Glass Tiger

by Joe Gores

  Thorne rode a series of city buses way out Sepulveda into the Valley, looking for just the right setup. Finally, in the back of a mall parking lot in Mission Hills, he spotted a beat-up 1998 Isuzu Trooper LS with a FOR SALE, $850 sign in the driver’s window and a phone number written in soluble paint on the door.

  The paint was peeling, the trim around the left headlight was gone, the front bumper was mashed down on the left side. But the rubber was good, a like-new spare was mounted on the back, and scrawled on the FOR SALE sign was ‘153,411 mi, runs great, power windows and steering and door locks, full tank of gas’.

  He was reminded of his ancient Land-Rover, back in Tsavo. He shook off the memory, and called the number. When he asked about the Trooper, a squeaky-voiced teenage girl exclaimed, ‘Matt’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t go ’way!’

  Matt was a community college student, thin and earnest and eager to make a sale. Thorne took the Trooper around the parking lot and out into the hustle-bustle of Sepulveda, with Matt beside him, stopped back in the lot with the motor running.

  ‘Seven-fifty. Right now. Cash.’

  Twenty minutes later, Thorne was on the 405 north to its merger with 1-5 in the Trooper, the signed pink slip over the visor. Whenever he stopped for gas, he bought candy bars and corn chips. Seven hours later he checked into the Microtec Inn and Suites at the cloverleaf where east-west 12 intersected north-south 1-5. He ate everything in sight at Rocky’s across the interchange. Back in his room he left a message for Deputy Escobar at the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department. No name: just a phone number, room number, and two words: CALL ME.

  Escobar called back within a half hour. Thorne said:

  ‘Lunch is on me tomorrow, same time, same place.’

  Escobar took just a moment to place the voice. Then he said, ‘Check,’ and hung up.

  Thorne went to bed and slept hard, without nightmares.

  41

  ‘Déjà vu all over again,’ said Thorne when Escobar entered the Sunset Bar and Grill at the Tower Park Marina off California 12. The deputy did indeed look exactly the same, right down to the miniature purple heart and mid-East service bar pinned above the ESCOBAR nametag on his impeccable tan Sheriff’s uniform. He chuckled at Thorne across the table.

  ‘Not you. You look like you need to swear out an ag-assault complaint against somebody.’

  The place was crowded with tourists and day-sailors. A blonde waitress came to take their order. Cheeseburgers, fries.

  ‘You ought to see the other guy,’ said Thorne. ‘That’s not the best part of it. Now the Feebs are looking for me as hard as they were looking for your perp last time around. You can win a promotion by turning me in.’

  A grin softened Escobar’s features. ‘I knew that relationship wouldn’t last.’ He turned his coffee cup idly. ‘I saw by the TV that Jaeger ate a bullet for the President up in Montana. You know anything about that?’

  ‘Yeah, a lot. Listen, you told me you took fluid, blood and tissue samples at the crime scene here in the Delta – including semen samples from Nisa’s body, right?’

  ‘Right. And the Feebs threw me off my own case and then stonewalled the evidence. No DNA results, no autopsy results, no tox screens. Never told me if the Magnum was the murder weapon, or even who it was registered to. So I forgot to tell them about my samples. I’ve got nothing to compare ’em with anyway.’

  ‘The Magnum was Damon Mather’s.’ Escobar’s eyebrows went up in surprise. ‘Yeah, intriguing, isn’t it? And here’s something else. Back in November, a doctor down in LA had a rape victim who was connected with this case. Intimately. Her attacker ejaculated on her face and body after beating the shit out of her. And the doc’s got the perp’s semen samples.’

  Escobar’s eyes gleamed. Thorne had been right: getting shut out of his own murder investigation had cut deep. Escobar was waggling his fingers before Thorne even finished speaking.

  ‘Okay, c’mon, give. The doc’s address. I’ll overnight my semen samples to him as soon as I get back to the office.’

  For the next two days Thorne marked time, exploring the Delta’s twisting waterways in a rented boat, hiking along its levees and studying its bird life. He wanted to call Janet at Whiskey River, just to hear her voice; but he figured he had nothing to tell her that she would want to hear.

  On the third day, unable to contain himself any longer, he sent a three-word fax to Houghton: Yes or No? Twenty minutes later, he got back a oneword reply: Tomorrow. The next afternoon brought another oneworder: Yes.

  Thorne drove to Lodi to drink beer and think. Johnny Doyle had laid it all out for him that night at the Hard Times Cafe, he just hadn’t been listening hard enough.

  Kurt fuckin’ Jaeger, our wunnerful Chief of Staff, had th’ hots for Nisa… She turn’d ’m down cold…

  Not understood by Doyle, but now understood by Thorne: she turned Jaeger down so hard he suddenly found he had trouble getting it up with any woman. That humiliation quickly led to obsession, to beating women for sexual release. Thorne felt as if he had raised a rock and found something slimy underneath it.

  So he got a black pimp in LA named Sharkey to fin’ ’im hookers din’t mind gettin’ beat on…

  When Janet Kestrel turned up at Jaeger’s hotel in LA, he left Nisa’s name and phone number and ‘Terminous’ on his phone pad for her to see. He had glimpsed a woman driving Corwin’s get away vehicle at the Grand Canyon, and thought Janet was she. But in LA, she played him so skillfully – while he was playing her – that he was deceived into thinking she was just a stupid little squaw girl after all, with no connection to Corwin.

  So Jaeger had followed his usual M.O. with any attractive woman at his mercy. He had beaten her to get sexually aroused, then had masturbated on her unconscious body.

  But at the hospital she passed on to Corwin what she had seen on Jaeger’s phone pad: Nisa’s name and number and the word Terminous. On election day, Corwin called Nisa, but she hung up on him before he could say they had nothing to fear from him. Then she called Jaeger, terrified, thinking she needed protection because Corwin had found them. Jaeger’s plan for revenge was back on track.

  That night at the Delta, Jaeger told Sharkey he was going to ‘scout around’ the houseboat. He went aboard, maybe saw Damon’s gun, said something like, ‘For Chrissake, gimme that thing before it goes off.’ Of course Damon did: Jaeger was there because Nisa had pleaded with him to come rescue them.

  Instead, he killed them. Six shots, muffled by the fog, five into Nisa. Then he ejaculated on her body. Murder: the ultimate sexual frenzy and release all in one package. With Corwin to take the rap. But Corwin survived.

  No wonder that Jaeger had dragged Thorne out of Kenya when the computer said he was the best man to find Corwin. Jaeger had murdered Corwin’s daughter and had befouled her body, and had blamed it on her father. Who was still alive. Jaeger was terrified, in fear of his life.

  But he was also ambitious. And Corwin had been smart enough to know that the best way to get him out in the open was to make all of them think that Wallberg was his target.

  Where Wallberg went, Jaeger went. When Wallberg was exposed, Jaeger was exposed.

  End of Jaeger. But end of Corwin, too, thanks to Thorne.

  Nothing to do now except tell Janet what had really happened on the Delta that night. He used his phone card.

  Kate’s voice said, ‘Whiskey River.’

  ‘This is Thorne. Tell Janet to be proud of Corwin. Tell her that he was not psychotic, just a man bent on vengeance. Tell her that he didn’t do anything ugly or dishonorable.’

  ‘I can’t. A week ago that fucking Fat-Arms LeDoux rolled over on her for immunity on an ag-assault charge. Hatfield’s men took her away in handcuffs.’ Her voice brightened. ‘At least, Hatfield reneged on their deal. LeDoux’s going down, hard.’

  A week. His heart sank. It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t gone looking for her. Janet didn’t have anything they wanted, but Hatfield would
never believe that.

  Thorne felt his face grow hot. For a moment he thought it was an adrenaline rush, then he recognized it as rage. The same rage that had so often carried him safely through his Ranger years, suppressed since Alison and Eden had died.

  Now he welcomed it. Red, cleansing rage, as he had felt at the Colombian rebels who had cut off Victor’s finger. But this rage was directed at Hatfield.

  The fucker had gone too far. Despite what he knew, despite what Hatfield had done to him, Thorne had been planning to creep meekly away, find a way to get back to Africa. But this! The Ranger mantra flashed through his mind: Rangers don’t leave Rangers behind.

  For right now, Janet was a fellow Ranger.

  And she had saved his life, as he had saved Victor’s.

  They had taken her watch, but Janet came awake with a start and knew it was the middle of the night. Her edge was that she had nothing to tell them except that Thorne was alive. And she would never tell them that. She had deserted him, sick, in the middle of the night, but she knew that if he learned where she was, he would try to get her out. He would fail, but he would try.

  Thorne had the Benny Schutz identity, so he could move around freely. Hatfield thought he was dead. He had the Trooper, a clean vehicle with no connection to Brendan Thorne in anyone’s data base. He knew what Jaeger had done on the houseboat. No one else living did.

  There had been something between Wallberg and Corwin from forty years ago. When Wallberg got that inaugural day message meant to get Jaeger into the open – CONGRATULATIONS TO A DEAD PRESIDENT – he had instantly accepted the idea that Corwin wanted to kill him. Thorne was going to find out why.

  For Janet. For the dead Hal Corwin.

  He had a lot of driving to do. Tomorrow was Memorial Day.

  42

  Memorial Day. Gus Wallberg sat in the old easy chair that had been his father’s, staring out of his study window at the blue and sparkling water of Lake Minnetonka. The kids were up for the weekend and had the sailboat out, heeled over with the wind, slicing through the waves. He could almost hear their shouts and laughter through the thermopaned glass. Edith was supervising in the kitchen: in two hours they would have a backyard barbecue under the big oak trees that would go on until well after dark.

  Just six months ago, he and Edith had sat here together on New Year’s Eve, looking out over the frozen lake from this very window, discussing his upcoming presidency. What a difference those six months had made! Corwin’s inaugural-day letter had not yet been written. Thorne had not been brought in from Africa at Kurt’s urging to try and find Corwin and stop him. There was no hint that Kurt would die by Corwin’s hand, no hint that Corwin would die by Hatfield’s hand.

  No hint at all that Wallberg’s poll numbers would soar as a result. The American people thought their President had almost been assassinated by some Muslim fundamentalist terrorist or some right-wing survivalist fanatic, and had rallied around. What would they think if they knew that countless millions of their tax dollars had been wasted by the Justice Department to find an assassin who didn’t exist? Well, they would never find out.

  Only Wallberg and a tiny handful of his most trusted aides knew that it had been someone from the President’s past. Terrill Hatfield had killed the killer, thus freeing their President of the dark burden he had carried for forty years.

  Almost freeing him. He sighed. Even here, even for just a weekend, he could not escape the pressures of his job. A hardcopy of the first draft of his Fourth of July speech was lying unedited on his lap. Looking at the clock on the mantel above the huge stone fireplace, he felt a tightening in his chest. In one minute, Hatfield would be calling on the secure scrambler phone with his final report on the search for Thorne and that woman, Janet Kestrel. Depending on what Hatfield had to say, Wallberg might truly be free of that dark burden.

  The phone buzzed discreetly. Wallberg lifted the receiver from its cradle with no visible tremor in his hand.

  ‘Terrill, happy Memorial Day.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr. President,’ came Hatfield’s unmistakable tones. ‘I hope you are being allowed to relax with your family.’

  ‘I’m on my way to a backyard barbecue right now. You have news for me?’

  ‘I have closure for you, Mr. President. Janet Kestrel is in custody. A week of sleep deprivation, no privacy, and interrogations around the clock. We have wrung her dry. I can assure you that Corwin did not pass on to her any dangerous knowledge of any sort.’

  ‘Outstanding!’ But Wallberg still had concerns. ‘When you release her, Terrill, won’t that leave us with a new problem? If she goes to the media—’

  ‘I am arranging for her permanent commitment to a mental institution as an incurable psychotic. She will have daily psychiatric counselling sessions that will be taped without the doctor’s knowledge. The more she insists on her story, the more apparent her psychosis will seem. If anything does surface…’

  Wallberg’s burden was lifting, lifting.

  ‘How soon will you be able to get it done, Terrill?’

  ‘Within the week. Both parents dead, her father was an alcoholic, so I ordered the Los Angeles AIC, Sammy Spaulding, to work up a psychiatric history starting in her pre-teen years, fabricating a pattern of sexual abuse from age two on into her teens. I went through Quantico with Sammy, he’s a solid company man, and I’ve instructed him to make sure that the paperwork is bulletproof.’

  Wallberg nodded his unseen approval as he listened to Hatfield giving him his life back. The man was worthy of his trust. But even with any threat from Kestrel neutralized, he still had to ask. Thorne was surely dead, had never met Corwin, but still he had been digging into the past.

  ‘Did the Kestrel woman have any information about Thorne?’

  ‘None. We know he was looking for her, but we found her before he could. She had never even heard his name until I questioned her.’

  ‘Any old Ranger friends he might have contacted? Those elite military types tend to stick together.’

  ‘His only Stateside contact was Victor Blackburn, that Ranger stationed at Fort Benning. We have been clandestinely monitoring his phone calls, letters, e-mails and faxes, twenty-four/seven. Nothing. Since Thorne disappeared into the Tuolemne River, he has reached out to no one, I mean no one. No contacts, no sightings. Mr. President, Brendan Thorne is dead.’

  The final weight fell from Wallberg’s shoulders. All possible vestiges of anything Corwin might have known or recalled was gone from the face of the earth. Anyone he might have passed anything on to was dead. Or incarcerated as insane. He cleared his throat sententiously. He loved this part of being President: the chance to reward the loyal service of his underlings.

  ‘I know how fervently you want to serve your country, Terrill. Serious lapses by the current Director of the FBI will soon be brought to my attention. I think you will enjoy my Fourth of July speech.’ He paused. ‘Mr. Director.’

  ‘I…’ There was a catch in Hatfield’s voice. ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Mr. President.’

  ‘You have earned the position, Terrill.’

  Both men hung up simultaneously, each in his own way elated and transported by the conversation. Dreams really did come true. The good guys really did win out in the end.

  It was the first of June, two days after Memorial Day. Brendan Thorne had gotten to Rochester, Minnesota the night before, coming north on 52 after driving east on 1-90 non-stop from Rapid City, South Dakota. Just after midnight he had checked into a modest, anonymous motel called The Highway near the junction overpass of 14 and 52 west of the city.

  Tired as he was, he had known it would be a mistake to stay at one of the big downtown hotels like the Kahler. The Feebs checked places like that. The Highway Motel was neat, cheap, and clean, just blocks from St. Mary’s Hospital and about a mile from the Rochester Public Library on Second Street, S.W.

  The library was an old-fashioned tan limestone building with a warm and welcoming air. In a glas
s-fronted display case were artifacts from the massive tornado in the last century that had devastated Rochester and led to the eventual establishment of the Mayo Clinic and St. Mary’s Hospital. One was a piece of wood with a straw driven through it by the force of the wind.

  When the silver-haired and bosomy woman behind the counter finished checking out a stack of bright-jacketed kids’ books for a soccer mom, Thorne approached her. She had a severe Irish face but a pleasant smile.

  ‘That straw through the plank!’ he enthused. ‘Amazing!’

  ‘Good often comes from ill. The tornado was the making of this city.’

  ‘Well, it’s a fascinating display.’ He paused. ‘I’m hoping that your library has the Rochester Post-Bulletin newspapers from the Vietnam war era on file.’

  ‘Have you tried the Post-Bulletin itself?’

  ‘I’m much more comfortable in a library setting, ma’am.’

  She gave him a warm smile. ‘I know exactly what you mean. We don’t have those newspapers on computer yet, not that far back, but we do have them on microfiche.’

  Twenty minutes later, Thorne was threading film through one of the three reading machines in a small musty windowless room hidden away behind the library stacks. There was even a photocopy machine that turned out white-on-black thermal copies.

  He worked with a great sense of urgency. He had to get the leverage to break Janet out before they drained her dry and stuck her away in some mental facility where he could never find her.

  The year he wanted was 1966, the day was January first, New Year’s Day. He started turning the crank of the microfiche reader. When he left two hours later he had a thin sheaf of thermal copies from his research. He paid for them, carried them out to his Trooper, and drove back to his motel.

  A warm breeze billowed the lacy curtains out into the room, then sucked them back against the screen. Diesel fumes from the highway mingled with the enticing smell of broiling meat from the steakhouse down the block. Thorne settled down with Chinese takeout and the photocopied news stories.