by Phil Bowie
“I’m glad you did.”
“Tell me about yourself. Are you seeing anyone?”
“No one in particular. There’s a woman who works at a ticket counter at Teterboro Airport. We go out from time to time.”
“What are your plans with Louis?”
“I don’t know. I like the flying. I never thought of myself as a businessman. I always thought some day I might start up a small charter operation in some backwater place along the coast. Get a Cessna and give sightseeing rides. Take aerial photos, that kind of thing.”
“I think Louis wants to make you some kind of manager.”
“He seems to be training me for something. It’s interesting.”
“Thank you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Thank you for understanding, I guess. This is a nice little place.”
“The best is yet to come,” he said as the waiter brought the salads. “Wait until you try your steak.”
The meal somehow consumed over two hours. He called a cab for her and after she left he walked the streets for an hour, thinking. She obviously had no idea what her husband was capable of. She seemed caught in her marriage, albeit a gilded cage. He resolved to do what he could to protect her even as he worked to help destroy Strake.
The next morning Davis met with Strake in his office.
“She had a long dinner with him at a place called Gina’s,” Davis said, “a greaseball joint near his apartment. They’re good and friendly. I’d say he’s probably doing her.”
Strake glared at him with pure malevolence for a long moment, then seemed to exert an iron control over himself, looking away. He said evenly, “How long do you think this has been going on?”
“I don’t know. Each of the last two weeks she’s taken off for a day by cab. She uses the same cab company each time. I talked to them. She goes downtown. The museums. Shopping. I don’t know all the places she’s been. They could have been meeting someplace.”
Strake stared through him, exuding some dank and ancient force. “I want both of them followed. And I want you to inspect his apartment. Go over it very well but I don’t want him to know you’ve been in there.”
Davis chose a day when Cowboy would be gone on business to Philadelphia, flying the King Air with the accountant as a passenger. He waited two blocks down the street that morning until he saw the pilot come out of the duplex apartment, get into his Ford pickup, and drive away. He gave it fifteen minutes and then walked along the sidewalk not looking to either side, a man merely absorbed in his own usual daily affairs, and right up to the front door. Acting as though he was fumbling with a worn key, he inserted the thin tensioner into the cheap old pin tumbler lock, slid in the pick to align all the tumblers, and in short seconds was inside.
Cowboy had to go back to retrieve a forgotten sectional chart and saw Davis going into the apartment. He kept on driving past.
What did it mean? Strake had to suspect he was spying and there was the notebook in his dresser, filled with facts, including more notes and impressions from the Venezuelan murder scene, that would now confirm Strake’s worst suspicions.
He made the trip to Philadelphia. To do otherwise would have alerted Strake. When he returned that night he stopped at the pay phone on the corner of his block before going to his apartment. He called Rader’s home number. An unfamiliar man answered.
“I need to speak with Rader.”
“Who is this?” the guarded voice said.
He hesitated. “This is Cowboy and I need to talk with Nolan Rader as soon as possible.”
There were several quiet seconds, then the voice said, “Where are you now?”
“I’m at a pay phone. Why?”
The voice said, “You know the last place you saw Mr. Rader?”
“Yes.”
“Go there now. A man will meet you.”
He drove to a small urban public park, deserted at this hour, and sat in the pickup by the curb with the lights out. He watched what appeared to be a furtive drug transaction take place a block away. A man walked by with a Rottweiler on a heavy chain leash. Traffic was sparse. Three cars parked within sight at intervals. After thirty minutes he was about to leave when a heavyset man dressed in jeans and a dark windbreaker came along the sidewalk. He knocked on the passenger-side glass with a fat knuckle and said, “You Cowboy?”
He unlocked the door and the man climbed in.
“Where’s Rader?”
“Just drive. A van will be following us on and off. That will be my guys. We’re going to do a little maneuvering to see if there are any other followers. It will take about an hour to get where we’re going. Go west down here on the main drag, then signal for a right at the first green light but at the last minute slip over and turn left.”
After a series of tricky turns, twice doubling back, driving through a fast food parking area and then through a strip mall, they finally kept to a route that wound off for many miles into the suburbs through some patchy woods. They circled through a development called Ravenswood Acres and finally stopped in the driveway of a modest ranch house that was indistinguishable from several hundred others in the neighborhood. The heavyset man got out to open the two-car garage and then motioned for him to drive inside. There was no sign of the van that had been following them earlier and apparently serving as rear guard.
They were met in the kitchen by a trim, balding middle-aged man in a business suit. When they were all seated in the living room the beefy one said, “I’m Vincent Teagarden with BATF, and this is U.S. Marshal Wesley Doyle.”
“I’ll ask again. Where’s Rader?”
Teagarden said, “Mr. Rader was…a bit overzealous on the matter of Worldarms. He has been transferred to another matter entirely. This is no longer his concern. I understand you claim to have witnessed some sort of confrontation in Venezuela.”
“Not a confrontation. A killing. A cold-blooded murder by Strake and Montgomery Davis. You must have everything I gave to Rader about it.”
“We’ve talked, yes. Do you have any reason to believe that this Strake or Davis suspect you’ve volunteered information to BATF?”
“That’s why I called tonight. By chance I saw Davis entering my apartment this morning. I left a pad there with a lot of information about the operation and some notes they can’t fail to interpret as meaning I saw that killing. The pad wasn’t well hidden. In a dresser drawer. Davis can’t have missed it.”
Teagarden and Doyle exchanged glances.
Doyle said, “You were followed to that park tonight. Right now we’re trying to determine by whom.”
“Well, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet by somebody working for Strake, wouldn’t you?”
“There’s no reason to get upset, here,” Teagarden said.
“Look, I’ve been supplying Rader with a lot of information. He seemed to know a lot more, to have a store of facts concerning illegal activities by Worldarms built up over some time. I saw Strake fire a bullet into a man’s brain and I’m willing to testify, sign a deposition, whatever, so why aren’t Strake and Davis being arrested? Why do I get the impression they aren’t about to be arrested?”
“That’s not within our purview,” Teagarden said. “All I can tell you is that evidence gathering of this scope can take a lot of manpower and a lot of time. Years even. At any rate, it’s neither our concern nor yours any longer.”
“Wait a minute. Is Strake arming somebody the Pentagon or the CIA wants armed? That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why Rader said Strake considers himself immune. Who are they? A rebel group somewhere ready to take down a dictator the CIA doesn’t like? Some paramilitary gang that has promised to take out one of the Colombian drug cartels?”
Teagarden spread his hands innocently and said, “Again, something like that wouldn’t fall within our sphere of responsibilities. Any need we have to know. We’re here, Marshal Doyle and I are, to help you. That’s all we know and all we’re charged to care about.”
“I’m sure
you’ve heard of the witness protection program,” Doyle said. “Also known as WITSEC.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, sir. I’m dead serious. We have reason to believe your life may be in danger.”
“Danger posed by Strake. So why don’t you go get him?”
“There are also people Worldarms may be dealing with who could be a threat to you. In any case you will be accepted into the program provided you are willing to abide by certain stipulations.”
“And those would be?”
Teagarden said, “I’ll let you two discuss what you have to. I’ll go check in with our backup guys.” He got up, pulling a hand-held radio from a belt clip, and went outside.
Doyle said, “Beginning right now, tonight, we break all the chains that hold you to your present life. Every last one, and believe me there are more than you realize. You don’t go back to your apartment or to the airport. You just disappear. You don’t ever come back to this area. We’ll send a team to get your belongings, but you’ll destroy any pictures you have and all of your ID. You’ll move several times under different names until we’re sure there is no trail left to follow. You will write out in detail a complete history of your life so we can cover all the angles. We know what we’re doing and we’re very good at it.
“We’ll set you up in a new life somewhere. It won’t be easy. You’ll live in isolation until we have a completely new identity established for you in detail. You will not ever contact anybody you know now, no matter the reason, no matter how good a friend someone might be. You have no close family left as I understand it so that’s not a problem. That’s usually the most difficult adjustment for many protected witnesses, leaving all but immediate family members behind.
“We’ll give you a new birth certificate, a new social security number, new credit cards. You’ll have to apply for a new driver’s license and test for your pilot’s license and ratings. We’ll help out with most expenses. I see no pressing reason for you to alter your appearance too radically. Color your hair and cut it short, try to dress differently, and that should suffice. You will live a quiet life and report periodically to a Marshal’s office in your relocation area. Some day you might be called as a witness. If not, the more time that passes, generally, the safer you’ll be, but that’s not to say you or we should ever relax the rules. Are you willing to strictly abide by all of that?”
He thought for a long moment, staring at the wall. He said quietly, “What alternatives do I have?”
“Not many. I believe this to be the prudent one.”
He had some money that he’d saved over the years. Enough for a good stake. Maybe enough to buy a Cessna. He was through working for Worldarms at any rate, and he had few other significant ties to the area. He had little to lose by agreeing, so he finally said simply, “All right.”
“Then we might as well get started,” Doyle said. “Do you have a preference for a new name? It shouldn’t be even close to that of a relation or to anybody you’ve ever known.”
He thought for a minute.
“Make it Bass,” he said. “Sam Bass.”
22
THE MODEST HOUSE WAS AT THE TOP END OF A STEEPLY switch-backing graveled lane a mile outside the town of Cherokee. John Hardin parked his ten-year-old high-mileage dark blue Toyota Camry in the tilted yard and set the parking brake firmly. It was November but only mildly chilly today. A tendril of smoke was curling up from the stone chimney to be shredded and swept away by a light breeze. The well-kept house had board-and-batten siding stained gray, with a green metal roof that sloped down and out to cover a full-length front porch. An old but clean Dodge pickup was parked to the side.
He got out stiffly and looked around. There was a rough lush meadow tumbling away from the house for several acres of the mountain flank, revealing a distant view down onto the narrow town in the valley, where lights were coming on as dusk fell. The woods rising up behind the house were thick with stately conifers, whispering prehistoric secrets among themselves as they combed the breeze. The hardwoods had shed their leaves, giving the forest a soft multicolored carpet.
He heard the front door open and turned to see a thin slightly bent old man dressed in silver-belted jeans and a red shirt with colorful beadwork in angular abstract designs flashed across the chest. His coarse black hair was long, streaked with gray, and bound tightly back into a single long braid.
“You can’t be selling anything I would need and probably not even anything I would want at my age,” the old man said with a wrinkled grin that showed a few teeth gone. His skin looked burnished and well-aged, like the leather of a Second World War flight jacket kept with care for decades, with deep permanent crevices and intricate patterns of etched-in lines.
“You’re Mr. Wasituna Lightfoot?”
“That’s what they call me. What do they call you?”
“I’m using the name John Hardin.”
The old man frowned and peered down at him intently. “You knew my granddaughter, then.”
“She said your father Goingback might have been one of the last of the Cherokee witches. Able to read another’s thoughts. Did he teach you how to do that?”
“There’s no magic to it. When you get older you can sometimes see into people a little clearer, that’s all. So many years take a toll but they also bestow a certain wisdom if you only let them. Besides, no white man has come to see me in a long time, and Valerie described a man of your age and size she had met out on that island. A man she had met and chosen. A man who was a good friend to her Joshua. Can you tell me, why did she die in that way?”
“Because of me, sir. They were coming after me.”
“And so we were told. We were also told you were dead.” The old man appraised him quietly with squinted eyes, finally nodded once, and grinned again. “You move carefully and your face is bruised around your eyes so you have been damaged but you don’t look at all dead. Come into my house, John Hardin, and we’ll talk.”
The breeze was ghosting into the partly-opened front windows in the living room, ruffling the curtains. It was a good home, old and solid and comfortable and reassuring, this home where she had grown up. Where she had played and laughed and asked many questions and made her plans. There was a small hickory fire in the fireplace, muskily scenting the room and dispelling the chill. A fire like many she must have looked into, the hickory scent catching in her hair as she had dreamed her dreams.
The stone wall above and flanking the fireplace had a series of thick pine shelves that held pottery and fine carvings of eagles and animals, and old wood-framed photos. He stared at one that immediately caught his eye, of a much younger Wasituna standing unbent near a waterfall, with his hand lightly on the shoulder of a six-or seven-year-old Valerie in a plain loose dress. She’d had even then a certain wry smile and a spark in her eye that hinted at the proud woman she would become. He felt his throat constrict and he could not speak. He turned away and sat at one end of the couch, the old man seated opposite on a straight chair, his hands on his knees, waiting patiently.
Finally he said, “I shouldn’t have come here, but I just needed to tell you that I’m sorry. She thought the world of you, sir. She would offer some bit of advice based on something you’d taught her, or tell me something about her childhood, some good memory that would include you. I know you pretty much raised her, and you did a good job of it. She wanted me to come here to meet you.”
“She lives in here,” the old man said, and tapped a gnarled finger on his chest. “And she lives on in Joshua and in you. Every parent believes his children and their children to be special gifts to the world, but there was always something a little more in Valerie. A strong, clean light in her soul that everybody who knew her could feel shining out on them. Her light changed those around her, as it has changed you. So her light—her spirit—lives on.”
“Yes, she changed me. I’ll never get over the loss of her but I’m richer for having known her. I’ll always love her.”
“No, sir. Not really. I saw one of them murder a man. I started collecting information against him, but that didn’t work out so I went into the witness protection program. It seemed like my best choice at the time.” He found himself saying much more than he had intended, instinctively trusting this old man.
“Under the name of Sam Bass.”
“Yes. But partly by chance they located me and then came after me. I should have been much more careful. I was stupid, and it killed her.”
“Now you use another name.”
“I’m back in the protection program. These bruises around my eyes are from surgery to change my appearance. I wear contact lenses to change my eye color. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, and I have to ask you never to tell anybody I was here. It could be dangerous for you. I know Joshua is over near Maggie Valley, but I can’t go near him. For his own safety.”
“Why haven’t these men been arrested? The sheriff of that county where she lived, he can’t tell me. Nobody can tell me.”
“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think they will be arrested any time soon. The one I saw do the murder is rich and powerful, with many connections. He may be selling guns to some group the government wants armed. I don’t know any way to find out.”
“Did Valerie tell you anything about our old ways?”
“Yes. She loved the culture. The long history of your people.”
“Many years ago, years before Valerie was born, there was a young Cherokee woman who was brutally abused. Raped.” The old man’s eyes were young and hard now, looking fiercely into a distant past. “There were corrupt reasons why the man who did it was not arrested. But it was the old way of our people, going back generations upon generations upon generations, for the family of one who has been wronged to see justice done. Three of us met and swore an oath. Justice found that rapist. He did not rape again.”