A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery wl-9

by Craig Johnson

  I eased back in my chair. “Can I talk now?”

  “No, you cannot talk until you show some semblance of being able to behave like a rational, reasonable law-enforcement professional.”

  I considered. “I’m not going to be able to talk for the rest of my life?”

  “No.”

  I glanced out my window and honestly reflected on my actions earlier. “I’m sorry.”

  She yanked herself forward and hissed. “Don’t say that, don’t even say that, because all that’s gonna do is piss me off even more. And you wanna know why? Because you don’t mean it. You walk around with this ten-foot-tall and bulletproof attitude, which, I might add, you should’ve gotten over during that last little jaunt in the mountains.”

  “That’s how I lost the fifteen pounds.”

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” She was really angry now and stood, still holding the confiscated .45. “There are a lot of people around here who kind of depend on you, you know.” She paced and then stopped, taking a deep breath and running her fingers through her hair. “A lot of people, and if you’re not going to think of yourself then maybe you should think about them.” She scratched the end of her nose with the barrel of the semiauto.

  Being a fast learner, I said nothing.

  With very little warning, she tossed the Wilson onto my desk, where it struck my leather blotter with a resounding thud and slid toward me. “That is a five-thousand-dollar sidearm—what the hell is Farmer Green Jeans doing with a gun like that?”

  I raised my hand.

  She dismissed me with a flapping of her own. “Talk.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She turned to look down at me. “You used your opportunity to talk for that?”

  I shrugged and studied her and gestured toward the pistol on my desk. “At the risk of you loading the aforementioned weapon and shooting me—are you all right?”

  She turned very slowly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  I put my hand on the .45 and slid it out of her reach.

  “I just want to be clear about this.” She thumped a forefinger at her chest. “I’m dressing you down and you’re asking what’s wrong with me?”

  “You just . . . You just seem a little on edge.”

  She walked over and closed my office door the rest of the way and then came back and sat in front of me on my desk, near me and the pistol. “Fuck. You. Again. I am trying to have a serious conversation about your recent juvenile actions and you’re trying to use that hackneyed old chauvinistic tactic of blaming all this on my emotions?”

  I raised my hand again.

  She raised a tactical boot and planted it firmly between my legs, grabbed the front of my shirt, and pulled me in close, forcing me to grab the arms of my chair for balance. “I am in complete control of my emotions.”

  As they go, it was the Mount Vesuvius of kisses—shocking, overpowering, molten, and leaving nothing but paralyzed ash in its wake. I thought for a moment I was going to suffocate when she released the fistful of my shirt like the ripcord on a parachute.

  Her face hovered there, and I continued to breathe her breath, feeling the warmth of it on my jaw and neck. “Any more questions about my emotions?”

  “Nope.”

  She pushed with the foot, and I felt my boot dislodge; it was only then that I realized that my chair was flipping backward. I scrambled to grab the edge of my desk, Vic, or anything, but she’d already stood and stepped away and I crashed backward onto the carpet-covered but still unforgiving hardwood floor.

  I lay there, attempting to focus my eyes and get the air back in my lungs as she walked over and stood above me, her hair framing her face like anything but a halo. The back of my head hurt, and I squeezed my eyelids together in an attempt to purge the ache that was starting at the back of my head.

  She leaned over at the waist to inspect me crawling from the wreckage and whispered in a sultry voice, “I didn’t call on you, teacher’s pet.”

  Boy howdy.

  Reaching a hand up, I was able to graze my fingers across her muscular calf as she turned and marched away. My eyes closed again for what I thought was only a moment and when I opened them she was gone and a different head, panting with a different sort of breath and with a worried look on his long face, was hanging over me. Unsure, he slathered a lick on the side of my head with a tongue as wide as a paperback, correct in the belief that a good kiss made everything better—well, almost everything.

  I reached up and grabbed his ruff and massaged his ear. “How you doin’, rascal?”

  He wagged and disappeared as I noticed someone standing in my doorway.

  “Walt?”

  I tried my best to sound casual. “Yep.”

  “I heard a crash.”

  “That would’ve been me.” Ruby walked in, and I noticed she was wearing a pair of her sporty, reflective running shoes; funny the things you noticed from this perspective. “What’s up?”

  “Saizarbitoria wants to talk to you, and Double Tough is on line one—something about a leased piece of drilling equipment?”

  “Could you hand me my phone and tell the Basquo where I am?”

  “Sure.”

  She rested the whole thing on my chest, picked up the receiver, and handed it to me, a finger poised to punch the button. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re doing?”

  “Nope, I don’t mind at all.”

  We both waited.

  Finally, she pushed the button and then smeared a thumb over my lips. “You might want to get rid of the lipstick—it doesn’t become you.”

  I watched as she stood and disappeared out my door. “Do we have any aspirin?” Readjusting the receiver in the crook of my neck, I thought about getting up, but I wasn’t really that uncomfortable, so I just spoke. “What’ve you got for me, Tough?”

  “Hey, Chief. Hughes Christensen got back to me, and let me tell you that’s the fastest that’s ever happened.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “It’s stolen.”

  “Well, fancy that.”

  There was a rustling of paper as he read from his notes. “The original leasing was through PEMEX, the Mexican government-owned petroleum company?”

  “The big dog, huh?”

  “Big to the tune of four hundred and fifteen billion in assets.”

  I whistled. “How did they even notice it was missing?”

  “They didn’t; it was subleased to a private contractor.” I noticed a few cracks as I stared at the ceiling in my office and listened to him. “That’s the way these big operations work; they order up a bunch of this stuff if they get even an inkling that they might need it, because, unlike the rest of us, they don’t wait on anything.”

  “I see.”

  “But then they got all this equipment lying around that they’re not using and start thinking about recouping their losses. Well, the small operators are desperately in need of the equipment, but the big companies have it all tied up, so they have to go to ’em with their hats in their hands and then the big boys overcharge ’em to get back some of the lease money they lost.”

  “Who was the subcontractor?”

  “An even bigger Brazilian company called Petrobras, but then they subleased the bit to a company called . . .”

  “No offense, Tough, and I really appreciate your efforts, but—”

  He laughed. “Seventeen more leases.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I want a raise.”

  “I offered you a rug.”

  “The final operator was a . . .” He read from the paper. “DT Enterprises.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Me neither, but there are a ton of these little wildcat operations down there; it’s like the Wild West.”

  “And you are telling me this because?”

  “These operators are not the best bookkeepers, because it is sometimes not beneficial to these operators to have the best books kept.”

  “I’ll
buy you a lamp to go with the rug.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that; you’re gonna have to find somebody else to work down here.”

  I was mildly shocked. “Are you quitting on me?”

  “Nope, but Frymire is; he dropped off a letter for you this afternoon. I guess him and the fiancée are movin’ down to Colorado. He says he can stick around for another week if you need ’im.”

  “Do we need him?”

  “Well, things are heatin’ up around here, but I figure I can handle it.”

  “Any more contact with the East Spring bunch?”

  “Nope, after you helped ’em get that piece-of-shit Plymouth goin’ they just headed on down the road.”

  “What did you do with the bit?”

  “I got it locked up in the back of the Suburban with my dirty laundry on top of it.”

  “Sounds safe.”

  “I wouldn’t touch it, unless I had to.”

  As I thought about some of the things Sheriff Crutchley had said, I spotted one of the .45 dumdum rounds that must’ve rolled off the top of my desk. I picked it up and held it in front of my face. Neville Bertie-Clay, the British army officer who had worked at the Dum Dum Arsenal near Calcutta, had developed the hollow or soft point bullet that to this day carried the arsenal’s name. The things should’ve been called Bertie-Berties.

  “Walt?”

  “Yep?”

  “Anything else?”

  The British had used the ammunition in the venerable .303 against Asians and Africans because it had sufficient enough stopping power to deter a determined charge. The Hague Convention of 1899 had found the dumdum too cruel for use against fellow European countries, but some police departments still authorize them because they mostly do not pass through intended targets and continue on into innocent bystanders.

  “Sheriff?”

  I’d seen what they could do in Vietnam, and the fistfuls of flesh they removed. “Yep. Hey, where is DT Enterprises licensed?”

  There was a pause. “Mexico.”

  “Where in Mexico?”

  There was more paper rustling on his end. “Chihuahua.”

  “Where the dogs come from.”

  “I guess.”

  “See what you can dig up on them.”

  “Roger that. Anything else?”

  “Start taking applications down there, would you?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, okay. Why don’t you just send Vic? I’ve got my cot set up in the back.”

  “I don’t think that would work out, but don’t worry, I’m going to call in some reinforcements.”

  He chuckled on the other end. “Smoke signals or war drums?”

  Double Tough knew my methods. “I’ll let you know.” I hung up the phone and moved it off my chest, crossed my arms, and tried to think, once again, about my dwindling staff, but DT Enterprises kept getting in the way. Why did that sound familiar? Was it something somebody with Lynear had said? I didn’t think so—maybe it wasn’t the Enterprises part.

  DT.

  Sancho came in and sat on the corner of my desk with a sheaf of papers under his arm, one hand cupped around some aspirin, and a glass of water in the other. “You sleeping down there tonight?”

  Dog followed him in and sat by my desk. “Just me and my faithful companion.”

  “Sit up and take your medicine. Ruby’s orders.”

  I took the four aspirin and the glass from him and leaned against the bookcase where I’d started the day. “Thanks.” I swallowed. “Everybody gone?”

  “Cord is still working over at the Busy Bee, and Mr. Rockwell is reading about himself in his cell.” He studied my quizzical look. “Ruby went over to the library and picked up all the books they had on Orrin Porter Rockwell and gave them to him.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s been awfully depressed since Vic arrested him, but I think he appreciated the books.” He smiled, and I couldn’t help but think how handsome that face would be on a sheriff’s election poster. “Bishop Goodman came by, and they talked for about four hours.”

  I laughed. “Our bishop may be fianchettoed.”

  “Huh?”

  “A chess move where the bishop can form a long, diagonal defense of a castled king. Anyway, I think the good bishop wants to write a book about Orrin Porter Rockwell, and the prisoner in question might be a shortcut in the research department.”

  “He seems to know an awful lot about him.”

  “That he does. Any word on who he really is?”

  “I tried to get his fingerprints, but he resisted, so I took them off of a glass of water.”

  I glanced at the one in my hand. “Remind me to never get on your bad side.”

  He pulled the papers from his underarm and looked at them. “It makes for some interesting reading.”

  I studied the Basquo’s face. “Oh, now, why don’t I like the sound of that?”

  “Well, you know we’re limited to service personnel and criminals on the fingerprint bank. . . .”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I got nothing.”

  “So he’s clean?”

  “Not exactly.” He flipped one of the pages over and handed it down to me as Dog settled in and stretched out, figuring we were here for the long haul.

  There was an enlarged, washed-out, mimeographed two-by-two photo, not unlike the one that had accompanied Saizarbitoria’s résumé from the Wyoming State Prison in Rawlins back when he’d been attempting to flee working in corrections. The man in the photo was trim, young, and straining with wiry muscle. There was an intensity in the light, opal-like eyes that was hard to miss and still in evidence. His hair was so close-cropped to the side of his head that his ears looked like he was cleared for takeoff—ears I thought I’d seen somewhere before on someone else.

  The official form from Ellsworth Air Force Base was a military identification for the year 1957 but stated that all information was classified.

  “Intelligence.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” He tapped the papers in his hand. “I had a friend at the National Personnel Records Center who found this in the files that said he was on loan to Civil Air Transport, under the auspices of the American Airdale Corporation. . . . Get it? Air, Dale . . . ?”

  “No.”

  “You will. Two years later Civil Air Transport and American Airdale changed their name to the much storied Air America.”

  I knocked the receiver off the phone. “CIA?”

  “Spooky as the night is long.” He laughed. “Up to ’62 he flew direct and indirect support for CIA Ops Ambidextrous, Hotfoot, and White Star, and then trained the Royal Laotian armed forces. After that he was involved with something called Project 404 as an air attaché to the U.S. embassy in Vientiane, and then he provided logistical support to the Royal Lao and Hmong armies under the command of General Vang Pao.”

  I’m sure what the Basquo had discovered was pretty important, but I was getting a little tired of all the dramatics. “C’mon, CIA?”

  “Wait, there’s more.” His eyes returned to the paper. “He was shot down in ’64 while making what they called a hard rice support run in the mountains dropping off weapons to tribal leaders who were opposed to the North Vietnamese. He was listed MIA, but by the end of the war in ’73 he was listed as a war casualty. Okay, so jump-cut to this VISTA volunteer working in Vietnam who happens to see this white guy with a beard and long hair working on a prison road crew in ’75 and goes over to him and asks him his name.”

  “Yep?”

  “The guy looks up slow and has some trouble getting his voice and remembering how to speak English before telling the kid his nickname, Airdale.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “From Short Drop, Wyoming.”

  I stared at him.

  “Dale Airdale Tisdale.”

  DT Enterprises.

  11

  Henry sipped his beer and leaned back in Ruby’s chair. “The woman who owns the mercantile, h
is wife, Eleanor, says he died in a plane crash in Mexico?”

  I glanced back at him. “Yep, but he supposedly died crashing a plane in North Vietnam, too. It seems to me he’s made a habit of crashing and dying all over the globe.”

  The Bear, the Basquo, and I had been surprised to find a few Rainiers in the commissary icebox and were sitting in the dispatcher’s area at the front of the office like truants.

  Sancho sat on the bench by the steps and turned the copy of Tisdale’s faded, black-and-white head shot in his hands, then stretched an arm out and forced Henry and me to stare it in the eye. “Tell me that’s not him.”

  The thing looked like a photo of a ghost. The eyes were the same, but the identifying feature was the ears—ears exactly like his grandson’s. “So what was he doing flying around Mexico?”

  “You tell me.”

  The Bear added. “And dead, no less.”

  I thought about it. “If he’s Sarah Tisdale’s father, then he had to be back here in Wyoming for at least a night.”

  Saizarbitoria sipped his Rainier. “Uh-huh.”

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  He looked at the can. “That this is the shittiest tasting beer ever?”

  “That’s not what I’m thinking.” The Cheyenne Nation chuckled, and I took a long swig out of my own can, just to make a point. “That he was still on the Company payroll down in Mexico.”

  Sancho belched and made a face. “Lawyers, guns, and money?”

  “I guess I need to talk to Eleanor Tisdale, not that I’m looking forward to it.”

  The Basquo nodded his head, knocked on the bench as if it were a door, and broke into a faux, flowery announcer voice. “Mrs. Tisdale, we’re sorry to report that we think your daughter’s dead, but guess who we have behind door number two?” I sighed, and he continued. “You guys know anybody at the CIA?”

  Henry and I glanced at each other, and then I pulled out my pocket watch. “As a matter of fact, we do.”