Tall Man in Ray-Bans (A John Tall Wolf Novel)

by Joseph Flynn

  Sergeant Bramley clinked her glass against John’s

  “Cheers,” she said.

  “A votre santé.” Health. They sipped their drinks.

  Bramley asked, “Are you always such a sport or is there a purpose behind your generosity?”

  John said, “You want me to give away all my secrets?”

  He had a natural reserve. Wondering if a supernatural agency was pursuing a vendetta against you also inspired caution. But he had to guard against paranoia, too. If Sergeant Bramley was Coyote, he might be undone.

  She said, “Not all of them. Not right away. Discovery is half the fun.”

  “You think we might meet again?”

  “I take two weeks vacation in Florida every February and two weeks hiking and fishing in our provinces every August.”

  John asked, “Is that an invitation?”

  “It is. In Florida, I like to wear high heels every so often, go dancing and not look down at the top of my partner’s head.”

  “How do you know I dance?” John said.

  “In the car, I saw you tapping your foot to the music. You’ve got rhythm.”

  Before the conversation could go further, McTee joined them.

  “Thank you for your patience,” he said. “We’ve finished our meals and to the extent possible I’ll answer your questions on behalf of my clients. My office is nearby. It’s private and it’s large enough to accommodate all of us.”

  “Fine by me,” John said. “Let me see if —”

  He stopped talking when he saw that one of the constables at the restaurant door was having a conversation by way of a portable radio. John couldn’t overhear what was being said, but from the look on the cop’s face it was serious. Bramley saw him, too, and was on her way over there.

  McTee turned and he also saw something new was in the offing.

  John told him, “Please ask your clients to give us a minute.”

  The lawyer’s expression revealed that now he was eager to get his clients away from all the cops, but running out of the restaurant wouldn’t look good. Might not even be possible.

  McTee told John, “We’ll order dessert.”

  The two local constables stayed inside the restaurant to keep an eye on Annie, Lily and McTee. The lawyer could leave if he wished. The sisters had to stay. John, Bramley, Melvin and Kent huddled with a local RCMP sergeant named Finnegan. The five of them had moved just up the street from Coyotes’ entrance.

  Finnegan told the others, “A couple of tourists found a body.”

  “Were the tourists Canadian?” Kent asked.

  “Yes. Both from the Center of the Universe.”

  John and Melvin gave Finnegan a look.

  Superintendent Kent clarified. “Toronto. People there can be a bit self-centered.”

  “A bit?” Bramley asked. She and Finnegan had to repress a laugh.

  “Please continue with your report, Sergeant,” Kent said.

  “The tourists, their surname is Park, both had their mobile phones with them, but there was no signal where they found the body. They had to hike for over two hours before they could make a call. We sent a car as soon as we heard from them. It was nearly dark by then and too late to send a recovery party out. We’ll do so at first light.”

  “Did the Parks touch the body?” Kent asked.

  “They said they didn’t. They were conflicted about that. They watch enough television to know a person shouldn’t disturb a crime scene, if this is a crime scene, but they were also concerned some carnivore might happen by and have a snack. They —”

  “What kind of carnivores are you talking about?” Melvin asked.

  Finnegan said, “There are quite a few. Black bears, grizzlies, mountain lions, wolves and —”

  “Coyotes,” John said.

  There was no getting away from it. Melvin looked like he’d be more comfortable with two-legged urban predators, too.

  “Exactly,” Finnegan said. “What the Parks did was cover the body with their two plastic rain ponchos and pin them down with rocks.”

  “Is that enough to keep animals away?” Melvin asked.

  Finnegan shook his head. “Ordinarily, no. But the Parks are of Korean descent and they spread some kimchi in a ring around the body.”

  Bramley nodded. “That might work.”

  John asked, “Did the Parks take any pictures, so SAC Melvin and I might see whether we have a professional interest here?”

  Finnegan said, “They took several photos, using their phones. Snapped them with the idea that if an animal did come along and wasn’t deterred by a bit of garlic we’d have something to help with identification.”

  Melvin asked, “Did you print any of the photos?”

  “We did,” Finnegan said. “I have them in my car.” He stepped over to a nearby Crown Victoria and came back with a three-ring binder. He handed it to Kent. Melvin moved in close for a look as the superintendent leafed through the photos.

  John waited patiently.

  Bramley liked that.

  Much cooler than peering over a shoulder.

  Kent passed the binder to John. He held it so Bramley could also see. After they’d glanced at all the shots, John went back to the third photo in the binder. It was shot almost straight down, looking at the face of the dead man. The back of the skull had been flattened, but the face was unmarked and the features were not displaced.

  From a pocket, John took the picture of Randy Bear Heart and Lily White Bird posing as Bonnie and Clyde. He laid it on the facing page of the binder for comparison.

  Rebecca Bramley said, “Well, well, well.”

  John handed the binder back to Kent. Melvin leaned in from one side, Finnegan from the other. All three heads bobbed. There was no question who the dead man was.

  John said to Finnegan, “Was there any evidence Randy Bear Heart died before he fell? I didn’t see any wounds on the body.”

  “Be right back,” Finnegan said.

  He went to his car again and returned with a clear plastic bag.

  In it there was a shell casing.

  Finnegan said, “There were no obvious wounds, the Parks said, but they found a few of these not far from the body. They thought it would be okay to pick one up with a pen and put it in the sandwich bag, in case it rained or the wind scattered the others.”

  All five cops smiled.

  Melvin said, “These people deserve some kind of commendation.”

  John asked, “Did you determine what kind of gun the casing came from?”

  “We did. It’s a .45 ACP cartridge, designed for the Colt semiautomatic pistol, the standard sidearm of the U.S. Army until they switched over to the Beretta.”

  “Christ,” Melvin said, “there have to be millions of those things around. I’ve got one.”

  The three Canadian cops looked at the FBI man with critical eyes.

  Melvin held his hands up. “Hey. It wasn’t me. If I’d shot at him, I’d have hit him.”

  John said, “It wasn’t him. There’s another famous weapon that uses the same round.”

  “What’s that?” Bramley asked.

  “The Thompson submachine gun.”

  Just like the one in the photo of Randy and Lily.

  Melvin, Kent and Finnegan went into Coyotes to speak with McTee, if not his clients. Bramley had put a discreet hand on John’s arm, indicating he should stay outside with her. She waited until the door had closed behind the others before she spoke.

  “I’ve seen a Tommy gun recently,” she said. “I was doing some window shopping.”

  “Where?”

  “A store right here in Banff. The really interesting thing? It fits perfectly with that picture of yours. The place has an exhibit of Bonnie and Clyde.”

  John beamed at her and made the connection. “Is the store called Go Native?”

  Lily had said she was going to open another store in San Diego. Maybe that was just misdirection. The real location of the new store was Banff.

&nbs
p; But Bramley told him, “No, this place is called Go Hollywood.”

  Smart women, Lily and Annie, John thought. Adapt to new surroundings.

  “What’s the process for getting a search warrant in Canada?” John asked.

  “Similar to the U.S. is my guess,” Bramley said. “You go to a judge and apply for one. You describe the grounds for believing the thing to be searched for exists, that it’s at the place to be searched, that a crime had been committed, that the place to be searched is where the thing will be found, and the thing to be found has evidentiary value.”

  John grinned. “I’ve always liked a smart woman.”

  Bramley shook her head, “You won’t get far with me if all you think I’ve got is a good mind.”

  “We’ll talk about the other stuff later.”

  “How about we talk about this? How much evidentiary value does the Tommy gun have if it turns out Mr. Bear Heart’s body, in fact, has no bullet holes in it?”

  John paused to think and said, “We’ll have to make some other connections then, but imagine one of those carnival shooting gallery games. You have those up here?”

  “Sure. You mean where the little metal guy scoots back and forth, changing direction when you score a hit?”

  “That’s the one. Now, imagine Randy Bear Heart as the little metal guy and Lily letting off bursts with the Tommy gun. You think she could run him off a cliff?”

  Bramley said, “Damn, that’d be cold.”

  “Yeah. So how quick do you think you can get a search warrant for Go Hollywood?”

  “I know a judge; he’s a fishing buddy of my dad’s.”

  “Always good to have friends,” John said.

  Bramley went to get the warrant. John went back into Coyotes.

  He was still uneasy about that name.

  The Trickster had to be somewhere nearby.

  Chapter 36

  Austin, Texas — July 17, the present

  Detective Darton Blake could not believe how much paperwork was involved in impounding cash surrendered by a citizen, even one who was a) not the subject of a current investigation; b) not convicted of a felony; c) not a known associate of a convicted felon; d) not a party to pending civil litigation; e) not related by blood or marriage to the sworn officer or civilian employee to whom the money had been surrendered.

  The same straining-at-gnats mentality pervaded the entire process. Darton had to provide the name of the person surrendering the money, the person’s address and phone number, gender, DOB, physical appearance (photo preferred), make of car, state and number of license plates … on and on.

  A photographer and two detectives from the financial crimes unit had to be brought into the effort. The photographer shot a picture of the Central Market bag with the money in it, a picture of the bag empty, a picture of the cash stacked on a table. The detectives from financial crimes first had to determine that the money wasn’t counterfeit. It wasn’t, thank God, or the Secret Service would have had to be called. They had to determine if the money had been stolen from a federally chartered bank or credit union. It hadn’t or the FBI would have had to be called.

  Finally, they had to do a bill by bill count. The cops were not about to take Coy Wilson’s word as to the total.

  All of that was recorded on video with the shift commander and Darton watching to make sure nobody stuffed any cash into his pocket. The official count coincided with Ms. Wilson’s: one hundred thousand dollars, exactly. The money was placed in a plastic bin, sealed and stored in the department’s locked evidence room.

  Darton was told by his boss, homicide unit commander Lieutenant Ernie Calderon, to take the Central Market bag back to Ms. Wilson and get her signature in the six places required by the department regulations.

  “You think this woman’s playing straight with us, Darton?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Yes, sir. She’s hoping to get the money but she’s protecting herself, too.”

  “Smart. But if she’s honest, why didn’t she stick around?”

  “She’s a musician.”

  Calderon smiled and nodded; that explained everything.

  Artists were nowhere near normal people.

  Darton drove out to Coy Wilson’s house. She wasn’t home. Lloyd Rucker, the next door neighbor, hadn’t seen her that evening, he said. Nothing was ever easy. Darton folded the shopping bag neatly and put it into Coy’s mail box along with one of his business cards asking her to call him.

  By the time he got home, dinner was cold. His wife had to go out and show her mother how to download vacation pictures from her camera to her computer. Darton reheated his dinner, washed it down with two Lone Stars and played catch with his son, Amos, in the backyard until it got too dark to see the ball. He sent Amos off to his room with a hug and sat down in front of the television, looking for a baseball game to watch.

  But he stopped his search to watch a cop show Nobody did a bit of paperwork and the bad guys got caught in forty-three minutes flat — all the time you had when you took the commercials out of an hour-long show. Watching his fictional counterparts pursue justice reminded Darton that he’d wanted to call John Tall Wolf about Coy Wilson finding all that money. There was something else he wanted to bring up, too.

  But he fell asleep on the sofa before he could remember what it was.

  Chapter 37

  Banff, Alberta — July 17, the present

  John needed help from SAC Melvin, so he maintained a public spirit of sharing and told Melvin and Superintendent Kent that Sergeant Bramley had gone to secure a search warrant for the Go Hollywood store and what they hoped to find there.

  Kent’s eyes narrowed for a moment. It was clear that he thought Bramley should have checked with him first before seeking a warrant. Even so, he wasn’t about to let the visiting Americans see a squabble between Mounties. John repressed a smile, thinking Bramley had shown no sign of worrying about putting the visiting poobah’s nose out of joint.

  He was getting to like her more all the time.

  He’d have to brush up on his dance steps.

  Melvin was skeptical about what he’d heard. He glanced at Annie Forger and Lily White Bird. They’d finished their dessert and were lingering over coffee. McTee was fidgeting, losing patience, and would soon start quoting Moses: Let my people go.

  For the moment, though, Sergeant Finnegan and his two constables still provided a chilling effect.

  “You really think these women would have the gall to hide an automatic weapon, one that might have been used in a homicide, right out in the open?” Melvin asked.

  John shrugged. “Best I can say is maybe. Fits with the name of the store, though. It’d be a Hollywood type of trick to play — and we’d all look very foolish if we didn’t check and it turned out to be what we’re looking for.”

  Kent nodded, but had his own question. “Do we know, for a fact, that Ms. Forger and Ms. White are the leaseholders of the store?”

  “Sergeant Bramley will find that out before she goes for the warrant.” John hoped she would, as they hadn’t discussed that little detail. Then to bolster his confidence, he said, “I’m willing to bet a month’s pay that they are.”

  He looked at Melvin and Kent. Neither took his bet.

  The FBI man asked his RCMP counterpart, “Can people up here own an automatic weapon?”

  “No, not fully automatic firearms. Large capacity magazines are also prohibited.”

  “Break the law, go to jail?” Melvin asked.

  “Yes.”

  John thought about that. He looked over at the two sisters. They met his gaze. They weren’t smiling, but they might as well have been. Their expressions were smug, challenging. When McTee turned to see what was going on, John looked back at Melvin and Kent.

  He asked the superintendent, “Do you have any laws against the possession of facsimile weapons?”

  Kent said, “We do. Replica firearms meant to exactly or with near precision resemble the real thing are prohibited.”r />
  “Would a violator do time for that?” John asked.

  “That would depend on the context. Using a replica in the commission of a crime, say, robbing a person or a business, would mean an added period of incarceration.”

  “What are you getting at, Tall Wolf?” Melvin asked.

  “Just trying to get the lay of the land,” John said deadpan. “It’s a BIA thing.”

  Kent allowed himself a small smile. He was coming to like this new fellow.

  The superintendent said, “Having the time to consider the matter, Mr. McTee over there is certain to say, even if we were to introduce a Thompson submachine gun into evidence, there’s no way we could connect it to Mr. Bear Heart’s death. He has no bullet holes in him, as far as we know. The cartridge the Parks retrieved has no time stamp on it. There’s no way to show it’s contemporaneous with the man’s death. We can’t show that one has anything to do with the other.”

  “What do you think about that?” John asked SAC Melvin.

  Melvin thought the same thing John did: Kent needed to take his corset off.

  If you couldn’t fake the bad guys out of their socks, you shouldn’t have a badge.

  In the interest of maintaining a hands-across-the-border friendship, Melvin didn’t share his opinion. He’d figured out by now the only reason Tall Wolf had been so forthcoming was that he needed something and couldn’t get it by himself.

  “I think,” Melvin said, “as long as you don’t lose sight of the law, it’s not a bad thing to get creative.”

  “What do you mean?” Kent asked.

  Melvin said, “Special Agent Tall Wolf is about to make a request — of each of us, I’m sure. What is it you need, Special Agent?”