A bald man named Josh Fielding seemed to be in charge. He unwrapped a new deck of cards and announced the rules. “We play Texas Holdem here. Are you in, Mr. Nicholas?”
“Sure,” Nick said and bought twenty dollars’ worth of chips from the banker, a red-haired man in his thirties. His name was Henry Wilson and he was a salesman of bathroom fixtures.
“Twenty won’t get you far with this crowd,” he warned Nick. “The ante alone is five.”
“A bit rich for my blood,” he replied. “I’ll go for forty and that’s my limit.”
The fourth man at the table, Charlie Rainbow, was a local rancher, part Native American, with a leathery face and deep blue eyes. They drew for the deal and he won, giving the cards a quick, rapid shuffle and cut. He dealt two hole cards to each player and the game was under way.
Nick lost another ten dollars before he folded, figuring he’d try one more hand before quitting the game. Fielding and Rainbow, who knew each other, were talking about the latter’s German shepherds, which he actually used for herding sheep. Wilson was a stranger, much like Nick, but he managed to win the hand. On the second hand Nick had two kings as his hole cards, and he ignored his self-imposed limit to bet sixty dollars. One of the flops gave him a third king, but he ended up losing to Fielding’s full house.
“That’s it for me,” he told them, rising from the table.
“If you’re in town, try again tomorrow,” Rainbow told him. “We try to get a game going most every night.”
Nick returned to Sandra’s room and was surprised to find her on her feet. “Where’ve you been?” she asked.
“Poker game down the hall. I lost.”
“Nick! Keep your mind on business.”
“More to the point, what are you doing up?”
“I dozed for a bit and I’m feeling better now. I think we should go tonight.”
“Sandra—”
“In the early morning, before dawn. Before breakfast.”
“Impossible things before breakfast.”
“Exactly! I need you, Nick. I can drive the car, but I need you to get the ostrich into the horse van.”
“He’ll probably still be asleep.”
She shook her head. “He was awake the other morning. Awake enough to give me a good solid kick.”
He could see there was no talking her out of it. “All right,” he agreed. “We’ll go. I hope I’m more successful than I was at cards.”
When they left the motel at four A.M., clouds had moved in to all but obscure the moon. Sandra was walking with a decided limp, but it didn’t seem to affect her driving. “Bainbridge told me he’s installing security cameras next week,” Nick told her.
“Locking the barn after the horse—”
“Ostrich.”
“—ostrich is stolen.”
“At least we hope it’ll be stolen,” Nick agreed. “Here’s the turn.”
He’d debated whether to cut the fence at the same spot Sandra had chosen, but when they reached it there was enough pre-dawn light for Nick to see that the fence hadn’t really been repaired, just patched with chicken wire.
“The same spot?” Sandra asked.
“The same spot. It’ll be easy.”
He’d barely removed the chicken wire when he saw some of the ostriches moving toward them. He slipped the toeless sock over his left arm and climbed through the opening. The birds seemed more curious than hostile and he moved quickly through them, searching for Oscar. The dark-feathered males seemed identical in this light and he decided to rely on his nose. He’d detected a definite Oscar odor on his previous visit.
And suddenly the ostracized ostrich was there in front of him, stretching its neck until it towered over him. The others had scattered, and Nick was alone with his prize. He took a deep breath and wrapped his right arm around its neck, careful to avoid a kick from its legs. Then he pulled the sock from his left arm and slid it over the bird’s head. Oscar made a hissing sound, apparently a show of anger.
Sandra was waiting outside the fence with the ramp down on the horse van. “Be careful he doesn’t kick you,” she warned.
“Don’t worry. I think I’ve got him under control.”
“I remember that smell. What is it?”
“I have a feeling that’s what makes him so valuable.”
Oscar went into the horse van, his vision still obscured by the sock, and Sandra quickly closed it. “We make a great team,” she said as she slipped behind the wheel and gunned the engine.
They were almost back to the highway when the first bullet shattered the side window behind Nick’s head. “Someone’s shooting at us!” Nick yelled. “Off to our right. Keep your head down!”
“Is it Bainbridge?”
“I don’t know. Keep driving.” He heard two more shots, but they missed the car. He only hoped they’d missed the ostrich as well.
“I can see headlights. He’s following us!”
“Do you have a gun?”
She shook her head. “Couldn’t get it through airport security. Didn’t think I’d need one anyway.”
The pursuing vehicle had cut across the field, trying to head them off. There was enough light now to make out a black SUV with tinted windshield, closing fast. “If he fires again he can’t miss us,” Nick told her. “Any ideas?”
“We stop and hand over the ostrich.”
“And he’ll kill us anyway.”
“I guess you’re right.”
The SUV pulled up alongside them and a familiar figure got out. It was Charlie Rainbow, the rancher who’d been at the poker game, and he was holding an old-fashioned six-shooter aimed right at them. “Hey,” Nick said in a friendly voice, “don’t you ever sleep?”
“Not when I hear cars on my property. That’s when I get out my pistol.”
“This is your property?”
Rainbow nodded. “Right up to Bainbridge’s fence. And you’re trespassing, Mr. — Nicholas, was it?”
Sandra remained silent and let Nick handle it. “Sorry about the trespassing. My girl and I were just looking for a little privacy.”
“Yeah? This isn’t no lover’s lane, Nicholas. Better go back to your motel room.” He glanced at the horse trailer and waved the pistol at it. “What’s in there?”
“My horse,” Sandra said, breaking her silence. “Want to see him?”
“No, just get off my land.”
“What about my broken window?” Nick asked.
“What is it, a rental? Just tell them it was vandalism. Their insurance will cover it.”
“All right. Can I have a chance to win back my money tonight?”
Rainbow grinned. “Sure. We’ll be there. Just stay off my land. I’d hate to shoot you by accident.”
On the way back to the motel, Nick asked, “What if he was a horse fancier and wanted to look at your nag?”
“It was still pretty dark. He couldn’t have seen him very well.”
“Well enough to tell a horse from an ostrich, I’ll bet.”
“Nick, we have to take chances in this business, you know that.”
“Are you always this lucky?”
She snorted. “I once served prison time for stealing a roulette wheel, as you well know.”
“Okay, what do you do now? Phone Renny Owlish?”
“Exactly. We have a bird in the hand.”
“Or at least in the van.”
Sandra parked the van at the rear of the motel lot and detached it from her car. Nick brought out some water and snacks for the big bird, who didn’t seem to mind his captivity all that much. Later he joined Sandra in her room and returned the trailer key to her. She called Owlish on her cell phone with the good news. “I have the product, Mr. Owlish. I’m ready to deliver it for the balance of the money.”
Nick could hear the raspy response. “Where are you? At the motel?”
“Of course. Are you coming here?”
“It may not be safe. I’ll call you back in a few hours, when I’m in th
e vicinity.”
“Fine.” She gave him her cell-phone number. “I’ll be hearing from you.”
“What now?” Nick asked.
“We’ve got the bird. All we have to do is turn it over to Owlish and collect our money.”
“But why is he so valuable? Have you thought about that?”
“I’m just a thief, Nick. You’re the one who sometimes plays detective.”
“It has to be drugs or diamonds.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ostriches will eat anything, and since they have no teeth, small stones often remain in their stomachs to grind foodstuffs. An adult ostrich can carry a couple of pounds of pebbles in its stomach for this purpose.”
“You’ve been surfing the Internet again.”
“That’s what it’s for.”
“So if it’s drugs or diamonds, how did they get into the ostriches’ lair in the first place? Do you think they just fell from the sky?”
“Exactly! Planes fly over Bainbridge Acres all the time. These were dropped in some sort of small containers to be picked up on the ground. Only the pilot missed the target area and the stuff landed among the ostriches.”
Sandra wasn’t convinced. “Even if our ostrich swallowed some of it, why would that keep the others away from him?”
“Oscar has a definite odor about him. Walt Bainbridge has allergies and couldn’t smell it, but I certainly could and so could you. The containers for the drugs or diamonds or whatever were strongly scented so they could be located after being dropped from the plane. The scent was repulsive to the other ostriches and they steered clear of Oscar.”
“Nick, can you imagine grown men sniffing around the ground for these things?”
“No, but I can imagine dogs.”
She’d walked to the window to peer out at the car, and suddenly she cried out, “Nick! There’s someone at the horse trailer!”
He was at the window in a flash, staring out at a red-haired man wearing a heavy leather coat. “Do you know him?”
“I never saw him before.”
“I did. I played cards with him last night. His name is Henry Wilson. Come on!”
They reached the horse trailer as Wilson was struggling to pick the lock on the back door and the ostrich was giving out his familiar hissing sound. But he wasn’t the only intruder. Nick saw Charlie Rainbow’s SUV pulling into the parking lot and heading for them. “Get away from that trailer,” Rainbow told them, brandishing the six-shooter he’d used earlier.
Wilson turned, expressing annoyance at the interruption. “Put that gun away, you fool!” he told Rainbow. “It’s broad daylight! Do you want the police on our necks?”
“I want that bird,” Rainbow said, “and I mean to have him.”
“Wait a minute,” Nick urged. “Before we all get arrested, let’s go to my room and talk this over.”
Sandra started to protest but he gave her a light jab in the ribs to urge her agreement. The four of them trooped up to Nick’s room with Rainbow still keeping a hand on his gun. Nick sat them down and began talking. “I think you’ll all agree that what we have here is a very valuable bird. I believe a flight by a private plane from Mexico purposely dropped several small containers holding a valuable substance, something you couldn’t risk being found by Customs if you brought it across by car. They were meant to land on your property, Rainbow, but they fell into your neighbor’s ostrich farm by mistake. We know ostriches will eat virtually anything, even small stones, and this one the Bainbridges named Oscar ate your valuable cargo. The pellets were strongly scented so they could be located by your dogs after they hit the ground. You mentioned at the poker game that you had German shepherds, which are often considered better than bloodhounds at picking up a scent. But the dogs merely led you to the ostrich farm, where Bainbridge heard them barking last week. After studying them and noting the ostracized one, you were sure it was the tracking scent that was keeping the others away. You contacted Renny Owlish and Owlish hired Sandra to steal the ostrich.”
“What’s Wilson’s part in all this?” Sandra asked.
Nick smiled. “Owlish booked your hotel room so he knew where you’d be staying. He arrived here earlier and took a room under his real name, just to keep an eye on things.”
“You mean Henry Wilson and Renny Owlish are the same person?”
“That’s right,” Nick told her, keeping an eye on Wilson.
“You knew that because of the bird in Owlish’s name,” she said.
“No, I knew it because Renny Owlish is an anagram for Henry Wilson.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s cut the talk,” Rainbow said. “The chips are mine and I intend to recover them from that bird’s stomach.”
“Diamond chips?” Sandra asked. “Is that what this is all about?”
Henry Wilson sighed. “Computer chips, the most powerful yet developed in Japan, stolen and smuggled into Mexico on their way to the highest bidder in Silicon Valley. Worth far more than diamond chips these days. They’re packed into small metal capsules, twelve to a capsule. Six capsules were dropped. That ostrich has seventy-two computer chips in its stomach.”
Sandra took over then. “The deal was one hundred grand to steal that ostrich, and I did it, with Nick’s help. I want the balance of my money. Then you can have the bird.”
“You’ve got a third of it. That’s all you’re getting,” Wilson said. “You may have the ostrich but we’ve got you.”
“Hand over the key to the horse trailer,” Rainbow ordered. The six-shooter was back in his hand. “I can’t miss at this range.”
“You get the key when I get my money,” Sandra told them.
Wilson slapped her across the face and Nick grabbed him around the neck, yanking him backward. But Rainbow moved in with his gun and pointed it inches from her head. “One move and she dies,” he shouted. “Give us the key!”
“You’d better do it,” Nick told her. “They mean business.”
“Nick—”
“Do it.”
She slipped the key from the pocket of her jeans and handed it over. “Shall we tie them up?” Rainbow asked.
“No need,” Wilson decided. “She’s got a bum leg and he’s past his prime. They can’t hurt us.” He took a packet of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and tossed it on the bed. “Here’s another ten thousand. Consider yourselves paid in full.”
They left Nick and Sandra and headed for the horse trailer in the far corner of the lot. Rainbow brought his car around and hooked it up to the trailer. They didn’t want to risk anyone seeing the ostrich in the busy motel lot, so they drove several miles out of town before they found a deserted side road where they could unlock the rear door and view their prize.
It was only then that they discovered the trailer was empty.
“How’d you do that, Nick?” Sandra Paris asked as they headed north with the ostrich in a horse trailer.
“When I went down to feed Oscar just after we got back to the motel, I saw the night manager, Sid Rawson, going off duty. I gave him a thousand dollars to rent a duplicate trailer. I knew one or both of those guys would show up. That’s why I poked you to help get them up to the room and away from the trailer, so Sid could make the switch. I bought a new padlock for him to put on the duplicate trailer, and gave you the key to that lock, keeping the original key in my pocket. I promised him another thousand when we met him just now and reclaimed the bird.”
“What now?”
Nick shrugged. “You should be able to find a veterinarian who can remove those capsules from Oscar’s stomach without doing fatal harm. Then you drive to Silicon Valley and shop them around to the highest bidder. Maybe you can even get Oscar back to Bainbridge Acres.”
“Come with me, Nick,” she urged. “We’ll have a fine old time together.”
“I can’t do it,” he told her, a bit sadly. “I helped you this far as a favor, because you called on me. But my job is done now. You can pay me for expenses, but th
at’s all. Drop me at the San Jose airport and I’ll be on my way home.”
“Gloria’s waiting.”
“Yes, that too. I hope she’ll always be waiting.”
When she dropped him at the airport she said, “I guess this is goodbye, then.”
“If you ever get kicked by another ostrich, give me a call. You’ve got my number.”
Blues in the Kabul Night
by Clark Howard
© 2007 by Clark Howard
A professional writer for more than 30 years, and a contributor to this magazine for almost as long, five-time EQMM Readers Award-winner Clark Howard is most often associated with the crime genre. He has, however, written more than 200 short stories in other genres. And it isn’t only fiction that he excels at. His true-crime books have brought him equal acclaim. This time out he writes of soldiers. It’s a world he knows well.
❖
The old four-engine Constellation cargo plane dropped down out of the darkening Afghanistan sky shortly after flying over the border from Pakistan, and received landing instructions from the tower at Kotubkhel Airport outside Kabul. Morgan Tenny, hunched in a jump seat behind Benny Cone, the pilot, looked down on the squalid outskirts of the Afghan city as the runway lights came into sight.
“You sure I’m not going to have any problem at the airport?” Tenny asked.
“Trust me,” said Benny Cone. “I been sneaking people in and out of this country for three years and haven’t lost a client yet.”
“What’s your secret?” Tenny asked.
“Hershey bars,” Cone replied.
“Hershey bars?”
“Yeah, with almonds. Afghanis are nuts about almonds. Excuse the pun.”
The old plane’s landing gear bumped hard against the blacktop runway, rose, bumped again, harder, then settled roughly into a jerky, lurching landing and decreased speed as it rolled toward the cargo terminal. When it came to a stop, Morgan Tenny followed Benny Cone through a narrow aisle between large, cable-secured wooden crates, to a high, wide cargo door which Cone unbolted and slid open on ball-bearing runners. Four forklift off-loaders were already driving toward the plane. Opening a hatch next to the cargo door, Cone unfolded an aluminum ladder that reached to the ground. Swinging a carry-on over one shoulder, he climbed down.
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007 Page 26