by Joseph Flynn
Super Chief
A John Tall Wolf Novel
Joseph Flynn
Stray Dog Press, Inc.
Springfield, IL
2014
Praise for Joseph Flynn’s novels
“Flynn is an excellent storyteller.” — Booklist
“Flynn keeps the pages turning.” — Houston Chronicle
“Flynn propels his plot with potent but flexible force.” — Publishers Weekly
Digger
“A mystery cloaked as cleverly as (and perhaps better than) any John Grisham work.” — Denver Post
“Surefooted, suspenseful and in its breathless final moments unexpectedly heartbreaking.” — Booklist
“An exciting, gritty, emotional page-turner.”— Robert K. Tannenbaum, New York Times Bestselling Author of True Justice
The Next President
“The Next President bears favorable comparison to such classics as The Best Man, Advise and Consent and The Manchurian Candidate.” — Booklist
“A thriller fast enough to read in one sitting.” — Rocky Mountain News
The President’s Henchman
“Marvelously entertaining.” — ForeWord Magazine
Also by Joseph Flynn
The Concrete Inquisition
Digger
The Next President
Hot Type
Farewell Performance
Gasoline, Texas
The President’s Henchman, A Jim McGill Novel [#1]
The Hangman’s Companion, A Jim McGill Novel [#2]
The K Street Killer, A Jim McGill Novel [#3]
Part 1: The Last Ballot Cast, A Jim McGill Novel [#4 Part 1]
Part 2: The Last Ballot Cast, A Jim McGill Novel [#4 Part 2]
The Devil on the Doorstep, A Jim McGill Novel [#5]
The Good Guy with a Gun, A Jim McGill Novel [#6]
The Echo of the Whip, A Jim McGill Novel [#7]
McGill’s Short Cases 1-3, Three Jim McGill Short Stories
Round Robin
Nailed, A Ron Ketchum Mystery [#1]
Defiled, A Ron Ketchum Mystery [#2]
Impaled, A Ron Ketchum Mystery [#3]
Tall Man in Ray-Bans, A John Tall Wolf Novel [#1]
War Party, A John Tall Wolf Novel [#2]
Kill Me Twice, A Zeke Edison Novel [#1]
One False Step
Blood Street Punx
Still Coming
Still Coming Expanded Edition
Hangman, A Western Novella
Dedication
For Catherine
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Anne, Catherine, Chris, Laura and Susan, who did their level best to catch all the mistakes I made. Any that remain are strictly my responsibility.
Author’s Notes
This is a work of fiction. Neither the characters nor the Native American reservations named in the story are real. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, of course, exists within the United States Department of the Interior, and within the BIA its Office of Justice Services is “responsible for the overall management of the Bureau’s law enforcement program,” but my research turned up no one who has the job description I gave to John Tall Wolf. This mixture of fact and fiction falls under the heading of literary license. If you’re a purist who demands complete realism, I recommend you stick to nonfiction, and good luck finding an author in that field who doesn’t make mistakes or omissions.
As to a white male writing about Native American characters, that involves a bit of license, too. From my point of view, that license is rooted in our common humanity. If writers were to focus only on characters who shared their own backgrounds, we would establish a regime of literary apartheid.
Copyright
Super Chief
Joseph Flynn
Published by Stray Dog Press, Inc.
Springfield, IL 62704, U.S.A.
Copyright © kandrom, inc. 2014
All rights reserved
Visit the author’s web site: www.josephflynn.com
Flynn, Joseph
Super Chief / Joseph Flynn
67,978 words eBook
ISBN 978-0-9908412-0-3
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Book design by Aha! Designs
Chapter 1
San Francisco, California
Merritt Kinney thought he was going to die in his bathroom. Turned out he had the portent of mortality right and was off on the location by only one floor. The case of indigestion that had struck him was the worst he’d ever known. The agony, he felt sure, was courtesy of food poisoning from the new joint down the block.
It took all his self-restraint not to scream. Doing that might cause the downstairs neighbors to think someone was being murdered and call the cops. He decided he was going to sue the restaurant.
In a desperate attempt to divert his attention, he reached back and grabbed the book sitting atop the toilet tank: “Railroaded: The Biography of Theodore Judah.”
Judah was the visionary with the first practical plan to build a transcontinental railroad across the United States. He was undone by the corrupt merchants who funded his efforts. The money men tried to buy Judah off, but he wouldn’t play along. He boarded a ship bound for New York in 1863 to find new financial backing and expose the corruption behind the railroad’s management, but he never made it. He took ill with yellow fever in Panama and died shortly after in New York at age thirty-seven.
The swindlers, who were over-billing the federal government for every mile of track laid, went on to become some of the wealthiest and most revered men in California history.
Kinney knew all that because he’d read the book several times, always hoping for a new ending. He felt his guts spasm and tossed the book in the nearby bathtub to save it from the long-awaited vile eruption. The resulting excreta required three flushes. He felt a great relief in his midsection but was left weak in the knees.
And greatly aggrieved by the stink.
Kinney completed his business and tottered across the room to open the window and let fresh air inside. That was when he saw the car pull up to the curb across the street. Four large men in dark clothes exited the vehicle and came straight for his building.
With an intuitive certainty, Kinney knew they were coming for him. They’d soon be kicking in his door, and if they caught him, he’d die as surely and as young as Theodore Judah had. For the same reason, too. Trying to expose a great crime, but not quite succeeding.
One of the men in the street looked up and saw him in the window. Kinney retreated and grabbed his cell phone. All he could get was static.
Good God, were they jamming cell phone service?
It certainly wouldn’t be beyond their means.
A stop-at-nothing billionaire was behind them.
Heart pounding, Kinney fled in the only direction available to him, up one flight of stairs to the building’s roof. He tried to use his phone again, hoping to find a signal. He wanted to call the Chronicle, tell a reporter everything he knew. All he got, though, was more static.
Frantic, he ran around t
he perimeter of the roof, looking for an adjacent building to which he might leap. Just as he found the most likely one, the door to the roof opened and the four large men appeared. One of them held a video camera.
Their leader looked at Kinney and knew immediately what his prey had in mind. He smiled and shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking … and it only works in the movies.”
Having delivered his warning, the man took out a badge. “Just in case you’ve got the wrong idea, we’re the police, and you’re under arrest for grand larceny. We’re going to take you in and book you. All your rights will be observed.”
Kinney didn’t believe that for a minute. They might well be cops, but he’d never make it to any police station. Even so, he took three defeated steps in their direction.
Then he pivoted and with a running start jumped for the roof of the neighboring building.
He came up short. Fell four stories and died on impact.
The cop had been right. Stunts like that never worked in real life.
Chapter 2
Los Angeles, California
Four hundred miles south of the alley where Merritt Kinney’s body lay broken, a classic EMD F7 locomotive wearing the classic red and silver war bonnet design of the most popular passenger train in American history gave a blast of its horn and began to pull out of Union Station. A small gathering of local dignitaries, celebrities, business people and train enthusiasts applauded.
Many of them still had glasses of champagne in their hands. They were the hardcore remainder of a party that had started hours earlier in the one custom coach that was pulled by the locomotive. The mayor, city council members, actors from both film and television, a handful of professional athletes, and other affluent people who could afford to pay $5,000 — tax deductible — for an evening of diversion had come and gone.
They all thought the locomotive had a retro cool design. The passenger coach was like a long thin room from an art deco mansion. It had a bar, a bandstand, a dance floor, plush settees and even a bedroom compartment where some serious getting-to-know-you might be done.
Only the door to the bedroom had been removed, so nobody actually got it on. Still, more than a few fantasies had been conceived. Strangers meeting on a train and all that. The band had been a big hit. One of the entrepreneurs present liked the idea of a traveling club. Exclusive as hell. Zipping through the night, letting all the little people gape in awe as it roared past.
The guy chatted with two big-shots, Edward Danner and Brian Kirby, whom he’d heard were dabbling in trains, “You guys know if there are any jet-powered trains yet? Hey, rocket-powered would be even better. All this is really cool, but these days you’ve gotta have speed, too."
Kirby told the man, “Rocket propulsion hasn’t been considered, but a Japanese train has hit 381 mph in a test run.”
The entrepreneur smiled and said, “That rocks. I could do something with that.”
Danner only rolled his eyes and walked away.
“What’s wrong with him?” the entrepreneur asked.
Kirby said, “He was hoping I wouldn’t be here tonight. We used to be friends, but that was a while ago.”
“I understand perfectly. I’ve been there. Two guys getting crosswise, it’s worse than a divorce. So which one of you screwed the other?”
“I came out on the short end.”
The entrepreneur smiled. “Yeah, but you just let him know you’d be getting even, right?”
“Why do you say that?” Kirby asked.
The other man laughed. “Why else would you have anything to say to him?”
As things stood in American railroading, the locomotive of the party train trundled out of Los Angeles at less than a tenth of the top speed of the world’s fastest train. Even so, it drew a round of applause. The night’s festivities had raised more than $400,000, after expenses, for the new train museum in Chicago where the locomotive was scheduled to spend the remainder of its days. Additional stops along the way east would add over $2 million dollars to the take.
Once the train was out of sight, the small crowd dispersed. Most got in their cars and drove home. The handful that had come from out of town made their way to the private airport in Santa Monica and jetted into the night sky.
Chapter 3
Brooklyn, New York
Amtrak Special Agent Maj Olson was awakened in her apartment at six a.m. Not by the alarm on her iPhone, but by the ring tone: a passage from Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” The part where the composer inventively wrote a cannon barrage into his composition. Maj sat bolt upright in bed, disoriented for a moment.
Not by the early hour. Six o’clock was her normal workday wakeup time. Only she was sure she had some vacation time left. She looked at the date on her phone and saw she was right about that. Christ, it was only the second day of her vacation; she had almost two weeks to go.
She hadn’t made any plans to travel. She was going to stay home. Catch up on her personal reading and her sleep. But the iPhone continued the cannonade, and she answered the call, saying, “This better be good.”
It was. A train had gone missing. Disappeared. Not just any freight train. Nor a passenger train. Nor a commuter run. The damn thing was a two-car classic on its way from L.A. to the new train museum in Chicago. Maj had briefly entertained the idea of going to the museum’s opening.
She’d decided not to do that. She was going to be lazy. Hang at home. Reevaluate her career choice. Maybe give it one last shot to find a college teaching post she might enjoy. Her Ph.D. from Columbia in American history ought to be good enough to …
Spend twenty or more years in a classroom?
Well, yeah, but only in the right classroom at the perfect school.
That’d been her plan all along. But she had to admit …
The nature of the call that had awakened her had piqued her interest.
Trains, even the two-car variety, didn’t just vanish. The damn things ran on rails and were massively heavy. The best illusionist in the world couldn’t make one disappear.
But that was just what her boss, Deputy Chief Steve Chudzik, head of the Amtrak Police Intelligence Division, was telling her.
“The Chicago Museum Special was supposed to show up in Las Vegas at four a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. There was going to be gambling and a party for bigwigs with the proceeds going to the museum. The train was actually due in at 3:30 so it could be prepped for the guests. When it didn’t arrive, the Las Vegas cops put up a helicopter to see if there was a problem on the line, an obstruction or something. But there hadn’t been any call from the cab crew and the guys in the air saw no sign of the train.”
“Damn,” Maj said. “What the hell could have happened?”
“That’s what you have to find out,” Steve told her, “and make it fast.”
“You’re thinking, what? A theft or terrorism?”
“I’m keeping an open mind. Other people are going with terrorism.”
“The FBI?”
“Among others.”
“I’ll be working with them?”
“Unh-uh. You’ll be partnered with the BIA.”
It took Maj a second to decode the acronym.
“The Bureau of Indian Affairs?” she asked, confused.
“Yeah, them.”
Then the picture became clear. “You don’t mean?”
“I do. Someone stole a Super Chief locomotive. What I hear, the guy you’ll be working with is some new poobah over there by the name of —”
Chapter 4
Washington, D.C.
John Tall Wolf looked at his name on the door of his new office suite. His title was co-director, Office of Justice Services. He stepped inside. The desk for his secretary was empty. Somebody had known enough to let him make his own hire. Still, he felt uneasy.
He’d never wanted to become an administrator, much less the guy at the top of the pyramid. In his case, though, he wasn’t alone at the summit. As co-director, he’d be working
hip to hip with his nemesis Marlene Flower Moon. Maybe cheek to jowl would be a better description, he thought. In any case, they’d be well inside each other’s comfort zone.
If John had his way, he’d still be a special agent working out of the Santa Fe field office — with the independence of having tendered his resignation on his first day of work at the BIA. Ready at a moment’s notice to walk out the door if Marlene ever tried to force him to do something he thought was wrong. Something that might put him in hot water.
Now, however, both a measure of John’s independence and his low profile as a rank-and-file government employee had been taken from him. Vice President Jean Morrissey had selected John for the job and President Patricia Grant had approved. Confirmation by the Senate was unnecessary. His new job didn’t rank that high.
One small comfort of his sudden rise in the world was that he’d had occasion to meet James J. McGill, the president’s husband. Sometimes known as her henchman. John liked that description; he also liked the man. McGill knew more than a little about a rush to prominence and had told John to call him if he ever wanted to talk.
The other perks of John’s new status were a serious bump in pay and benefits: traveling business class, better hotel accommodations, more vacation time. Rebecca Bramley, a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the love of his life, had been all but giddy when she learned of John’s promotion. She was in Washington to witness his swearing in by the Secretary of the Interior that afternoon.
John’s parents, Dr. Haden Wolf and Serafina Wolf y Padilla, would also be present and couldn’t be more proud of their son.
Really, it should have been a shining moment for him, a day of signal achievement.
Still, he felt uneasy and he saw the reason why the moment he opened his office door. Marlene Flower Moon, his co-director, his former boss and the woman he thought might really be Coyote, was waiting for him. It had never occurred to her the polite thing to do would have been to respect his new boundaries. The look she gave him said working with her now would be more of a battle than it had ever been before.