by Joseph Flynn
Their target fooled them. Didn’t do a window-peek at all.
Just opened the front door and stood there, backlit, no gun in sight.
“That the guy?” Tall Wolf asked.
Ron said, “That’s him. Jake Burkett.”
Jake squinted and said, “Is that you, Chief Ketchum? What’s going on?”
Clay Steadman’s bedroom was large but spartan. Floor to ceiling windows with mountain views. A California king bed on a redwood platform. A writing table and a chair against the opposite wall. Above the table were two rows of five head shots. None of the photos was of him. The lower row featured his favorite leading ladies, three of whom he’d married, two of whom had given him four children. He’d long ago set up irrevocable trusts to provide for his former spouses and the offspring he saw only occasionally. The upper row was a rogues’ gallery of his favorite villains, the co-stars whose onscreen odiousness had made him seem all the more heroic.
Looking at the photos inspired him when he sat at the table and rewrote the scripts he would put into production. He had deals with three studios. He played the suits off against one another to get the best terms. Kept them on their toes, made sure none of them ever felt left out for too long. Coaxed them into coproduction deals when a shoot demanded a really big budget.
The mayor had been outlining the story for the movie based on Walt Ketchum’s life at the table. When he had all the elements structured to his liking, he’d turn it over to one of his screenwriter friends. Normally, the two of them would go back and forth through any number of drafts until Clay put the finishing touches in place.
With his next two movies, he wasn’t going to have the luxury of taking his time with the writing. It’d be an outline, a first draft, a polish and roll camera. Clay had outlined the first two acts of the script he and Walt had worked on and had the third act clear in his head. He had a working title, one he thought Walt would have liked.
“Texas Mean.”
The mayor thought that captured the way Walt had been raised and the attitude he’d carried with him as an LAPD cop.
That night, though, Clay wasn’t working on his next movie.
He was cleaning his gun.
He’d fired the weapon dry on the police department range yesterday, but he released the magazine and made sure the chamber was clear. There was no excuse for shooting yourself with a weapon you were cleaning.
The safety check accomplished, Clay field-stripped the Beretta. He didn’t need to look at the weapon to do it. Not yet. Even so, he watched his hands at work, doing his best to imprint the process on his disintegrating brain.
He looked at the component parts he’d laid out on the white cloth he’d used to cover the table. He asked himself the name of each component. Was pleased none eluded him for even a moment.
Clay swabbed out the bore with a solvent-soaked patch pushed by a cleaning rod. The mayor smiled at the male-female symbolism. It made him think of Marlene Flower Moon. He knew she was after as much of his money as she could grab. That didn’t bother him a bit.
Sure, she was greedy, but there was something between them, too.
They were both predators, admired each other’s cunning.
Better his money should be passed on to people he liked than be left behind like the carcass of a once majestic animal to be fought over by scavengers.
The mayor continued to clean his gun, finished that and began to lubricate it.
He held the barrel up to the light to check for residue.
Finding none, he fitted the barrel back into the frame rails.
He soon had the gun back together and started to feed cartridges into the magazine. He slapped the clip back into the Beretta. He chambered a round, disengaged the safety and pointed the weapon at his head. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
He didn’t pull the trigger. Not tonight. Not in his home. Couldn’t expect Ron Ketchum or any other future mayor to live in the place if he did that. But he had to keep in practice. Remember exactly what to do. What the hell would be the point of feeling suicidal if you forgot how to kill yourself?
He clicked the safety back on and left the gun on the corner of the writing table. He put the cloth, cleaning equipment and tools back in his bedroom closet. He’d probably forget where they were eventually. That was why he always left the gun on the table.
He’d told the chief he was going to bed because he was tired. He hadn’t wanted to explain the ritual of the nightly gun cleaning. The purpose of that would have been obvious and the last thing he wanted was people trying to save him so he could crumble before their eyes. Now, though, he was tired.
But there was one more thing he had to do before he could sleep.
Outline the third act of “Texas Mean.”
Before he forgot what he wanted to write.
“Five minutes and then we’re leaving,” Tara Driscoll said.
Ms. Driscoll was Roger Sutherland’s lawyer. She’d arrived at the Muni Complex fifteen minutes after her client. Sergeant Stanley had seated them in the PD’s main conference room. Provided each of them with a Snapple green tea. Made sure they were comfortable.
“But you’ve been here only five minutes, Ms. Driscoll,” Sergeant Stanley said, “and you spent that time conferring with your client.”
“Very well, we’ll stay as long as you like … provided the police department pays us our combined hourly rates. I believe the total will be above a thousand dollars per —”
Sutherland leaned in and whispered into his attorney’s ear.
“Very well,” she said to him with a smile of approval. “Our time will cost you fifteen hundred dollars an hour. Can you authorize that, sergeant? If not, how would you like to make use of your remaining three minutes?”
Sergeant Stanley knew he was far from a detective, but he was an expert at getting people to see where their best interests lay.
“Mr. Sutherland,” the sergeant said, “there was recently a major act of vandalism at the Jade Emperor construction site. As a prelude and a diversion to that attack, a car blew up on Lake Shore Drive, just up the street from the construction site. We’ve been able to trace that car to a dealership in Nevada.”
Tara Driscoll started drumming her fingers on the conference table.
Sergeant Stanley was not about to let her distract him. He still had ninety seconds left, and he was just getting to the good part. He resumed without hurrying.
“We’ve also found out, Mr. Sutherland, that you once intended to purchase the car that blew up.” That got their attention, Sutherland in particular.
He leaned forward and asked, “It was my Viper?”
Driscoll yanked him back by his arm and hissed something into his ear.
She, in turn, received a tongue-to-tympanic-membrane communiqué from Sutherland.
Then she looked at the sergeant and told him, “My client never assumed legal ownership of the vehicle in question, and your time is just about up.”
Sergeant Stanley remained calm. “Very well then. Allow me to inform you that the federal government is looking at what happened at the Jade Emperor as an act of domestic terrorism. If we can’t clear up this matter right now, I imagine you’ll be hearing from the FBI quite soon. I believe you’ve already met Special Agent Benjamin, Mr. Sutherland. She’s likely to be more insistent on a full and frank discussion with you, one not limited to a few minutes. No matter how Ms. Driscoll might feel about things. If Special Agent Benjamin even allows Ms. Driscoll to be present. I’m not exactly sure how the Patriot Act affects that right now. I think it might even allow for indefinite detainment without any charge being brought.”
The sergeant got up and opened the door.
Roger Sutherland and Tara Driscoll remained seated, having a hushed but not intimately positioned discussion. After a moment, Ms. Driscoll faced forward wearing a mighty frown.
Roger Sutherland asked Sergeant Stanley, “So what do you want to know?”
“You’d like to se
arch my house, Ron?” Jake Burkett asked the chief.
“Yes. Your garage and your state vehicle, too.”
“Holy smokes, what’d I do? I don’t have to submit to a body cavity search, do I?”
With a straight face, the chief said, “You’re a person of interest in a murder investigation.”
“Now, that is serious,” Jake said, sounding like he thought the whole thing was an elaborate practical joke. “Who’d I kill?”
“You’re involved in a lawsuit with Hale Tibbot, well, with his estate now. It concerns a large parcel of land,” Ron said.
A lawyer would have called the chief’s reply nonresponsive.
Jake Burkett, however, raised no objection.
He did say, “If I do let you look around, you’ll put everything back where you found it? I don’t see any reason to clean up a mess somebody else makes.”
Ron said, “We’ll be respectful and leave things tidy.”
“Should I have my lawyer here?”
“That’s certainly your right.”
“I guess I could close my door on you, too. But what the hell? I don’t have anything to hide. Wait a minute. I don’t know about the truck. That’s state property. Would it be okay if I just opened the doors, the glove box and the console? Let you see whatever you can from outside the vehicle.”
“That’ll do for now,” Ron said.
“This going to take all night? I’ve got to get up for work in the morning. It’s okay if I go to work?”
“Let’s take things one step at a time,” the chief said.
“My oh my, this is serious.” Jake looked at Tall Wolf. “Who might you be?”
“Uncle Sam’s favorite nephew,” he said.
Ron said, “He is a federal agent.”
“Didn’t know they got issued a sense of humor.”
“Mr. Burkett,” Tall Wolf said, “I was told you’re an environmental engineer. Was that an undergraduate or graduate degree?”
“Both,” Burkett said, sounding to Ron’s ear a little defensive for the first time.
“By any chance,” Tall Wolf added, “might you have earned a double major as an undergrad?”
The chief had no idea where Tall Wolf came up with that question. But Jake Burkett no longer looked like things were a big joke. Ron thought Jake might just close his door on them. The chief was about to tell him never mind about his curriculum vitae when he remembered Keely Powell’s evaluation of Tall Wolf’s intellectual standing.
It was higher than his own.
Ron bided the moment in silence.
After a long pause, Burkett answered. “I did have a double major, environmental and electrical engineering.”
Even Ron was smart enough to know an electrical engineer would have a leg up on most people when it came to building a time bomb.
The chief was also savvy enough a cop to understand that Tall Wolf had the answer to his question before he asked it. Probably knew Burkett’s college GPA and class rank, too.
If Burkett had denied the double major, Tall Wolf could have arrested him for lying to a federal agent. But Burkett had been smart enough to answer honestly. And now he had a good reason to stop cooperating. Tall Wolf had made him uncomfortable.
“Chief,” Burkett said, “I think we’re gonna have to do all this by the book. Get a warrant if you want to search my property. If you want to talk with me, I’ll make sure my lawyer is present. Good night.”
With that, Burkett stepped inside.
Double-locked his front door.
Ron gave Tall Wolf a look.
“What?” the special agent asked. “I wasn’t supposed to be the bad cop?”
Ron shook his head as they walked back to their car, Tall Wolf looking back over his shoulder.
“You think we’re in danger now?” Ron asked.
“I was just kidding about playing the bad cop, but you saw the look that came over the guy’s face, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Looked to me like he could kill someone.”
“Hard to take that to court.”
“Yeah, but now we know, and that’s always important. I was also sure he wouldn’t have been so loosey-goosey if he had anything to hide around here.”
“Me, too. But I’d still have liked to look around. You can learn things just by seeing how people live. Things that might lead you to look somewhere else.”
“That’s true. Sorry I jumped the gun on that. I could have waited to ask my question until we had a good look inside. My mistake.”
Ron stopped dead.
“Something wrong?” Tall Wolf asked, stopping, too.
“Special Agent Benjamin is on this frequency. I was just listening for the sound of her keeling over when you admitted that federal cops can make mistakes.”
Both men heard Keely Powell laugh in their earbuds.
Right before Benjamin said, “Fuck you, Chief.”
Tall Wolf took the gold nugget out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Ron.
“Didn’t see the right moment to play that card,” he said.
Ron left a detail of four cops to watch Jake Burkett’s house through the night.
Another four would shadow him in the morning.
Back in the Marriott, heading to his room, John Tall Wolf saw a lone housekeeper pushing her cart down a hallway. He thought the job had to be more wearing on a hardworking woman when she didn’t have friends nearby to gossip with … and that idea ignited a moment of insight for the special agent.
Once inside his room, he got Sergeant Stanley on the phone.
“Sergeant, would you know if anyone has checked Helios Sideris’ hotel room?”
“Special Agent Benjamin took care of that.”
“Do you know if she talked with the housekeeping staff?”
“No, sir. I don’t know that.”
“Remember when I called you about overhearing housekeepers discussing an illicit romance between hotel staffers. That gave me the idea just now that they might know a lot of things about people who generally don’t even notice their presence.”
“Huh,” the sergeant said, sounding like he wished he’d thought of that himself. He shared with Tall Wolf, “We didn’t get any video of anyone entering Sideris’ room even though it had been tossed.”
That led the special agent to wonder whether an electrical engineer would know how to fiddle with a closed circuit TV security system. Didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to him.
“Sergeant, why don’t you ask the housekeeping staff, maybe the custodial staff, too, if any of them noticed someone unfamiliar entering the hotel’s security area.”
“You think someone edited the video?”
“Unless the hotel is haunted.”
“We’re thinking Sideris might have caused the mess himself. Forgot where he put something. Turned the room upside down.”
“Maybe, but it never hurts to check things out.”
“No, it never does.”
“Might be a good idea to have a Spanish speaker on hand when the questioning is done, someone who doesn’t look Latino, might not be expected to be bilingual.”
“Right. You must think someone on the staff is in on this.”
“That’s the way it worked with the Pinnacle Security guy at Hale Tibbot’s house.”
“You’re right about that.”
“It’s pretty impressive, the cooperation a nice chunk of gold can buy,” Tall Wolf said.
Sergeant Stanley remembered the way the golden nugget had made him feel.
“Yeah, no kidding,” he said.
Tall Wolf’s next call was to Marlene Flower Moon. She was back in Washington, DC. Three hours later there. But Coyote didn’t turn in early. Even if she had, she’d awakened Tall Wolf in the middle of many a night.
“You think you could come up with three hundred million dollars quickly?” Tall Wolf asked, not bothering to say hello.
Marlene laughed. A moment of silence followed. She was thinking abou
t it.
“Let’s say I could,” she said, “for the sake of discussion. Why would I want to do that?”
“For a substantial return on investment.”
“Always a good reason. What’s your cut of this deal?”
“Not a penny. You know me.”
“Right. Money doesn’t interest you.”
“Not like it seems to interest other people.”
“Give me another reason. I’d have to find other … investors.”
“You remember what happened to the Sioux in South Dakota?” he asked.
“A lot of bad things happened to those people.”
“Think of the 1868 Treaty of Laramie, Deadwood and Homestake,” Tall Wolf said.
“You found gold?” Marlene whispered.
“Not me, but I know who did, and you can get a forty-nine percent interest for the figure I mentioned. You and your investors. It’ll probably pay off even better than making movies in Hollywood.”
Tall Wolf was twitting her there.
Knowing Marlene, though, she’d find a way to do both.
“You can also think of it as a way to repay the white man for what he did in the Black Hills,” he said. “That should do you some political good, too, don’t you think?”
Another moment of quiet settled in between the two of them.
“What I think, Tall Wolf,” Marlene finally said, “is you’re smart enough to scare me sometimes.” She laughed. “But that’s what makes things between us so interesting, right?”
“Good night, Coyote,” Tall Wolf said.
He had Herbert Wilkins on speed dial and got to him before Marlene could.
Tall Wolf told the Washoe council leader, “I got you the money you’ll need to buy that property. Marlene Flower Moon will be calling you as soon as we’re done talking. I told her she could buy up to a forty-nine percent stake for her money. If you let her screw you over for more than that, it’s on you. You understand?”
Wilkins’ voice was hoarse in reply. “I do, and thank you. This is going to help a lot of people.”
“Try to remember that when Marlene comes at you. And one more thing.”