When You Run with Wolves

by Robert White

  “You might want to do something about that before winter,” he said.

  “You know how it is when you’re pressed for time,” I said.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. There’s a big building on the corner of Ninth and Pennsylvania in DC that’s using up all my minutes and wearing out my telex. They want to know why two brainless lowlifes are still running around Northeast Ohio with close to a million dollars.”

  “So how is it going, Agent Pippin – your progress, I mean?”

  “Getting there, Jack, getting there. It is coming together fine and I thank you for asking.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to confide any bureau secrets about the whereabouts of Randall Calderone?”

  “Right again, Jack.”

  “Do you mind if I make some coffee?”

  “How many cups do you drink, my friend?”

  “The number varies. It depends on the particular crisis of the day,” I said.

  “Then I’d say you’re consuming gallons of it lately.”

  “You didn’t drive up from Youngstown to enquire about my caffeine intake.”

  “Actually I don’t spend much time down there nowadays. I’ve got a motel off the freeway. Comfy but the porn’s unsatisfying. Like you, Jack. A lot of prick-teasing without the Big O.”

  “Sorry you’re feeling so unsatisfied, Agent Pippin. Maybe you should drive home more often for a conjugal visit. Or try more coffee.”

  “You’re mixing metaphors now, aren’t you, Jack?”

  “Maybe but I’m confused about what we’re really talking about,” I said.

  “Confused is something I know about. Here’s one thing you might clear up for me. Your father, for starters. I got stonewalled when I sent your father’s name over to Langley, see if maybe your family was on some kind of post-Nine Eleven list. My guy over there did some private checking. All he could reveal was your father was GS-13. That’s two pay grades higher than mine. You never once mentioned that fact with all that talking you did downtown. How come?”

  “It wasn’t germane,” I said.

  He laughed. “Ger-mane. Now, that’s a big word for a guy who never went past grammar school. Interpol has nothing on you, but the RCMP telexed me a couple tidbits. You were an active youngster, weren’t you?”

  I knew he was fishing. The Canadian courts wouldn’t release any facts of my incarceration as a young-adult offender, but he’d know I was a ward of Ontario for a while. I had done a couple months in a Toronto city jail when I left Quebec and was learning how to live on the streets. Even Sarah didn’t know about that.

  “Man, the things you didn’t say. You living in Montreal, and you never mentioned that one, either. All that bullshit about going to a tiny parochial school in Minneapolis in the cold, dark winters – oh my. You jes’ pullin’ my dick, wasn’t you, white boy?”

  “Is that your way of keeping it real, Agent Pippin? You wear those fine-looking suits that say you’re proud to be a successful professional, but how many Afro-Americans are there in the bureau? All window dressing for the quota system, isn’t it?”

  “I notice you keep trying to put a burr under my saddle, Jack. That comment about my field darkie shuck and jive – keeping it real. Old slang, man. Better get on Facebook or some shit. Find out how the kids are talking these days.”

  “I’ll consider that suggestion. Thanks.”

  “You think I’m some affirmative-action baby you can mess with. This is the fucking US government talking to you.”

  “It’s hard to read you, Forzell,” I said.

  “I can see you’re fishing now. I can see that,” he said. “You want me to tell you things, but that ain’t how it works, Jack.”

  He wagged a finger at me playfully. He kept the smile fastened but it was a little tighter at the corners than before.

  “Why not put Calderone on your Ten Most Wanted list – do something useful instead of wasting time on me?”

  “You watch too much TV, man. Two reasons, but first let me answer your question. Calderone is small potatoes. Your brother, he don’t even count. You need to kill a couple state troopers or hang out with serious terrorists you want on that list, my boy. I did submit his name, for what it’s worth, but the DDA didn’t send it on.”

  “You said two reasons.”

  “You’re making a lot of moves, Jack. Borrowing trucks, cruising the Strip. I got reports on you from all over. Were you looking for some of that young snatch now that your wife has dumped you? Is that it? Get a little sport-fucking in before the metal doors clang shut behind you for the rest of your natural life?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Here’s some advice for your near future. Put all thoughts of that out of your head because where you’re going, they make cute little punks like you wear dresses and they change their names to Mary. You’re too old and ugly for that, maybe, but you better learn to sleep with one eye open, keep a sharpened bed coil handy, and get used to dating the Palm sisters.”

  “Thanks, I’ll bear it in mind. But it’s still not worth your time to drive over from your comfy motel room,” I said.

  “Third reason, then. I got a line on Calderone from the DEA while he was in the Southwest. They say he worked for the Ciudad Juárez cartel moving drugs out of Neuvo Laredo across the Texas border. They use Uzis down there, Jack. They drip acid on their victims. They soak rags in kerosene and tie them around the victims’ balls before they light them on fire. They burn snitches alive in fifty-gallon barrels.”

  “Again, I say, why tell me?”

  “Your brother’s chum, Calderone, he fits right in. One of my DEA sources said a gringo matching his description working for the Jiminez brothers walked into a bar called La Portena and set five decapitated heads on top of the bar, walked out whistling Dixie.”

  My guts were still churning from the revelation that my father might actually have been a legitimate intelligence agent. All those stories, all that James Bond wacko stuff like being a top-level intelligence agent in Cambodia during Pol Pot’s regime. Carlos never quite let go of the illusions we used to have about him. From fifteen on, I never believed that everything he said was anything but another scrap of twisted fantasy from a deranged man who failed at life...

  Pippin’s voice took me back to the present. “He didn’t just cut their heads off,” he was saying, “but, man, he skinned their faces, one at a time – took the flesh right off the bones with a filleting knife. Five of them! A lot of those Brand assholes are tough and maybe could do one if you were strong enough to stomach it. But five, no way.”

  It gave me a chill to think I had anything in common with Randall Calderone. I made a show of checking my watch.

  “Oh, sorry. Am I boring you?” Pippin asked with mock-seriousness. “Well, let me cut to the chase, as they say. Alicia Fox-Whitcomb is making another statement today. I do believe she’s finally going to recant and name your ass. You like big words, don’t you? She’s finally going to make that third identification, Jack.”

  “Agent Pippin, I think rescind covers your meaning better.”

  “Keep playing Scrabble with me, motherfucker, and I hope when you’re eating hillbilly dick in prison it makes it all more fun. Oh, I almost forgot. Your ex-wife was here with a cop. She wanted to give you this in person.”

  He handed me a paper and stepped off the porch with a jaunty strut to the car. He looked too dapper for my working-class neighborhood in his crème-colored suit and charcoal tie. The truth was, I envied him. I envied every simple man on my street who lived a normal life.

  “Hey, you haven’t asked me what I think of niggers yet,” I shouted.

  He threw me the finger without turning around. I was down to less than a couple hours to move some pieces. Pippin wasn’t the only one who had time pressing at his back. I was a third-string utility infielder at bat in the ninth inning with two hits. I wasn’t looking for a homerun or even a single. All I wanted was to turn away from the fastball
in time, let it screw into my kidneys and hope I didn’t piss too much blood afterward.

  I checked out back in the shrubbery and inside the garage and behind it. I saw the hoof prints of a deer and some scat where it had lain down the night before. The grapevine was crushed flat. I went back inside, checking upstairs and down looking for anything obvious. If the place was bugged, and I had to believe it was, I’d never find anything without sweeping equipment better than what I could afford at Radio Shack. I checked the views from the windows in case Pippin’s timing was meant to distract me so his agents could move into place.

  It was already five minutes to one. I had to get the walkie-talkie from the attic and make the call to Marija. I had to pack a suitcase of clean clothes. I was now officially homeless. Sarah had included a restraining order in my eviction. All that water-logged money sunk to the bottom of an old man’s swimming pool and not a dollar of it could help me now.

  #14

  I found her in the booth of the Oak Room right on time. She might not have been tailed in the holiday crowds out on the street, but I knew we both would be once we left the bar. I sat down across from her and saw the drink waiting for me. She gave me a greeting, as if surprised to see me, and when I slid into the booth, she got up and came around to embrace me. She gave me a passionate kiss with her tongue moving all around in my mouth while her hands moved around my clothes. It wasn’t easy controlling my voice after that kind of kiss.

  “I take it you’ve had a lot of practice doing that,” I said, but my voice gave me away and she knew it.

  “Let’s say I’ve worked with some interesting people in different places,” she said.

  “Is my drink safe or will I be staggering around outside in the nude telling all my secrets to people in the street?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Why would I dope your drink?”

  “Why would you take money out of my wallet when I was sleeping?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  She was wearing a striped top over Capri slacks. Her hair was brushed back over her ears and held there with a headband. Big gold loop earrings and white lipstick made her look like an extra in a sixties’ Mamie van Doren film.

  “I need to show you something,” she said. “Finish your drink.”

  The crowds streamed around us and she tried to hold my hand as we walked. When we reached the intersection of Little Minnesota, she turned very casually and stopped. She kept her eyes on me but I watched the crowd part in front of us and fold back together.

  “Do you see the old arcade across the street?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s abandoned.”

  “See the padlock on the front door?”

  “I can’t see anything. Too many people,” I said.

  “Never mind. It’s there but it doesn’t work. Come down that side of the street walking east with the money. When you get in front of the arcade, wait for the crowd to build up a little and then push the door open.”

  “Will you be inside?”

  “I’ll be standing out front. If you walk past me, I turn around, and your brother dies. If you try to set me up, I’ll walk away from it. There’s nothing to link me to any of this,” she said.

  “Will my brother be inside?”

  “Just do what you’re told and stop asking questions. Keep the walkie-talkie with you from now on. We want to know where you are every second.”

  I said, “We can meet somewhere isolated and I can hand it to him. We don’t need to do this James Bond stuff out in the open like this. Too many people. We’ll be covered in cops, Marija. It’s too complicated.”

  “He doesn’t trust you,” she said. Then she thought a second and smiled at me again with her pretty teeth. “He doesn’t trust me either. It has to be right here in this crowd. He knows the cops are watching you. He’s watching you too.”

  “I’ll need to see my brother before I hand it to you. No brother, no money. It’s that simple. Tell him that.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she said. “But I can’t promise. He’s paranoid. Just follow his instructions,” she said. “Your brother and you can come out of this alive. It’s the only way.”

  “How do you know he isn’t going to dump you and run off with the money?”

  “I’ll worry about me,” she said and gave me that incandescent smile she kept in reserve. She held out her hand for me to shake. I felt the paper slip lightly from her hand to mine.

  “I’ll call your home phone tonight and tell you why we’re not a compatible couple after all,” she said. Who was she, this woman? I wondered. Some men actually stopped to look at her. She was a chameleon. I was a sap and way out of my depth.

  “You won’t have to try hard, Marija,” I said, but she’d never hear me above the crowd and the traffic. An orange Stingray drove by with its chassis outlined in purple neon, and I saw the driver’s head swivel to take her in as she passed in front of him.

  I stood there feeling the press of human bodies moving all around me – people in singles and pairs, groups of four and five, all chattering happily. All the younger ones had cell phones and were carrying on animated conversations. Living in two worlds. I wasn’t comfortable anywhere.

  I had to call Stevie, the cabbie, right away about the drop location. A scrap of information floated up to my brain. I looked once more at the boards nailed over the windows of the old penny arcade. It contained ancient amusements from the 1950s but had finally lost its nostalgia value to the babyboomers and gone bust. The last time Sarah and I walked around inside its dusty interior, I saw the same quarter machines where tiny metal buckets clawed in brightly colored rubble for packets of gum and cheap toys stamped made-in-Japan behind the glass. I fed quarters into a machine that returned postcard snapshots of women in bathing suits. Most of them had chubby thighs and would have looked matronly on a modern beach filled with young beauties.

  I crossed the street and walked by it. The last owner had installed glass block windows in some belated effort to achieve shabby chic. Some of the blocks were smashed in or missing. The big front glass panes were smeared with white stain.

  I walked down the sidewalk to the back of the building and felt the hackles of my neck rise at the thought of Calderone out there watching me. He’d have to be crazy to hang his face out in public. Then I remembered what Pippin said about him. Out behind the building I saw the door had a similar rusty padlock hanging from it like the one in the front. It wasn’t a perfect place, way too much in the open, but I didn’t have a choice.

  I drove to Erieview and asked to see the manager’s cabin. He was delighted that someone wanted to rent a cottage after Labor Day, and I had my pick of places. They were named for famous lakes all over the world. I chose Lake Winnipeg. The old man had actually driven us there once for vacation so it might be lucky. Maybe that’s why I had lakes on the brain. I was born in a state that had bragging rights for a thousand of them. At least that’s what my father told me when I asked why we didn’t speak French like everyone else in Montreal.

  It smelled of mildew and disinfectant. There were aged photos on the walls of steamships in winter and summer scenes. Many of them were taken at the Soo locks and Superior, Wisconsin. I saw a sepia-tinted photo in the bathroom of one of the original steam vessels contracted by Carnegie to haul his iron ore from Minnesota fields. It had a stovepipe stack with guy wires holding it in place on the boat deck. It didn’t look like something you’d want to be on in a winter gale.

  I paid the manager for three days. Now I was down to forty-five dollars. Rick the prick had left the gas tank on empty for me so there wouldn’t be much left by the time I got back.

  #15

  I pulled the truck into Emil Danko’s driveway, not sure whether I’d get past the eagle-eyed old Korean War veteran.

  I knocked on his door and waited a long time. I repeated the knock loudly enough to rattle the colored glass panes and heard his wheelchair motor approaching. He was muttering somethin
g to himself as he opened the door. He looked at me a long time, blinked twice, and then he recognized me.

  I saluted. “Congratulations, Sergeant Danko, First Marine Division, X Corps.”

  “Congrat for what? Say what? Say, ain’t you that same guy was here last week pokin’ around my place?”

  “You’ve been nominated by American Foreign Legion Post one-one-five-oh as its candidate to put forward for national selection as one of the top ten veterans of foreign wars. Combat magazine sent me to do a feature story, and I just have a few questions for you...”

  My spiel was borne of desperation. I was careering into absurdity from every angle, and if my mark were less pathetic than a senile old man in a wheelchair, I’d have given up all hope. As it was, the forces of darkness were still pitching a shutout.

  But as I mumbled through the last portion of this nonsense, he wheeled aside to let me in. From then on, he never left my side. I pretended to take copious notes. Mostly I wrote obscenities about luck and fate, doodling after each response to a question. Danko had those times, dates, and names locked into a part of his brain that had somehow remained diamond-sharp. The frozen Korean peninsula and the Chosin Reservoir remained for him a timeless, never fading tower planted deep in his neocortex despite the crumbling edifices time wrought on everything else before or since.

  After fifteen minutes of this, I asked him if he still used the swimming pool out back. He stopped in mid-sentence, looked perplexed for a moment, back in some distant siege when the Chinese infantry came pouring out of the ravine and pinned his unit down into the frozen earth. He recovered, however, and said he had it installed for his grandkids and was still paying the damned thing off. They hadn’t used it in two years, he mentioned. He was revving up for a return to his war story when I interrupted him again with a request:

  “Would you mind, sir, if I took a quick look? I’m thinking of getting one just like it for my own kids.”