Tailed

by Brian M. Wiprud

  “Yes, it is” came a voice from behind us.

  The compact form of Colonel Lanston was stomping toward us from the stage entrance, the two MPs towering in her wake. She was wearing her folding blue garrison cap, the silver oak leaves twinkling in the streetlamp glow.

  “Gang’s all here,” Nicholas muttered.

  “Who’s this?” Colonel Lanston jerked a thumb at Nicholas, eyeing him shrewdly.

  “Nicholas Palihnic. An insurance investigator,” Stella said.

  “My brother,” I said.

  “My son,” Fowler said.

  We all froze, turning slowly to where J. C. Fowler approached from amid the parked cars, his arms swinging like he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Had he just said my son?

  “Fowler.” Colonel Lanston betrayed a reptilian smile. “Glad you could join us. We’ve been looking for you, too. You’re all coming in with us.”

  “What’s the charge, little woman?” Fowler joined our circle, jauntily adjusting his sunglasses at Lanston. “Hey, like the hat.”

  “This is not my father,” Nicholas snorted.

  “You’re all people of interest to the government. You’re coming in for questioning.”

  “Not so fast.” Brickface and Stucco emerged from the stage door, guns drawn but down. “This is the FBI’s jurisdiction, Colonel. We’ll take them in for questioning.”

  “Ha! The big pig versus the little blue pig. I love it.” Fowler showed us all his little white teeth.

  “This is definitely not my father,” Nicholas repeated.

  “Shut up,” Lanston snapped at Nicholas, turning to Bricazzi. “I thought we were conducting this investigation jointly?”

  “Then how is it you came here without coordinating with us?” He afforded her a patient grin. “My instructions are to conduct this investigation as we do any other. If you want to discuss that with my superiors, that’s your privilege. Stucco? Bring the car around. We’re taking them to the Federal Building for questioning.”

  Stucco cleared his throat. “All in one car? Maybe I should ride with them in their car.”

  “You know, you always seemed different,” I whispered to Nicholas. “Maybe Fowler and Gabby…you know.”

  “No, I don’t know,” he whispered angrily. “Why did he say he’s my father?”

  I shrugged. “There is a resemblance.”

  Nicholas shivered and looked at Fowler.

  “Listen, piggies…” Fowler started getting visibly itchy, beginning what was becoming his familiar Lon Chaney act. “There is no way I’m going downtown with you and the two flatfoots unless you get a warrant. I know my rights.”

  “Garth! Nicholas!” Vargas emerged from the stage door at a trot, his shirt soaked with sweat. “Did you see what happened? To Draco? A luchadore with horns—”

  “We know,” the assemblage chorused.

  “Who’s this?” Colonel Lanston jerked her head at Vargas.

  “We may need more than two cars,” Brickface said to Stucco.

  “That’s Vargas,” Nicholas and I said in unison.

  “Who is this woman?” Vargas said warily, looking like he might just take flight.

  “Little blue piggie!” Fowler made his patented question mark in the air with his hand.

  “And him?” Vargas pointed at Fowler, who was beginning to go into his snake pantomime.

  “Nicholas’s father,” Stella answered, smirking.

  “That weirdo is not my father.” Nicholas didn’t sound so convinced anymore.

  “And the white one?”

  “Stella, from Wilberforce/Peete,” I said. “I work for her. Well, I did, but—”

  “All of you shut up.” Colonel Lanston spread out her arms like an umpire calling safe at the plate. “We’re going to get to the bottom of what all you people are doing here. Stucco, you go with Vargas and these two.” She gestured at me and Nicholas. “Bricazzi and I will take Stella and Fowler. The MPs will follow in our car.”

  “You don’t seem to understand.” Bricazzi stepped in front of Colonel Lanston, close enough that she had to look almost straight up at him. “This is an FBI matter. You’re not coming.”

  That’s when Fowler lit off into the parking lot, caroming between cars and howling.

  Stucco and the MPs took off after him.

  chapter 17

  Stucco rode shotgun, while Vargas took the reins of his Pontiac. Nicholas and I were in back, but Wilco was missing. Apparently he’d chewed through his leash and gone AWOL.

  “That damn dog,” Vargas fretted. “How will I ever find him? I should have left him in Vargo.”

  As cop cars poured into the parking lot, spectators had flooded from the stadium. We were following Bricazzi and Stella in the FBI sedan. Fowler had successfully vanished among the cars, and Bricazzi was furious.

  Even with the red strobe, the black FBI sedan was fighting the riptide of traffic at the exits. It was slow going, and Vargas had been outflanked a couple times by exiting lucha fans, so that we were a few cars farther back.

  “Agent Stucco?” I ventured. “What’s Colonel Lanston’s part in all of this, anyway?”

  He glanced back at me, rolled his eyes, and resumed his previous blank stare out the windshield. None of my damn business, I guessed.

  “You know,” I whispered to Nicholas behind a cupped hand, “it occurs to me that it’s possible one of this bunch is the killer. We don’t know where any of them were at when Draco was killed. Stella had my list of clients, so she knew where to find them. We don’t know where Vargas was, and he would know how to be a luchadore for an evening. And Fowler was both in Seattle and here when those two murders took place.”

  Nicholas pouted in thought, then leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Stella? I don’t think she’s strong enough to have done that. Vargas? The killer wasn’t his build, and if so, why wouldn’t he have killed you back in Michigan? Fowler? He’s candidate number one. He’s nuts.”

  “What a thing to say about your dad.”

  “You cut that out,” Nicholas hissed. “I haven’t forgotten about Amber.”

  “Touché.” I winced. Had Angie witnessed the Amber incident, I’m sure she would be understanding. But I wasn’t so sure my retelling of the scene would portray it accurately. That is, in a way that it might not bring my fidelity into question.

  “You don’t think it’s really possible, do you?” Nicholas rubbed his hands together nervously.

  “Nicholas, if you’d seen Mom at the nudist camp, I don’t think you’d ask that question.”

  “Why wouldn’t she have told me?”

  “You know how she and Stuart never talked about the past. Hell, we lived in Uncle Lenny’s house and never knew anything about him. Or about Kit Carson.”

  “This is a little different, don’t you think?”

  “Sure I do. Doesn’t mean Gabby does.”

  Nicholas sulked a moment, but I didn’t let him do it for long.

  “Why did you want her at the wedding, anyway?”

  He went from frustrated to annoyed. “Why do I have to keep answering that question?”

  “It wouldn’t be because you suspected you might not be Stuart’s son, is it? To try to get her to tell you?”

  “Now, what would make you say that?”

  I shrugged and looked out the window at the jostle of SUVs ahead of us, their exhaust wafting in the window.

  “Did Mom tell you something?”

  “Gabby? Same as always. Trying to talk to her about the past is like opening a clam with a toothpick. So come on, Nicholas. Least you can do is tell me why. I did you a favor and invited her, after all.”

  He looked out his own window and said nothing.

  “I am your best man.”

  He didn’t budge.

  “Nicholas, this isn’t about one-upmanship. I’m your brother, first, foremost, and always. If you can’t tell me, who can you tell?”

  He half turned from the window, and I could see he was o
n the cusp of caving. I just needed to give him one more tiny little sentimental nudge.

  Growing up, even though we were just a few years apart in age, we’d been very different people, with radically different perspectives. We got along, even teamed up, but there was always a barrier between us: we never shared any kind of intimate bond where we confided things. Perhaps boys don’t do that. There were times when I’d wished we were more open, that I could have helped him when he got in trouble, guided him. And that when I was unsure or worried or whatever, that I could have confided in him. Maybe we were too much like our emotionally distant parents.

  Takes two to tango, I guess. I’d always been afraid Nicholas would have responded with derision or sarcasm had I showed any weakness. And no doubt he’d always thought that his big brother would interpret any emotional openness on his part as a green light to tell him what to do. But as I’d grown to know him better since he resurfaced from his self-imposed exile from the family, I’d found that he’d matured, mellowed. I’d recently started to hope that we could at some point put aside the sibling jousting and be more open. Angie’s overtures toward warming his heart to us had also found some purchase—she could actually guilt him into showing up to Sunday dinners. And the impending wedding was certainly evidence that there was more emotionally to Nicholas than met the eye, that he was capable of letting someone beyond his heart’s sentry.

  “Well, Garth,” Nicholas began, still staring out his window at the creeping traffic. “It’s like this…there’s no birth certificate on file for me with Gabby and Stuart. I think I’m adopted. Yet there’s no adoption papers, either. So was I left on the stoop in a basket? I’ve known this for a long time. That’s why I changed my last name to Palihnic all those years ago when I applied for a passport to go overseas. Picked the name out of the phone book.”

  When he turned, there was a new look in his eyes. Not sarcasm. Not the affected foxy squint.

  His eyes were filled with alarm: “Watch it!” he shouted.

  An arm circled around my neck and I was suddenly being dragged out the window. The last cogent thing I saw was a second, ill-defined assailant punching Stucco in the face through the front window. Lights were everywhere and nowhere, my body was being dragged, horns were honking, there were isolated shouts. The arm gripped my neck like a nutcracker, and I clung to it for dear life. The sudden plunge into icy panic made survival my body’s number-one priority, shutting down such unnecessary bodily functions as seeing and hearing. All my resources were directed toward trying to keep a slight supply of air to my lungs and blood to my noggin. I tried vainly to keep my feet under me as I was hauled backward, each stumble threatening to collapse my esophagus. I had little idea where I was being taken until I found myself in the back of a dark panel truck with three figures looming over me, the truck engine racing, the gears churning, the sear of streetlights burning across the windows.

  I was on my back, wheezing, and I think I implored my captors not to kill me, though with my neck and vocal chords feeling about two feet longer, I can’t imagine I was able to speak. Maybe my brain was imploring all by its lonesome.

  “You could have killed him like that,” one said.

  “Yeah, well, we had to hurry,” another voice boomed.

  “We’re just lucky we grabbed him when we did,” a third admonished. “He’ll be OK. Anybody following? Here, sit him up. Get some water.”

  “I got some sports drink.”

  “It’ll have to do,” said voice number three. “Sit him up. Against the side.”

  I was dragged by my arms, for which I was grateful, and then I felt a plastic bottle pressed to my lips. I drank greedily, even though the liquid burned my raw throat.

  That’s when the lights came on, and my eyes hurt almost as much as my neck.

  It took me a second to make out the three goons in front of me through my fingers.

  It was the three men from the Mystical Order of the Tupelca I’d spotted in the arena and seen in New York weeks before. There was a tall one with the burlap hair, flat nose, and wide lips. He was leaning over me, his gray eyes inspecting my neck. The linebacker, the guy who must have dragged me, had big worried brown eyes and a hairline a step away from the baldness goal line. The third had a droopy mustache, weak chin, and an Adam’s apple you could have used to tee off for a par four at the Masters.

  And they were dressed in what I’d classify as box store chic: sport shirts, jeans, Windbreakers, and white tennis shoes. For captors they certainly didn’t look very threatening.

  “Did I hurt you?” Linebacker looked genuinely worried.

  “He’s OK,” Droopy simpered. “Aren’t you?”

  Flat Nose tilted my head to one side and looked at my neck. Then he gave a disappointed glance toward Linebacker. “You know, you could have opened the door instead of dragging him through the window.”

  Linebacker looked ashamed.

  I cleared my throat, testing whether my vocal cords were still there or whether I’d somehow swallowed them.

  “Don’t worry.” Flat Nose put a hand on my arm. “You’re safe with us.”

  “Safe?” I croaked. They looked apologetic.

  “It was the only way.” Droopy shook his head. “You’re not safe out there. You’re the last one. If they get you…”

  I coughed for a few beats, sitting up straighter. I could feel a ripple of pain down my back where it had scraped over the car windowsill.

  “We’re Tupelca,” Flat Nose said proudly. “Javelina Dwelling.”

  Clearly Flat Nose was their leader as the other two always looked at him before speaking. They all thumbed their Windbreakers and little silver pig lapel pins at me, like I was being badged or would recognize the import of what they were showing me. But it meant nothing to me if they were javelinas, Porky Pig enthusiasts, or bacon aficionados.

  “Yes, I know, you rented my pronghorn. I thought you were from the Pronghorn Dwelling?”

  “We just pretended to be pronghorns.” Droopy reached down and put on a purple bucket hat with two tassels and a little pig stitched into the center. “See?”

  I pinched my eyes closed. “I’ve been kidnapped by Shriners?”

  “Not Shriners,” Linebacker corrected, “Tupelca.”

  “Uh huh. And you’re not going to kill me?”

  “Goodness, no!” Droopy looked genuinely appalled, like I’d asked if his Granny wore edible lederhosen.

  Goodness, no. Well, I couldn’t imagine any of your usual murderous, felonious types would use the word “goodness.”

  “Then let’s have it.”

  They raised their collective eyebrows, waiting.

  “Tell me what the hell is going on, why you kidnapped me from the FBI.”

  “You weren’t safe with them.” Flat nose snorted. “One of them may be a Coyote.”

  “A Coyote?”

  “Yes, from the Coyote Dwelling. They’re the ones trying to kill you, Carson.”

  “Let me get this straight.” I rubbed my throat and brushed the hair from my eyes. “Other Tupelca, not Javelinas, but Coyotes, are trying to kill me. They killed Titan, Sprunty, Bronte, and now gored Draco in front of ten thousand people at the Qwest Arena?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Droopy nodded.

  “Let me ask you this: why didn’t you just call the cops on them?”

  “We don’t know who they are.” Flat Nose shook his head, clearly annoyed by this detail. “They’re a stealth dwelling. They were expelled years ago, after the first killings, but some members from different dwellings are secretly still allied with the Coyotes.”

  I suddenly felt very weary and heaved a sigh.

  I’ll admit, in the past when I’ve been subjected to such humiliations as being kidnapped, I was at times alarmed, and then some. Even terrified. At the moment, I was just annoyed. Very.

  “What is it with you people? Why can’t I be left in peace? I buy and rent taxidermy, I do a little insurance appraising, I have a home life, a beautif
ul loving girl. You know, there must be all sorts of people who live their entire lives without being kidnapped by a fraternal order. There must be people who aren’t the target of murdering Coyotes. There must be some people who haven’t been chased by psychotics at every turn. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. Now, can you tell me why that is? Is there a conspiracy? Are you all working together or something?”

  They looked at one another cautiously, and with no little confusion. I continued.

  “So what is it you people want with me this time?”

  Linebacker knew the answer and raised his hand. “We can’t let the Coyotes kill you. The Coyotes must not get all five vuka.”

  With a metallic bang, the door to the front of the truck slammed open. I couldn’t have been more surprised if you’d poured a bucket of Jell-O down the back of my shirt.

  “Garv! My friend!”

  It was my captain of the taxidermy industry, in his little woolen suit and flowery silk tie, ready to tackle the business world head-on.

  “Good grief,” I whispered, and looked at my captors. “You kidnapped Otto, too?”

  “Very heppy to see you…” Or tackle me head-on, more like it. Otto flung himself at me, wrapping his arms around my sore neck.

  “Ow! Otto, get off me, you’re hurting me,” I rasped. He smelled of stale cigarette smoke and street-vendor aftershave.

  I felt the van veer and jolt to a stop, the brakes squealing. I was in for another surprise. A beautiful blond surprise.

  “Garth!”

  “Angie!”

  She rushed from the doorway, grabbed Otto like a humping dog by the scruff of the neck, and threw him aside. Next thing I knew she was hurting my neck, which was OK, and the kisses didn’t hurt at all.

  My mind was spinning. Had the Tupelca kidnapped Angie and Otto, too? No, they’d been up front, driving the getaway van. So, I was kidnapped by Angie and Otto? And they were with the Tupelca?

  I pried my love off me, gave her a kiss on the lips, and said, “For the love of God, would you please tell me what’s going on?”

  That’s when I smelled something familiar. Dog breath. I turned and found Wilco at my side, like he was inspecting my jugular vein for a snack.