Dead Folks

by Jon A. Jackson

  “When I was knocking on the back door,” Joe said, nodding toward the window, “you said something, I think it was Ί was wondering which of you would be back first.’ “

  “Good memory,” the colonel said. He looked alert.

  “It's improving,” Joe said. “But when I asked ‘Which of which,’ you didn't answer.”

  “Which of which?” The colonel looked annoyed. “I just meant . . . there's been other folks nosing around my neighbor's house. The lady who lives there is on the road a lot. A good neighbor keeps an eye on a neighbor's house. We don't want any breakins around here. But I didn't notice you were knocking on the door, Joe. It looked more like you broke into the back porch.”

  “But you didn't call the cops,” Joe said.

  “I'm not exactly fond of cops. I think you understand. But I'd like to know what you were up to. The cops can still be called, if necessary. But I figure a white boy gets a chance to tell his side of the story, first. Maybe you're a friend of my neighbor.”

  “What's your neighbor's name?” Joe asked.

  “You tell me, Joe, if she's a friend of yours.”

  “Who's been poking around?”

  “Mud people,” the colonel said. “Big mud people. I think they call them Tongans. There's some Tongan gangs in Salt Lake.”

  “Really? Aren't the Tongans some kind of islanders, from the South Pacific? Sweet hula dancers, something like that? Or, I guess I heard they were missionary people. They don't sound like gangstas. Don't you like church folks?”

  “Some of them, maybe most of them, are good folks, church folks. Like you say. But there's these gangs, too.” As if answering his own contradictory comments, the colonel added: “Some mud people are okay, if they're docile, don't act up. They have their uses. But too many are against white people. They come here because they want what America has, but they don't have any respect for this country. They want what our advanced technology has won for us, our hard-earned abundance, the good life that comes from hard work; but they don't want to work themselves and they aren't smart enough to figure out how to do it on their own. And then there's white people who like them, who work with them. Race traitors. You aren't a race traitor, are you, Joe?”

  Joe looked horrified. “Not me! Screw a bunch of Tongans.” Joe recalled with a twinge that he'd said much the same to Cap'n Lite some long hours earlier.

  The colonel seemed satisfied, but he asked, “So what do you know about the lady next door?”

  Joe shrugged. “I thought it was a babe I knew, named Georgia Johnson. I went out with her a few times. She gave me an address. Maybe I got the wrong address. We had a, uh, nice time. I thought I'd look her up.”

  The colonel considered all this, then said, “Do you have some identification, Joe?” When Joe produced his wallet the colonel looked at the Montana driver's license, then he called out, “Edna!”

  The woman entered immediately. “Keep an eye on Joe, here,” the colonel said, handing her the gun. He went into the next room while the woman leaned against the sink, casually holding the .45. She didn't say anything, just watched Joe. When Joe gestured with his empty coffee cup she just shook her head. Joe smiled at her. He wondered why a housewife would lounge around in jeans and a Patagonia jacket. She looked like she was ready to go out at a moment's notice. She looked very fit and alert. She didn't look like she was planning to bake some Christmas cookies.

  “Got all your shopping done?” he asked her. Edna barely emitted a snort of amusement, but didn't answer. “Me neither,” Joe said. “I didn't even send a single card. Just didn't have the ol’ spirit, I guess.”

  The colonel was gone for ten minutes. Joe could hear him talking in another room, but too faintly to make out the conversation. It was a telephone conversation, though. No other voice audible. When the colonel returned he handed the wallet to Joe. The license was back in the plastic holder. Nothing seemed disturbed, including the few hundreds that Joe kept in the bill compartment.

  “I guess you're all right,” the colonel said. “I had to call some friends who know about licenses. You understand. We have friends everywhere.” He took the .45 from the woman and stuck it in his jacket pocket. The woman left the room without a word. The colonel poured coffee and sat down to chat a little longer about mud people and the grievances of vets. But after another ten minutes he stood up and held out his hand, saying, “Sorry to inconvenience you, Joe. No hard feelings, I hope. You can go. Like to talk to you again, though, if you are interested in our group. Where are you staying?”

  “I'm not staying,” Joe said. “I'm just on my way through town. I'm headed back to Montana.” He shook the proffered hand. “I'm not complaining. You're a good neighbor. We need to look out for each other,” he said, hoping the ambiguity registered.

  “The lady next door isn't named Georgia,” the colonel said. “But maybe she gave you a phony name. What does Georgia look like?”

  “Blond,” Joe said, “stacked, about twenty-five.” He was thinking of Cateyo.

  The colonel shook his head. “Georgia gave you a fake address, Joe. Well, sorry about all this, but you shouldn't have popped that door.”

  “Hey, I hardly touched it,” Joe said. “The damn thing practically fell open.”

  The colonel shrugged. Presumably he bought it. He let Joe out the back gate and looked approvingly at Joe's Cadillac. Joe waved and called out, “Merry Christmas to you and Edna!” The colonel didn't respond.

  Joe drove away. Within a few blocks he had picked up the tail. It was a plain blue Ford. Joe turned toward the interstate. The blue car dropped him, but another plain car, a Chevy, followed him onto the northbound freeway. Within a few miles it exited, but was soon replaced by another Ford, or it may have been the first one, which lay well back in the early morning traffic but closed up whenever Joe neared an exit. Joe stayed on the freeway, up past Morton Thiokol, the chemical plants, the air base, headed toward Idaho. In a period of an hour he thought that he had identified no less than four different vehicles. He didn't try to shake them. No doubt they would soon tire of his unsuspicious behavior.

  It was still early morning, but the southbound lanes into Salt Lake City were filling up with commuters while the northbound lanes were vacant. The sun had fully risen, spreading across the frosted flats of the north lake. It was a lovely drive with the mountains towering to Joe's right. Somewhere around the climb up into the mountains, not far from the border, Joe looked back and realized that there was not another passenger car visible, just semis and pickup trucks. He drove on for a while at a steady seventy before pulling off at a truck stop in Idaho. He gassed up, then sat in the coffee shop for ten minutes, sipping at a Coke, watching every car that pulled in. At last he returned to the car and started back to the freeway, just a few hundred yards away. He was about to pass the northbound ramp and head back south when he spotted a car with its hood up, parked under the freeway bridge. A man leaned on the fender, looking at the engine but not doing anything to it. Joe swerved abruptly onto the northbound ramp. He had to drive all the way to the next exit, another six miles, before he was confident that the disabled car had not followed him onto the freeway and that no other vehicle had taken up the chase.

  On his way back to Salt Lake City, now an hour and a half away, he speculated on the resources that could mount such a tail. And suddenly it occurred to him that he'd screwed up. He exited at the truck stop and, sure enough, there was the “disabled” car parked near the underpass, the hood down now and the driver sitting in it. Joe drove directly to the truck stop, parked in front of the coffee shop and stuffed his wallet into the sleeve of his down jacket. He walked briskly into the place. He asked the waitress in the coffee shop if she had seen his wallet. When she said no and they went to look in the booth where he'd sat, he reached down under the booth and let the wallet slip onto the floor. With a show of great relief he picked it up and thanked the waitress. He gave her a five-dollar tip for helping him find his lost wallet. When he came out of the
shop to get in his car he saw that the “disabled” vehicle had now pulled into the parking lot, although the driver had not gotten out. Joe jumped in his car, fastened his seat belt and drove back onto the northbound freeway. He observed that the driver of the “disabled” car had gone into the restaurant.

  Good lord, he thought, how long can they keep this up? He figured they must have radio vehicles well up the line, checking to make sure that he didn't get off the freeway and ready to signal the distant tag team when he did. Did they have planes? Choppers? Why not? It was a big operation. And it spelled one thing: Feds. But why would the Feds be this interested in him? The New World Order, he thought, derisively. Maybe the colonel was on the other side and thought Joe was a militia man. But no, obviously it had to do with the house on Main Street. That was where they had picked up his trail. The colonel had preferred to let him run, for some reason. He couldn't imagine why, but he thought that as long as they were letting him run, he might as well run . . . for a while anyway, just to see how far they would pursue him.

  He sailed through the snowy hills on the sweeping highway, pondering. Who the hell were these guys? He was a little disappointed in the colonel. He had enjoyed the earnestness with which the man had spun out his tale of the bitter ex-warrior, the grim racist. The guy was probably a liberal, in reality—although if he hadn't been a pilot in Vietnam someone had certainly briefed him well. And then the picture cleared: it was Helen. They had got onto her because she had smurfed a lot of the money she had stolen from him. They would have been alerted by one or more of the banks she'd frequented. Once alerted, it would have been easy to track her back to the house. They would be DEA, he supposed. Possibly IRS or Immigration, or whoever was concerned with large amounts of money being smurfed. Maybe it was a joint operation. And they would be after the money primarily, not the smurf. So why hadn't they raided the house and confiscated the money? Well, perhaps they had. And now they would let the smurf, and/or her accomplices—himself—run, to show them the rest of the smurf gang, the operation, perhaps more money houses. Who knows? If they got lucky the smurf might lead them to the actual drug boss. (In their dreams, Joe thought.) But after a while, they would tire of this running and then they would pick him up.

  Joe knew about smurfing. He had done a bit of it himself, but then he had tired of the process. It was too time consuming and it constantly exposed you. That was why he had turned to more elaborate schemes, his so-called “Gogol scam,” where a lot of money could be washed with much less exposure. He reflected briefly on the AIDS house scheme, the Last Resort; that seemed promising.

  This pursuit crap was making Joe agoraphobic. He was getting way too popular, he felt. He had Mulheisen after him, Tongans, now the Feds. What next—the Fat Man? Oh yes, to be sure. The mob would join the posse. In fact, they had been first out of the gate, sending their hit man after him. They wouldn't give up now. He was sure that Heather had been the second hitter. At least she was taken care of. But there would be a third, no doubt—and a fourth, a fifth murderer. And maybe the Colombians would get in on it, too. Hell, why not the Marines? Maybe the Montana Militia would like to ride against him as well.

  It seemed a bit much, he thought. All he'd done was advise Helen on how to get the revenge she so desired. She had done the number on Carmine, not he. Once upon a time he had been an invisible man, but no more. One little helping hand. . . . No good deed goes unpunished. Now it looked like Joe Service was going to have to take a fall. Not, he told himself, likely.

  Helen! Oh, dear. She would be on the case, too. If she got out of jail in Butte. . . . Joe realized that he had to get back to Salt Lake fast, Feds or no Feds. He wanted his money—if the Feds hadn't already copped it. Helen would be after it, too, and she wouldn't know that the Feds were waiting and watching. There was nothing for it: he had to slip in under their noses and get his money back.

  The problem was this damn freeway. It was too easy for them to monitor his progress. It was a long, wide-open trail with only a few exits. Too easy to monitor. He pulled off at a rest stop and got out. He went to the bathroom and relieved himself. He was tired. He came out into the refreshing air. His was the only car. A couple of semis sat muttering. The countryside was open. Distant agricultural structures, distant mountains, a world of snow-dusted sagebrush, and high above, the dissipating ribbons of contrails. Probably spy planes, he thought. He looked at the Cadillac and wished he had a less conspicuous vehicle. But then a thought occurred to him. He knelt and peered under the car. Before long he found the magnetized transmitter, tucked into the rear wheel well. This was how they tracked him. He stood up and looked around the sky. No choppers, no planes . . . could they be using satellites? Why not? He decided to leave the transmitter in place.

  He took the exit at Pocatello. It wasn't a big town, but it was a town. It had a university, it had people. He was tired, anyway. He drove to a Best Western motel, a big one downtown, and checked in. He parked the car where it could be easily observed, confidently transmitting his location. Then he went into his room and right out the bathroom window. No point in giving them time to set up a surveillance team. They wouldn't bother that room for a while.

  A few minutes later, a few blocks away, he had found the car he wanted: an older model Chevy in a large post office parking lot. It was parked among several other cars near the employees’ entrance, so there was a good chance that it belonged to someone who wouldn't be getting off shift for several hours. He was very familiar with this model of Chevy and he was grateful to be in the trusting Mountain West, where so few people bothered to lock their car doors.

  Within ten minutes he had filled the tank with gas and was rolling pleasantly south, back to Salt Lake City. It was a lovely drive and he reflected on the notion that an electronic monitor had an interesting aspect, in that it continued to advertise his presence in Pocatello and the very reliability of its constant signal must have a tendency to lull the trackers into a false confidence. It was nice when irritating things could be turned to one's advantage.

  10

  Jolly Season

  Christmas morning was bitter cold, the wind howling about the Garland ranch house. The first thing Grace did was make up the fire in the living room. A few years before Cal died they'd had electric baseboard heaters installed, just as a backup, so they wouldn't have to stoke up a fire to keep the pipes from freezing if she and Cal went off for a day, or even overnight. It had made a big difference in their freedom in the winter and a blessed relief from the annual struggle with frozen pipes. And, of course, the house wasn't quite as frigid in the morning as when Grace and Cal had been newlyweds. Still, habits of frugality die hard; the thermostat was never set above fifty-five degrees.

  After the fire was made up and roaring along, she cleaned up the mess from last night. She'd left the tea things out and now she straightened the comforter and pillows on the couch, where Heather had lain during the evening. She pulled up the comforter from where a fold of it had been stuck down behind the cushions and she fluffed it out, then folded it up. Next she turned over the cushions. And that was when she found the bullets. Six .30-.30 cartridges, lying under the cushion where Heather's upper body had rested while Grace had read from The Cricket on the Hearth. Grace glanced at the rifle, the sturdy old Winchester model 94 standing by the kitchen door, then at the closed door to Calla's room, where Heather was sleeping.

  What to do? What did it mean? Why would Heather remove the cartridges from the rifle and then hide them in the couch? There was something terribly wrong. A chill went through her, then a feeling of sadness welled up. So this, too, was not going to turn out? She'd been happy, reading to the young woman. She could see that Heather had genuinely enjoyed it. She had begun to believe that they would have a real jolly old Christmas of it, after all.

  She couldn't make up her mind quite what to do next. Call Jacky Lee? What could she say? This young woman took the bullets out of my rifle? No, no. It was, as yet, too much of a puzzle. It never for a mo
ment occurred to her that Heather had anything to do with the fire at Joseph Humann's cabin. She just didn't connect it. But she knew something was seriously wrong. She knew she had to be on guard. She started to put the bullets in her pocket, then decided against it. She replaced them under the cushion.

  She made coffee and chewed on a bit of toast with service-berry jam while she thought of what to do. It occurred to her that Sally would be along in a bit. Sally would surely stop by. She should have picked up her check yesterday, but hadn't. Grace would ask Sally what she thought. In the meantime, when she went out to do chores, she would take the rifle, just to be on the safe side. She had plenty more cartridges in a box in the pickup, which was parked in the barn.

  Heather burrowed deep into the down comforter. She would have to get up soon, but for now she was pleased to be able to snuggle into this delicious warmth. But after a while, when she heard the old woman stoking the wood stove and then puttering about in the kitchen, she became discontented. It seemed that she could never really rest. Something was forever calling, demanding that she get up and get going, do something, make something of yourself, quit lollygagging. And even when there was no actual call, no accusation of laziness uttered aloud, there was always the silent accusation, the long pregnant waiting for her to act. Oh, how she hated it.

  Heather heard the kitchen door open and close and the faint sound of Grace Garland's boots breaking through the stiff meringue of wind-hardened drifts. Reluctantly, she crawled out of the seductive warmth of the bed, into the chilly air of the bedroom. In the living room the stove was briskly ticking, pulsing a marvelous heat. She stood by the stove in the flannel nightgown that Grace had given her, shivering until the delicious heat penetrated. This was splendid. She thought of herself as a snake, stiff from the night, warming in the sun.