Another Man's Moccasins

4

My daughter held my hand. Ruby and Henry sat at the reception desk and looked at me, Henry with the receiver still at his ear.

Saizarbitoria had put our set of photographs of the young woman’s body on Ruby’s desk, and they lay scattered beside the battered snapshot. I had sent Sancho to Powder Junction to ask some questions at the Wild Bunch Bar, and Lucian lay on the entryway bench, still thankfully sound asleep.

"Daddy?” She was nuzzled up close, standing right next to me with her arms trailing down mine and her chin at the scar tissue on my clavicle. “Daddy, is it possible...?”

I looked at her, and it was almost as if she wanted it to be true. “No.”

“Then why would she be here?”

“I have no idea.”

Ruby looked again, studying the photos with renewed vigor. I faced the blue yonder in her eyes, and she nodded. “Walt, they could be related.”

I compared their faces. There was a resemblance, but with the swelling and discoloration of the victim in our photos, it was hard to make the leap.

Or I simply didn’t want to.

Henry began speaking into the phone in Cheyenne; I could understand the references to Brandon White Buffalo, but that was about it.

She was smiling at the camera, and she had great teeth, just as I’d remembered. There was a nervousness in the smile, though, a wayward tension that showed that she wasn’t used to having her photograph taken.

I thought about the body of the dead young woman by the highway and tried to connect it with the smiling woman in the old photo and to the one in my memory. I reached down and turned one of our photographs so that the profile of the woman matched the snapshot. Some of the bone structure was the same.

I glanced at Henry, and it looked like he was on hold again. He nodded toward the pictures. “It is possible.”

I crossed to the bench beside the stairwell and sat, careful to avoid Lucian’s boots; the last thing I needed was for him to wake up. I sat there thinking and looked at the streaming patterns of sunlight on the hardwood floor. Thinking about Vietnam, about Tan Son Nhut and Mai Kim—remembering the heat, the strange light, and the moral ambiguity.

“Who was she?”

I was startled by Cady’s voice and looked back up. I thought about all the wayward memories that had been harassing me lately, the recrimination, doubt, injured pride, guilt, and all the bitterness of the moral debate over a long-dead war. I sat there with the same feeling I’d had in the tunnel when the big Indian had tried to choke me. I was choking now on a returning past that left me uneasy, restless, and unmoored.

I chewed at the skin in the inside of my mouth and stared at the floor. “She was a bar girl at an air force base where I was sent on an investigation.” I glanced up at Henry. “You met her, when you came down.”

He nodded. “Before Tet.”

“Yep.” My eyes went back to the sun-scoured pattern at our feet, and I watched the dust that floated in and out of a sunshine that seemed far away.

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1967

Gusts of dust, pebbles, and dirt scoured the airfield as the two rotors of the big Chinook forced everyone to crouch and look away. The wind from the blades was enough to knock me down and lift tarmac sections of over a hundred pounds. I kept my eyes closed and waited for the stinging to stop. The big helicopter landed, the gun crew relaxed, and the .50 caliber machine guns went limp as if the will to fight had left the aircraft.

It had.

I felt a hand on my shoulder as someone gripped me and shoved me away from the swirling, filthy air. “Ya-tah-hey, white boy!”

I had gotten a message from battalion headquarters indicating priority one from Special Operations Group, Military Assistance Command. Everyone in the communications shack wanted to know what it was about, but I’d quietly taken the closed paper into the street outside to open and read the short note. “Hue and Dong Ha in last twenty-four. Stopping in for R & R tomorrow night, eighteen hundred. Nah-kohe.”

When I could see again, we were standing at the edge of the airstrip, and I noticed that the Bear was loaded for bear—unsecured weapons hung around him like casually prepared death. The Cheyenne Nation, RT One-Zero, Recon Team Wyoming, wore a claymore mine in a canvas satchel, with a homemade detonation device in his chest pocket, a string of the golf-ball-sized V-40 minigrenades, a CAR-15, and a sawed-off M79. He was weighed down with every ammunition pouch I knew of, along with a Special Forces tomahawk at his back. I tapped a finger on the explosive device at his chest. “You better disconnect the blooper on that thing; we’ve got a lot of loose radio frequency around here, and you’re liable to go off to the happy hunting ground.”

He didn’t move.

I shook my head and looked at him. “Did you think you were going to have to fight your way in?”

It was a tight, flat smile. “In or out; it makes little difference.”

He wasn’t traveling alone; beside him stood a recon Montagnard, as the French had named them. About half my height, the little guy was a fierce-looking individual issuing sullen looks from under his pith helmet. He also carried the cut-down version of the M16, as well as a suppressed .22 caliber High Standard, a 60 mm minimortar with ammo, and a Special Forces Randall Model 14 Bowie knife.

“Walt, this is Babysan Quang Sang.”

I stuck out my hand. “Glad to meet you.” He looked at my hand as if he’d never seen one. I waited a moment and then dropped it. "C’mon, I’ll buy you guys a beer.”

As we turned to go, Henry stepped into a lieutenant colonel who was headed the other way. The Bear’s movements slowed until he was absolutely still. “Watch where you are going.”

The light colonel stood there for a moment looking at the collective armament and at the tall Indian with the carved bone amulet in the image of a horse at his throat, the recon patch, and the ID bar that read STANDING BEAR. The half-bird then looked at the indig who in turn looked ready to pull his knife and leap for the officer’s throat. It took a moment for the colonel to respond, but when he did, he smiled. “That’s watch where you’re going, sir.”

It promised to be a stimulating forty-eight hours.

Action at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge was well under way when we arrived, and there were no tables available, so we sidled up to the bar like a threesome of fur trappers from the great northwest. I ordered three Tiger beers, turned to toast my best friend in the world, and yelled to be heard over the crowd. “Good to see you alive!”

“Good to be alive!” He looked behind him and saw that the tiny Montagnard was being ingested by the crowd. Henry set his beer down, turned to pick Babysan up, and placed him on the bar between us. Quang Sang smiled as if this were an everyday occurrence and drank his beer in one breath. Le Khang gave me a warning look from the other side of the bar but quickly went back to polishing the glassware when Henry took off his cap and rested it between them. “So, this is where you have been spending the war?”

“I sometimes reconnoiter to the piano.” He nodded his head, knowing full well I was lying. “Henry, they cut your hair.”

He smiled. “They cut yours, too.”

It was quiet for a moment, and I felt compelled to ask, “Where to next?”

He looked around but figured there weren’t any VC in the immediate vicinity. “Hill 861 and then back over the fence to Laos!”

“I didn’t know they were in the war.”

He shrugged and sipped his beer. “They are not.”

I nodded. “What’s on Hill 861?”

“Cong.” He smiled. “But there will be a lot less in twenty-four hours!” He nudged the Montagnard. “Powder River!”

The tiny bushman screamed out in a voice as high-pitched as those of most of the women in the bar. “Powder River! Mile-wiye an inch-deep letter buck!”

The Cheyenne Nation stood there, illuminating pride. “I figured if he was going to be on Recon Team Wyoming, he should know the history.”

“Boy howdy.”

“Would you like to hear his rendition of ‘Cowboy Joe’?”

I shook my head and looked back at Henry. “You’ve gone native.”

He smiled, but it was all teeth. “I have always been native.” He tipped his beer up and downed it in three swallows, slamming it down alongside Quang Sang’s knee. The tiny man followed suit, so I slammed mine and held up three fingers.

He flipped a thumb toward Babysan. “Do you know the story on these people?”

“A little.”

He leaned in close, and our more reasonably projected conversation took place over Babysan’s knees as I handed them their beers. “They’re a combination of Malay tribesmen, Chinese Han, Polynesians, and Mongols.” He smiled again, and again it was all teeth. “Did you know that the Mongols used to ride 250 miles a day?”

I made a face.

“Made the Pony Express look like pikers.” He took a sip of his beer. “They do not get along with the rest of the Vietnamese. They figure they are a bunch of effete snobs that wouldn’t last twenty minutes out in the bush. The lowlanders call them . . . ,” he looked around, and his eyes dismissed the other southern Vietnamese in the loud room, “. . . savages.”

I nodded along with him. “I get the point.”

“They make fun of them because their skin is darker and their pronunciation is different, but they routinely whip the VC with bows and arrows.”

“I got it.”

“They have a jungle economy, so money does not mean anything to them. The French used to pay them in beads. . . .”

“Got it.”

“Uncle Sam pays Quang Sang sixty bucks a month, and he’s the highest-paid yard in his tribe.” I stopped saying anything. “These people have one of the strongest warrior ethics of anyone I have ever met.” Even though we were close, his voice had risen to the previous level. “They have been abused by the Vietnamese, the Communists, the French, and now by us. And when this criminal war is over, I can guarantee you that they will pay the highest price.”

I took a breath and waited as the all-around radical calmed back down. Henry had always been a hothead, but it seemed as if his temper had gotten worse in the last few years; maybe it was the war, maybe it was the times. “I guess that ‘native’ remark got you a little angry.”

He took another swallow of his beer, reset his jaw, and looked at me some more. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry. I sometimes think I’m funny.” I watched him continue to watch me as I sipped my beer, a little slower now.

It was well into the witching hour. I had introduced Mai Kim to Henry and Babysan. We had transferred the party to the piano bench, and Henry and I watched as the two of them slowly danced to “Hurt So Bad.” I was accompanying Little Anthony and the Imperials with a one-finger melody. It was a big piano bench, which was good, because the Cheyenne Nation and I pretty much filled it up. He was turned toward the dance floor, while I was drunkenly focused on the piano keys.

Henry Standing Bear swayed with the music but broke the rhythm by bumping my shoulder. I turned to look at him, and he gestured with his beer toward the dance floor. I half turned on the bench and looked at the pair. They were the only dancers still out there, and they swayed in the green and red glow of the dim Christmas lights and in the shadows of the floods from the air force base.

After a few turns, Babysan Quang Sang gave me the thumbs-up. “I think he likes me.”

Henry smiled. “I think he likes her better. He was negotiating true love, but I told him you were paying for her services. I arranged it with the pilot over there.”

I shook my head and looked back toward the bar. Hollywood Hoang raised a glass of what looked like champagne to seal the deal, and I looked back at Mai Kim. “She’s a good kid.”

I could feel him studying the side of my face and turned back to the piano. He continued to watch me. “You get some?” I shrugged and shook my head no. “Why not?” He took a sip of his beer, I took a sip of mine, and we sat there in silence longer than sober people would. “You still dating that blonde back in Durant?”

As near as I could remember, Henry had only met Martha once at the county rodeo dance, but the Cheyenne Nation didn’t miss much. “I don’t know if I’d call it dating. I haven’t heard anything from her in about a month and a half.”

He snorted. "Walter...” He always called me Walter when he was going to drop a load of philosophical crap on me, as though the shorter version of my name couldn’t withstand the strain. “It is a war.”

“Even here, I noticed.”

“There is a certain suspension of the normal rules of engagement.”

“We’re not engaged.”

“You might as well be. Shit, Walt, you shake hands with a woman and you feel like you have to be true to her for the rest of your life.” I didn’t say anything but kept plinking, and the silence returned to our voices.

The USO had a piano tuner, of all things, who was touring Southeast Asia, but since the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge was off base, they hadn’t come here. I moved up an octave, but it was only marginally better.

“I am sorry.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard him and turned. “What?”

He continued gazing at the dancers. “For yelling at you, I am sorry.”

“It’s not important.”

“Yes, it is.”

He was silent again.

The Bear didn’t make statements like this lightly, and I’d learned to pay attention to him when he spoke in this tone of voice. “I am not so sure that I am going to make it through this war, and I would not have you think poorly of me.”

I sat there staring at him and tried to think which part I wanted to argue with first, finally settling on the most important. “Of course you’re going to make it through this war.” He still didn’t say anything. “One day we’re going to be old, fat guys, and we’re going to sit around and drink beer and talk about getting me laid.” It sounded flat, even to me, so I stopped. “I know it’s hard out there....”

“It is not hard out there.” His head turned, but he didn’t look at me. “I like the night; I see my ancestors in the dark, a thousand foot-steps, deadly quiet. The ghosts are with me, and I see them, but it was different the last time I was out on recon-ops.” His eyes came around like searchlights. “I saw myself.”

I waited.

“But it was okay, because I was behind me. As long as my ghost is behind me, like a shadow, then I am safe.”

I continued to wait.

“If he ever moves up in front of me, it will be bad.”

“It is really too bad.”

I took my eyes off the road and glanced at him. “What?” Due to DCI’s slow response, the VA administrative staff not being available till tomorrow morning, Brandon White Buffalo not returning our calls, and my inability to sit still, we had decided to take a drive down to Powder Junction and talk to the bartender at the Wild Bunch Bar.

“For the young woman to have come so far seeking a relative. . . .”

“We’re not related.”

He smiled. “I believe you.” He gestured toward Cady. “If it were not for what sits between us, I would be willing to swear that you have never had sex in your life.”

She ignored Henry. “Evidently, she thought you were related, or why would she come all the way to Wyoming?”

“And how else would she know who you are or, more importantly, where you are?” He looked out the window at the passing landscape and the trailing edge of the Bighorn Mountains. “Who knew you from back then and could provide that kind of information now?”

I thought about it, and the thought was depressing. “You really think that she thought she was related to me and came all the way from Vietnam?”

“It is the worst-case scenario.”

I shook my head. “Why wouldn’t she have written or made a phone call?”

“Perhaps her circumstance did not allow for it.”

The radio interrupted the philosophical debate. Static. “Unit one, we got the report from DCI, and Saizarbitoria says to tell you he forgot and took the personal property packet for them and says that he’ll give it to you when you get there. He wants your 10-40. Over.”

I tried to pluck the mic from the dash, but Cady was faster. She had always liked pushing buttons. “Roger that, base. Our 10-40 is...” She looked at me.

“You started it, now finish.”

Henry’s voice rumbled in his chest. “Mile marker 255.”

She stuck her tongue out at me and rekeyed the mic. “Mile marker 255, about a mile north of Powder Junction.”

I leaned over and added my part. “We’re a minute away. Tell him to keep his badge on.”

We pulled off the highway, drove through the underpass, and saw two young boys, who looked like brothers, standing at the corner of a day care and jumping up and down in unison with their hands above their heads. They waved.

I waved back, figuring there probably wasn’t a lot to do in the southern part of the county.

I turned right onto Main Street into the slanted parking spot alongside Sancho’s unit. There was a motorcycle with a cover partially over it and with Illinois temporary plates that was parked on the sidewalk; there was a battered maroon Buick, which had California plates, that was clumsily parked at the curb at the far end of the boardwalk; and there was a forest-green Land Rover with the words DEFENDER 90 across the side parked next to it—didn’t see many of those, even during tourist season. We got out and walked down the wood planking, and I noticed that the Land Rover was from California, too.

The Wild Bunch Bar wasn’t too different from any other bar along the high plains; it was a rambling affair with three pool tables and a connected café, although there were a few things that made it stand out a bit in comparison with some of the others in the county. Reflecting the influence of the Australian and New Zealand sheepshearers, there was an All-Blacks soccer poster by the door and a tattered Aussie flag over the jukebox.

There was a flat-screen television at the far end of the bar, certainly a new addition, and a dark-haired man in a leather jacket and sunglasses was seated under it; he was actively watching the Rockies being pummeled by the Dodgers. He smiled, cried out, and raised a fist as L.A. loaded the bases. There were no other customers in the café.

The bar was along the left-hand side of the room, and Saizarbitoria was seated on the stool closest to the door; he was having a cup of coffee with the bartender, a stringy-looking young man with flame tattoos and a shaved head. Thirty, maybe. “’Sup, Sheriff ? Can I get you folks something?”

I looked at my daughter, who in turn looked at him. “Diet Coke.”

I motioned to Henry and me. “Iced teas.”

I sat on the stool next to Sancho and pulled his written report from under the personal property bag at his fingers. The bartender’s name was Phillip Maynard, and he had a local address but had only moved here a week earlier from Chicago. He came back with our drinks, and his eyes lingered on Cady. “You new around here?”

She slid the can closer to her. “No.”

I folded my arms on the bar and got his attention. “Are you?”

He looked at me and quickly made the familial connection. “Uh huh.”

I sipped my tea. “So, there was an Asian woman in here night before last?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded toward Saizarbitoria. “He show you the photograph? ”

“Yeah.”

“Same woman?”

He put his hands behind his back and tried to look at the report. “It was kind of hard to tell, but the clothes were the same.”

I nodded. “You get a lot of Asian women in here?”

He paused for a second. “I don’t know, I started less than a week ago—they could come in here in droves. I don’t know.”

"When did she come in?”

“Friday afternoon, before the after-work rush.”

“Right. And what time is that?”

He thought about it and shrugged. “She was gone by four-thirty. She wasn’t here for very long.” I finished my drink and looked at Henry, who had yet to touch his. I followed his eyes as they traveled to the man with the sunglasses in the corner, who smiled a worried smile and then returned his attention to the National League West.

“What’d she have?”

Maynard refilled my glass. “I think she just had some wine.” He thought about it. “And a bag of pretzels.”

"She say anything?”

He reached around and took a sip of the beer that he had stored on the counter behind the bar. “Nope.” His eyes went back to Cady.

I studied the report. “It says here she arrived around noon?”

“Yeah.”

"Four and a half hours? ” I looked at him. “You don’t consider that to be very long?”

The blood was rising in his face. “Well, I mean...some people stay in here all day.”

“And for four and a half hours she didn’t say anything?”

“Nothing in English, just French and a little Vietnamese.”

I gave him a look. "Vietnamese?”

He nodded. “I washed dishes in a Vietnamese restaurant in Chicago. I don’t speak the language, but I can recognize it.”

“Who did she talk to?”

“Herself.”

“Was there anybody else here?”

He studied the bar. “There were a couple of ranchers that came in to get out of the sun.”

"You know their names?”

“No.”

"Ever see them in here before?”

He shook his head no. “Like I said, I been here less than a week.”

I glanced at Henry, who was still watching the man in the corner who still appeared to be enjoying the ball game. “What’d they look like?”

“Working ranchers—locals, not the fly-in type.”

I thought that the description fit the Dunnigan brothers who had been haying the roadside along Lone Bear Road. “About sixty-something? One of them wearing a straw hat, the other in a ball cap with a ranch brand on it, had a squint?”

He started nodding before he answered. “Yeah, that was them.”

“They talk to her? ”

“A little, yeah.”

“Catch any of the conversation?”

He shrugged. “They were tryin’ to hit on her. I mean, she was good-looking.”

“They leave together?”

“No, she left before they did.” He paused for a second, and I knew he was thinking about changing this part of the story. "You know...”

The trick in these types of situations is to assure the subject that you know there’s more to the story and to let them tell it. “Yep?”

“They did leave just a little after she went out.” He partially closed one eye and bobbed his head. “They really were hitting on her pretty hard, now that I come to think about it.”

I nodded. “Anything else? It’s a homicide investigation, so don’t feel as if you have to hold back.”

“She paid in quarters.”

“Quarters? ”

"Yeah.”

I continued to look at him. “That’s odd.”

He nodded, quick to agree. “I thought so, too.”

“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” I handed the report back to Santiago and stood. “I’m assuming that we can contact you here or at the address my deputy’s got on the report?”

“Yeah, I’m here all summer. I don’t have a phone yet, but I’m workin’ on it.” He pulled a thin, black cellular from his back pocket. “I’ve got this, but it only works at the parking spot outside the veterinary office.” He nodded up the road. “They’ve got painted rocks to mark the spot, and a sign that says ‘telephone booth.’”

“Welcome to Wyoming.”

He was suddenly talkative. “They supposedly have WiFi down at the motel, but I have yet to find it.”

I stood, anxious to end the interrogation and work the rest of the room. “Okay. Let us know, would you?” I walked behind Cady and toward the dark-haired man with the sunglasses, who still seemed completely absorbed in the baseball game. I noticed it was in commercial. “Hello.”

He looked from the television to me and stood, dropping his sunglasses with an index finger to peer his almond-shaped eyes over the top. “I’m good, Sheriff. How about yourself?”

I was a little taken aback by his friendliness, not to mention the non sequitur, but you get used to this kind of reaction when you wear a badge. “Fine, thanks. Is that your Land Rover out there with the California plates?”

“Yes, sir.” He looked about fifty, perhaps a little older, and appeared to be in very good shape. “Is there a problem, Officer? ”

"Just passing through?”

He paused when I didn’t answer his question. “I have a piece of property I’m taking a look at in anticipation of retirement. ”

“Here in the area?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what do you do, Mr.... ?”

He extended his hand, and his grip was strong. “Tuyen. I’m in the motion picture industry, in the distribution of Asian-market films in the United States.”

“Mind if I see some ID?” He immediately trolled in his back pocket, brought out a black leather wallet, which he held close, pulled out his driver’s license, and handed it to me. He waited. His name was Tran Van Tuyen, and he was out of Riverside, California. Even in the photo, he was smiling. Fifty-seven. I memorized the license number and handed it back to him. “Thank you.”

"Have I done something?”

“No, we’ve just had an incident concerning a young woman who might’ve been from out of state, so we’re simply checking everyone.” He stopped smiling, just a bit. “Mr. Tuyen, are you Vietnamese?”

He blinked, and I felt guilty for even asking. “Yes.” He didn’t say anything else.

“The reason I ask is that the girl I mentioned is Vietnamese.”

He stared at the bar stool between us. “I see.”

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“What did this young woman look like, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Long black hair, midtwenties, dressed in a pink top with a black skirt.”

It appeared that he was thinking about it and seemed sad that I was asking. “No, Sheriff, I’m afraid not.” I watched what looked like a flood of emotions in him, a mixture of sorrow, loss, and then suspicion. “What has happened to this young woman?”

“I’m afraid it’s an ongoing investigation, and I’m not in a position to divulge that sort of information at this time.” I listened as the training kicked in and thought about how I sounded like a recording and that maybe after the statement, I should have beeped. I had had this feeling before. “Are you going to be in the area long, Mr. Tuyen?”

He seemed preoccupied but answered with the same practiced smile. “Yes, the property I am looking at is near the town of Bailey, which is nearby?”

“Just up the way, off county road 192. What’s the name of the property?”

“Excuse me?”

I leaned on the bar and tried to get a read on him. “The property you’re thinking of buying, Mr. Tuyen.”

He pulled what looked to be a fax from one of the realty offices in Durant. I studied it. “The Red Fork Ranch—that’s a nice place.” I handed the paper back to him and noted it was dated yesterday. “Richard Whitehead moving?”

“I’m afraid I do not know; I only know that the property is for sale.” He returned the paper to his pocket, his license to his wallet, slipped a ten from it, and then stood and placed the bill-fold into his jacket. He was about five feet nine, tall for a Vietnamese, thick of wrist, and his movements were very precise.

"Mind if I ask where you’re staying?”

“The Hole in the Wall Motel, in room number three.” He picked up the empty bottle and set it on the inside of the bar. “I’m going to look at the property after I leave here. You’re not going to pull me over a mile up the road, are you?” He sighed. “Because if you are, I’ll just take the Breathalyzer test now.”

I inclined my head toward him. “I get the feeling I’ve offended you, Mr. Tuyen.” He didn’t say anything. “If I have, I certainly didn’t mean to. I’m sorry to say that we don’t get too many Vietnamese here in Wyoming, and you’ll have to excuse me if I find it odd that we should suddenly have two.” I continued to look at the man and was conflicted with my own mix of feelings. It was possible that I was bordering on racial profiling.

He smiled, just enough so that you weren’t sure if he’d done it at all. He took a card from his breast pocket and handed it to me. His head dropped, and he headed for the door. He looked back when I followed him and paused for a moment with his head still down. The smile was gone. He pushed the door open and disappeared.

Santiago stood and laid a five on the bar. “If you think of anything, here’s my card, give me a call?”

Phillip Maynard palmed the fin and the card. He called after us, but mostly to Cady. “Come on back anytime.”

The glass door bumped unevenly behind us. Tran Van Tuyen was driving west in the Land Rover, which looked like a passing emerald in a backdrop of overexposed sepia as it rolled down the Main Street of Powder Junction.

It was an absolutely gorgeous summer afternoon, and I took a deep breath like I always did when I remembered it was the pay-off time of the year; and felt like crap.

Cady pulled my arm, always reading the fine print of emotion when I was attempting to appear unruffled. She hugged me. “What’s the matter?”

"What’s WiFi?”

“Daddy . . .”

I took a deep breath and hitched a thumb in my gun belt. “I’m afraid I may have just engaged in a bit of profiling.” I watched as Tuyen faced straight ahead and the shiny green utility vehicle made the turn on 192 and then under the overpass of I-25. I squeezed her arm back. “You were popular in there.” I plucked a pen from my deputy and scribbled Tuyen’s license plate number on the envelope of the dead Vietnamese woman’s personal property packet. I read his card—Trung Sisters Distributing, with an address in Culver City and three phone numbers. I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation as I handed Saizarbitoria back his pen. “What do you think?”

Henry took a breath. “Yes, Walter, you are deeply prejudiced, and I have long been meaning to discuss this with you.”

I nodded and dug into the property envelope as they all watched me. “Only against Injuns.”

He nodded. “It is to be expected.”

I plucked out the plastic bag I wanted and handed the larger one back to Sancho, who was smiling and shaking his head at our banter. “You didn’t ask him about the Indians and the matches, boss.”

“No, I didn’t... Call those two numbers in to Ruby and see what she comes up with, then check the Hole in the Wall to see if he’s registered and alert the HPs just in case he decides to go somewhere.”

“Got it.” He disappeared into his unit and left us standing on Powder Junction’s old west boardwalk.

The Cheyenne Nation and my daughter watched as I searched the ziplock. She tugged at the short hair near the scar. “What are you doing, Daddy?”

I didn’t answer her but held up the key fob, still in the plastic, and pushed the button. The lights flashed, and the doors unlocked on the maroon Buick junker at the end of the row.