“Home? All her old man cares about is booze. He don’t give a shit about Lela. I’m the only one looks after her.”
Father John threw another glance at the kid. He had one elbow propped on the door, holding his hair back, staring straight ahead. There was a trace of pimples along his hairline. What the kid said was true, Father John realized, and it gave him an immense sense of sadness.
“That’s how you look after her? Let Monroe beat her up?”
“Hey, what was I gonna do? Captain’d beat the shit outta me, too.”
“If you care about Lela, you’ve got to get her away from Monroe. You could be in a lot of trouble,” he pushed on. “Doing the man’s dirty work. Lela could be in trouble, too, if you keep her with you. It’ll look like she’s in on whatever you’re doing.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Dennis Light Stone. What did you do to him?”
“Nothing!” The kid shot forward on the seat and braced himself against the dashboard. “I didn’t do nothing to him.”
“You harassed the man, tried to intimidate him into giving up the job at the casino.” The tan truck turned west onto a gravel road, and Father John followed. Stripes of shadows lay over the rooftops of the little community of Arapaho. “When that didn’t work, what did Monroe order you to do? Beat him up? Shoot him? What?”
“Man, Father!”
Father John looked over. The kid was shaking his head so hard that his whole body was shaking. “I ain’t into killing people for nobody, not even the Captain. I mean, he tells us we gotta make it tough on the collaborators and contain the enemy and all that, but he ain’t telling us to go kill the enemy. I mean, he don’t say that!”
“What happened to Dennis?”
“I don’t know, I’m telling you. I ain’t seen that Indian in a while. We got other collaborators we been assigned to.”
“Such as Vicky Holden?”
The kid was quiet. Out of the corner of his eye, Father John saw him sink back against the seat, settle his elbow against the door, and start mopping at his hair. “I gotta follow orders.”
“How’d you get mixed up with Monroe anyway?”
Tommy sucked in his breath again, then he said, “Captain comes here, makes jobs that pay real money. I don’t see nobody else hiring me around here. Sure as hell, the casino didn’t wanna see my skinny butt in their fancy place. So I work for Monroe. It’s a job, that’s all.”
“Intimidating people. Throwing rocks through windows. That’s your work?” Father John glanced over again. In the resigned look flowing across the narrow face, he knew he’d hit on the truth. “Where’s Monroe get his money to bankroll the rangers?”
“Ain’t my business. All I care about is he’s putting some of it in my pocket.”
“You’re looking at an assault charge, Tommy. You could be on your way to some jail time.”
“No way.” The kid shouted into the wind blowing through the window. “I’m just following orders, doing my job. We got a war going on, Father.”
“War?” They were in Arapaho now, winding along a gravel road past the block-like houses that erupted out of the flat, brown earth. The tan truck turned into a bare-dirt yard in front of a small, rectangular-shaped house with white paint peeling from the front and a concrete stoop that sloped sideways.
“What are you talking about?”
“War between good and evil, between the good spirits and the devil. Devil got that casino started here, and our mission is to get it outta here.”
Father John bumped across the yard after the truck and stopped. The purple truck nudged against his rear bumper. He turned off the engine and looked at the kid. “Do something decent, Tommy. Lela’s a noncombatant. Get her away. Bring her to the mission. She can stay at the guest house. She’ll be safe there.”
“Captain says she’ll blab to the fed if I don’t watch her.”
“Lela’s scared. She’s not going to blab to anybody. She wouldn’t have said anything about the body at Double Dives if her aunt hadn’t called the police.”
The kid clenched his jaw; the muscles in his cheek started twitching. He kept his eyes straight ahead as he pulled down on the door handle and got out.
“Let’s go, Father.” Fasthorse was outside his window again. “Captain doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
19
FATHER JOHN FOLLOWED Fasthorse across the yard, up the concrete steps, and into the living room. The door banged shut behind them. The house could have been any house on the reservation: kitchen in the back, bedrooms off the hallway. A middle-aged man, Indian, dressed in camouflage, sat at a card table in the middle of the living room, studying the papers spread in front of him. Strips of duct tape were wrapped around the edges of the table.
Fasthorse stood at attention a few feet away. Finally the man shifted the papers into a stack, which he laid on top of another stack, and lifted his eyes. “At ease, Sergeant.”
“Sir, we have the padre for Captain Monroe.”
“Go on back. Captain’s waiting.”
Fasthorse made an about-face. “This way, padre,” he said, motioning toward the hallway behind them.
They walked past two opened doors to rooms with small beds pushed under the windows and papers and books piled on card tables and chairs.
The Indian stopped at a closed door and gave three sharp knocks.
“Enter.” The order was an impatient bark.
Fasthorse pushed open the door and stepped inside. “Father O’Malley, sir,” he said, then he backed into the hallway.
Father John shouldered past and went into the room. Hunched over a desk, writing something on a form-like sheet of paper, was a large man with a fleshy, beet-red face, and balloon shoulders and chest that pushed against the fabric of his camouflage shirt. Two silver bars were pinned on his shoulders. Beneath the thin strips of the man’s gray hair, Father John could see the pink scalp and the top of the furrowed forehead.
“Be with you in a minute,” Captain Monroe said without looking up. He dipped a pen into the ink bottle at his hand and went back to writing. The pen made a scratching noise on the paper, like the noise of a bird pecking at seeds.
“You brought me here, Monroe,” Father John said. “What do you want?”
The man took his time arranging the pen in a perpendicular line to the paper before he raised his eyes. He was in his fifties, Father John guessed, light-skinned with a square-set jaw and narrow, gray eyes filled with a mixture of contempt and amusement.
“Obviously, my intelligence reports are correct,” he said. “They say you’re a maverick, Father O’Malley. Take a seat.” He waved one hand across the desk toward a folding chair against the wall. “There are a few matters I want to clear up.”
Father John pulled over the chair and sat down. “You’re right, Monroe.”
“Captain, Father.”
“There are matters we have to clear up. Where are you holding the girl?”
“The girl?” A note of surprise rang in the man’s voice. “I assume you’re referring to Lela Running Bull. I’m not holding her or anyone else. The people working for me are free to ask for a discharge at any time.”
“You’re saying that Lela works for you?”
“Her boyfriend has enlisted in the rangers. I assume you’ve met First Lieutenant Willard. As long as she chooses to stay with him, she will be treated as a military dependent. Loyalty will be required of her.”
Monroe squared his massive shoulders and regarded him a long moment. “The first matter I wish to clear up is that Lela Running Bull has given you”—he picked up the pen and began waving it like a baton—“erroneous information. Loose lips”—now the pen was tracing large circles in the air—“sink ships, I believe the old motto was. Loose lips can destroy my mission. I won’t allow that to happen.”
“You brought me here to tell me that?”
“My rangers had nothing to do with the body found at Double Dives. Nothing whatsoever.” Monroe
set the pen down again and rolled it against the side of the paper. “The girl, I’m afraid, made you believe otherwise. Let me assure you, I had no reason to want the white man—what did the newspaper say his name was? Rodney Pearson from Two-Valley Road—dead.” He shook his head, and a strand of gray hair fell over his forehead. He smoothed it back into place. “We will do nothing that is counterproductive to our mission, Father.”
“So you send out your employees . . .”
“Rangers, Father.”
“. . . to lob rocks through windows, assault people in the parking lot.”
“Assault? You mean the unfortunate incident in the casino parking lot two days ago?” The man picked up the pen again and stabbed it in the air. “That brings me to the second matter I wish to clear up. The incident was an accident. As for the broken window, let me assure you that Tommy has been disciplined and confined to quarters, except for limited exposure, such as today’s mission to bring you in.”
The man drew in a long breath that inflated his chest. “Unfortunately, we received a visit this morning from Chief Art Banner and two other BIA police officers. They had a warrant from the tribal court for the arrest of Tommy Willard. Naturally, I explained that Lieutenant Willard was deployed elsewhere in the field and, until he checked in, I had no idea of his exact whereabouts. The police insisted upon interrogating the other three men who witnessed the incident. They searched the premises. To no avail, I may add. I had to restrain my men from taking offensive action. We must keep our eye on the primary mission.”
“You can’t hide Tommy forever. Sooner or later, he’ll be arrested.”
“In that unfortunate case, the other rangers who witnessed the incident will testify on Tommy’s behalf that it was nothing but an accident.” The man gripped the edge. “This morning, we had another visitor. Special Agent Ted Gianelli who interrogated me about the demonstrators at the casino. All of this pressure, Father O’Malley, is due to the girl’s loose lips and the lies she told you. I order you to stop spreading the lies immediately.”
“I’m not one of your rangers, Monroe.”
“Captain Monroe.” The man gave Father John a hard look, then lifted his head and squared his shoulders.
“What happened to Dennis Light Stone?” Father John pushed on. “What did you do to him?”
The man didn’t blink. A hint of a smile played at his mouth, and then he said, “My intelligence tells me that Light Stone hasn’t been at his post for several days. He’s the first to desert the casino. Other Arapahos who have sold their souls to the devil will follow his lead. I can only conclude that our preliminary tactics are succeeding.”
Father John shifted forward, braced his arms on his thighs, and drove a fist into his palm. “You really believe you can scare people enough that they’ll stop showing up for their jobs?”
“Our tactics are appropriate to the circumstance, Father O’Malley. Appropriate to enemy resources. Tell me, were you in Vietnam?”
“The army didn’t want high school students.”
“Didn’t want college students either, as I recall.” Monroe’s lips parted in a slow smile, as if he were smiling to himself. “Let me guess, after high school, you went directly to college. Draft-deferred college student. Am I right?” He pushed on, “I met guys like you after my tour of duty. College students still sucking on their mother’s teats, and conscientious objectors scurrying around the hospitals like rats. Yeah, I knew guys like you, and I decided back then, you can’t ever trust them because they don’t know. They just don’t know. You gotta fight evil without them. You got to search out the collaborators to destroy the enemy.”
The man lowered his jaw into the folds of his neck and stared up at him. “You ever heard of Pleiku? Nah, you wouldn’t know about that. We culled out the collaborators and turned them into God-fearing, freedom-loving Vietnamese. That’s what we thought. In the daytime, they were God-fearing, freedom-loving Vietnamese, and at night they’d come out firing at our camps. You know what I learned? We have to stay with the collaborators, keep them in sight at all times. Don’t ever turn our backs on them. You can never trust collaborators.”
“This isn’t Vietnam.”
“Like I said, Father, we gotta fight evil where we find it. Indian people got sucked into this gambling filth. It’s draining their souls. I’ve got rangers all over the country helping to stop this scourge. But the politicians are selling us out, like in Nam. This time, we’re gonna win the war without them, because we got the people behind us. You should’ve seen the crowd that came to my rally in Florida couple years ago. Good Christian people that believe in our mission and want to save the Indian people. Show how much they believe with the checks they write. We got a vast army fighting against gambling, and we’re gonna win.”
“The casino’s operating, Monroe. You can’t shut it down by intimidating Arapahos who work there.”
“Collaborators!” He spit out the word. “They’re the ones we have to turn and keep watching. Soon’s they see the light, they’re gonna come forward, tell people what’s really going on. We won’t have to shut down that den of thieves. The Indian Gaming Commission’s gonna do it for us.”
“What do you think is going on, Monroe?”
“Ask Dennis Light Stone.”
“I will as soon as I find him. Now I’m asking you.”
“The usual evils, Father O’Malley. Must I list the evils? Thievery, fraud, debauchery.” He shrugged. “They’re found in every casino.”
“Every casino, Monroe? What proof do you have of any wrongdoing at Great Plains Casino?”
The man made a clicking noise with his teeth and sat back, lacing his fingers over his chest. After a minute, he said, “It’s always the same. First, the evildoers co-opt the guy that’s supposed to be watching them. I believe you’ve heard of Matt Kingdom, Gaming Commission chairman? Usually, they co-opt guys like him with fancy cars and vacations to the Bahamas, but Kingdom . . .” He shook his head. “All that Arapaho wanted were some jobs for his nearest and dearest and other jobs to hand out. Done!” The man snapped his fingers.
“So you’ve targeted people you think were hired because of Kingdom?”
“They got the best jobs. More than likely, they’re gonna know what’s going on. All we gotta do is convince them to come over to the God-fearing side, Father, and when that happens, they will speak the truth. They will confirm our intelligence.”
Father John was quiet a moment. “You’re wrong about Vicky Holden. She’s not one of Kingdom’s people.”
“No? Then why did she suddenly take the job?” Monroe slapped his palm on the sheet of paper and rose to his feet. He was shorter than Father John had expected, not more than five and a half feet tall, with hips as thick as his waist. “You should consider joining our mission, Father.”
“You mean, help you intimidate people?” Father John got to his feet. He towered over the man.
Monroe laughed. “A man like yourself, people respect you. You start telling the truth about the evils of gambling, they’re gonna listen. They’re gonna stop going to that cesspool.”
“Not interested, Monroe.”
“Surely you don’t condone gambling?”
“I don’t condone your tactics.”
“That’s because you don’t know, Father. You weren’t there in Vietnam. You don’t understand what works. Light Stone’s ready to come over now. I know the signs. He’s gone off somewhere to think about it, and he’s gonna come back and speak out about what’s going on. You’ll see. Our tactics are working. My men will escort you back to your headquarters.”
“I know the way.” Father John started for the door, then stopped and looked back. “Stay away from Vicky, Monroe.”
“Oh?” The man’s face cracked into a smile. “You got an interest in the lady?”
“Just stay away.” He held the man’s gaze a moment, then headed down the hallway, through the living room, and out into the blast of mid-afternoon heat. Tommy and the others
were leaning against the purple truck, hands cupped over cigarettes. They jumped to attention as he walked past. He got into the pickup and, cutting around the truck, drove out onto the road, rear tires spitting back kernels of rock. He kept the speed down past the cluster of small houses, wondering how many people living in the area were part of Monroe’s army, then turned left onto Rendezvous Road.
The pickup was straining over a rise, the engine knocking, when he saw something move in the tall grasses in the barrow ditch. An antelope, he thought, easing up on the accelerator. You never knew when a frightened animal would dart onto the road.
And then he realized it was a person—a girl with long black hair billowing around her thin shoulders. He slowed almost to a crawl, keeping his eyes on the girl darting through the ditch. Suddenly she turned and lifted her head, squinting into the sun. Then she bounded up onto the road waving both hands over her head. A purple bruise spread over one side of her face.
Lela Running Bull. He was struck by how small she looked, like a child dressed in blue jeans hanging low on her thin hips and a white T-shirt clinging to her small breasts.
He stopped the pickup on the side of the road, close to the girl, leaned over and pushed the door open. She clambered inside, breathing hard, little dots of perspiration glistening on her forehead. Blue-black bruises, like tattoos, ran down her arms. The purple bruise ran into the blackness around her eye. The whites of both eyes were bloodshot.
“I seen you go into headquarters,” she said, pulling the door shut. She was still gulping in air. “Tommy and me been staying in the house across the road. I ran out the back door, so he didn’t see me.”
“Are you okay?” He glanced over at the girl. A stalk of grass clung to the side of her jeans, and there was an odd odor about her—a mixture of sweat and sex and dried earth. “Do you need a doctor?”
“Just get me away from here,” she said, shaking her head.
Father John stepped hard on the accelerator, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror, expecting the tan truck to appear over the rise. The road was empty, a line of asphalt shining in the sun.
Killing Raven (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 14