by Joseph Flynn
As a final gesture, both cops gave Emily and Rebecca their business cards, the ones bearing their direct phone numbers. 911 might still be faster, but Beacher and Beltran promised to take a personal interest when they responded.
After hearing all that, Rebecca pulled rank and said she and Emily would do their rounds together that day rather than work separately. Emily put her car in the garage and made sure her home security system was on.
Rebecca steeled herself for the freeway trip to see Walt Wooten, Lee Proctor’s calligrapher.
35,000 Feet Over Ohio
John thought anyone as old as his great-grandfather shouldn’t have to put up with the hassles of commercial air travel. At six-foot-four Alan White River was also way too tall even to consider trying to wedge himself into a coach-class seat. John’s status as a minor poobah in the federal government qualified him to travel business class, but he’d have to fill out reams of paperwork to cover Alan White River’s travel on the government’s dime, and he didn’t have time to do that.
He could have picked up the tab out of pocket, but he didn’t think that was fair since he intended to use Alan White River’s wealth of knowledge of Native Americans to help him with his case. And then there were Dr. Lisle’s travel expenses. As a researcher, she didn’t command the hefty salary a physician in private practice might reap. So John would feel compelled to cover her tab, too.
Unless he figured out a way to access his preferred means of long-distance travel: an executive jet. Preferably one equipped with a crack crew and a respectable number of creature comforts. All of which would come out of somebody else’s budget.
With those considerations in mind, John turned to someone who, at first glance, wouldn’t be inclined to help him at all: FBI Deputy Director Abra Benjamin.
She did, however, answer his call without delay.
“Director Tall Wolf, are you calling to relinquish responsibility for the investigation of the theft of Dr. Yvette Lisle’s computer? If so, I’d be happy to have you brief me immediately on the progress you’ve made so far.”
John said, “That’s not quite why I’m calling.”
“You know the President has said the case will belong to the FBI as of this Friday.”
“Saturday, actually. At noon. But I have to give you credit for eagerness.”
A note of frost entered the deputy director’s voice. “What can I do for you, Mr. Director, in the short time you have remaining on this case?”
John said, “I’d like to borrow one of the FBI’s airplanes. An executive jet. Nicely crewed and outfitted. Recently washed, if possible. And safety inspected within the past 30 days, of course.”
“Would you like cocktails and meal service, too?” the deputy director asked dryly.
“I don’t think anyone in my party drinks alcohol, but snacks would be nice.”
“And you understand the FBI will bill the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the aircraft, crew, fuel and incidental expenses?”
John said, “You could do that or you could pick up the cost yourself.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“Well, I think I’m getting close, or at least closer, to wrapping up my investigation. If you want me to incur the overhead, I’ll reluctantly have to take the credit, too. If you choose to bear the financial burden, I’ll step into the background and let you and the FBI have the limelight. Your choice.”
The perpetually ambitious deputy director thought about that for a heartbeat. “Where do you want to fly?”
“To a domestic destination.”
“That being?” she asked.
“That being somewhere you’ll learn once I’m aloft and well en route.”
“You sound like you don’t trust me, Mr. Director,” a distinct chill in Abra’s voice now.
“Just relying on what Byron DeWitt has told me, Ms. Deputy Director.”
For just a second, John thought Abra had ended the call.
Then she asked, “How do I know you’ll let me claim credit?”
“Byron can tell you how self-effacing I am, and you can chastise him for talking about you. But maybe you shouldn’t be critical, his being married to the President and all. Madam President also wants me to be the next Secretary of the Interior. Do you think I should take that job?”
Abra Benjamin didn’t offer an opinion, but now she certainly understood that John had a lot more clout than she’d ever suspected. “Please hold while I speak with Mr. DeWitt.”
The conversation must have been terse.
Would John yield credit? Yes, he would.
And she was back on the line with John. A plane would be waiting at Dulles as soon as he could get there. She would expect another call from John as soon as the plane was well on its way to its destination.
“Will do,” John promised.
All in all, the exercise of securing an FBI executive jet had turned out to be easier than finding and booking a commercial flight.
Santa Monica, California
Rebecca and Emily looked on as Walt Wooten examined each of their signatures under a large magnifying glass attached to a double-hinged extension arm with a rotating ball-socket base. He hummed along with a recording of Billie Holiday singing “God Bless the Child” that was playing through the speakers in the studio of his Santa Monica house.
A naturalized American citizen of African-English-French-Canadian origin, Wooten was an immigrant who had made good in the United States. It helped, of course, that he’d been born with natural artistic talent and had refined and disciplined his gifts at the Ottawa School of Art. Drawn to the larger realm of artistic possibilities in the U.S., but contrarian in nature, he eschewed New York and moved to L.A.
The weather in Los Angeles also appealed more than New York’s.
At that moment, mellow Mediterranean-like light flooded through a north-facing skylight. God bless the child that’s got his own.
Walt hadn’t arrived with much money in the bank or even in his pockets. He hadn’t gone hungry after hitting L.A., but he had to apply his talents to commercial tasks to get his financial foothold in his new country. He designed logos for start-up businesses; he drew storyboards for both ad agencies and movie studios, back in the days before such tasks fell to computers; and he did calligraphy for well-heeled businesses and charitable organizations.
These days, his oil paintings sold for mid-five to low-six figures. Approaching 60 years old, he felt the market had accurately assessed his gifts, though he did think the sales prices of his work would appreciate after his death. As much for sentimental value as artistic worth.
The artist himself thought he was pretty damn good but not great.
Watching him duplicate their signatures with a keen eye and a deftly fluid brush in hand, Rebecca and Emily might have said he was underestimating himself.
What they did say was, “That’s amazing.” And “Scary, too.”
So commented Rebecca and Emily respectively.
Walt turned to look at his guests and chuckled. He said, “Thank you, and what’s so frightening?”
Emily said, “Well, just what we came here for — somebody creating a fake signature on an important document that could make the difference between who gets to walk off with the next big business idea and piles of money.”
The artist thought about that, nodded and smiled appreciatively.
“You’re right, scary,” he said. “I guess I lack the larcenous spirit to think like that, but in a way, it’s nice to know that someone besides a geek sitting at his computer could pull off a modern caper. With far more elegant simplicity, too.”
“We haven’t corrupted you, have we?” Rebecca asked.
“Possibly if you both offered to pose nude,” Walt said with a sly grin. “No, no, I’m too old for that sort of stuff now.”
Emily undid a button on her blouse to tease back, and the artist blushed.
Then she said, “Do you know any artist who might be seduced by sex, money or som
ething else to do a dead-bang knock-off of someone’s signature?”
When Rebecca and Emily had arrived, they’d explained the nature of the case they were working on without revealing the names of the people involved. That was when Emily had asked to see a demonstration of the skill at copying signatures that John had described to Rebecca.
Now, they’d both seen what could be done. What Walt had done.
The artist steepled his fingers and thought. “Sex and money are terrific motives … but I think prestige would be even more seductive. Something that an artist might receive from a boost in both critical and popular acclaim.”
Rebecca and Emily hadn’t told Walt that they’d had the same idea.
“How could something like that happen?” Emily asked. “It can’t be as simple as people just opening their eyes wider and suddenly noticing how wonderful somebody’s work is.”
Walt laughed. “No, epiphanies are few and far between, and critical consciousness doesn’t get raised from the bottom up. On the other hand …” Walt sighed. “I can’t begin to tell you the extent to which art has been influenced by the tastes of royalty and nobility. The preferences of kings, queens and archdukes must have some value, n’est-ce pas?”
“You’re saying the bourgeois figured they’d better fall in line?” Rebecca asked.
Walt nodded.
Emily said, “But blue-bloods are more figureheads than rulers these days.”
“Which leaves room for billionaires and mega-celebrities,” Rebecca countered. “They’re the ones with influence these days.”
“Exactly,” Walt said. “You get people with big money and social cachet to say something is wonderful, it will be the rare critic who contradicts them. Most of them will fall in line or even pretend they were leading the parade all along.”
Emily asked, “So you know anyone who’s shooting up the art-charts these days, Walt? Someone who might knock off a forged signature or two in his spare time?”
He gave them a name.
Telling Emily, “I do this for your father. He was one of the kind souls who kept me from becoming a cliché: the starving artist. That’s why I still do work for him. But I really don’t want this to trace back to me.”
“Mum’s the word,” Emily said.
Rebecca mimed locking her lips.
“Thank you,” Walt said, “and do stop by again. We won’t have to do nudes; sitting for a portrait would be fine.”
35,000 feet over Illinois
Peering out a window of the FBI executive jet, Alan White River told his great-grandson, “I’ve never done this before, looked down on clouds.”
John said, “You’ve never flown before?”
“Not in an airplane.”
For a moment White River had left John puzzled. Then he understood.
“You’re talking about stepping outside of your body,” he said.
“Yes.”
Dr. Lisle, sitting opposite John in a conversation cluster of seats, asked the old man, “Do you use peyote to aid your spiritual experiences, Alan?”
He gave a small shake of his head. “I don’t criticize those who do, but I have never felt the need. I’ve always been able to release my spirit, my consciousness, from my body without any outside help.”
Dr. Lisle nodded. “The functioning of the brain is still largely a medical mystery. The National Institutes of Health spend $4.5 billion a year on brain research, but no one knows how information is encoded and transferred from cell to cell. Nobody knows if information is encoded differently in various parts of the brain. It would be as likely as not to think that different people’s minds function differently in substantive ways.”
John chose to focus on a different question. “If you separate your mind from your body, how do you bring them back together?”
“There is a point of fastening,” White River said, “like a helium balloon grasped in a child’s hand.”
John looked at Dr. Lisle for her opinion of that simile.
She only shrugged as if to say, “Why not?”
John pushed the point further. “A child can let go of the helium balloon, and off it goes, hardly ever gets retrieved. Would the same thing apply to your spirit, Grandfather?”
He smiled serenely and said, “I’ve been trying to master the skill of letting go. So far, I’ve had no luck. I don’t worry about drifting on the wind. There is someone waiting to catch me.”
Awinita, John knew.
White River looked out at the clouds again. Sunlight was painting them with shades of gold. “This is all so beautiful. I would never have seen it without you, Grandson.”
“My pleasure,” John said.
The old man said, “I wonder how different our lives would have been if the white man had invented airplanes before trains. He might have ignored large stretches of our lands that did not appeal to him. We might have managed to live next to one another with a bit less bloodshed.”
The musing was rhetorical and neither John nor Dr. Lisle responded to White River as he continued to stare at the sky outside the speeding aircraft.
In a quiet voice, John told Dr. Lisle, “I have to make a phone call. When I’m done, I’d appreciate it if you’d join me over there.”
He pointed to a cluster of seats on the other side of the aircraft.
She nodded, but with reluctance.
Tall Wolf was anything but a bad cop, but she correctly feared an interrogation.
Interstate 25 Southbound — New Mexico
“You’re letting me go?” Bodaway asked.
He was behind the wheel of his recently purchased Honda, taking Marlene to Albuquerque.
“Never,” Marlene told him.
“But you’re not saying I have to go back to the Cree? Not after I stole their chief’s Cadillac SUV.” He deeply hoped that wasn’t the case.
Marlene looked at him with a bleak smile. “Keep your eyes on the road.”
Bodaway obeyed without hesitation.
Marlene said,“No, I’m not sending you back to the Cree, though that is an amusing idea. They have very severe customs concerning people who have wronged them, even if those punishments haven’t been practiced for many years.”
Bodaway’s heart started to slow to a normal pace. He knew he should just shut up, but he couldn’t keep himself from asking. “What are you going to have me do, after I drop you at the airport?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“So I should just stay in Albuquerque.”
“If you choose.”
Bodaway squeezed the steering wheel, while continuing to watch traffic. Anxiety and uncertainty were amping up his adrenaline once more. “I don’t understand. How can I choose to do anything if you’re not freeing me?”
Marlene explained, “You will always be my creature. You will come when I summon you. If you don’t come, it will be because you are dead or you will soon wish you were. You may travel the country as you wish, and I will always know where you are. I will be able to smell your dread of me and your hate for me at any distance. Now, do you understand?”
Bodaway nodded, not wanting to say anything he might regret.
Marlene sensed his apprehension and approved of it.
“You fear me now, as you always should. With time and distance, though, you will come to despise your weakness. You will think you’re stronger than you are, and I am weaker. You will know that isn’t true, but you will tell yourself it is. So, really, what I’m doing to you is much crueler than sending you back to the Cree, and you’re beginning to understand that already.”
Marlene didn’t have to look at him to know this.
She could hear his teeth grinding.
“Well, let me make things even worse for you. If there’s one thing you should never attempt again, it would be trying to do any harm to Tall Wolf. I’ve told you he is mine, and you will leave his fate to me.”
Bodaway didn’t say a word, but his teeth would soon crack if he didn’t ease the pressure.
/> Tormenting the fool had made Marlene feel just a bit better.
Tall Wolf’s implicit praise of her had thrown her off balance in a way she could not remember ever having experienced. She had long tried to seduce him with sexual allure and had failed every time. That he might have beguiled her with a bit of simple flattery was unnerving.
Of course, the difference was that her intent had been malicious while Tall Wolf’s words still echoed in her mind as being honest.
She’d have to figure out a way to deal with that, somehow turning it to her advantage.
She was still working on the problem when Bodaway dropped her at the airport.
25,000 feet over Iowa
The pilot had announced that the aircraft was beginning its descent into Omaha a moment before John’s call to FBI Deputy Director Abra Benjamin went through. “You certainly took your time getting back to me,” she said.
“I had to make sure your employees in the cockpit weren’t taking me to Disney World,” John told her.
Despite her adversarial position, the deputy director laughed. “And how did you determine that?”
“I saw fallow cornfields below not orange groves.”
“You can’t make that kind of a distinction from a cruising airplane.”
“Eyes like an eagle,” John said.
There was a pause just long enough to indicate uncertainty before Abra said, “Bullshit.”
“Yeah,” John confessed. “Truth is, I didn’t think you’d want to mess with the next Secretary of the Interior.”
“You’re really being nominated for that job?” Cynicism was infectious.
“I am, but I’ll swap places with you if you’re interested.”
“No, thanks. How about we get down to business?”
“Okay, it turns out Wilbur Rosewell, the guy your people let go after he tried to attack my great-grandfather and me, lives in Omaha. That’s also where Dr. Yvette Lisle was born and raised. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
“It could be,” Abra said.
“Is that the way you’d be investigating this?”