Big Medicine (A John Tall Wolf Novel Book 5)

by Joseph Flynn

  Rebecca gave her colleague a light punch of approval on a shoulder and said, “I’ll be more than happy to find out.”

  Farnam Street — Omaha, Nebraska

  Wilbur Rosewell, the ethics-free private investigator and former killer cop, rode in the box truck driven by Petrovich, the no-first-name Russian emigré. Rosewell got nervous whenever Petrovich was behind the wheel. He’d never said anything about it, but now he worried maybe a cop might pull them over, the way Petrovich drove. If Brice Benard were tied up in the back, along with who knew how much of his gold, things might go as wrong as they could get.

  They might have to shoot any cop who stopped them, and that was never a good career move. Rosewell’s heinie started to pucker just thinking about it. He finally came out and said, “You know what, Petrovich, you drive like a foreigner.”

  The Russian spared Rosewell a sidelong glance. “I drive with an accent?”

  Rosewell coughed up a nervous laugh. “Yeah, goddamnit, that’s right. You not only watch for oncoming traffic and whoever might be coming up from behind, you look like you’re checking out every manhole cover in the street in case someone might pop up with a bazooka. And you keep looking up, for Christ’s sake. What’s that about? Attack helicopters or flying saucers? You make jerky lane changes for no good reason. You can’t do any of that shit once we grab Benard and the gold.”

  Petrovich stopped for a red light and looked at Rosewell. “No?”

  “No. In America, patrol cops watch for erratic driving.”

  “I have been driving here for two years, and I have never been stopped.”

  Rosewell shook his head. “Is that the way you operated back home, counting on dumb luck?”

  The light turned green, and Petrovich checked out every angle he could see before he put the truck back in motion with an abrupt burst of speed, until he cleared the intersection, and then he slowed down until he was under the speed limit.

  “At home, no one would dare to stop me,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, those days are o-ver. If you’ve been here for two years,” Rosewell said, “you’ve seen how Americans drive, and I don’t mean the crazy asshole kids or the geezers.”

  “Geezers?”

  “Old people. The ones who don’t have the muscle tone to push the gas pedal down more than an inch.”

  Petrovich nodded. “Yes, I know both these types.”

  “Okay, so what you should do is shoot for somewhere in the middle and, for Christ’s sake, be relaxed about it, like you don’t have a care in the world.”

  “Perhaps that is the problem,” Petrovich said.

  “What is?”

  “You ask me to do something for God, and I am an atheist.”

  Rosewell just barely stopped himself from saying, “Jesus!”

  He was working to keep a pulsing vein in his forehead from bursting when Petrovich asked, “Would you like to drive the truck after we take Benard and his gold?”

  “Yeah, I would.”

  “Then I will accommodate you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If the police stop us on the way to Benard’s office, I will be humble and cooperative.”

  “Exactly right. That’s absolutely the best way to play it.”

  They caught another red light at the next intersection. Rosewell had long felt certain that every traffic engineer in town was being paid off by OPEC. Maybe the mayor and the city council, too.

  As they waited, Petrovich said, “You know, of course, that I do not use my own name.”

  Rosewell hadn’t given that a moment’s thought, but it made sense. “Yeah, fine.”

  “Do you recognize my name from your school reading?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve chosen the name of a character from a famous novel.”

  “No kidding,” Rosewell said, clearly not interested.

  “You are not familiar with it?”

  “No.”

  “The novel is called Crime and Punishment.”

  That got a grin out of Rosewell.

  The Russian continued, “Petrovich was an investigator who got a fellow to confess to two murders he committed — after someone else had already confessed.”

  Damn traffic light stayed red long enough to let a 100-car freight train pass by, Rosewell thought, and now the damn Russian was talking literature. Shit, next it might be chess.

  Petrovich said, “I mention this to let you know I will get Benard to tell us where all of his gold is kept, and how to get at it. So I hope you will forgive my Russian driving.”

  Rosewell sighed and nodded. “Yeah, okay. Sorry about busting your chops.”

  The light turned green, and Petrovich moved through the intersection in a normal American fashion, accelerating but not racing.

  He told Rosewell, “I thought as a former policeman you would know Crime and Punishment, but if you do not read …” He shrugged.

  Rosewell gave the Russian a dirty look. “Hey, I read books. When it comes to stories about guys like you and me, I just like Elmore Leonard better.”

  After a moment of reflection, Petrovich said, “You know, so do I.”

  A few minutes later, he backed the truck up to the loading dock at Brice Benard’s office building.

  Eppley Airfield — Omaha, Nebraska

  Marlene Flower Moon landed in Omaha after a smooth, quick trip from Albuquerque. Despite having to pick up the tab for her transportation, she was in surprisingly good spirits. By putting her expenses in proportion with her net worth, she realized that what she’d had to pay for the flight was less than a trifle.

  In her own right, she’d earned a small fortune from assisting the late movie icon Clay Steadman in the production of his last movie, Texas Mean. She’d later come into a far greater sum, and a continuing revenue stream, when she’d learned Clay had left his 33.33 gross points in the film to her, as well as any subsidiary rights that might later be exploited.

  Clay’s executor had explained to Marlene that the actor had felt a true kinship with her and wanted to express his gratitude appropriately. Marlene thought he already had by involving her, a complete novice, in his farewell performance. She’d seen immediately that he hadn’t had long to live, despite being more physically vigorous than anyone might have suspected.

  “It isn’t often that I’m surprised,” she’d told the executor.

  Only Tall Wolf had surprised her again just recently. She wondered if the shape of the universe was changing — and what that might mean for Coyote.

  The executor had warned her: “The studio might try some trick to weasel out of compensating you appropriately, but Clay said you’d be more than a match for them.”

  Marlene smiled politely, shook the man’s hand and said thank you.

  Then she went to see the studio head. As predicted, he tried to screw her financially.

  He told Marlene, “We won’t contest the legitimacy of Clay’s will, of course, but you should know that because he was getting older and his appeal to the youth market had been waning for years, and because the material itself was of a risky nature, we all agreed that Clay would take net points on this deal.”

  Net points, also known as monkey points, were those that got paid only after the studio deducted all of its overhead from the box office receipts. Nobody with any real prominence in the Hollywood ecosystem ever took net points as part of their deal. Gross points, those that came straight out of gross revenue figures — screw the damn inflated studio expenses — were the only way to go for stars.

  As long as Clay Steadman had drawn breath, he was still a star.

  The studio head, being unfamiliar with Marlene, thinking she was only some babe who’d sunk her claws into a fading old man, had expected her to do no more than plead, haggle or at worst threaten a lawsuit. The movie boss was betting the studio had more and better-connected lawyers than any gold-digger did.

  Marlene didn’t take the bastard’s throat in her teeth as she had done with Bodaway. Nor did
she piss on him. Instead, she seized his throat in her right hand, piercing his wattled flesh with what felt to the bastard like an iron claw. She didn’t go deep enough to kill him, but the pain and the shock were sufficient to cause him to wet his own pants.

  She walked out of his office not only with the gross points Clay had left to her but also with half the gross points the studio had held on the film. Put together, she had taken in more than 50 cents of every dollar Texas Mean brought in. That was a hundred million already, and a steady stream continued to provide more.

  Clay’s other heirs had congratulated Marlene on her negotiating skills.

  As the chartered jet came to a stop, the cabin steward told her, “Your limousine is waiting for you, Ms. Flower Moon. It’s been a pleasure to have you aboard today.”

  She tipped him $2,000 and told him to split it with the flight crew as he saw fit.

  Getting settled in the limo, she took out her phone. She had thought of heading straight to the Omaha Marriott Downtown, the place where Tall Wolf said he was staying. She’d bet all her movie money that the place charged more than federal guidelines allowed.

  That was when a small revelation occurred. Tall Wolf had his own sly ways, didn’t always play according to the rules. There was a streak of kinship between them. Not in terms of blood but in spirit. A sense of mischief, at the very least, was something they held in common.

  Not that Marlene was ever going to get sentimental about it.

  Rather, it was always helpful to know a potential adversary’s tendencies.

  She made a call to Tall Wolf. “I’m in Omaha. Where are you, your hotel?”

  Since Marlene hadn’t bothered with a hello, John didn’t either. “I’m about to confront a guy I think ripped off a Native American medical researcher, and tried to con the local tribe out of something valuable, too.”

  “The Omaha?”

  “Yes.” John remembered a point that Cale Tucker had raised with him. “Would you know any tribes that had a hostile relationship with the Omaha back in the old days? Or even recently?”

  Cale had said maybe Brice Benard had native blood.

  If it was also bad blood toward the Omaha …

  “The Lakota Sioux,” Marlene said.

  “Yeah? Serious stuff?”

  “In 1855, a mixed-blood Omaha chief named Logan Fontanelle was on a buffalo hunt with a number of his men. During a lull, he left the others to go pick gooseberries.”

  “Really? Pick berries?”

  Marlene chided him, “It wasn’t the Sunday picnic activity it is now, Tall Wolf. A Lakota war party came across him. They took Fontanelle prisoner, killed him and scalped him. Presumably made off with his berries, too. What does all this have to do with anything?”

  “The guy I’m going to see is named Brice Benard, a big-shot real estate guy. Someone suggested to me he might have native blood and be a traditional enemy of the Omaha.”

  Marlene laughed. “I see you still know how to recruit good help.”

  “The best,” John said. “That’s why I called you.”

  “Benard sounds French to me,” Marlene said, ignoring the compliment. “The Omaha and the French have long intermarried. There’s also an overlap between the French and the Lakota.”

  “But is there still a serious rivalry?” John asked.

  “There’s always friction of some sort between various groups, and on a one-to-one basis anything is possible.”

  “Yeah, just look at us,” John said, “the best of enemies who can still get along.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Tall Wolf.”

  “Okay. You can meet me back at the hotel then … after I go see Benard. Maybe I’ll have to call the cops, if I need to shoot it out with him and, you know, any thugs he might have around.”

  “You really think you can play me that easily, Tall Wolf?”

  John said, “Unh-uh, I just thought you might enjoy being in on the action.”

  Marlene stewed for all of ten seconds, couldn’t see a way out.

  Didn’t want to, really.

  Having made peace of a sort with Tall Wolf or not, she was still in the mood to enjoy shredding someone’s ass.

  “Give me the address where you’re going,” she said in a flat voice. “I’ll meet you there.”

  John did and told her, “I look forward to it.”

  Los Angeles, California

  The recruiting effort took a couple of hours. Everyone Emily, Rebecca, Arcelia and Emily’s neighbor, Colonel Donahue had called agreed to show up at Emily’s house by late that afternoon. At the colonel’s suggestion, they also consented to wear their dress uniforms. Medals for valor, of course, would be polished.

  Rebecca had called the Consulate General of Canada in Los Angeles, identified herself as a former inspector with the RCMP and asked if there were two members of the Force available to help her as part of a gathering that would include female members of the LAPD, the United States Marine Corps and the front office of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

  Once Rebecca’s bona fides were established, Consul Edmund Wolcott came on the line and said, “Sounds like you’re planning quite the event, Inspector. Have you secured a parade permit, by any chance?”

  “Won’t need one, sir,” she said. “The show’s being held on private property.”

  “Everything will be well within bounds, both legally and in terms of general decorum? Can’t do anything to cause a fuss in Canada’s fourth largest city.”

  Rebecca laughed. Los Angeles was jokingly given that title for the estimated million citizens of Canada who lived at least part time in the metro L.A. area. She said, “Everything will be proper and peaceful. Might even be a nice bit of publicity to display back home.”

  “Any chance I might be able to observe?” Wolcott asked.

  “I think we could arrange a living room window view for you. That is, assuming you have the free time.”

  “I do. You asked for two female members of the Force to attend. Would it be agreeable if I brought a third? We have a Deputy Commissioner Eileen Murphy visiting us, and she claims to know you. She’d also like to be on hand.”

  A warm glow filled Rebecca. “I’d be honored to have the deputy commissioner join us.”

  “Another seat in the living room is available?”

  “If she has her dress uniform with her, I’d love to have her stand with us, sir.”

  “By happy coincidence, she does. Will there be press in attendance?”

  “A reporter and a photographer from the Times.”

  “Good. They should be happy to share with our newspapers.”

  The troops were massed in Emily’s living room at 4:55. Colonel Donahue and nine other Marines, as was their custom, would be the tip of the spear. They’d be followed by ten officers of the LAPD. Arcelia, in a San Francisco Giants jersey, and the two women wearing the Dodgers jerseys would each have a baseball bat at her shoulder. Rebecca, Deputy Commissioner Murphy and two Mounties from the Consulate General would form the honor guard for Emily, who would be the last to step through her front door.

  The women exiting the house would form two parallel lines along the walkway leading from the house to the public sidewalk. Inside the house, watching from the wings would be Leland Proctor, Emily’s dad, along with the President of the L.A. Police Commission, Bob Sifuentes, who’d cleared the LAPD officers’ participation, Consul Edmund Wolcott and Detectives Eloy Zapata and Wallace MacDuff, who’d stopped by to see how Emily was doing and, being miffed that they hadn’t been included in the plan, refused to be budged.

  Emily mollified each of them with a kiss on the cheek and told them if circumstances dictated that they could come out shooting, making sure they didn’t hit any of the wrong people.

  The photographer from the Times was also inside the house, and he’d shoot Terry Adair over Emily’s shoulder. The newspaper’s reporter would appear on the sidewalk outside the house and try to get a comment from Terry as he beat his expected retreat. The repor
ter might also use his iPhone to take some video, if he was willing to risk getting the phone smacked out of his hand.

  Emily thought she was going to look like a great big doofus if Terry didn’t show.

  But he rang the doorbell right on time.

  Omaha, Nebraska

  A big guy in green coveralls who must’ve handled shipping and receiving for the building came charging out of a door leading out onto the shipping dock. He was a solid 240 pounds, if he was an ounce, Rosewell thought. Looked like he might’ve played college football at some small school 30 years ago. A linebacker who could deliver a big hit when he didn’t have to run too far to get to the running back.

  He waved a thick index finger at Rosewell and Petrovich as they climbed the steps to the dock. “You guys can’t park that truck here. You’re not on my list.”

  He held a clipboard in his left hand. A sheaf of neatly stacked papers clamped to the board apparently told him whom to allow into his grimy domain. No surprise, their truck wasn’t on the list; they hadn’t told Brice Benard they’d be bringing it.

  Rosewell stepped forward with a smile. “Last minute call, Stan.” He’d read the man’s name on his coveralls. “Mr. Benard called for us. If you get him on the phone, I’m sure he’ll tell you it’s all right. I’ve got his number, if you want it.”

  The loading dock boss gave them both a look. It was clear he’d recognized Benard’s name, and he didn’t really have a problem with Rosewell, but he didn’t like Petrovich’s looks. Rosewell understood why when he saw the Russian look Stan up and down like he was deciding where to shoot him first.

  Before Rosewell could give Petrovich an elbow to straighten him out, Stan turned his back, and walking away said, “I’ve got the number, too. I’ll be right back.”

  “Lighten the hell up,” Rosewell whispered to Petrovich. “We haven’t even gotten into the building yet.”

  “You get cooperation your way,” the Russian responded, “and as you shall see, I will get it my way. Remember to tell Benard what I told you.”