An Obvious Fact

by Craig Johnson

  “I’ve got a whole bar full of witnesses who saw you holding it in my ear before my friend Henry took it away from you.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got an entire alley full of people who saw you punch me in the head.”

  I sounded bored, even to myself. “As you resisted arrest and attempted to visit grievous harm on Officer Dougherty here.” I leaned in closer. “ThE, ol’ buddy, where did you get the gun? You see, I know who owns it—and I’m betting you do, too. Now, if she gave it to you, that’ll make it a lot easier in that I won’t have to worry about where she might be if you took it away from her.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  I stood and gestured to get the EMT’s attention. “When you get done, you can sew up this end, too.”

  Walking back into the bull pen, I turned to Corbin. “Put a general out for Lola and that gold Caddy; she doesn’t strike me as the type to go around unarmed.”

  He sat in a dejected manner and pulled the old stand-up mic toward him. “I screwed up pretty bad, huh?”

  “Not really. So far the only one who got hurt in all of this is the human Kong in there.” I shrugged as another yelp emanated from the holding cell. “And I’d say he deserved it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I spread my hands. “Where in the world is Lola Wojciechowski?”

  • • •

  The Bear and Dog were waiting for me outside, leaning on the MRAP as a group of bikers observed the two of them from a distance. “Are they going to have to put ThE down?”

  “I wish.”

  “What is next?”

  I held up the revolver. “Any ideas?”

  He glanced down the hill at the throngs of black leather, his eyes narrowing. “Is there a pool table in this town?”

  I stepped back toward the office door and yanked it open. “Corbin, is there a pool table around here somewhere?”

  “Capt’n Ron’s Rodeo Bar, in the back past the dance floor.”

  “Got it.” I shut the door and gestured down the hill. “Conveniently located a hundred feet that way.”

  The Bear started off with Dog. “I wonder, in the course of recent developments, if they will allow pets?”

  We stopped at a large barn door opening into another outside beer garden. “I keep telling you, he’s a service dog.”

  The bouncer at the door, an amiable-looking cowboy almost as wide as he was tall, asked, “And what service does he provide?”

  “Bomb detection.”

  He shook his head. “Works for me—there are plenty of them going off in there.”

  Dodging inside with the beast, we angled to the right and could see Lola taking a shot and stretching across the far-side pocket, revealing more than a little décolletage to the admiring members of the sporting life.

  “Lola.”

  Even I was taken aback by the thunder of the Cheyenne Nation’s voice in the raucous noise and music of the filled-to-the-gills bar.

  She took a second to steady herself and then took the shot with her custom cue, a banking roller that sunk the two ball in the farthest corner. She stood, cocked a leg, and rested her hip against the table as Big Easy, the guard-biker we had last met at the hospital, stepped into our line of sight, speaking in a slight Samoan accent: “Problem?”

  I held the revolver up. “A pink one.”

  “Not your color, my man.”

  I nodded past him toward Lola. “No, but it’s hers. Tell her we’ll meet her outside and not to make me come looking for her or I’ll see she gets seven months of high-security, low-amenity lodging in Sundance.”

  As we started to turn and walk out, the big and easy Samoan reached over and touched Henry’s shoulder, the arm attached having powered the biker’s head into the drywall of the Rapid City Regional Hospital. “I know you?”

  The Bear smiled the one-crease-at-the-corner-of-his-mouth smile. “Momentarily.”

  We waited by the door longer than I would’ve liked, but she finally came sauntering out and stood with her arms crossed. “I’d like my gun back.”

  I glanced at the revolver tucked in my belt. “You mind telling me how he got it?”

  “How who got it?”

  “Star of stage, screen, and reality TV, Billy ThE Kiddo.”

  “And who the hell is Billy ThE Kiddo?”

  “A good friend of your son’s.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and came closer. “Define good.”

  “Bodaway called him about seventeen times before the accident—if indeed it was an accident.”

  She straightened up and dropped her arms. “Look, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, let alone who you’re talking about. You put the gun inside my purse in my car’s glove box the last time I saw it.”

  “Your car, this gun . . . you’re kind of lax with your possessions.”

  She glanced at the Cheyenne Nation. “What can I say? I’m just a material girl in a material world.”

  The crypt voice returned beside me with enough timber to fill the Black Forest. “Lola, there are lives at stake.”

  She snorted. “That’s funny, ’cause that’s what I’ve been trying to convince you of for days.” She hooked her thumbs into the belt loops of her jeans and turned coquettishly to me. “Imagine my surprise: I came here looking for a red knight in shining armor and all I find is a Watson to your Sherlock Holmes. Feel free to put my gun back where you found it.” With this final pronouncement she turned and rejoined the swarm in the bar with her hands raised above her head, snapping her fingers, swaying and singing to Jerry Lee Lewis’s “C.C. Rider.”

  We stood there for a while before he handed me the leash.

  “I’m starting to see how this relationship didn’t work out.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He glanced at me. “For what?”

  “Trying to get you involved in this. It was stupid, and I didn’t really know what I was getting you into.”

  “She is something of a contagion.”

  I nodded and rubbed Dog’s head. “Let’s go get you a blood test at the Rapid hospital tomorrow and put this all to rest—then we can head home.”

  “Deal.” We turned and began walking the rest of the way down the hill, stopping at the corner and waiting for another assemblage of motorcycles to go by. “It is funny, but I was just getting used to the idea of being a father, even if it was with Lola.” I studied him, and he began talking again. “I watch you with Cady.”

  “Well, she’s yours, too.” I sighed. “Sometimes I think she’s more yours than mine.”

  “But she is not.”

  We crossed the street, and I thought I’d better lighten the subject matter. “Starting to have regrets concerning your ill-spent youth?”

  He smiled. “No, no. I just sometimes wonder.”

  “What your life could’ve been like?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take my advice—don’t do that.” Pulling up Dog in front of the Ponderosa Café, I turned and looked at him. “Regret is my turf, buddy.”

  He smiled a little more broadly. “Sorry.”

  “You were right about steering clear of her, and I drove us right back in there.”

  We began walking again. “It’s your maiden-in-distress syndrome; you have a difficult time resisting.”

  I laughed. “Yep, but I’m starting to get the idea that Lola is the kind that ties people to the railroad tracks.”

  “One of the disadvantages of operating in the contemporary American West is that not all the bad guys have handlebar mustaches.”

  We crossed the last street toward the motel and walked across the parking lot toward the cabins on the end near the river, where we saw Lola’s gold ’66 Caddy parked on the grass. The mist from the Belle Fourche almost
hid the thing, but the moonlight glistened off the chrome and quarter panels like jewelry.

  “Evidently, she also has unique ideas on parking.” I pulled the pink-gripped revolver from my belt and handed it to him. “Here, you can put it in her glove box.”

  “You are giving it back to her?”

  I jiggled my jacket where the five rounds rattled in my pocket. “Empty.”

  He palmed the thing and started off toward the car, only to stop.

  I stood there looking after him in the half-mist. “Something?”

  He gestured with an open hand, bidding me to follow. “Someone. In the car.”

  We both walked over to the convertible. ATF field agent Brady Post was sitting in the passenger seat, his head turned to the side with his eyes closed and his mouth gaping open, looking like he was snoring and dead asleep. On closer inspection, however, he was simply dead, a hole in his chest.

  10

  We couldn’t decide what we were going to do with the Caddy, so we leaned against it.

  “Need I remind you that what we have here is a dead federal agent?”

  “I’m aware of that, but I’m also aware that if this goes public, whoever did it is going to go to ground and we’ll never find out what was happening here, let alone who’s responsible.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “They have a vehicle shop at the Hulett Police Department.”

  “The tin shed?” He studied me. “You want to move both the body and the car as well?”

  I glanced over my shoulder toward the bridge, where traffic had appeared to have disappeared, it being the wee hours. “We drive him up there, and then I’ll contact McGroder, the AIC in Denver.”

  Henry looked back at the dead agent and shrugged.

  “We’ll say we were trying to maintain the integrity of the crime scene.”

  “By driving it across town.”

  I held a palm up, feeling for imaginary drops. “It might rain.”

  He shook his head and reached for Dog’s leash. “Do you have gloves?”

  I pulled a well-worn pair that I used to shoot with from my jacket. “If you would, put Dog in the room and try and not wake up Vic. I’ll meet you at the cop shop.”

  He inclined his head. “You are not going to give me a ride?”

  I skimmed off my jacket as I walked toward Post and carefully placed it over the agent’s head. “You were the one getting squeamish.”

  “I’m over that now; pick me up in the motel lot.” And off he went with Dog.

  I watched the two of them walk away and then turned back to Brady Post, kneeled down, and looked at him. “What did you get into?” I rested my chin on my arm and studied the dead man, a dull ache starting to form behind my eyes. “And what was it that was important enough to kill you for?” I leaned in close and did something I rarely did. “I’m sorry, but if I’m going to get whoever did this, I’m not going to be able to follow protocol.” I patted his arm and gave it a squeeze. “But then, you didn’t strike me as a by-the-book kind of guy.”

  I climbed in the car, started her up, and gently spun the wheels. Easing the accelerator, I backed onto the parking lot and headed for the area between the two buildings. When I pulled on the headlights, the two car thieves were standing in my way.

  The shady one who was with the Viking was the first to speak. “Where are you going with Lola’s car?”

  “I’m parking it in a safe place, as opposed to down by the river.”

  He continued to talk as Eddy fidgeted. “Does she know that?”

  “Everyone in the Western Hemisphere’s been driving this car this week, and you guys are going to question me?” I rubbed my hand across my face. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “A friend of Lola’s.”

  “Really?” The thick-timbered voice came from behind them, low but loud enough to straighten their backs. The Cheyenne Nation draped an arm over each man. “Because I am a friend of Lola, too, and I do not remember seeing either of your names on the guest list.”

  They were silent, staring at the asphalt as the weight of his arms curved their spines.

  “I will tell you what—when we see Lola next we will tell her you said hello. Eddy the Viking and . . . ?” He hugged the other man, but he didn’t appear to want to speak. “And?” I watched as Henry’s forearm muscles bunched and the man’s face was drawn in close to the Bear’s.

  “Phil Vesco.”

  Henry loosened his grip. “Eddy and Phil went up the hill. . . . I will be sure to recommend you to Lola for your sterling service.”

  I watched as he undraped himself and walked around the car. After slowly getting into the backseat behind the cloaked man in the front, he waved good-bye to the two road agents.

  • • •

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Corbin Dougherty’s voice rose as he unlocked the steel doors leading to the maintenance shed behind the department’s main structure. “Who killed him?”

  “We’re not clear on that, at least not yet.”

  He pulled the doors back and flipped the lights on inside. “He’s a federal agent?”

  “Yep.”

  “How do you know?”

  I turned my head, and Henry and I looked at each other for that briefest of moments as I pulled the Cadillac into the two-bay garage. “He introduced himself to us.”

  Corbin rapidly closed the doors. “Do they normally do that?”

  “Not generally.” I climbed out, and Henry flipped the seat and followed. “But the other night at the motel he badged us; he’s ATF and working on some kind of gun-running scheme that Bodaway Torres might’ve been involved with in Arizona.”

  “Our Bodaway Torres?”

  “Yep.”

  His face was the picture of bewilderment. “Smuggling guns into Wyoming?”

  Henry and I looked at each other again. “Kind of sounds like coal to Newcastle, doesn’t it? Look, maybe it’s not that particularly, but something is going on and the only way we’ll find out what it is is by keeping agent Post’s death under wraps.”

  He looked at the enormous car and the dead man. “For how long?”

  “I’ll ask Mike Novo to get a cashier and some bag boys up from DCI in Cheyenne and have them begin a preliminary while I get ahold of the agency in Denver. Maybe my friends in the FBI can get some information from the ATF and we can get a little more to go on.”

  • • •

  “I could see them having that response to me personally, but what in the world could they possibly have against the horse I rode in on?”

  “Was that an official response from the ATF?”

  Agent-in-Charge Mike McGroder laughed on the phone from Denver. “Pretty much. It would be different if we were all on the same team, but you know, Walt—the federal government is more like a loose coalition of warring tribes.”

  “Did they even admit that he was theirs?”

  “No, and with the number of CIs surrounding them, it’s going to be like a minefield as to who knew what he was and who didn’t.”

  “CIs?”

  “Confidential Informants. That’s the way these guys get in and it’s how they get their information.”

  “What are the chances that he’s not ATF at all?”

  “Difficult to say, but if he’s out of the Phoenix area, I can make some calls to the RAC and the ASAC. I know the guy in charge down there and he might be a little more motivated, especially if I tell him one of his agents is dead.”

  I continued to advance my education. “RAC?”

  “Resident Agent-in-Charge.”

  “ASAC?”

  “Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge.”

  “Is that what you guys do in your spare time—sit around and make up acronyms?” I sighed. “I’m
trying to keep this from becoming a circus.”

  “I understand you don’t want this to turn into a know-and-go, but the ATF’s Special Response Team is going to want its pound of flesh on this, Walt.” There was a pause. “With a vengeance.”

  I looked out the Hulett Police Department’s windows, the outside as black as a mine except for the ghostly white fender of the Pequod. “That’s fine, but you know as well as I do that if the feds come in here in force, then whoever did it is going to fold up the tents.”

  There was a pause. “That puts a lot of pressure on you to find out who did it before that happens.”

  “Yep, it does.” I hung up the phone and turned to look at Henry.

  “The game is afoot?”

  I sighed. “I wish you’d stop doing that.”

  Dougherty sat in another chair and looked at us. “What now?”

  I glanced at the clock on the wall. “The DCI crew should be here in a few hours.”

  “Before eight?”

  “I doubt it. Why?”

  Incredulous, he looked at me. “Because then my chief shows up, and I have to explain what a Cadillac and a dead ATF agent are doing in our maintenance shed.”

  “Blame it on me.”

  He nodded his head emphatically. “I intend to.”

  “Well, in answer to your question, I think one of the key elements in the investigation is back in your holding cell.” I glanced at Corbin. “He is still back in your holding cell, right?”

  “Who?”

  “Kiddo.”

  “Oh, him. Yeah, he’s back there.” My thought began dawning on him. “Why, are you thinking he’s part of this?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s a connection between him and Bodaway and a connection between Bodaway and a dead ATF agent. I’m thinking we take advantage of having the owner-proprietor of The Chop Shop in the holding cell and snoop around and see what he and Bodaway might’ve had going on over there.” I shrugged. “And we can take the Pennington County sheriff’s unit back to him; as far as I know, Vic’s race car is still in their impound lot.”

  Henry and I gathered up as Corbin threw me the keys to the Tahoe. “What do I tell the chief, other than it’s all your fault?”