him. The phone is way too big to be a cell. I can make out the profile of an antenna, like a little finger pointing up. He is using a satellite phone to get past our wiretaps.

  You can only use a satellite phone outside, with a clear view to the sky. That is why he comes to the shooting range.

  “Gemini? It’s Taurus. What have you got? You’re the expert. You’re the one with access to intel, the off-site, the whole deal. Don’t leave me hanging out here with my pants down, buddy.”

  He waits. I wait. My breath comes fast.

  “You said you could get past the SAC. I’m counting on it.”

  The cold shower of logic becomes a deluge of ice. It is unmistakable. Dick Stone is talking to someone inside the Bureau.

  On an untraceable satellite phone.

  Twenty-five

  Once again, I am a passenger in the dark, being driven along unknown roads to an uncertain destination—just like in undercover school. As in undercover school, I have made the strategic decision to imbibe an illegal substance, meaning I am as stoned as the rest of them on some awesome weed.

  That night, before I could alert Donnato to the discovery of the satellite phone, we learned through a posting on the FAN Web site that Lillian, the sweet old bird-watcher rescued from the mustang corral, was dead.

  Dinner was quesadillas, and Megan was quiet.

  “What happened?” Sara said. “I thought she was okay.”

  “She’d just had a heart-valve replacement and it got infected.”

  “Too bad,” said Stone with a mouth full of cheese.

  “It was a direct result of the action,” Megan snapped. Her face looked slack, darkness beneath the eyes. “She was traumatized, and then she’s taken to a bad hospital in a piss-poor excuse for a town.”

  Slammer was jamming green apple halves and carrots into an industrial juicer.

  “Do you have to do that?” Sara asked.

  “Fiber, man.”

  The juicer must have been outfitted with a jet engine.

  Megan told Stone she was leaving for two days.

  “Why?”

  “Lillian’s memorial service.”

  The juicer howled.

  “Where?”

  “San Jose.”

  “Turn that thing off,” Stone shouted. “Fuck your fucking fiber.”

  The motor ticked to a stop. Slammer had extracted a quarter cup of amber-colored juice.

  Megan put her head in her hand. I laid my arm around her shoulders.

  “Megan’s upset. She saw the whole thing at the corral.”

  “Never should have happened,” declared Stone.

  “The lady was too old to go on something like that,” Sara added.

  “It wasn’t her being old.” Megan raised her burning eyes. “It’s us who were arrogant. We were breaking the law when—”

  “What’s the law anyway?” asked Stone. “Whatever the government decides. Arbitrary bullshit.”

  “I’ll be back late Sunday,” Megan said tiredly.

  “You’re not going. It’s a trap. The feds will be there.”

  Megan stood. “That’s crazy!” She had gone shrill. “I am so sick of your paranoid fantasies. The world is fucked and we can’t save it. We’ve been living in fantasyland all these years, without one normal day. Without peace of any kind. Without family.”

  “We could have had a family.”

  “All I ever wanted was a baby.”

  “You could have had a baby.”

  “No! I couldn’t! We were always on the run.”

  “Hush up now!” Stone said menacingly.

  “I won’t! This is my house.”

  “You want me to leave? Because I’ll leave,” said Stone.

  “Thank you,” Megan said. “After you have ruined my life.” And she walked out of the room.

  We waited in silence until Sara and I got up to collect the dishes.

  Stone told us to sit down.

  We sank back into our seats.

  “This is a tragic situation that did not have to happen,” Stone repeated in a hurt voice. “Nobody would have had to get messed up with wild horses if it hadn’t been for Herbert Laumann. He is the oppressor. He is the United States government. Megan has a right to be angry. A lady is dead who didn’t have to be.”

  He was good. Low-key and light on the rhetoric. You could feel him gathering up the fractured energy left in the room, wrapping it ever so piteously around himself.

  Hours later, Megan was gone and Stone roused the household—Sara, Slammer, and me.

  “We’re gonna have some fun,” he promised. “Gonzo political action.”

  Now, miles away from the lost farm, we are squeezed into the white truck, and Dick Stone is singing Otis Redding: “They call me Mr. Pitiful. That’s how I got my fame—”

  He keeps switching songs, genres, decades. Inside his head must be some crazy mix of rhythm and blues and screaming black-leather motorcycle metal. In a fraction of a second that goes on for eternity, he can hear Blue Oyster Cult expanding like the day of reckoning since 1975.

  “Music is consciousness; it never dies,” Stone proclaims. “Music exists forever, somewhere in the universe.”

  “If it never dies,” Slammer apes, “where was it born?”

  “In a thirty-twoer laced with windowpane.” Dick Stone grins.

  Rewind.

  We are forty minutes outside Portland. Real time. It is way past the midnight hour, and this, in the grand saga of injustice and revenge, is what Dick Stone has been given: two kids passing a joint as if they are on a lark, the boy running his mouth about his wicked life, the poor little rich girl without a clue; and the pretender, the eager stranger with wild dark hair and shifty eyes, slouching in the seat beside him.

  But he is pleased with the discipline of his rock ’n’ roll commando unit. Under his leadership, they have put together a goody bag of plastic squeeze bottles you would use for catsup, now filled with hydrofluoric acid; cans of red, white, and blue spray paint; a video camera; and Molotov cocktails made with the bandit’s signature Corona beer bottles.

  Still the original, still the best.

  For no discernible reason, he jerks the joint from Slammer’s mouth and flicks it out the window.

  “What the fuck?” The boy laughs uneasily.

  The bandit punishes him with silence.

  Sara is all of a sudden in a fit of giggles, rolling on her back in the rear seat, long, thin arms and legs kicking out at funny angles.

  “You’re a little butterfly.” Dick Stone looks in the rearview mirror. “Just like Megan, back in the day.”

  It was Megan, he tells us, who shared that thirty-twoer of psychedelic malt liquor in the Civic Auditorium down in San Jose, when BOC was at the height of their satanic debauchery; the concert from which he never came back. Like the apparition of young, idealistic Megan (aka Laurel Williams, the environmental scientist at Berkeley), Sara, he intones, is a butterfly who alights on your hand, revealing magic yellow granules of powder on its wings. Why would such a vision be given to you?

  Meanwhile, the new one, Darcy, keeps to herself, staring at the suburban night. Dick Stone smiles at some reverie and rolls his window down, dropping an arm out of the truck, letting the cigarillo hang, wasting good Dominican smoke as a rush of air tears hot embers off the tip, leaving a trail of extinguishing sparks. It satisfies him, like pages burning in time.

  “Hey now,” says the boy, “what’s that asshole doing?”

  Slammer jumps up and hits the horn and a van in front of us swerves to a stop. The driver of the van throws the door open, shouting in Farsi.

  Stone turns his head very slowly toward the boy. His graying stubble looks Halloween raspberry in the cold red intersection light.

  “Don’t…do…that.” He accelerates, but not too fast.

  “I really feel like slapping someone right now.” Slammer pounds a fist hungrily. �
��I really feel like getting into a fight.”

  Dick Stone ignores him.

  “That’s what I mean!” Slammer agrees, as if the old dude had said anything. “There’s two chicks in the car, know what I’m saying?”

  “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “We should hit ’em.” The boy is pointing and alert. “McDonald’s, man.”

  The drive-thru is bright as an alien spaceship. There is a line of cars.

  The bandit asks, “Why?”

  “Babylon profits by killing animals,” Slammer chirps. “Why not?”

  The bandit sighs. “It’s a cliché.”

  I guffaw. He cocks an appreciative eye. He loves Darcy for being a little rebel, and right now, stoned as the rest of them, Darcy loves him.

  Sara sits upright in the backseat. “McDonald’s is too corporate. Too big.”

  Slammer scowls. “You’re a freak.”

  Kindergarten.

  The bandit makes a U-turn and heads out of town.

  “Sara has a point,” he instructs, and pulls out a well-worn piece of rhetoric: “Evil needs a face.”

  The road becomes a country lane, no lights. The houses are spread farther apart. Only by slowing down and scanning the fences caught in the hard white headlights do we notice a small metal sign that says THE WILKINS. Stone turns down a road that bisects a pasture and leads to a newly constructed four-bedroom home with a spindle-post porch—just the kind of hypocritical western touch that ticks the bandit off.

  He pulls off the road, beneath a stand of juniper trees, and cuts the lights.

  “That’s the target.”

  “Who are the Wilkins?”

  “Our friend BLM Deputy State Director Herbert Laumann’s in-laws. The government whore is mooching off the grandparents now.”

  Because someone destroyed his house and his kid is still in the hospital.

  My stomach tilts with the sickening recognition that old obsessions die hard.

  Slammer whispers, like he’s seen a prophetic city: “Babylon.”

  Beneath the dashboard the prudent bandit has mounted a sophisticated scanner that picks up encrypted radio signals used by law-enforcement agencies. He fiddles, listens to the static. Nothing threatening on the airwaves.