by Vince Milam
“Breakfast.” Her voice carried over the breeze as she approached. The proclamation was delivered at a peculiar distance, but perhaps she feared surprising us. Two stone-cold killers. A bit harsh, but I still stood unclear on her Case-in-the-world perspective. “Not great,” she added, walking up, “but not bad for last minute.”
She plopped down and pressed against me. “And you can’t complain about the delivery service. A rare commodity in this part of the state. Did you really sleep out here?”
“Getting back to nature. What’s chow this a.m.?”
“Chow? Cheesy egg crepes, you cretin.”
She unwrapped several layers of clean dishtowels and foil, setting the bundle of rolled goodness between us. She handed Marcus and me a towel. “Eat. Eat while they’re still warm.”
We did. They were beyond fine. Between bites, she pointed east toward the smoke plume. “Are my neighbors having issues?”
“Bad news,” I said. “Afraid Mr. Tannenbaum’s place is empty again.”
Irene appeared settled, different. “Current evidence would suggest more than empty.”
“Charred.”
She patted my leg. “I can live with that.”
I gave a quizzical look, and she smiled as a reply. I shifted and locked eyes with Marcus. He shrugged and took another bite of crepe.
“Maybe it’s the landscape,” she said. “Alters perspective.”
“Okay.”
“Out on the fringe. I mean, we have thousands of square miles of wilderness at our doorstep.”
“Yes, we do,” Marcus said, and offered Irene his fresh-filled coffee mug.
“Thanks,” she said, taking a sip. “And eat those before they get cold. Especially you.” She leaned over and bumped me. “Evidence would also indicate you worked up an appetite last night.”
This took some getting used to. Irene the hesitant replaced, overnight, with Irene the take-care-of-business. I chewed on the change.
“So I’ve come to a realization,” she said.
“Okay.”
“You know, that’s a bit of an irritating habit. The whole ‘okay’ thing.”
“Amen,” Marcus said. His lighter flicked and he relit his cigar.
“So glad we could have this opportunity to mull over Case’s deficiencies,” I said, plucking a last crepe from the foil.
“Touch of attitude, bub. Not sure I find it attractive. And I’m trying to say something.”
“Okay.”
“Hit him,” Marcus said.
“What I’m trying to say is I’m beginning to get it. The need. And this applies to you as well, Marcus Johnson.”
She stood and positioned in front of us on the slight slope. “I’m not an idiot. You both said you were in the army. Uh-uh. It was some kind of Special Forces. Too much evidence, too much attitude. Including not ever talking about it.”
Marcus and I shared a quick glance. Irene paced. “And the events of the last couple of days brought a realization.” She stopped, hands on hips, shifting laser stares from me to Marcus and back again. “There’s a place in the world for evil confronted. Evil removed.”
She continued pacing. “Now, I haven’t figured out how I feel about that. The concept of evil. The judgment. The actuality of on-the-ground stuff.”
“Some of us haven’t, either,” I said.
She stopped again. “Good to know. I think. Shows evidence of a moral dilemma.”
“Well, it’s a complex slice of life,” I said.
“Or not. If you analyze it down to its essence.” She turned and paced. “Either way, I’ve realized there’s a place for action outside normal channels. I’m getting that. And it’s a big deal. For me.”
“Good. Glad to hear it,” I said. “Now maybe you’ll stop asking me about killing people.”
She stretched, looking tight and fine. The breeze lifted her loose hair. “Maybe. Or maybe not. Depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether the subject matter requires clarification.”
“I’m talking general perspective.”
“So am I. And it’s situational.”
“Not always.”
Marcus interrupted. “I’m glad to hear this, Irene. Genuine ugliness and evil is real enough. Sorry you had to face it. But this conversation has taken a leap.”
“A leap?” she asked.
He puffed his cigar. “A leap into Dr. Phil territory. You two sort this over a glass of wine sometime.”
“Amen,” I said.
“Amen to the sorting it out or to the change of subject?” she asked.
“Both.”
She snorted, shook her head, and stomped over to remove the remains of the crepe delivery service. During the process, she got in my face. “When will I see you again?”
“Tonight,” Marcus interrupted. “My place. He’s leaving soon.”
“Leaving? When?”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“Why?”
“He misses his boat.”
“I miss home.”
Irene gathered her things and walked off. At a distance she called over her shoulder. “What time, Marcus?”
“Seven,” he called back.
“Case.” I twisted and shared a straightforward look.
“Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you.” She turned and headed toward her place.
We sat silent, digesting the food and conversation. Cattle lowed below us, grazing. Another day, and I was blessed to be here.
“A prime example of how detrimental your lifestyle is,” Marcus said. “A boat. Quite the attractant for a woman you’re interested in.”
“Little early for the talk.”
“No, it’s not. It might not work between the two of you, but you could at least try.”
“I do try.”
“Big-picture try. Commit to a lifestyle change.”
“There’s the little issue of a bounty on my head.”
“Mine too. But you don’t see me wandering all over hell’s half acre. In a leaky boat.”
“Yeah, but you’re not dancing down Broadway, either.” I waved a hand across the vast expanse before us. “This is a pretty good hiding spot.”
His voice changed. Low, sincere, without rancor. “I’m not hiding, Case. But you are.”
I plucked a few dried grass stems, tied a knot, and thought of playing the Mom and CC card. A thought dismissed. It ran deeper than that.
“Must be a helluva burden. Always being right.” I meant it.
A soft chuckle replied. We sat in comfortable silence while he finished his cigar.
“You want a ride back?”
“No, thanks. Rather walk. Any departing advice?”
Marcus pushed himself vertical, holding back another groan. “Yes. Make the phone call.”
He walked away and left in his trace one of the two activities still on my plate. A call to the director of CIA operations. And I’d do it. After a visit to a lost brother.
Chapter 25
Put a period at the end of the sentence. Call it good. A challenge when events such as last night’s ended. I chased away scumbuckets—injected true and palpable fear into their lives—but it floated in the maybe and might world. You could hope it did the trick. But hope lacked the emphatic vigor of a terminating bullet. Then again, I’d learned even death lacked a terminal point when someone you’ve killed was part of a tribe prone to retribution and revenge.
A high hill on Marcus’s property offered a view of the Beartooth Mountains, distant and backdropped with shifting gray skies. The steepest sections of those high jagged peaks, well above tree line, had shed much of winter’s snow. Sun, avalanches—the exposed shadowed cathedrals lacked invitation or welcome. I appreciated their stoic nature, timeless, immune from the conflicted feelings we toted by the gunnysack. And I carried my fair share.
Marcus had been right. Hiding. A less than appealing feature. Boat life. A good life. For a single man. I balanced thoughts of the pa
ssion with Irene last night, fiery and full-on. It was tainted on two fronts. Irene’s opening premise painted me a killer. A poor foundation for romance, which we had both ignored during the embrace. She may have owned a valid viewpoint, one that disturbed. I’d just cogitated the lack of finality with the latest endeavor. The latest mission. Not an attractive slice of Case Lee’s makeup.
And there was the shadow, the conscious presence, of Rae. Rae Ellen Bonham. Loving and forgiving and gone. A shadow I resurrected during female encounters. She would have wanted me to move on. And I tried. Success came incrementally. It had been over four years since her murder. The blink of an eye when staring toward craggy peaks, distant and resolute.
Another landscape view waited. I trekked over hills and through coulees, sagebrush scraping jeans. Melting remnants of last night’s sheen of snow. Mule deer bounded, bounced, from the ravines. They stopped, as always, before disappearing over a hill. Checked me, large ears on full alert. Then gone.
A final rise and halfway down the hill. Below me a nondescript patch of bunchgrass prairie, pressed against the slope. Green sprigs poked up, soon thick, fresh grass. Deep below the surface lay two large SUVs. Marcus had dug the hole with his bulldozer last fall. Six Chechens were buried inside the vehicles. Bounty hunters. Marcus, Catch, and I nullified their birth certificates. And with them one lost blood brother. William Tecumseh Picket. Angel. A member of our Delta Force team. He’d brought the Chechens to help kill me. For twisted love or perverse association or wiring gone bad. Hard to say.
Catch delivered the coup de grâce. Marcus and I failed at our attempts. Holder of the final executioner’s act held little import. Because there lay Angel. Deep under cold, cold ground. Marcus wouldn’t talk about it. Neither would Catch or Bo. A brother gone bad. Problem taken care of. Move on. I lacked their ability.
I sat on the sloped ground, forearms rested on raised knees. A respite needed, and at times, strange. The morning passed in contemplation, meditation, and prayer. The world still, quiet but for the sound of cool air through sagebrush and across endless seas of grassland. Reflections, snippets of time past floated, came, and went. The good, the strange, the nonsensical. When I was eight and my best friend’s pet rabbit died. He asked me why. It lay at the bottom of its hutch, lifeless and limp. The time my mom snatched me up and danced with me in our Savannah kitchen. I yelled with glee. Dropping from a rope swing into a cool creek, other kids waiting their turn. Holding hands with Rae—an act simple and fulfilling. Life. Pools and ripples and streams. Not a lick of sense in much of it. But a thread, stainless steel, woven throughout. Love. It disappeared among the fabric, reemerged, glistened.
That was one side of the ledger. On the other, cold ground. A brother buried. Problem resolved. But the period at the end of Angel’s personal sentence remained opaque.
I said goodbye and walked away. The morning breeze increased and with it, chill. The sun wouldn’t make an appearance today. Marcus’s place came into view, smoke rising from the great-room chimney. A strange comfort, emotive and sharp, washed over me at the sight. Sanctuary, perhaps. Love and understanding waited, without doubt. And it triggered another keen pull for home.
Jake delivered three barks, a general alarm, before he recognized me. He raced, slammed against my legs, and demanded affection. A full minute of intense scratches justified his technique, and I strolled into the ranch house. Steel thwacked wood as Marcus chopped veggies.
“Stew tonight,” he said, and paused for a visual inspection. He could pick up on my physical and mental state with a glance. One helluva leader.
“Want my help?”
“And have you molest an otherwise culinary mountaintop? No, thanks. Fresh coffee in the pot.”
I poured a mug and inspected the meat sizzling at the bottom of a large cast-iron pot. “Roadkill?”
“Funny. It’s buffalo. Fine and tender and makes a stew that’ll curl you up like a baby.”
Classic country played through speakers. He’d hum along with most tunes, attempt singing others.
“You ever consider moving out of the 1970s? Music-wise?”
He sipped coffee, one eyebrow raised. Without his Stetson and in the subdued light from the large windows, his hair showed more gray than expected. He wasn’t old, and it bothered me. A visual marker, unwelcome.
“Oh, I could put on something more modern. Songs sung, ostensibly by actual men, as they whine about stubbing their toe. And how unfair it is.”
“I hear NPR is looking for a music critic. You might give it some consideration.”
He responded by singing along with Lyle Lovett’s version of “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” at a higher volume than usual. I laughed, shook my head, and announced, “A shower calls.”
That afternoon the house filled with the aroma of simmering stew. Marcus donned work boots and prepared to check his cattle.
“I’m making that call. And want to reassure you,” I said.
He paused putting on his ranch coat. “Reassure me?”
“Yeah. Calling the director.” Marilyn Townsend.
“Don’t require reassuring.”
“I’ll use my satellite phone. 128-bit encryption. She can’t trace it, find my number. Or location.”
“Not my world. Yours.”
“The point is she’ll never know where I’m calling from. No signal to track, nothing, nada.”
“I have no interest in the Company, Case. And they have none in me. Again, your world. Not mine.”
“Wanted you to know.”
He finished buttoning his coat. “Now if it was the Chesapeake witch you were calling, I might be worried.” Jake shot through the dog door and waited for Marcus’s exit. It came soon enough.
Jules. Jules of the Clubhouse. Although Marcus internalized the necessity for the CIA and its Delta Force hammer, he held no truck with murky clandestine waters. And Jules personified that ocean. A by-the-book guy, and I understood his perspective. My relationship with Jules added impetus to his admonitions for a career change.
I sat on the edge of the outdoor porch, out of the wind and with excellent satellite connectivity. Took a breath and dialed her number. Two rings, then silence. She picked up but wouldn’t speak first.
“Director. Case Lee.”
A pause—perhaps a recording device switched on. “Mr. Lee. Good of you to call.”
“I understand you wanted a chat.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“Let’s start with my people are not to be abused.” She was pissed over my handling of her Hood River messengers. I remained quiet.
“Am I crystal clear on that?”
“I don’t appreciate your people operating on domestic turf.”
“Not operating, Mr. Lee. Delivering a message. Tell me you do understand the difference.”
I plowed ahead. Semantics wouldn’t dilute this conversation. “You’re a busy person. Let’s get to the subject du jour.”
Marilyn Townsend defined no-nonsense. But her straightforward manner, appreciated in the day, no longer held sway. In it but not of it—a point I would emphasize while referencing recent Company operations. Operations that starred yours truly as the dangling puppet. The subject of this call, as she was well aware.
“Papua New Guinea,” she said.
“Not like this. Face-to-face.”
I’d have my say with the director, in person. Under my rules, not hers. Conversation that afforded reads and nuances unattainable over the phone. She paused. I waited.
“Fine. When and where?”
“I’ll call day after tomorrow.”
She hung up.
Marcus built a substantial fire in the great-room’s fireplace that night. Miriam brought over a couple of board games and blackberry cobbler. Irene contributed fresh bread and two bottles of wine. We sat on the floor around the room’s low plank-wood table, eating stew from thick porcelain bowls and playing Scrabble. The fire popped, conversation and wine flowed, the atmosphere fin
e and warm and old-shoe comfortable.
“Fine stew,” I said. “Better than good.”
“Can you believe a man so good looking also cooks?” Miriam asked. “Now if we could take the edge off all his levelheadedness.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
Marcus ignored us and focused his attention toward the game. The sudden absence of new neighbors was broached early.
“Glad you handled it, Case,” Miriam said. “Don’t need the gory details, but glad it was you.”
“One of those things,” I said. “Over and done.”
“Pretty sure Marcus would have taken them down. Permanently. Dug a hole and buried their butts,” she said.
Marcus and I shared a glance. No one outside of Marcus, Bo, Catch, and I knew of the six Chechens and Angel’s final disposition.
“Especially when I heard how they attacked you, Irene,” Miriam continued.
“Is aktat a word?” Marcus asked.
I checked Merriam-Webster on his tablet computer. “Nope.”
“One good thing came out of it,” Irene said. “All these years and I’d never met evil close up. Now I know.”
“How about botryoid?” Marcus asked, spelling it for me.
“Doubt it,” I said.
“Would you look it up?”
I did. A legitimate word. Resembling a cluster of grapes. “How did you know that?”
“You’re not the only man of mystery at this table.”
“Did you get hurt, Case?” Miriam asked. “Last night?”
“I’m fine.”
Miriam’s dog scooted closer to the low table, nose extended. “Oh, I wish you would, Dity,” Miriam said, her voice low and threatening. Dity eased back on her haunches. The dog made a quick check of Miriam’s face and confirmed the seriousness of her tone.
“When are you not fine?” Irene asked. She pushed her bowl aside and turned the Scrabble board for a better-suited angle.
When I think of death, Irene. And the fragility of life. And my too-often active hand in the whole damn thing. “Pretty even-keeled most of the time.”
“Forget it, Irene. With these two, you might as well talk to a cottonwood stump about emotions,” Miriam said.
We ate the cobbler with vanilla ice cream and followed it with brandy and coffee. Marcus and Miriam said good-night and wandered off together. Irene yawned and said, “I better get going as well.”