Another Man's Moccasins

15

“Daddy.”

It was possible that Tuyen had been attacked, but had he been hit twice or was it a setup?

“Daddy? ”

I had pushed him, but had I pushed him enough? Was I pushing the wrong guy?

“Daddy! ”

I focused on my daughter, who was giving me hard looks as Henry chuckled and the collective Morettis smiled and continued eating the hors d’oeuvres. “Sorry.”

I picked up a stuffed mushroom from the appetizer tray and glanced at Michael for a little backup as he helped himself to another Rocky Mountain oyster. The Philadelphia beat cop came in like a champ with a little mind reading. “So you don’ think this Tuyen is on the level? ”

I chewed the mushroom, not tasting much of anything, and looked around at the interior of the Winchester Restaurant and the replica antique firearms over the fireplace. “I’m not sure how, or how deep he’s involved, but something just doesn’t ring true with the guy.” I looked at Henry, who I’m sure was reading my mind; for him it had been a lifetime avocation. “What do you think? ”

The Cheyenne Nation sighed. “He is spooky; once a spook, always a spook.”

I thought about the old term for spies, nodded, and looked at Vic; I was still trying to get used to her in a white, ribbed tank top and a tight, short skirt. “What do you think? ” She munched on a fried cheese stick and extended a hand, holding the palm down flat, shaking the turquoise bracelets at her wrist as her manicured hand wavered. Then I watched as she took another breaded steer testicle from the center platter and placed it onto Michael’s plate.

I still wasn’t sure if he knew what he was eating.

“One of the things that keeps snagging me is the preciseness of the hanging.” I caught the eye of an elderly woman at the next table, and Cady glared at me, causing me to lower my voice and lean in. “The hanging was textbook—the drop according to height and weight, and there’s only a limited number of people in the common populace who would know how to pull something like that off.”

Vic played with the silver dancestick earrings I had gotten her up on the Crow reservation for her birthday. “Would Tuyen? ”

“It’s possible. Some of the organizations he was cozy with were known to perform these types of executions.”

“Who else would know? ”

I turned my glass of Rainier in the water ring. “I am loath to say it, but Den Dunnigan did a stint as a corrections officer up in Deer Lodge, Montana, back in the old days when they used to hang people. That and we just saw the Dunnigans’ truck pull into the turnoff to Bailey but then continue on.”

Michael dipped the high-plains delicacy in cocktail sauce. “He got any kind of record? ”

“He has a temper, and once came close to beating a guy to death with a shovel.”

Despite her reservations, Cady joined the conversation. “Is that the crazy rancher? ”

“He’s not crazy.”

Henry chimed in. “I am not sure that confusing your mother with the timer on the electric coffeemaker denotes a great deal of mental stability.”

I turned back to Cady. “Not James, his brother Den.”

My daughter leaned in even more. “He thinks his mother is a coffeepot?”

I looked at all of them. “It’s complicated....”

The waitress interrupted. “Are you folks all right?”

Michael looked up at her, still munching on the Rocky Mountain oysters. “These are great; can we get another round? ”

I thought about the girl, the missing one. Who was she? More important, where was she? The only thing I could think we might do is knock on doors from ranch to ranch and see if anybody had seen her. It was a long shot but all I could come up with in the rough and expansive country of the Hole in the Wall.

“What about the second girl?” The Bear was mind reading again, and I wasn’t sure if I was happy that he had just made my internal monologue the topic of conversation for the group.

“What second girl?” I hadn’t had a chance to fill Vic in.

“The manager of the Flying J down in Casper said there were two girls in the car and that both had long dark hair, but I asked Maynard and the Dunnigans, and they all said Ho Thi was traveling alone.” I nodded at Henry. “James said that he was having . . . I don’t know. What would you call them? ”

He smiled. “Visions.”

“Anyway, we went out to the ghost town and took a look around but couldn’t find anything.”

Michael took the last Rocky Mountain oyster. He hadn’t noticed that he was the only one eating them. “Ghost town?”

“There’s an old settlement to the west of Powder Junction, a mining town that dried up.”

Michael stopped chewing and looked at Vic. “You have to take me there.”

I looked at them. “There are snakes.”

Vic blew a breath between her lipsticked lips. “Fuck that.”

Cady smiled and reached a hand out for Michael, who took it. They both turned back to look at me. Cady seemed concerned. “What kind of visions?”

The elderly couple at the next table were leaning in, too, so I lowered my voice. “He said he saw the girl who had been murdered out there in Bailey.”

“You mean when they found the body?” Cady’s voice was a little too loud, so I gave her a look back.

“After that. James said he was driving home one night— this was after finding Ho Thi’s body—and there she was standing on the side of the road.”

Cady’s voice was just as loud as before. “What’d he do?”

I shrugged. “He said he stopped his truck, but by the time he got out, she was gone.”

Henry leaned back and sipped his wine and stared at the elderly couple who suddenly took less interest in our conversation. The Cheyenne Nation returned the glass of red to the surface of the table and, after a moment, spoke. “Den was a prison guard?”

“Yep.”

“He seemed defensive.”

Cady looked uncertain. “This is the crazy one?”

“His brother, but obviously a certain amount of eccentricity runs in the family.” I looked at my neglected beer on the table and continued to lose my taste for it. “However, Den is very protective of James.”

Henry nodded. “Yes, but why would Den, or for that matter James, kill Ho Thi, kill Maynard, and attempt to kill Tuyen? ”

They were all silent, and this was when my job sucked.

Cady sipped her wine and smiled; always the optimist, she was trying to find the upside to my predicament. “So that means that Virgil White Buffalo is innocent.”

“Yep.” I watched the tiny bubbles rising in my glass, avoided all their eyes, but especially Henry’s.

“So, you’re sleeping at the jail again? ”

I pulled the Suburban up to Vic’s single-wide and slipped the decrepit thing into park. “It’s my turn.”

“You relieving Frymire? ”

“Yep. Then Frymire is supposed to relieve Saizarbitoria at the hospital, because Double Tough didn’t look good.” Henry had disappeared in the Thunderbird, giving Cady and Michael a lift out to my place, so I had given Vic a ride home. I watched as she pulled a leg onto the bench seat, exposing a little thigh well above her boots.

“What are you going to do about Virgil, Walt?”

“I don’t know, maybe call Human Services or try and get hold of somebody in charge of the social programs up on the Rez.” She unsnapped her seat belt, turned, and carefully placed the black leather boots that were embroidered with blue roses in my lap. I thumbed the stitching. "Pleurosis....”

"What?”

“Blue roses; it’s what Tennessee Williams used to call his sister’s pleurosis.”

She shook her head, sighed, and considered me. “You are so fucking weird.” She crossed her ankles and made herself comfortable. “You have to let him go.”

I thought about the big Indian and placed a hand above the boots on her well-shaped calf, marveling at the smoothness of her skin. “Yep.”

She stretched and pushed her heels further into my lap. She curled an arm and propped up her head. The slight breeze from the open window stirred her hair. “What are you going to do about Tuyen? ”

I stroked her calf, my hand pausing at the back of her knee as she drew it up, parting the short skirt further. “I figure I’ll keep him under house arrest until I get some validation from California.”

“The Dunnigans? ”

“Well, considering the circumstances, I really don’t have any choice but to bring them in for a formal questioning.”

She smiled one of her more carnivoristic smiles, the one that displayed the oversize canine tooth to its best advantage. “And what are you going to do about me?”

I tipped my hat back, sighed, and looked at the analog clock—it was practically the only thing on the dash that worked. “I have to be at the jail in ten minutes.”

Her golden eyes were enormous, and I tried to focus on them as her skirt slipped even higher. “Your loss.”

Boy howdy.

“I’d ask for a rain check, but it doesn’t seem to want to rain around here lately.”

My handsome deputy shook her head and shifted her body. Like a dervish, she swung her boots down and kneeled on the seat, enjoying her height advantage as she turned, tilted my head back with both hands, and captured my mouth with her own. It was a bandit kiss, hard and fast—designed to leave the victim with a lingering feeling of what could have just been.

She straightened her lipstick with her third finger, slid out, closed the truck door, and turned, strutting away without bothering to pull her skirt down. She called over her shoulder. “You’re telling me.”

I felt like I’d been hit and run.

Virgil White Buffalo was the only one awake by the time I got to the jail. After snatching a few Post-its off my door facing, I discovered Frymire with Tuyen’s computer still in his lap, and snoring again. It was possibly the reason the big Indian wasn’t sleeping. He still didn’t talk much, but I’d begun making a habit of speaking to him whenever possible, hoping that I could get him in practice. “Hey, Virgil.”

He didn’t say anything but nodded toward my deputy.

I carefully lifted the computer from Chuck’s lap and nudged the young man, and he looked up at me. I put the computer back in the case that was open on the counter and read Ruby’s latest missives.

“I guess I dozed off again, huh?”

“Yep, but if Virgil here won’t hold up his end of the conversation and you don’t play chess, it’s to be expected. Anything new? ”

“I was playing around with the computer, but the security systems are tough.”

“You know about those things? ”

“Yeah, I’ve got a degree in computer science.”

“You do?” I thought about it. “I don’t remember seeing that on your application.”

“I didn’t think it mattered—we don’t have any computers in Powder Junction.” He had a point.

I held one of the Post-its in my hand and read the designation. “ACSS-BPS.” I looked up at him. “What the hell is BPS?" ”

“I have no idea.”

I read the yellow square in my hand. “WiFi? ”

“Wireless connections for computers; most people use it for laptops. Haven’t you seen the signs on the motels out by the highway?”

The next note was about some stolen drilling equipment east of town. “Yep.”

He yawned. “It means you can run your computer without hooking to a landline; just open it up and it acquires a signal.”

I thought about it. “But what does WiFi actually stand for? ”

“Wi is for wireless, and . . .” He paused. “I’m not sure what the Fi stands for.”

I stuffed the Post-its in my shirt pocket. "Semper...” I wasn’t so sure he got it and watched him yawn again.

He caught me glancing at him, and he gestured toward Tuyen’s computer. “You want me to take that thing and see what I can come up with?”

It was personal property, but if everything checked out with the Vietnamese man’s story, I’d just be hauling it over to the hospital for him anyway. “Sure; maybe it’ll help you to stay awake.”

I sent him off with his homework and sat in the chair opposite Virgil. I slid the upside-down trash can with the chessboard between us. Virgil White Buffalo, Bad War Honors, Crazy Dog Clan, studied me.

“I’m afraid I’m not going to be much of a challenge in comparison to Lucian.”

His voice was still rough but carried like a bass viola, vibrating the air between us. He turned the board, and I ignored the symbolism as he gave me white and the first move. “Maybe you’re better than you think.”

I froze my finger on a pawn. “I doubt it.”

“You must be worthy. Short-pants told me the Old Ones speak with you.” I looked up, and his eyes stayed on mine as we listened to the old Seth Thomas on the wall tick. He gestured through the bars and toward the game. I brought the pawn out to G4 and he countered with another to B5. There was a pause, and I listened to him breathe along with the ticking of the clock. “The Old Ones have never spoken to me.”

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968

“He’s dead.” I looked at Hoang’s eyes and watched as they stared indifferently, his mouth slack in silence and the bubbles no longer struggling through the blood that saturated his chest. I held his head up and supported it against me.

Baranski laid an arm over Mendoza’s seat and threw a look back. “What?”

The sunrise oranged the sky, and I desperately tried to contain my anger. “You can slow down now, he’s dead.”

The CID man peered back at the road and returned his eyes to me through the rearview. “What’d you just say?”

“I said that he’s dead, and you can slow down. You accomplished what it was you set out to do.”

He looked at Mendoza, who was in the passenger seat and was still staring ahead. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have sworn that there were two dead men in the jeep. “Are you accusing me...?”

“He told me about the satchel, the one you gave him to take in the helicopter when we were on our way to Khe Sanh.” Even in the gloom of early morning, I could see his eyes as they flicked to the side. “He told me, and I saw you do it. Pretty slick, getting rid of all your bad eggs in one basket.”

“Hey, fucking new guy, do you have any idea the shit that you’re getting yourself into?”

I ignored him and continued. “It didn’t make any sense when the chopper blew to the northeast with Charlie attacking from the same direction. Anything they would have shot at us would’ve blown the other way.” I gestured with the body in my arms. “I guess Hoang didn’t know you intended to kill him, too. And then, since that didn’t work, you tried to get him to kill me. If I’ve got it right, Hoang was supposed to get me good and drunk and then take me out to the bunker where you’d already killed Mai Kim and finish me off.” I swallowed, my spit catching in my throat. “But I saved Hoang’s life in Khe Sanh, and he couldn’t shoot me himself or pick me up and drag me over to the murder site where you could finish the job. He didn’t even tell you where I was.” I looked down at Hoang’s dead face. “Turns out, he was a pretty good guy, huh?”

He kept the jeep at close to sixty. “Fuck you, you fucking asshole.”

My hand slipped below Hoang’s legs, where the safety strap from my .45 was still unsnapped and the safety was not on. “The acceleration in drug trafficking roughly coincided with your arrival here at Tan Son Nhut, and the only thing I’m wondering is whether you knew about the investigation beforehand and were trying to protect your interests, or if you just stumbled onto this mess and made it your own little cottage industry.”

He looked at the road through the windshield as if there were something up there. “You don’t know shit.”

Mendoza suddenly spoke. "Hey...”

I looked over at Baranski. “I think I’ve got it all pretty much figured out, except for one thing.” I studied the back of Mendoza’s head. “Is he in on it, too?”

The Texan raised a hand, pointing toward the road. “Hey!”

Baranski looked at the side of his partner’s face, and I cleared the big Colt from under Hoang’s legs as the Texan grabbed at the steering wheel. Baranski swung back around as we struck something in the road, which sent the jeep in a two-wheeled spiral off to the left. “What the ... !”

The vehicle didn’t quite flip, but the jolt tore Hoang’s body from my grip, and I tumbled out the back with the .45 still thankfully in my hands. I hit a dirt pile and carried a lot of it with me into the barrow ditch beside the road. I lay there for a moment, trying to get my breath back, and looked around for Mendoza and Baranski, but the only body visible was Hoang’s, lying askew about twenty yards in front of me.

I shook my head and felt some blood dripping down my cheek. I must have picked up road rash from the pavement. I rose up on my skinned elbows and shook my head again in an attempt to clear my vision; it seemed as though the surrounding bushes were approaching Hoang’s body and the jeep, which was still lying on its side on the elevated highway. Birnam Wood marching on Dunsinane.

I listened to the pounding that sounded like tanks firing in the back of my brain and wiped some of the dirt and blood from my face with my free hand. I took a deep breath and stood, thinking that I’d better find the CID man and his chum before they found me.

Then the bushes turned and looked at me.

They were wearing black pajamas and flat hats and stood there with gleaming AK-47s. One of the bushes toward the back held a Soviet-made RPG grenade launcher and gestured for the others to help him haul a light machine gun that Hoang’s body must have hit when it had been thrown from the jeep.

I raised the .45 as the closest soldier, the one with the RPG, began screaming. I fired, and he slumped backward into a sitting position, the bush camouflage falling to his side. I ran toward the others. It was a dicey proposition, but the range on the Colt was useless against the AKs unless I could get in close. I ran forward as the next bush swung his weapon toward me. I blocked the barrel by grabbing the fore stock, and he fired into the hillside. I pressed the .45 into his midriff, pulled the trigger, and held on to his gun as he fell away.

A spray of gunfire ripped up from the ditch, and I fell to the side of the man I’d just shot, yanked the automatic rifle up, and took a bead on the VC soldier who was shooting. The kick was a little harder than an M16, or maybe it was just the uncomfortable wooden stock, but the other fellow dropped anyway, and I lit up a few more VC as the rest disappeared into the high grass.

Do what you’re trained to do and you might get out of this alive. Make the right decisions as if your life depended on them, because it does. Hesitate and you hesitate forever.

I lay there trying not to focus on the multitude of ways I could’ve died in the last few minutes and listened to the pounding in the back of my head instead. I stretched my jaw muscles and looked down the road where the sappers and Viet Cong squad had been headed. I knew we weren’t very far from the west gate of the air base, but the few hooches in the area appeared deserted and there were no civilians on the highway, which was something I’d never seen before. It was then that I noticed the wreckage of an M48 tank. There were bodies sticking out from all the hatches, and it was obvious that the machine was out of action. Beyond it was an M113 armored personnel carrier—the battle-taxi must have run into the back of the Patton when it’d gotten shelled—and there was another body slumped over the .50 caliber machine gun at its commander seat.

Farther down the line, I could see more wreckage where a few more of the APCs had been likewise shelled and were out of commission. Along with the remaining tank, five vehicles were herringboned off the road and firing into an old textile manufacturing building to the west.

It was obvious what had happened. With boots and saddles, the cavalry force must have been dispatched from further north, possibly from Cu Chi, in defense of Tan Son Nhut, and been dry-gulched on Highway 1.

A buddy who had been at the Fort Knox armor training school said they’d shown them what a real firefight was supposed to look like in a display known only as the Mad Minute, but where the tank and machine-gun fire was directed at a target in the display, here and now the thousands of green tracers that were lighting up the quasi-darkness were traveling toward me.

A few streaming bolts of fire from a bazooka caromed off a billboard at the roadside until one found a trajectory that hit the armored personnel carrier that had been the source of the nearest friendly fire. It blew to pieces with a thundering shudder.

A few of the Viet Cong squad that had been disguised as bushes were now throwing hand grenades over the arch of the highway about a hundred yards away. I was unfamiliar with the AK-47, but I finally found the single-shot switch and aimed at the nearest VC. My shot was a little low and to the right, but he fell and the grenade he held exploded, taking him and the two men nearest him.

I stepped back into the bamboo for cover, counted five seconds, then leaned back out and fired again. I had a clean miss on the next, and he began running the other way to join another squad that had come out of the civilian hooches.

There were hundreds of them.

I started rethinking my tactics and thought that perhaps I should try to find somebody on my side who wasn’t dead. With a glance at Hoang’s body, I struggled to get up the embankment to the burnt-outM48. The footing was pretty good, and I got to one of the dirt berms that had blocked the road. A few enemy rounds ricocheted off the surface. I took some deep breaths and slid around to the east behind another dirt pile to get to the personnel carrier’s forward track. The driver was the closest, and it was obvious that he was dead. I glanced up at the commander’s cupola and could see that he was dead, too. I decided to check the next APC.

No one was firing from the vehicle, but I could still hear noises from inside. The main hatch was open, and it looked like the majority of the personnel had escaped with only a few dead. I could smell the blood, so sweet it was almost sour, and was about to move on when I noticed a sergeant who was still breathing sitting with his back against the engine housing. I yelled at him. “Gunny, you all right!?”

His head wavered a moment, then he raised his face. His left eye was gone.

I scrambled through the hatch and grabbed his arm, pulling him toward me as another round of AK fire ricocheted off the tough hide of the armored vehicle and flew around the area where I’d just been standing. I had a flickering of anger at the men who had deserted the damaged sergeant as I staggered into the vehicle and placed him against the bulkhead. “On second thought, it might be a little safer in here.”

I grabbed a first-aid kit from the steel-plated interior and pulled out a pad and a box of gauze, carefully wrapping it around his head to stanch the bleeding. The round must’ve entered his eye and then exited at his closest ear, a miracle in itself. Then I slipped out one of the syrettes of morphine and stabbed the one-hitter into his chest.

He started and looked at me with the one eye. “Do you know what day it is?”

He had a thick Appalachian accent, and I studied him, stunned that he could still talk or hear. “What?”

I watched as he tried to speak with one side of his mouth. “Do you know what day it is?”

I swallowed in an attempt to work up some spit, but my tongue still felt like one of those fly strips. “I think it’s a Tuesday.”

He nodded. “It feels like a Tuesday.”

I smiled back at him and placed the sticker from the syrette on his lapel so that the medics would know he’d been dosed. “Yes, it does.” He mumbled something else as I checked the rifle’s banana-style magazine and found it had only two rounds left.

The attacking soldiers were getting closer, and it was only a short question of time before they hit us with another screaming antitank round or dropped a grenade in the hatch. I laid the almost-spent AK in the sergeant’s lap. “Sarge, I need you to sit tight, because if I don’t start laying down a little suppression fire, we’re about to be overrun.”

I saw that one of the M60s had exploded its barrel and that the other one didn’t look much better. I was trying to avoid the dead commander, but the .50 caliber machine gun looked like our last chance. I reached up and gently pulled the captain down from his position and set him beside the sergeant. He’d caught at least three rounds in the chest, and his expression was one of profound interest; he didn’t look surprised, and it was as if he’d known exactly what was happening to him as it had happened. I looked at the sergeant, who appeared to sink back a little as his one eye closed, and I hoped I could get us a little breathing room before he stopped breathing.

I checked the .50 and could see that it had never been fired. I racked the charging handle, braced my boots, and carefully raised my head up through the hatch. I could hear voices to my left and pivoted to see a number of VC crawling all over the M48 that I had abandoned.

I swung the barrel of the heavy machine gun around and tried to remember the numbers from basic and recalled that the air-cooled M2 would cycle 550 rpm if you let it, but that if you did, it would shoot out the barrel; so I pulled the trigger with just a little restraint— sprayed and prayed.

The weapon did everything it was designed to do, and I hoped that I would never have to see anything like it again.

I pivoted back to the ditch and laid suppression fire along the embankment; those who could crawl or run scattered into the hooches and grass like Wyoming wild turkeys on the third Thursday of November.

If I was going to get the sergeant and myself out of there, now was the time.

I jumped down from the commander’s platform and turned around in time to see Baranski. He was perfectly framed in the open back hatch of the armored personnel carrier, and he was smiling.

I stood there for one of those slow-motion frozen seconds as he raised Hoang’s silenced Walther PPK directly at my face and fired.

“Do you want to answer that?” His voice was coarse with enough gravel to fill a five-yard dump truck.

I looked up at Virgil’s eyes and tried not to focus on the damage to his left brow. “What?”

He exhaled a slight laugh. “You’re playing a very good game, but the phone is ringing.”

I looked down at the half-finished chess match and then up to the phone on the holding cell wall. “Thanks. You’ll let me know if I win, right?” I walked over and picked up the receiver. “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Offifice?"” I didn’t sound like I was sure.

“Walt?”

I came back fully when I realized it was Frymire. “Yep?”

“I’m over here at the hospital, but Sancho’s not here.”

That wasn’t like the Basquo. “What about Tuyen?”

“Sleeping like a baby.”

"Maybe he went to the bathroom or to get something to eat."”

Chuck was sounding a little rattled. “Sheriff, I’ve been here for a half an hour, and he hasn’t shown up. I asked the on-duty nurse, but she said she hadn’t seen him since she’d made her rounds at eleven forty-five.” I looked up at the clock—forty-five minutes. “You want me to call him at home? ”

I thought about Marie and their expected child, and her reaction to a one o’clock in the morning call from the Sheriff’s Department concerning the whereabouts of her husband. “No, I’ll take the beeper and come over.”

I glanced back at Virgil White Buffalo as I hung up the phone and thought about what he would do to the jail when I left him alone. I was going to let him go tomorrow anyway— today, technically, so what could it hurt? I handed him his personal effects from the drawer, including the photo wallet, jacket, and knife. “Virgil, how would you like to go on a little field trip?”

By the time we’d driven through the sulky, high-plains night and gotten to the hospital emergency entrance, the duty nurse, Janine Reynolds, was waiting for us.

She looked up worriedly at Virgil, no doubt remembering his last visit. I glanced up at him. “You’re not going to trash the place again, are you?”

His face remained impassive. “No.”

Frymire was standing in the hallway next to his chair at Tuyen’s door when we approached. He stood, a little unsteadily, and readjusted his shoulder with Tuyen’s computer still under his arm. “I haven’t seen him, and I’ve been here for almost an hour.”

I turned to Ruby’s granddaughter. "Janine?”

She pointed. “When I made my rounds before midnight, he was sitting in that chair.”

Frymire tried to interrupt, but I was still looking at Janine. "Tuyen?”

She nodded toward the closed door. “I took his dinner tray away. He was looking out the window when I told him it would be a good idea to turn off the light and rest.”

I shrugged as I turned the handle and opened the door. “Well, at least he hasn’t been asleep long.” Frymire held it open as I entered and flipped on the light. “Mr. Tuyen? ” He was rolled up in the sheets and a single polyester blanket and was turned away from us toward the windows. “Mr. Tuyen, I’m sorry to bother you, but...”

He didn’t answer and, as I got closer, I could see that there was a dark stain on the covers. I leaned over and carefully pulled the sheet back from his face.

“Oh, Sancho.”