by Bobby Cole
Runt started grabbing some of the stuff he’d stolen from John Allen’s house and wanted to put it in Winston’s truck.
“Are you crazy?” Winston snapped at him. “Leave that shit in the car, man!”
Runt left the guitar in the Porsche but put John Allen’s sunglasses in his pocket. He parked the car and looked down the levee at the still water. He loved the car and hated to do it, but he gave it one big push, and she rolled down the hill and splashed into the water. The car floated for a few minutes, then drifted out farther from the bank. Eventually $89,000 worth of fine German engineering disappeared beneath the surface.
Swinging open the passenger door of Winston’s Suburban, Runt looked again at the car’s watery grave and moaned his disappointment in losing it.
“It’s the only way, Runt. We have to make it look like John Allen has driven off somewhere.”
“I wish we could have just hidden it for a while,” Runt said with remorse for the car. Then he remembered something he stole. “Damn, I forgot the boots!”
Winston grimaced in his pain. “Too risky. Get your ass in the truck. I’ll buy you some boots. We need to go.”
Chapter 28
John Allen opened his eyes slowly, adjusting to the semidarkness. Had this all been a bad dream? His wishful thinking lasted only seconds before the reality of the warm blood on his face hit him. He could also feel blood caked in the back of his hair. He was sore all over from the beating Winston had given him, but he remembered crushing Winston’s knee. The beating had been worth it.
The rough concrete he was lying on was cool to his skin. It must be early morning. His head was pounding, and his shoulder burned, then was pierced by a succession of sharp, molar-grinding pains as he eased himself over onto his back. He could see sunshine filtering in through the cracks around a metal door. The warm rays illuminated the room enough for him to make out heavy wood beams above him and walls that looked like wood frames covered in tin. There was a rough-looking sink on one side and a counter next to it that looked like what somebody with only the most rudimentary carpentry skills had slapped together. Two heavy ropes spanned the room and dangled down to two rusty, hand-cranked boat-trailer winches. He was in a homemade skinning shed used to butcher white-tailed deer.
Various tools were stuck in crevices and could prove useful if he could somehow get to them before Runt came back. The sight of the tools inspired him as he fought his way to a sitting position to take inventory of the situation.
If he could free his hands, he felt sure he could bust out of this shabby building. He just had to break the zip ties. When he tried again, though, his shoulder ignited with a spasm that stopped him cold and left him fighting to calm his breathing and manage the pain, which had now settled into a constant, powerfully aching throb.
John Allen wondered what time it was, and whether Emma had realized he was missing yet. She would start calling or texting him at eight, probably, but she wouldn’t likely be worried or concerned for a few hours, maybe not even until noon—and if there was a new development with the terrorist surveillance, possibly even later.
Hoss would be expecting him, though. He would want to see the pot John Allen had purchased. Thank God he’d stuck it in his gun safe. He still wasn’t sure why he’d done that, beyond a general fear it would somehow get broken if it were just left around. As a prank, he’d wrapped up an extralarge ceramic coffee mug in the robe to give to Hoss. Some prank, he thought now. Locked away in that safe, how would the pot ever find its way back to the Choctaw Nation if he didn’t find a way out of this?
Well, then, find a way out, he instructed himself.
Agent Emma Haden had finally fallen back to sleep after listening to the recordings John Allen had made of his dealings with Winston Walker. She could hear everything clear as day and knew it would help with a conviction. It was an unorthodox way of doing things, but the prosecuting attorney would be pleased to have the recordings. And she was completely satisfied that it wasn’t entrapment, for two reasons: The first was that Winston already had been known to engage in the trafficking of illegal artifacts. And the second was even better still—Winston himself had contacted John Allen about selling the pot.
Now up and exercising, she had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and was sipping pomegranate juice as she put in her two miles on the treadmill before going into the office. It was Sunday, but that didn’t matter. Crime didn’t take a day off. She had on tight biker shorts and a ratty, loose-fitting Anytime Fitness T-shirt, which didn’t matter at all since no one could see her. Her view of the sunrise over the Barnett Reservoir made her feel it was worth it to have risen at such an early hour.
Once at the office, Emma planned to let the Meridian police know of her intentions to pick up Winston Walker and his sidekick, Runt. She’d found it was better to work with the locals than against them. She didn’t like tipping her hand to someone else about her plans, but she was always one to follow protocol. It kept her out of trouble with her superiors.
Several other agents would be at the office, as she had alerted everyone to her plans last night. She hated to pull them away from their families on a Sunday morning, but she wasn’t going to miss a chance to place cuffs on Walker’s wrists.
She glanced at the wall clock, which read 6:22 a.m. Still too early to call John Allen, even though she badly wanted to.
Emma upped her speed and added more incline as she started her second mile. She could see a few fishermen beginning their morning across the lake. She wondered what they were fishing for and whether they were catching any. She hadn’t been fishing since she was a little girl and had spent Saturday afternoons with her dad. They would fish and eat Vienna sausages. Those were precious memories. So why hadn’t she fished since? Because no one she’d seriously dated—and least of all her ex-husband—had ever asked her to go fishing.
Maybe that should’ve told her something about them. Maybe that was a quality to judge a man by.
She wondered whether John Allen liked to fish.
Winston drove home from the reservoir, worrying about the events of the night and about Runt. He pounded the steering wheel several times and cursed himself for having ever met up with John Allen. He readily admitted that it had been a stupid move. He was smarter than that. The situation had forced him to kidnap John Allen in an effort to clean up the mess. Pride made him think he’d done nothing that could link him to the crime, but because it had happened so fast, he knew there was a chance he’d miscalculated somewhere. The fact that he needed fast money was causing him to make some rash decisions.
It wasn’t lost on him that his life and future depended on Runt. He could be trusted as much as any meth head could, but even when he was straight, Runt couldn’t make good decisions. Winston had to do all the thinking, as Runt could only consider the moment and not the future, and certainly not the potential consequences.
The future had always mattered to Winston. He’d grown up watching other kids get all the accolades and awards. His dad had worked as a maintenance man for a wealthy, local owner of a construction company. In addition to maintenance duties, the man had used Winston’s dad for every job he didn’t want to do himself, from school science projects to teaching his children to drive. Mr. Walker had just been trying to provide for his family, but Winston was always embarrassed by what his dad did for a living. His dad’s boss had a son and daughter close to Winston’s age, and they had everything, while Winston, who attended the same school, had nothing. The rich man had paid for Winston to attend a private school, to make it easier for his dad to be there to help out with tasks like mowing the football field before games. Instead of donating his own time to the Booster Club like every other parent, the rich man had donated his dad’s time. The daughter had been two years younger and wouldn’t even look at Winston, even though his dad washed her dad’s car, cleaned her pool, set up her parties, and most days, picked her up from school. It was Winston’s first experience with not being who he wanted to b
e and not having what he wanted.
He had still been in junior high school when he’d decided he would change his name. He’d wanted to be influential, powerful, and someone people admired, but the problem was he hadn’t known how to go about it correctly. All he’d ever known was how to cut corners and to cheat. He’d started by stealing Ralph Lauren shirts and stylish shoes like the other kids wore, and it had gradually escalated. While other kids were proficient in certain subjects or athletics, Winston came to realize he was good at conning and conniving people out of things he wanted. It was much easier than working for them.
Though his house wasn’t much now, it had once been really nice. Years ago when the money had been flowing, he’d overextended himself and purchased it. Very quickly, though, he couldn’t even afford regular, basic maintenance on it. If—or more likely, when—the bank repossessed it, it would bring about half what Winston had paid for it, due to his neglect and drunken, drug-fueled abuse. The pool house, or what was left of it, was so contaminated from cooking meth you couldn’t stand to be in it. The pool itself was only half-full and hadn’t been cleaned in so long it was greener than a golf-course pond.
After he parked the Suburban, Winston cussed his knee and limped into his house with help from Runt. On the drive home it had swelled up and stiffened. He needed some serious pain medication, and fortunately he had some. If the Indian police came to talk to him tomorrow, he would need an excuse for his knee that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
After he set the seed pot on the counter, Winston grabbed a beer from the fridge and two OxyContin pills from his stash. Runt helped him to the couch, and he crashed onto it in a cussing fit.
It wasn’t daylight yet, but Winston had a list of things for Runt to do. Winston needed him to pull the plastic liner from the rear of his Suburban and clean John Allen’s blood off it at the car wash. Winston also needed him to hide the artifacts, the drugs, and the two pistols that were in the house in case a search warrant was somehow issued.
“Can I count on you?” Winston asked as he handed his phone to Runt to plug in to recharge.
“You know you can,” Runt answered.
Winston grabbed a knife and pointed it at Runt. “You don’t tell anyone what we’ve done,” he said, then dipped the knife’s point and used it to split his pants from the thigh down to expose his bruised and swollen knee.
Runt stared at the swelling and felt squeamish. The knee was almost twice its normal size. There was no discernible kneecap visible, and the bruising was horrific.
Winston didn’t seem surprised or concerned. He’d grunted when he first saw it and now touched the swelling here and there as he went on talking.
“They’ll try and split us up and tell you that Winston said this and Winston said that. But trust me, I ain’t saying shit.”
“I ain’t, either, boss,” Runt said, turning his head from the injury.
“They’ll get frustrated and threaten you and try to scare you into telling them what they want to know.”
“They can’t.”
“Good. I’m counting on you. Now just do what I asked, and we’ll be good. Tomorrow we’ll make a plan to deal with John Allen. I’m hoping my knee is better by then.”
Runt shook his head doubtfully. “Yeah, I’m betting it’s not going to be. My daddy blew out his new knee jumping off a ladder, and he had to have surgery. His knee didn’t look as bad as yours.”
“Shit, that’s the last thing I need right now,” Winston said. “That pissant John Allen will pay for this.” He grunted in pain as he lay back against the pillows.
“I’m just saying it looks bad, dude.”
Winston grunted again as he retrieved two $1,000 chips from his pocket and tossed them to Runt. “That’s for you. Just go, and keep your phone close. I may need you. But look here, don’t text about any of this shit. I don’t know for sure, but I bet they can retrieve our texts if they want to.”
Winston then closed his eyes to let the meds take the edge off his pain. He was tired, and he had a lot on his mind. He’d begun to wonder whether he’d been set up by Rosco. As he’d feared, the man had gotten cold feet about selling him any more artifacts, and Winston had been forced to silence him. He’d known he couldn’t trust him to stay quiet, and he’d been right to put a bullet in his head. It had been easy to make it look like a suicide. What he didn’t know was whether Rosco had already turned him in before Winston had gotten to him.
Sunday morning started as it always did for Hoss: he read reports and checked in on the front lines to learn what had occurred the night before. Saturday nights were always busy in the casino, and Friday nights weren’t bad, either. He sipped coffee and thought about all the work-related problems he had and how he planned to deal with them.
Tomorrow was Rosco Jones’s funeral, and so far the county detective had found no reason to believe it wasn’t suicide. Hoss had already been through Rosco’s locker before the detective had arrived and asked to do the same. Hoss knew it was clean. He’d hoped to find artifacts, but he hadn’t. It had contained only a worn Bible, an apple, a can of sardines, and a box of crackers.
Hoss had already briefed the chief on the security situation and the progress to repair the eyesore the truck had created at the entrance of their beautiful casino. She wasn’t happy and wanted the forty chips back without having any of them redeemed by a cashier paying more attention to Snapchat than her job. She let Hoss know she expected him to handle the situation, and he was depending on others. That always made him nervous.
The casino was a huge source of revenue for the tribe. It attracted all sorts across the entire socioeconomic spectrum. There were a number of wealthy gamblers and many people who didn’t have any business gambling with their paychecks. In between were middle-class men and women who enjoyed the art of gambling. Sometimes they won and sometimes they lost. They had systems to win and dreams of what they would do if they hit it big. The casino allowed people to forget their problems and gave them a chance, however remote, to score a financial win that they could immediately realize. They drank beer and booze and dreamed their nights away at various gaming tables. The casino had programs to help people with gambling addictions and had been known to turn away people they knew shouldn’t be there. It was a business, but they did care about their community. The chief reminded Hoss of the importance of keeping the business running smoothly.
Soon his phone would start ringing, and more problems would arise. He spent his days handling issues that popped up faster than they could be solved, but he enjoyed both the challenge and his role. He never lost sight of his commitment to protect the tribe’s assets—a subject that now brought John Allen to mind.
Hoss had agreed that the tribe needed someone who would travel and acquire the spiritual artifacts that had been located. It was an important job. He hadn’t wanted to hire John Allen, but he did think the tribe could trust him. That was no small thing. They had every reason to fear being taken advantage of, and earning their trust could be a slow and difficult process. Hoss just didn’t think John Allen would have a passion for the job and stick with it. He saw him being more of a businessman who after a year would crave returning to the helm of an accounting firm.
The chief had listened to him but asked that Hoss trust her. She’d had a feeling about John Allen, a trust that he would empathize with their plight and be a good face in the communities to represent them. He was Caucasian, and she felt it would help other white people understand the plight of the Choctaw spiritual artifacts and also help the tribe recover as many as possible. John Allen was more than just an agent scouring the countryside for artifacts to purchase. At times he was a PR representative for the tribe, and the chief hoped he could bring more community awareness to their situation.
Hoss also didn’t like the tribe leasing the Porsche for John Allen. He did understand the reasoning, and he could see how it might help with the front John Allen was presenting at times. When you boiled it down, Hoss resented drivin
g a three-year-old leased Buick LeSabre, while new employee John Allen was tooling around in a shiny black Porsche 911.
Being the focused security expert he was, Hoss had attached a GPS tracker to the car and spot-checked John Allen the first few months of his employment. He’d always found him to be exactly where he said he’d be. Hoss did this not because he didn’t trust John Allen but out of the extreme guilt he felt about losing their first agent. The man’s fate haunted him. He and his car had simply vanished, and Hoss couldn’t get past it.
He didn’t expect to see John Allen today. Tomorrow, though, he would be here and tell the story of his role in the apprehension of Winston Walker with the enthusiasm of a rookie cop announcing his first arrest. Hoss wouldn’t begrudge him that, but getting his hands on the artifact John Allen had purchased was what had him charged up. He couldn’t wait to see it, and make sure it was returned to his people.
By ten o’clock Emma was furious with John Allen. He wasn’t answering his phone or texts. Maybe he’s in church. This was the South, smack-dab in the middle of the Bible Belt, and she could see him turning his phone off during Sunday school, and especially during church. She remembered him saying the blessing before their meal. She couldn’t be mad at him for going to church, but he could have touched base with her. Their operation was still ongoing even though it was Sunday.
She listened again to the recording and was amazed by his presence of mind. She knew federal agents with way more training who’d lost their nerve in undercover situations. He’d done well.
She tried to call once more, and the phone rang until the voice mail picked up. She didn’t think she needed to leave another message. If he got the first one, he would know to call. If he listened to the second one before he called, he would know she was pissed.
Before Agent Garner left to go back home, he’d suggested they wait one more day to arrest Winston Walker. Emma hadn’t wanted to wait, saying she didn’t really need to talk to John Allen since she had his voice-recorded evidence of the sale. But Garner was right: protocol dictated a formal debriefing before they would roll out an arrest team. She had reluctantly agreed and realized she was only growing madder at John Allen as more time was lost.