The Vulture

by Frederick Ramsay

  They left Picketsville toward evening and the twenty-minute drive from the office to and through Buena Vista went by in frosty silence.

  Billy plastered a smile on his face. “So, is that new perfume? You smell nice.”

  Essie riding shotgun, stared straight ahead. “It’s soap…Dove bar.”

  Billy realized he needed to deal with the chill in the air. He also knew this wasn’t normal coming from the usually voluble Essie, and therefore, it could not be good. “Oh. Well, it’s um…nice. Say, what’s eating you, Babe?”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “That Ike ain’t dead.”

  Billy made an effort to rearrange his face into something resembling incredulity. Billy had never been good at covering his emotions, which explained why he was such a bad poker player. He failed at this as well. “What makes you think…wait a minute, why you asking something like that?”

  “Look, Ma didn’t need help watching them babies. You and Frank talking about everything else ’cept Ike, and everyone acting so smug and cheery. There’re only two possible reasons for that. First, you don’t care he’s dead and for sure that ain’t the case, so second, he ain’t dead. You all thought that if I knew about him being alive I’d tip it to anyone who mighta been watching. Am I right?”

  “Well, yeah, but you have to understand—”

  “I don’t have to understand anything. You all treated me like…Listen, I’m part of the office, right? We’re a team. So teammates trust each other. If they have a problem, they hash it out. They don’t go jumping to conclusions like you and Frank did.”

  “Essie, I’m sorry, but it was so important that nobody know. Not then. Not now. So—”

  “So…okay, at first I would have, you know, tipped off anybody who could have been sent to check, I mean, but now I had time to think about it, I wouldn’t have. I am not stupid, you know. So, how about I come back to work full-time? I’m going crazy out at Ma’s.”

  “Yeah, Okay, I guess. Talk to Frank. Here we are. Jesus, what a dive. Okay, remember, we are just being cool. If we’re asked, we just want to share our sympathies about a fallen brother and all that. Otherwise, we’re grabbing a quick beer on our way to work.”

  “Got it, but I ain’t done with this.”

  The bar was crowded with off-duty cops, firemen, truckers, and the town layabouts. There is an aroma that identifies bars where desperate men drink—somewhere between stale beer and fear. Well not fear, exactly. Something that signals danger anticipated and/or avoided. Whether going on duty or coming off, there was an exhalation of that distinctive scent—cop pheromone. Essie excused herself and cut through it on her way to the restroom. It was a “lady thing,” she said. Billy found a high-top near a pair of cops and ordered two beers. Essie emerged from the restroom and a man whose moustache suggested he was a devotee of American Chopper sidled up to her and offered to buy her a drink.

  “You got plans for tonight, honey?” he asked.

  “Sure do. How ’bout you, sugar?”

  The guy hitched up his jeans to show off the horseshoe-sized rodeo buckle. “Mebee we could do some of that planning together.”

  “You think? Well, here’s the thing. I got two little kids to home. I got number three in the oven, you could say. I ain’t got rid of the belly fat from the second and there’s a road map of stretch marks the whole way round. And, oh I forgot, my husband is mean as a snake and packs a .357 Magnum. You okay with all that?”

  Moustache drifted away. Essie pulled up to the high-top.

  “What was that all about?” Billy said.

  “He wanted to know if I wanted to romp in his playpen. Then he changed his mind.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I told him you packed a .357 and were the jealous type. That caught his attention and he asked to be excused.”

  “Wow. You still got it, Babe.”

  “And don’t you forget it. What did you learn so far?”

  “Not much. The two dudes at the next table were sort of friends with Frieze, not real close, though. They thought he was weird. They said he belonged to some right-wing survivalist thing and kept at them to sign up. I kinda think that might be important, but I don’t know why.”

  “We should buy them a drink, don’t you think?”

  ***

  Charlie Garland finished his call to the drone vendor and hung up the phone. He shuffled the papers on his desk and drummed his fingers. Martin Pangborn. His eyebrows converged. He knew that name from somewhere. Where or when? Not recently, but not that long ago. He yelled for Alice to come in. He needed her to run a complete scan on Martin Pangborn.

  “Give me everything, Alice, his birth, siblings, where he went to school, girlfriends, boyfriends, imaginary or real, I don’t care. I want it all.”

  ***

  “So, what was the name of that organization he was pushing you to join up with?” Essie asked.

  When Billy was on duty, as opposed to relaxing with friends, he had one of those faces that defied reading, try as you might. If he chose to and unless he was very angry or in pain, one look at him and you would think there was absolutely nothing behind those brown eyes. “The lights were on, but nobody is home,” the expression goes. It wasn’t true, but it had always served him well.

  Billy let Essie do the talking while he relaxed his expression into amiable stupidity and studied the two men at the other hi-top through the bottom of his beer glass. Essie opened her fringed leather vest, batted her blue eyes, and flashed her hundred-watt smile. She had a way of extracting information from men that was way different from his. At the moment, her way seemed to be working the best. Three beers and that smile would to do it. Essie was not another blond airhead, but she could convince anyone she was, if so moved. The two county cops were dazzled. That the beers were taking effect and they were a little tight made Essie’s job a whole lot easier.

  “Shit, lady, I don’t know. It had something with a star in it, I think,” the first cop said. “So, who do you all work for again?”

  Before she could answer, the second cop blurted, “There was a number in it, but it didn’t make sense. Like, something-star, twenty-one…no, bigger number, I can’t remember.”

  “Fifty-one,” the first one said. “Yeah, that was it. He was a member of the Star Fifty-one. No, that’s not right. It was the Fifty-first Star. I thought it was a Masonic thing at first, you know. A lot of them lodges have a star in their name, so that’s why I thought that, but he said no way, it was a patriotic organization that had true patriots for members. I remember saying, ‘Well, of course it does.’ On account of, well duh, if was a patriotic gang, wouldn’t that be who’d be in it? I mean, it stands to reason.”

  The other cop nodded. “Frieze was a nerdy kinda guy and I don’t think he was wrapped too tight either. Anyway he said things like, ‘There is patriots and then there is true patriots. True patriots respect the Constitution of the U. S. of A. and the others just wave flags but don’t do nothing when their country is under attack.’ I asked him who was doing the attacking and he listed a whole bunch of people and, you know, organizations and such. Didn’t any of it make much sense to me so I stopped listening. He was an okay guy, though, except for that. I mean nobody should take a bullet in the face like that. No way. Son of a bitch.”

  “No, they shouldn’t. Cops put their lives on the line and deserve better. Right, Billy?”

  “Right, they do. Son of a bitch.”

  “Damned straight,” the second cop said. “Umm. Come to think about it, that group there, it was like a survivalist thing, only military. Like, they went off in the woods out west somewhere and lived off the land, took target practice, stuff like that. You’d think mandatory range duty here would be enough, but he said he needed time with automatic weapons and the big stuff.”

  “Big
stuff?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what he meant by that, I figured he was just blowing smoke.”

  ***

  Sam removed the memory chips from the various surveillance devices she’d set around their cabin, loaded their images into her computer, and arranged them into a slideshow.

  “That’s one of the guys at the gate,” she said and tapped the screen. “He seemed to be in charge. The rest were mostly spear carriers, you know—stood around fingering their weapons and looking fierce. Oh, and I think that one was too, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Send that array to Charlie and ask him if he can put names to faces. Do you think any of these guys copied or took anything with them when they left?”

  “Keyboard logger says no. They might have bypassed it by taking pictures of the screens but I doubt it.”

  “We should be good for a day or two and then they’ll be back. I wonder what we should leave behind for them to find that might knock over a domino.”

  Ruth sat up. “Say what? You want them to suspect something? We don’t have enough trouble already?”

  “The fact that they felt a need to search this place means they are suspicious. What I want to do is satisfy their curiosity and confirm their suspicions, but send them in a different direction. I’m thinking of something that will divert them. Look, our cover story is pretty thin, right? I mean what is the likelihood the Gottliebs from North Carolina would come all the way out here to buy ranch land? Even if it were the truth, who’d believe that? It doesn’t smell right. Now, suppose we were to leave brochures and a prospectus about mineral rights and fracking lying around. Now, our ‘secret’ will be revealed. They will congratulate themselves for being suspicious in the first place and then smart enough to figure out what we were really here for. Since they know that we are not likely to do anything more than talk and poke around, they will leave us alone.”

  “That is very devious.”

  “My middle name. And then, because we are not really a threat to them, they will make allowances for our behavior which they might not otherwise do.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Charlie turned his attention to the picture array Sam sent him. He forwarded it to the desk that handled facial recognition and e-mailed what he was doing to his opposite numbers in the FBI and Homeland Security. He didn’t need an interagency kerfuffle over what could be perceived as the CIA meddling in domestic affairs. Possible terrorists with ISIS connections, he’d noted on the transmittal. That would give them pause but shouldn’t upset anyone. Most of the people working national security issues were willing to cut the sister services a little slack now and again. It’s just that they did not like surprises.

  E-mails sent, he went back to scouring the databases available to him that might reveal anything that seemed off-kilter in Idaho. A second message from Ike sidetracked that search. He spent the next hour with the Agency task force responsible for real estate transactions and safe houses. Shortly thereafter, Western Sky Realty or whatever Ike decided to call it, had office space in Idaho. A packet of brochures and prospectuses outlining the oil exploration processes connected with fracking were shipped out on the next flight to the state as well. He left for a late lunch and returned to find he’d missed a call from NuFlyte Industries. They would be pleased to demonstrate their drone and when would Mr. Garland like to see the product? Charlie set up a meeting for the next morning and no, he didn’t need to see it fly, he only need to know its capabilities and if the company would release one in his custody. He was told that even though it was an unusual request, considering the source, they would be happy to oblige. He sent out a requisition for field agents to assume duties at their fake real estate business, two women and two men ought to do it, he thought. As an afterthought, he asked for Karl Hedrick to be seconded from the FBI and added to the list. All their faces were erased from the databases used for facial recognition. Alice stuck her head in the door to announce that she had completed the task he’d given her. It had taken most of the afternoon and early evening. She dumped a thick stack of printouts on Charlie’s desk.

  “It’s late and I’m going home. After reading all that, I need a stiff drink and long soak. Until I clock-in tomorrow, you’ll have to get your own coffee. Good evening, Charlie.”

  Charlie hefted the papers and shook his head. He began reading. After an hour, he remembered where he had run across Martin Pangborn before and, more importantly, the circumstances. It seemed unthinkable that that run-in had prompted all that had transpired since. He read on, dug into the scant history available about the businessman’s childhood, the more detailed data about his business dealings, the havoc they’d caused countless families, and concluded that it was, indeed, possible.

  He needed to warn Ike to be careful. If Pangborn ever figured out that his plan had failed, things could get very sticky, very fast. Charlie sat back and considered what or who else might be on Pangborn’s agenda, or in his crosshairs, to be more exact. That’s when he realized that, among others, he might be on the man’s hit list, too. It was an interesting thought and one, if true, he might be able to use to his advantage. That assumed, of course, that Pangborn didn’t know that he, Charlie, had stumbled onto him. A risky assumption.

  Frank Sutherlin called to tell him that he and the deputies in Picketsville had teased out the where and how of the bomb-planting and who might have been involved. Unfortunately, the cop who’d been involved was dead, he said, and did Charlie know anything about a group called the Fifty-one or Fifty-first Star?

  Charlie said he did now, but not enough. The last he’d seen of that logo was on a burned-out helicopter on an island in Maine. He’d put somebody on it in the morning and complimented Frank and all the people in the sheriff’s office for work well done. Did he need anything else? Not right now but told them to keep digging. Was anyone else in the Rockbridge Sheriff’s Office a member? Could he track the car driven by the cop killer? Frank said they were trying but there wasn’t much to go on. Just the dash cam image. Charlie said to send it to him. He’d put his people on it.

  It had been a slow process but things were starting to come into focus. He felt the tingle in the back of his neck. He was onto something. He turned his attention back to the printout of Martin Pangborn. Mr. Pangborn, it seemed, had himself connected all the way up to the former President of the United States. He was a consummate wheeler-dealer, a confidante to celebrities, a would-be kingmaker, and judging by some of the practices he’d employed in the course of acquiring his wealth, a nasty piece of business.

  It was a little after midnight when Charlie believed he might have stumbled onto the connection between Pangborn and Senator Connors. It was pretty thin and he’d want to think about it before he said anything. Ike should probably know, but no one else. Something that explosive needed to be verified, rock solid. Martin Pangborn had friends and money in high places and would not roll over easily, even if he was a blackmailer.

  He packed up and went home. He made sure no one followed him. Tomorrow, things should pick up.

  ***

  The sun had been down and what passed for dinner consumed. Sam was occupied with the messages coming in over the encrypted airwaves. She felt pretty sure she had isolated the receiver they were looking for. All she needed was to connect a place to the messages. Which ranch, mansion, or motel harbored the recipient? She thought she’d need to drive around with a tracker and triangulate before she did. Tomorrow she’d request the fake bad guys to up the radio traffic.

  Ruth listened with half an ear, her eyes on Ike. Ike was pacing. She recognized the behavior and knew that nothing in her bag of tricks would make him stop. She’d tried once and felt like a fool when Ike smiled absently and paced on by as she, wearing a lacy nightgown which was more lace than gown, attempted to lure him away. Even her feeble attempt at a hip thrust went unremarked. Ike apologized later and said he didn’t remember anything. She’d fo
und that hard to believe.

  “Are you sure? I mean I know that thing that you don’t wear often enough and if you had been in it and…did you say thrust? I would remember that.”

  “I did and you didn’t, Sheriff. Your loss. That is not something I do on a regular basis and after that rebuff, I might never again. It was cold.”

  “That part, I remember.”

  Ruth sighed at the memory and watched as Ike reached the end of his ambit and started back. She poured two fresh cups of coffee and offered Ike one as he walked by. “What do you need?” she said, hoping it would be something in her power to deliver, but certain it wouldn’t.

  He took the cup and sipped. “Movement.”

  “Movement?”

  “We are stuck. I need to move forward, sideways, even backwards if it will get us out of this rut.”

  There wasn’t much she could do about that. It was only after the crate arrived and its contents revealed the next day that Ike had what he needed to get back on track.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The UPS truck gnashed its gears, reversed, and drove away leaving the crate and several packages on the porch. Ike hauled them indoors and opened the largest one, the crate.

  “Unless I missed something,” Ike said, “this is our drone.”

  Sam shook her head. “It looks like a big model airplane. My brother used to put them together only his were made out of balsa wood and some of them had a rubber band motor. Is that Styrofoam?”

  “It is, among other things.”

  “So, we ask for a drone to put eyes on the ranch and this is the best that Garland can do?”

  “You didn’t think he was going to commandeer a Predator, did you?”

  “I hoped. So what do we do with this Cracker Jack toy?”

  “Give me an hour with the manual and I will let you know. In the meantime, why don’t you locate the source of the chatter? Five will get you ten it is the New Star Ranch.”