by Joseph Flynn
The Las Vegas cop smiled. “You know, we might be getting somewhere with this case. I’ll pass the picture along to patrol officers.”
“I’ve got another photo,” John told him. “The guy who owns the truck. It was taken in the bank in New Orleans that was robbed.”
Grunwald beamed. “Better and better.”
“Not so much. He was wearing a baseball cap and eyeglasses. Had big muttonchop sideburns, too. You take away all that stuff, you might not recognize him.”
The idea of changing appearances spurred a thought for John.
He told Grunwald he needed to make a call.
“No problem. The news about the blackout is all I have for the moment.”
John asked him to stay. “What I’m thinking might help your people.”
“Okay.”
John called Marcellus Darcy and said, “That guy you like for the robbers’ scout, the one with the truck?”
Marcellus said, “I was just about to call you about him.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t happy with that picture of him in the bank.”
John smiled. “Great minds think alike. Neither was I. Did you see if he has any educational background in computers?”
“You’re gonna spoil all my fun, ain’t you? He went to the University of Arizona for one semester, then switched to online classes.”
“Don’t suppose you have a list of this guy’s classes and his GPA.”
There was a long silence.
“I did spoil all your fun, didn’t I?” John asked.
“Just about.”
“So I shouldn’t ask you if you found a student photo of him?”
“Damn,” Marcellus said.
“I’m sorry,” John told him.
He could have taken matters a step farther, but he didn’t want to hurt his friend’s feelings.
“That all you got?” Marcellus asked.
“It is,” John lied.
“Good. ‘Cause Edmee and me went one more step.”
“What’s that?”
“We pulled the man’s current driver’s license outta the computer. Got a picture of what he looks like now.”
That was what John was about to suggest.
“Good idea,” he said. “You and Edmee are doing great work. Can you send me everything you’ve found?”
“Just sent the email.”
John thanked him and said goodbye.
Grunwald asked, “You got cops everywhere working for you?”
“Marcellus is a postal inspector, another fed, but, yeah, I like to be inclusive. Let’s take a look at what he’s sent.”
John opened the email. Two photos, headshots of the same guy looking like they’d been taken some years apart, judging by a receding hairline and growing jowls.
Grunwald said, “If that guy isn’t the one we want for the bank robberies, I’d bet my house he’s in some other racket.”
“Let’s see if he’s been caught for anything,” John said.
He pulled up the NCIC website and entered the man’s name: Lamar Dekker.
The query came up negative, no record found.
Grunwald said, “I still say he’s wrong, and maybe you’re right about the system being hacked.”
John said, “Maybe. I’ll send the pictures to the FBI anyway.”
After Grunwald left, John looked at the sketches of the Desert Mountain National Bank robbery made by the choreographer who’d seen it. The drawings had been done in pencil, outlining the robbers’ shapes against minimally rendered backgrounds. The figures of the robbers themselves were simple line drawings with no details to the faces beyond the placement of eyes, noses and mouths.
Omitting the makeup, warpaint, wigs and feathers actually helped John to see things differently. Removed the distractions. He knew by now the robbers weren’t Native Americans but the stripped down renderings started to help him see other possibilities.
What the choreographer captured, logically enough, was a sense of flow.
A still life rendering of men in motion.
One guy running, caught in midstride, both feet off the ground.
Another one vaulting the tellers’ counter.
These guys were athletes, just as the choreographer had said.
Athleticism was a distinguishing mark of elite soldiers, of course, but John felt these guys were civilians. Teammates. The only question was what sport they played.
He looked at the sketches of the robber who made the hand gestures. There were sketches of three hand signals. Individually, they still didn’t give John the answer he’d been seeking. He held the pages with a thumb and index finger and riffled through them like an animation flipbook. That sparked something, but didn’t quite bring it all the way out of hiding.
He repeated the exercise two more times. He kept inching closer to the answer. He put the sketches down and working from memory duplicated the gestures the choreographer had drawn. He knew he was right on the edge of finding his answer now.
The best thing to do at that point was to relax and just let it come.
He called down to the hotel gift shop to make sure it was still open. He hurried down and found a pair of swim trunks he liked in his size. He paid with his personal credit card.
Marlene Flower Moon often criticized his expense account, but she’d never been able to find anything of substance that could cause him real grief.
Ten minutes later, after changing in his room, he was in the hotel pool. It was huge. Had its own waterfall. When John arrived there was a young couple with two small children splashing in the shallow end of the pool. They left shortly after he’d entered the water.
He had the whole pool to himself. He lay back and floated, looking up into the dark sky. The resort was off The Strip, surrounded by golf courses not neon signs. So the stars didn’t have to fight a blast of light pollution to be seen. They sparkled like a Cartier display case set against the ebony sky.
Suspended in water that was only marginally cooler than the balmy night air, John felt at peace. If not at one with nature, he was well content to view heaven’s light show. He watched the constellations wheel through the sky above him.
As if communicating with the stars, John began duplicating the hand gestures the choreographer had sketched. At first, there was no cosmic sign of acknowledgement. But the third time he ran through the sequence, he saw a shooting star. It raced through the darkness in a long graceful arc that reminded John of —
A curve ball. As if he’d just called for a breaking pitch.
That would make him the catcher.
Making the robbers baseball players.
— Chapter 29 —
Cashman Field, Las Vegas, Nevada
The stadium was the home field of the Las Vegas 51s, the Triple A minor league affiliate of the New York Mets. A Google map showed John where it was located in North Las Vegas. There was no game that night, but the ballpark’s security team was on duty. John only had to ring a bell at the main gate to get their attention in the person of the chief officer, a gray-haired fellow whose name tag said Lathrop.
John showed his ID and said, “Federal officer, is there someone who —”
Lathrop squinted. “You’re from the Bureau of Indian Affairs?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think we have any Indians on our team.”
“It’s not the home team I want to talk about.”
“So none of our guys is in trouble?”
“Not with me.”
“That’s good. So why are you here?”
“You think you might let me in?” John asked.
“Look, I’m not trying to give you a hard time, but my job is to keep people out of the ballpark and, no offense, I’ve never heard of your outfit before.”
“How about the Metro police? You know them?”
“Sure.”
“Here’s my local contact.” John handed him Grunwald’s card.
Lathrop scanned the info
rmation. “You won’t take it wrong if I call Captain Grunwald.”
John shook his head. “Always good to be careful.”
The call and confirmation of John’s bona fides took less than a minute.
Lathrop opened the gate and let John inside. Returned Grunwald’s card to him.
“What can I do for you, Special Agent Tall Wolf?”
“You have somewhere we can talk?”
Lathrop took John to his office.
A trained observer, John noticed a photo of a younger Lathrop in a baseball uniform on the wall behind the security chief’s desk. The two men took their seats. Lathrop tried to make up for his perceived lack of respect for John’s official status.
“Sorry about not recognizing your law enforcement credentials. Captain Grunwald gave me a quick earful about that. You like a soft drink or something?”
“I’m good, thanks, and the BIA isn’t a high profile agency.”
Lathrop seemed to relax a bit, hearing that John bore him no ill will.
“What is it you do? Your regular job, I mean.”
“I work at the intersection of Native American and mainstream cultures. If there’s a four-car pile-up, I try to sort things out.”
Lathrop nodded. “That sounds like a good idea, but what does that have to do with this baseball team? Wait a minute, you did say it wasn’t our guys, right?”
“Right. I’m hoping maybe you can tell me about the visiting team that just came through.”
“San Bernadino? What’ve they got to do with anything?”
“You know about the big league steroid scandals, of course.”
“Damn right, I do. They should never let any of those bastards into the Hall of Fame.”
“Well, all I can say is what I’m working on is worse than that.”
Lathrop sat back in his chair and said, “Damn. And it’s got something to do with In — I mean, Native Americans? I don’t think there’s a one on the San Bernadino roster.”
“No?” John thought about that and asked, “Is their team name the Indians?”
“Unh-uh. It’s the Serranos.”
John asked Lathrop to spell that for him.
He tapped “Serrano tribe California” into his smart phone.
He read aloud the information that came up. “The Serranos are a native tribe centered in the San Bernadino Mountains.”
“Sounds kinda Spanish to me,” Lathrop said.
John nodded. “That’s the name the colonial missionaries gave them.”
“And you had to look that up?”
John asked, “You know how many tribes there are in this country, Canada and Mexico?”
Lathrop said he didn’t.
“That’s okay, neither do I,” John told him, “but it’s a lot. By any chance, do you have a program for your team’s series with the Serranos?”
The security boss opened a desk drawer, took one out and handed it to John. He leafed through it. The full rosters of each team were provided with a picture of every player, his position and season batting and pitching statistics, as applicable.
There was also a column for the league standings. The 51s were in second place, a game out of first. San Bernadino was dead last. Twelve games behind the leader.
“Looks like the Serranos are having a rough season,” John said.
“They were before they came here, before they hit New Orleans. Now, they’re on a tear, a four-game winning streak. Won those games by an average of seven runs.”
“Really?”
Successful bank robbing must be a real pick-me-up, John thought.
“Too damn late to do the poor bastards any good,” Lathrop said.
“Wait until next year?” John asked.
“Not even that for those guys.”
“Why not?”
“This is San Bernadino’s last season. They’ve been bad a long time. Basically, it’s where guys have gone to end their careers. They can’t fill their stadium for love or money. Heard the owner is going to declare bankruptcy. If more than one or two players on that team catch on anywhere else, I’d be amazed.”
“Well, hell,” John said.
“Yeah.” The empathy was clear in Lathrop’s voice.
John looked at the picture of him in his baseball uniform.
“It’s pretty tough to let go of the dream, isn’t it?”
“Damn right, it is. You tell yourself you’ll get over it, but you never do. I haven’t anyway. There’s never been a major league player my age, but there isn’t a day I don’t wake up and think I could still pound the ball against half the bums I see taking the mound in the big leagues.”
“Is that anger talking?” John asked.
“It was at first. Now, it’s just wishful thinking.”
“Thanks for all your help,” John said. “There’s just one more thing I need to know.”
“What’s that?”
“Where do the Serranos play next?”
Lathrop didn’t even have to look it up. He was a true baseball lifer.
“Tacoma.”
Traveler’s Rest Motel, Tacoma, Washington
Corey Price’s room was no bigger than anyone else’s on the team and with eight large men occupying the space, it felt like there wasn’t enough air to breathe easy. An antique window air-conditioner couldn’t keep up with the body heat the guys generated. Everyone was sheened with sweat, though some of that had to do with tension. The small window in the bathroom was open, but all that did was admit a stale odor from the creek behind the property.
The only good thing was, the team manager and the coaches had worries of their own. They were content to leave the players to their troubles. The skipper had suggested the team stay together for a blowout after their last ever game. Everyone had agreed, but without any great enthusiasm.
Nobody really expected the entire roster to show up.
Price had returned from Seattle with two coolers filled with beer.
After everyone had popped a can, he let them know how he felt.
“Dekker said we can expect to make as much money from the Seattle job as the other two combined but, personally, I have a feeling the shit is about to hit the fan.”
Jack O’Grady, who played center field like he was channeling a young Willie Mays but couldn’t hit a ball off a tee, said, “It was bound to, wasn’t it, the kind of luck all of us have. Still, it was fun while it lasted.”
Everyone agreed and most of them grabbed another beer.
Price said, “I told Dekker I was thinking about blowing off the last robbery.”
Tut Warren, who could hit but couldn’t field a ball if you let him use a fisherman’s net, asked, “You sayin’ we’re done robbin’ banks, Corey?”
Tut was one of the few guys who thought he stood a chance of finding a slot on another team, one that was affiliated with an American League club, so he could sell himself as a designated hitter and wouldn’t ever need to worry about playing the field.
Price shrugged. “I told Dekker I’d go through with it, but that was only to shut him up. If it was up to me, I’d say to hell with it. But if the rest of you guys want to do it, I’ll be right there with you. So let me see a show of hands. Who wants to do one last bank job?”
Six of them did. Only Price and Tut thought otherwise.
Tut gave the other guys, including Price, something to think about.
“If this is the last job an’ it’s a big haul, who’s to say Dekker doesn’t just keep all the money and our bikes, too. Disappear without a word. Maybe even tell the cops who done it.”
O’Grady pointed out, “He rats on us, we rat on him.”
Tut said, “They got pictures of us doin’ a robbery, man. What they got on Dekker?”
“How would they even know where to find him?” Eloy Garcia asked. “He gets in that truck of his, he could drive all the way to Panama.”
Exactly where Eloy, a third baseman who demonstrated brilliance in all aspects of the game just often enough to
stay on the payroll, planned to go with his stolen loot. He said once he got home he knew places nobody would ever find him.
Eloy shifted to Price and Tut’s side, and the debate was on. Voices rose and gesticulating hands flung beer across the room. Price had to intervene twice between guys who verged on throwing punches. He whistled down shouting matches several more times. They didn’t want to get busted for creating a disturbance at the motel, he reminded them.
When he decided the jawing had gone on long enough, he stepped to the center of the room and held an open hand out to each side. “Let’s take another vote.”
The result this time was an even split, four to four.
Each side glared at the other.
Price said, “I got something I want each of you to think about. Let’s say we rob this one last bank. We get away clean with the big money Dekker promised. What do we do then?”
The others all looked at him like that was as dumb a question as they’d ever heard.
O’Grady was the one to answer. “Well, Corey, I believe what we’d do then is take our money and head our separate ways.”
Price nodded. “Uh-huh. So we get on our motorcycles and go. Only don’t you think, by now, every cop in the country knows what kind of bikes we ride? And what about the cash? Are we going to put it all in duffel bags and strap them to our backs? Don’t you think that might be just a bit obvious? Wouldn’t the sleepiest state trooper in the world sit up and take notice?”
Nobody in the room had ever heard of the Socratic method but they all got Price’s points.
“Well, shit,” Tut said.
“Here are the two biggest questions of all,” Price told them. “How come with all the planning Dekker handed us, he never gave us a final getaway plan? One that might take us all home. You think maybe having us come to a bad end was part of the deal all along?”
“That sonofabitch,” O’Grady snarled.
The others seconded the opinion with their own profanities.
In the end, when their venting lost steam, they turned to Price.