Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  Ham laughed. His eyes laughed, like the photos on Sophie’s wall. Disarming laughs, able to put one at ease sitting next to him on his grand porch. “On the other hand I’m quite comfortable talking to someone I have solidarity with.”

  “How so?”

  “We’re quite alike, you and me. We were both left without parents at an early age—me when my father died of exposure and mother couldn’t afford to feed me, and you when your folks died in that car wreck.”

  “You have a habit of checking into investigators’ lives?”

  “We’re alike.” Ham ignored the question. “You were the first Lakota to be hired by the bureau, and I was the first Lakota to be appointed to the federal bench.” Ham dropped his lime slice into a wicker basket between the chairs. “I just want you to solve this before the Senate hearings convene. The last thing I need is to go on Capitol Hill with the shadow of Gunnar’s murder hanging over my head. I can pull some strings if you need help.”

  Manny shook his head. “The tribe’s assigned two investigators to work with me.” He could have added that the two tribal investigators were a criminal investigator with two months of experience who was on the verge of a breakdown, and a snotty, arrogant hottie who had been little help except to distract the criminal investigator. These were his army of assistants, but it wouldn’t hurt to stretch the truth to the good judge. “Some things just take time: lab tests need to get analyzed. Identification of next of kin. I hope to have this wrapped up by the time of the hearings.”

  “Thanks.” Ham nursed his beer. “I have what the New York Times calls a plethora of detractors. Enemies that want me to fall on my face in those hearings. Many my own people.”

  “I recall you’ve caught flak for your repeated opposition to tribal sovereignty. Last thing you ruled on was denying giving the entire Badlands back to the tribe.”

  “That was over a year ago.”

  “Right before your mining rulings.”

  Ham stood and leaned against one of the huge timbers holding up the porch. “I just didn’t feel it necessary to mine parts of the Palmer Creek and Stronghold Unit that that Canadian company wanted.” He smiled at Manny. “And I see you do some checking of your own.”

  “Nature of my job.”

  Ham nodded and sipped his beer. “If we let the tribes handle their own affairs completely, they’d allow mining there. The environmental disasters would do irreparable harm to the park, and the tribe.”

  Manny swished ice cubes around in his empty glass. “Mining would give the tribe the shot in the arm it needs to get on its feet.”

  “All the tribe needs to get back on its feet is a shot in the butt. Besides, there’s never been proof there’s anything’s worth mining in the Badlands.”

  “The School of Mines would disagree.”

  Ham waved the air as if dismissing the comment. “I know. They filed an amicus brief that last time it came before my bench. Some professors were upset they didn’t influence me.”

  “And the letters supporting mining the Badlands? My agent in Sioux Falls said there were a thousand sent to your Sioux Falls office.”

  Ham turned to Manny and a frown hung on his chiseled face like storm clouds filtering the sun. “Do you know how many of those letters call me an Uncle Tomahawk? Or how many threatened my life because I stood up for what I believed was best for our people? Come inside.”

  Ham led Manny into the cabin. They walked under an elk head larger than any Manny had seen hanging over the door, past cedar log tables guarding either side of a sofa with deer antlers as armrests and a buffalo robe draped over the back. Ham stopped at a rolltop desk situated in a small alcove and opened it. A Glock—like the one Manny was supposed to carry at all times—held down a shoe box, and Ham caught him eying the gun.

  “Like I said—I have enemies. Joe insisted I keep it handy.” He took the lid off the shoe box and shoved it toward Manny. “That’s how many vile letters I’ve received just since it was announced I’d been nominated for the Supreme Court. I keep them close in case someone carries out their threat. And for every one of those that’s arrived at my office, I’ve received a hundred angry e-mails.”

  “You want me to take these and start a threat investigation? The last thing we need now is a federal judge assassinated.”

  Ham shook his head. “At least I’ve risen enough in importance that I might be assassinated and not just murdered. But I wouldn’t want to give the bastards that much credit, knowing I whined to the FBI. The investigation I’m concerned about is Gunnar’s murder—having it completed before the Senate hearings. His and Moses Ten Bears’s.”

  “You know about that?”

  Ham nodded. “Moses and some other guy were found in the same car as Gunnar. Poor souls just happened to be on the bombing range at the wrong time. How they all happened there is beyond me.”

  “We didn’t release anything to the press. Who told you about Ten Bears?”

  “I have my sources with the moccasin telegraph, too. Or maybe it’s because I have such a strong connection with Moses. I told you he and Grandpa Charles had a special friendship, didn’t I?” Ham chin-pointed to a painting hanging on the wall opposite the elk, a painting that hung guarded by shadows that parried light getting to the canvas. Manny stepped closer and craned his neck upward. And gasped. “An original?” The second original Ten Bears work Manny had seen this week. He felt honored.

  Ham nodded. “That was one of Moses’s early works. Right now you’re thinking I’m on the take for owning an original Ten Bears painting.”

  “It is priceless.”

  “Hardly. Everything has its price.” He took Manny’s glass and refilled it with tea from a gallon jar on the granite counter, drawing out his explanation, once again the attorney. He handed the glass back to Manny and continued sipping on the same Corona. “My father, Samuel, resented Grandfather Charles. Bitterly. He’d abandoned Dad and Grandmother Hannah to pursue his political career, and his false promises of marriage and a family broke her heart, though Grandmother never let on, from what mother said. Only once did Grandmother Hannah mention that Grandfather Charles’s political career meant more than his family, and it appears as if she handled it well, despite her poverty.

  “No so my father—his hate drove him into a fresh bottle every day of his life, and he remained a bitter drunk until the day he died.”

  “So your mother told me.”

  “You’ve spoken with her?”

  “I had to verify your whereabouts on the reservation the week Gunnar went missing.”

  Ham shook his head. “Mother. She would have told me you stopped if she had a phone, but it wasn’t until last year that I talked her into getting power run into her place.”

  “I saw she could use a home makeover.”

  “Don’t judge me by the looks of her place.”

  Manny nodded. “I apologize. People tell me I get down on folks now and again.”

  Ham waved the comment away. “She won’t allow me to help her. Except for her dentures—that’s the one thing she wanted when I became successful.”

  “I noticed that, too.”

  Ham laughed. “How could you not? They’re white enough to be a lighthouse beacon. And they don’t fit well. I told her I’d take her to the finest dentist I could, but she threw a fit. Said it was too pricy, and she found a dental school that I won’t name to pull her teeth and give her choppers. Looks like they got the teeth from some donor horse, but she’s happy with them, and I’m stuck wearing sunglasses whenever I visit her.”

  Ham set his empty bottle on the coffee table. “But you wonder about the painting.”

  Manny nodded.

  “Moses gave that to Grandfather Charles after a terrible vision he had of Grandfather, terrible enough that Grandfather didn’t want it around after he saw his fate.”

  “What happened to those other paintings that people didn’t want?”

  Ham shrugged. “There was the rumor that an art critic from New Yo
rk found and stole them after Moses disappeared. Who knows. But Grandfather Charles said this was Moses’s vision for him—frightening though it was—and said he’d beat the vision. That sounded like Grandfather Charles—reckless and unafraid of the devil himself.”

  Manny set his tea on the table and donned his reading glasses as he stepped close to the painting hanging above eye level. Subdued browns, burnt umbers, and grays dominated the work, the edges ragged, undefined, cruel. The harsh Badlands under a dirty burnt brown sky. An orange sun blazed too-large for the picture, heating cows with matted, motley, mangy hair, skinny range cows looking as if they’d lived their last season. “Frightening.”

  Ham had soundlessly come to stand beside Manny. “And this was also Moses’s vision for himself, or so Grandfather always thought. Moses was a poor rancher, starting with the few cows the government gave him when he became fee patented. He tried to make a go of it—some ranchers in the Badlands became successful, but not Moses. Those cattle represent his sick herd, or so Dad said.”

  “Still doesn’t explain how you came by it.”

  Ham looked sideways at Manny. “I’m even a suspect in the theft of a painting.”

  “I didn’t mean…”

  Ham held up his hand. “Just being facetious. Grandfather Charles left the painting in Moses’s cabin because he spent time there every year hunting and knocking around the Stronghold. I think Grandfather always intended bringing it home, but he died three years after Moses did. Eldon—Moses’s son—gave it to my father one summer, who tossed it into the garbage in a drunken stupor one night when I was a little kid. I waited until dad passed out and rescued it. I kept it at Holy Rosary Mission until I graduated.”

  Manny gestured around the cabin. “I don’t see a security system. Aren’t you afraid someone might steal it, since you’re away so much?”

  Ham smiled. “I have my own kind of security system. Joe stops often when I’m away.”

  Manny recalled the heavy-handedness with which Joe Dozi parried the people at the Alex Johnson lobby. “Where could I find him?”

  Ham took a tarnished railroad watch from his front trouser pocket. It chimed when he opened it. “My Waltham here says Joe should be at his bike shop. Sturgis Rally Week is the first week in August and he’s prepping two bikes to show.”

  “Then I’ll visit him there. I’ll keep you posted on those things that don’t conflict with the investigation.”

  “In case your prime suspect pans out?”

  Manny shook his head. “I’m hoping my prime suspect ends up being no suspect at all.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Manny veered to avoid hitting an oncoming car that had drifted into his lane. Or was it Manny that drifted into the other lane as he punched a number into his cell phone? He recognized Helga’s grating voice right away, sharp and short and sounding as if she’d stepped out of a Hogan’s Heroes episode. Manny asked if Gunnar and Ham’s arrest report was ready to be picked up. “I thought all you guys worked together,” she cackled into the receiver.

  “What guys?”

  Her long pause annoyed him, even more than the look she’d given him over her long nose the previous day when he asked to view the archival reports. “You federal guys. The Secret Service is federal, last I knew.”

  “What are you talking about?” Another car dodged his government Malibu and laid on the horn, missing him by a foot. Manny pulled to the side of the road and stopped. “I’m not working with the Secret Service.”

  “Well, one breezed in here yesterday. Asked—no, demanded—I give him the arrest report, the same one I copied for you. At least you asked.”

  No small compliment from someone that didn’t even shave her underarms. “Can you make another copy?”

  The cackle again. “He took the microfiche roll the report was stored on, along with the arrest report I’d copied for you and that good lookin’ fella with you. I told him you’d be picking up the report today, but he said he’d save you the trip.”

  “What makes you think he was Secret Service?”

  “I thought he was some scary bastard off the street at first. You know the kind whose portrait is painted by a courtroom artist.”

  “What made you finger him as Secret Service?”

  She paused dramatically. “His photo on his Secret Service credentials.”

  “What was his name?”

  Helga exaggerated her sigh over the phone as if to punctuate her annoyance. “How should I remember? When the Secret Service demands I hand over all the files, I do.”

  Manny did his own deep breathing. For being connected to a law enforcement agency, Helga was unusually naive. Didn’t she ever jump on the Web? Didn’t she know how easily fake bonafides could be bought for any agency with a stroke of the SEND button? Including the Secret Service. “Do you at least recall what he looked like.”

  “Of course,” Helga snapped. “He was stocky and short. Wore those funky heavy shades you government types wear. Not your average guy. Kind of scary.”

  “How so?”

  “You know—charming as a carbuncle. Women’s intuition and all. Like if I hadn’t given him the report he would have broke a kneecap or an elbow. That kind of charming.”

  Manny forced a thank you and started disconnecting from the phone when Helga shouted, “Maybe you can tell that bald-headed son of a bitch to stay away from this agency if he’s going to act like that.”

  Manny pulled in front of that bald-headed son of a bitch’s Sturgis motorcycle shop, ironically situated between the Jolly Funeral Home and Gunnar’s Lounge. As he stepped out of his car, hair on Manny’s arms stood at attention beside large goose bumps. Helga wasn’t the only one with intuition. Manny had felt anxious the other day when he spotted Joe Dozi in the lobby of the Alex Johnson, anxious and wanting to be anywhere besides close to him. Those same feelings came over him now and he took deep breaths before starting for the shop.

  Tiny bells over the door announced his entrance, but he doubted anyone inside heard him. An engine roared as the throttle cracked from the shop area. Manny took in the tiny office in a glance: the black suit jacket sticking out of a green nylon dry cleaner’s bag. He bent and opened the drawstring. The jacket was wadded around a pair of black slacks, white shirt, and red tie. Manny set it back beside a captain’s chair shoved under the desk.

  The motor noise coming from the shop drowned out Manny’s footsteps as he walked through the door into the shop. Joe Dozi sat on a short, wheeled stool, his ear cocked too close to the motorcycle engine, one hand on the carburetor throttle, the other clutching a screwdriver. He let off the throttle and the motor smoothed to an idle. “No need to sneak around,” he called over his shoulder, never looking at Manny but concentrating on adjusting the carburetor primaries.

  Manny shut the door behind him. “Did Judge High Elk call and tell you I’d be visiting?”

  Dozi grounded the spark plug against the engine and the motor died. “What was that?”

  “We need to talk.”

  Dozi stood and wiped his hands with a shop rag sticking out of his pocket as he gestured to the motorcycle. “Ariel Square Four. Getting it ready to show at the rally.”

  Manny bent and ran his hand over the seat, which smelled of recent reupholstery. “Cast iron heads. But this is a midproduction motor. ’39?”

  “So?”

  “This is a ’38 Square Four? They had cast iron heads in ’38, but switched to aluminum heads the next year.”

  “You know your bikes. Ride?”

  Manny laughed. “I have a hard enough time keeping four wheels between the lines and out of the wrecking yard. My uncle used to take me to the rally every year to watch the races and drool over the bikes.” Unc would save up for a month before coming to Sturgis for the rally, saving a little gas every week so he and Manny could make it. Manny hadn’t been so interested in motorcycles then: he’d been more interested in spending time with Uncle Marion. And with the double-decker ice cream Unc always managed to hav
e pocket change for. “You might have trouble if the judges spot the switch in heads.”

  Dozi’s high-pitched laughed bounced off the confines of the small shop. “Even the most stringent purist won’t spot the difference.”

  “I did.”

  Dozi’s smile morphed into a deep frown as he scooped GOJO from a bucket and began cleaning his hands. “Maybe you won’t be around for the races.” Dozi worked the cleaner into knuckles swollen by fights, into fingers that had grown calluses from years of hard work. Or wet work in Special Forces, if Reuben’s assessment was correct.

  “That a threat?”

  “Naw.” He smiled. “It’s just you FBI types are most likely to be assigned anywhere. Now what is so important you have to come all the way up here to see me?”

  “Your Secret Service credentials for starters.”

  Dozi shrugged. “Let’s talk in the office. As much as I love the smell of oil and gas, I’m sure you don’t.”

  Manny followed Dozi into his office, careful not to step onto the GOJO that was dripping grease off his hands and hitting the floor in tiny, brown orbs. He wiped his hands on the shop rag still sticking from his back pocket and dropped into a captain’s chair behind a gunmetal gray desk. He wadded the rag and tossed it into a cardboard trash can beside his chair. “Now what’s this shit about Secret Service credentials?”

  “First let’s start with that Oglala Sioux Tribe Durango getting keyed in front of the Alex Johnson the day I met with the judge there.”

  “That supposed to mean something to me?”

  “It means something to Officer With Horn.”

  “That big, dumb Indian that was eye humping me there in the lobby, the one I put the run on?”

  “Don’t sell Willie short. He’d be your match, should you decide to push the issue. And it’s important to him ’cause his police chief’s going to make him pay to get it repainted. And Willie doesn’t make a whole lot.”

  Dozi tilted his head back and laughed, the high pitch almost a squeal. “If I wanted to screw with him, I wouldn’t do a juvenile thing like key his car. If I wanted to mess with him I’d stomp a mudhole in his ass right there in the lobby.” He rubbed his flattened nose as if to emphasize his threat. “Now we got that bullshit out of the way, tell me the real reason you’re here.”