by Joseph Flynn
“Makes me tingle all over.” He wasn’t kidding.
So they went to Montreal. Had a fine time in their executive suite at Le Crystal. The deep soaking bathtub held both of them, a combined twelve-and-a-half feet of international law enforcement. The separate shower stall was roomy enough for good clean fun, too. The bedroom and living room were furnished on the same scale.
Outside the hotel, they followed the tourist guide book. Visited La Citadelle, the largest military fortification in North America. Built atop Cap Diamant with a commanding view of the city, it was constructed to defend Montreal against an invasion by the United States. Once that threat had passed it was used to put on military displays that entertained tourists.
They hiked the slopes of Parc du Mont-Royal, an urban oasis designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Visited the Ile d’Orleans, where the French first arrived in 1535, and saw many of the six hundred heritage buildings that had been preserved there. They drove north to the Laurentian Mountains and saw First Nation relics that proved the native people had beat the French to the region by at least three millennia.
The night before they took their stroll, they’d gone to Le Piano Rouge to hear some music. John got far more of a show than he’d ever expected. The lead singer of the featured band said, “I’d like to perform a duet now, but I need some help. Is there a lady in the audience who knows ‘I’ve Had the Time of My Life,’ and would like to make her professional debut?”
With mischief in his eyes, he added, “I’ll pick up the bar tab for two, if you get a round of applause.”
John turned to see if there were any takers. By the time he looked back, Rebecca was on the stage. Tall, sleek and stunning in her cocktail dress, she got cheers before singing a note.
“You win, I surrender,” the singer said, “but can you sing?”
She glanced at John before replying, “Let’s find out.”
The guy started the number with a spot-on knockoff of Bill Medley. John leaned forward, the better to hear if Rebecca could imitate Jennifer Warnes as closely. She didn’t. Her voice was her own and pitch perfect. It blended as sweetly with the Medley voice as anyone could ask. Maybe a bit too well from where John sat. He felt sure he wasn’t the only one in the club who felt he was seeing two people fall in love right in front of his eyes.
Rebecca not only got her round of applause, she got a standing ovation.
Under the cover of the audience’s noisy approval, the lead singer whispered into Rebecca’s ear, “You must be here with someone special, the way you sang.”
She nodded and told him, “A great big American, in law enforcement.”
Her message received and understood, the singer contented himself to buss her cheek.
Joined those clapping as she left the stage.
On the way back to Le Crystal that night, John said, “You were great.”
Rebecca told him, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
The following morning, they visited local art galleries and then ambled back to the hotel, their mood dampened by a sense of impending separation. They lived and worked in different countries. Their careers weren’t the sole focus of their lives, but neither wanted to go looking for a new job anytime soon.
The circumstances that had brought them together, working a case, were the same ones that kept them apart. Most of the time. The days they spent together were wonderful, but that only made the nights they spent apart more difficult.
Phone calls helped. Skyping, though, made the distance more obvious.
They went back to their suite to … take a nap.
Rebecca told John hockey players did it all the time. John said toddlers did, too. A ringing phone woke them up two hours later.
Duty called for John.
There was trouble in New Orleans. A band of Indians had robbed a bank. Right after most of the town’s electrical grid had gone down. Nobody thought that was a coincidence.
John needed to get down there. Right away.
He got out of bed, dressed and started to pack.
Rebecca said, “If you’re going back to work, I might as well do the same.”
John told her, “I’m hanging on to the two days of vacation time we didn’t get to use.”
She got out of bed, kissed him and said, “Right, me too, because this wasn’t how I planned to end our naps.”
— Chapter 3 —
New York City
In the time-honored tradition of government work, John’s trip to Washington was a case of hurry up and wait. Not that John had been able to cover the 489 mile distance between Montreal and Washington quickly. The first direct flight that day didn’t leave Canada until 7:30 p.m. By the time it landed and he got to the meeting to which he’d been summoned, it would be after nine at night. People might resent his lack of dispatch.
So he took a two p.m. flight to New York, figuring he could catch one of the many shuttle flights to the nation’s capital and arrive at a more reasonable time. Soon enough, anyway, to be handed a summary sheet of what had been decided at the meeting, and maybe catch another flight down to New Orleans that evening. Things didn’t work out quite so well.
John landed at JFK just ahead of a storm front roaring in from the Midwest. All flights into and out of New York were canceled and weren’t expected to resume until that evening. John caught a cab to Penn Station. The high speed Acela trains ran hourly between Boston and DC. When there wasn’t a power outage due to severe weather, that was.
John looked out at the downpour flooding the city and wondered if he should should rent a car and drive to Washington. The cabbie who had driven him from the airport to the train station had told him the trip usually took a half-hour; their travel time had been three times that. John thought he might spend hours just getting out of the New York metro area, and who knew how long it would take to make the two hundred-plus mile trek to DC?
He decided to wait out the storm in Penn Station.
He left a voicemail message for his acting boss Nelda Freeland.
Who, by no coincidence, was Marlene Flower Moon’s niece.
Marlene was the director of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services. John suspected she was really Coyote, the Trickster. The supernatural iteration of the flesh and blood animal that had tried to devour him when he was an infant.
John sat in the crowded station, a silent figure conveying no particular sense of menace, but he was nonetheless afforded an unusual amount of personal space. He wore a good suit, was closely shaved and recently barbered. He was also a bit over six-foot-four with wide shoulders and copper skin burnished to a red glow by the summer sun. Even on a day when no ray of sunshine was to be found, though, he wore his customary pair of Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses.
Not for affect. His eyes were sensitive to even artificial light.
His birth mother, a member of the Northern Apache tribe, had left him to die on a rickety platform she’d constructed in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. John had been conceived out of wedlock, fathered by a young man who was probably Navajo not Apache. His mother had broken two social taboos — sexual promiscuity and tribal outbreeding — to keep her father from arranging a marriage for her. In that, she was successful.
Still, she thought the child she’d produced should be given unto the keeping of the Great Spirit. He would be better off that way. It was a convenient rationalization.
Until a large coyote came along and thought John would make a fine meal. The people who would become his adoptive parents, Haden Wolf and Serafina Wolf y Padilla happened upon the coyote trying to dislodge the infant from his platform and thwarted the plans of both John’s birth mother and the beast. But not before the desert sun shining into the child’s eyes left him with an inability to tolerate bright lights.
Doctor and Mrs. Wolf also defeated a lawsuit filed against them six years later by John’s birth mother when she sought to reclaim custody of him. The idea that Coyote, the figure of mythi
c powers not the specific animal, might also try to retrieve John, was one that neither John’s parents nor, later, he himself could dismiss.
As Coyote was a known shape-shifter, John always felt the need to be alert whenever he was among strangers. He was watchful even with people he knew. He was most suspicious of the woman who had recruited him for the BIA, Marlene Flower Moon.
John’s thinking was to keep a nemesis within view. Marlene’s idea was to use John’s skills and talents to further her own ambitions. To consume him figuratively if not literally. Well, maybe she thought she’d dine on his remains eventually.
It was John’s sense of relentless vigilance, combined with his size and his sunglasses, that kept crowds at a distance.
By the time the storm passed and the trains began to run again, John got to Washington just about when he would have if he’d taken the later flight from Montreal. Sometimes a draw was the best anyone could manage.
— Chapter 4 —
Washington, DC, Tuesday, August 20th
Just outside of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, often thought of as the ugliest government structure in Washington, especially in contrast to the White House next door, John Tall Wolf met Acting Director Nelda Freeland of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Justice Services for the first time.
By way of introducing herself to John, she said, “Your absence forced Vice President Morrissey to delay the conclusion of our meeting.”
“Exactly what I had in mind,” John said.
Nelda’s eye’s narrowed and John was impressed by how much his nominal new boss resembled his nominal old boss, Marlene Flower Moon.
“May I see your teeth, please?” he asked.
“What?”
“Come on, humor me. If you do, I’ll try to cut down on the wisecracks.”
Nelda didn’t find the offer irresistible.
She said, “I was warned about you.”
“Of course, you were. Marlene told you as much as she thought you needed to know. Your resemblance to her has to make you family. She’s never been married. So that would have to make you her niece … or her illegitimate daughter.”
Anger flashed in Nelda’s eyes and her lips drew back to reveal perfectly aligned teeth.
Including four incisors that looked like they could make a meal of a bull moose. No cooking necessary. She was Marlene’s kin all right.
Which she confirmed. “I’m Director Flower Moon’s niece. Let’s go. I don’t want to keep the vice president waiting.”
John held the door for Nelda and asked, “So has Marlene conquered Hollywood yet?”
She was working with movie icon Clay Steadman on his new film.
The one about a bigoted L.A. cop.
Nelda didn’t answer, but John figured Marlene was doing well enough to let the new kid warm her chair for the time being.
John and Nelda beat the clock, got to the conference room attached to the vice president’s ceremonial office before the appointed hour, but they were still the last to arrive. Vice President Jean Morrissey sat at the head of the table. To her immediate right were FBI Director Jeremiah Haskins and Deputy Director Byron DeWitt. To Morrissey’s left were Director of National Intelligence Clement Archer and newly confirmed Director of Central Intelligence Robin Hannah.
Nelda Freeland sat next to Hannah.
John rounded the table and took the seat adjacent to DeWitt.
He shook the hand the deputy director extended to him.
The vice president formally introduced John to the others. He nodded to each of his new acquaintances. Then he said, “A pleasure to meet you and everyone else, Madam Vice President. Sorry I was unable to be here yesterday, but I swam as fast as I could.”
Nelda blushed, but the vice president chuckled and the others smiled.
“We’ll have to increase your travel budget, Special Agent,” the vice president said.
Everyone chuckled at that.
“Now that you’ve joined us, I’d like to recap our discussion of yesterday so we’re all on the same page. If that’s all right with everyone.”
Nobody objected.
Louis Armstrong International Airport, New Orleans
The eight men sat in two facing rows of four seats in Concourse B. None of them was a Native American. Three were white; three were Latino; one was a lightly complected African American; one was Asian American. They were all young, relatively. They were all big, compared to most people. They were all dressed casually. Some with better taste than the others. None of them would make anyone look twice. The plane they would board had just pulled up to Gate 15, in a far corner of the concourse.
None of them fidgeted or exhibited a nervous tic. But neither did any of them read a magazine, play a video game or zone out to music coming through earbuds. They simply looked at the guys seated across from them and dwelled on their own thoughts. That and glanced at the one guy who was just a bit bigger, older and more wised up than the others.
His name was Corey Price. He ran the show. The operational end, anyway.
As the passengers on the arriving flight deplaned, Price’s cell phone chimed to announce the receipt of a text message. All the others in the group heard the electronic signal. As an act of discipline, and following their instructions to the letter, none of them looked at Price as he took out his phone and read the one word message: Brock.
Price knew the code key by heart. Brock was Lou Brock. Hall of Fame baseball player. Former all-time leader in single season and career stolen bases. His glory years had come with the St. Louis Cardinals. But for purposes of the code, Price recalled the uniform number Brock had used only during his largely forgotten first three years with the Chicago Cubs: 24.
Price leaned over to Reyes, the guy on his left and whispered, “Brock.” All the others knew the code, too. And soon each of them had gotten the word and they were all smiling.
Why shouldn’t they be? They’d learned that each of them would be getting twenty-four thousand dollars as his cut of the robbery of the Thibodeaux State Bank. Not a bad day’s pay.
The gate agent announced that boarding for their flight to Las Vegas would begin in five minutes. Getting out of town soon would feel good, too. Everything was going according to plan.
Then Price’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID, stood and stepped away from the others before answering. “Yeah?”
The voice on the other end said, “I told you we’d do it, didn’t I?”
“Really?” Price asked. “After all this time?”
“I’m like you,” came the reply. “I don’t give up.”
“Christ.” Perfect goddamn timing, Price thought.
Getting good news after you turn to a life of crime.
The boarding call came and Price headed off to Vegas.
EEOB, Washington, DC
Vice President Morrissey laid things out clearly. A cyberattack of alarming sophistication had taken out critical elements of a large American city’s infrastructure yesterday. During the time that the greater part of New Orleans’ electrical grid was down, a band of men who were either Native Americans or costumed to appear as such robbed the Thibodeaux State Bank on Rampart Street, making off with more than $200,000 in cash.
“We don’t know if the robbery was motivated by anything more than money,” the vice president said, “but there is a long and global history of terrorist groups that have committed such robberies to finance their activities. Political extremists from both the right and left have committed such crimes in Europe. Nationalist and religious zealots have used bank heists to fund themselves in Asia. And, of course, we’ve had groups and individuals ranging from the Symbionese Liberation Army in California to, more recently, a white supremacist in Utah rob banks to finance their aims.”
John said, “Pardon me for interrupting, Madam Vice President, but that last guy, didn’t he say he wanted the money so he could return the country to white people?”
Jean Morrissey said, “Yes, he di
d. Are you anticipating where I’m heading here, Special Agent?”
“That Native Americans are trying to show who really got here first?” John said.
Nelda Freeland closed her eyes and compressed her lips into a thin line.
No doubt committing each of John’s words to memory.
To forward as soon as possible to Marlene Flower Moon.
The vice president smiled at John. She liked people with spunk. Was one herself.
“That’s one possibility or an element of a larger plan, and the big picture is what concerns us most here. The fervent hope at the White House is that the event in New Orleans was strictly an exercise in criminality. If it wasn’t, if the interruption of vital services in New Orleans traces back to a foreign power, then what happened was an act of war.”
John said, “If I might ask, weren’t there any other crimes committed in New Orleans, other than the bank robbery, ones that happened in the wake of the power failure? What makes the bank robbery stand out?”
The vice president nodded to Deputy Director DeWitt.
He turned to John and said, “There was a spike in crime across the board. Power wasn’t restored until after dark. But most of the crimes reported by the NOPD were simply increases in the usual number of routine complaints. In terms of money lost, and sheer helpfulness to the criminals’ efforts, nothing comes close to the robbery at the Thibodeaux State Bank.”
John nodded and said, “Just wanted to check.”
“It was a good question, Special Agent. Given the dimensions of the situation, the CIA and other federal agencies with responsibilities for gathering intelligence abroad will look for foreign actors: individuals, groups or sovereign states who might have had a hand in what happened. The FBI will look for domestic terrorists and organized crime elements. And you, Special Agent Tall Wolf, will …”