Bad Penny (9 page)
Authors: John D. Brown
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Kidnapping, #Organized Crime, #Vigilante Justice, #Military, #Spies & Politics, #Conspiracies, #Thrillers
They came around a bend, and about two miles ahead an RV moseyed along. It had mountain bicycles on the back. It didn’t take Sam long to catch up to it. He put on his blinker and pulled up along side. A sunglassed grandma was at the wheel. Frank lifted the binoculars and looked down the long road.
About a half a mile ahead, an SUV was pulled off to the shoulder in the other lane, pointed their way. It was white. It looked like it had a light rack on the roof.
Frank’s blood began pumping. “Good night,” he said.
“What?” Sam asked. Then he saw the SUV.
It was too late for them to pull off to the side of the road. Frank threw himself to the floor between the front seats and crawled to the middle aisle.
“Is it a cop?” Frank asked.
“Oh, boy,” Sam said.
A second passed, then another. Plenty of time to travel that distance at the speed they were going.
Sam started to laugh.
“What?” Frank asked.
“Department of transportation,” Sam said.
Relief washed through Frank, but he stayed where he was.
About two minutes later Sam said, “I think you can get up.”
Frank popped his head up and looked back at an empty road. “How much farther until we get to this Korea guy?”
“He’s just this side of Lander. I give it about ten minutes.”
Frank stayed in the middle seat and scanned the road. They skirted round the tip of the Wind Rivers and found a lot more green on this side. There were a lot more hills and bends too. And every corner they went around, every rise they topped, his heart thumped, waiting to see a cop. Periodically, he looked behind, knowing he was going to see flashing red and blue.
They entered irrigated country. Instead of sagebrush, fields of late-season meadow grass ran up to the hills, hundreds of acres of them, all ready to be cut. Farm houses dotted the valley. Sam kept trying to make a call. At last he got service and his phone dialed.
A few rings later, Korea picked up.
“Just passed the Wamsley’s place,” Sam said.
A tinny voice replied, “We’re in the shed.”
“And Yolanda?” Sam asked.
“She’s under the knife,” Korea said. “I hope you’ve said your prayers today.”
“Tell me she’ll fly.”
Korea just laughed and ended the call.
Sam looked over at Frank. “We’ll be fine. Really.”
They were going to go up in a plane held together with bubble gum and baling wire.
Off to their right, a farm boy rode a four-wheeler over a field of mown meadow hay. Two scruffy black and white border collies chased after him; they were stretched out, running at a full gallop, looking like they were having the time of their lives. “When I get reincarnated,” Frank said, “I want to come back as a farm dog.”
“We’re not going to need reincarnation.”
“I’m just putting in my order,” Frank said.
About a minute later they came to a dirt road that shot off from the state route and led to a house and cluster of barns and other buildings about a half a mile off the road. Sam slowed and turned onto the road.
The ranch looked like most of those in Wyoming. Wide fields to grow hay and alfalfa for winter feed. Some corrals and a barn. Not too many animals—the cattle would still be up in their summer range. There were two large sheds—one for tractors and other vehicles. Another was clearly a small airplane shed made out of corrugated tin and fiberglass. Beyond the buildings stood a pole with an orange wind sock flapping in the wind.
They drove into the yard, scattering some chickens and two peacocks. They passed a small stack of old hay bales, a hay wagon with tires that looked like they belonged on an old Ford pickup. The house was an old red brick thing with huge wooden butterflies decorating the gable. A dog rose up from the yard to come greet them.
The wind sock stood at the end of a dirt runway that had been leveled in the middle of the sagebrush. It was covered with bits of small desert grass and scrubby weeds. Sam drove round to the airplane shed. The door was open, the airplane inside. It was an old Cessna 182, with the wing on top and fixed landing gear underneath. One of the wheels was missing its cover. The plane was white with a yellow cowling from the prop to the windshield and a brown stripe running the length of the fuselage—the colors for the University of Wyoming Cowboys.
Standing in front of the plane were two men, riveting a sheet of aluminum onto the wing.
The men were in their early forties. The skinny scraggly one wore a cowboy hat and looked like he’d been baking about a hundred years in the sun. The big guy looked like he might have killed a few people in his day. He wore bib overalls and boots. His goatee was a grungy mess. There was a tattoo on one meaty arm. What was it with Mormons and ex-cons?
“Did he just get out of supermax?” Frank asked.
“Who?”
“Jimmy Hoffa.”
“He’s a teddy bear.”
“Right,” Frank said.
Sam parked the van and they both got out. The Mafia hit man with the rivet gun finished and inspected his work. The skinny piece of leather shrugged, clearly not knowing if their wing repair would hold.
“So where’s Korea?” Frank asked.
“Right there,” Sam said. “Brother Korea’s the big one. The other one is Brother Young.”
“Those two are Mormons?”
“Card carrying.”
“I didn’t think Mormons came in that variety.”
“What kind of varieties did you think there were?”
“I figured you had your basic cookie-baking type and then the guys wearing suits on bicycles.”
“Well, now you can add the Brother Korea and Brother Young types to your collection.”
Frank grunted.
“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” Sam said.
A few hours ago Frank had been trying to convince Ms. Mary of Cowboy Donut of that very thing. Now he wasn’t too sure. Either way, he supposed the Church authorities were happy these two were way up here in Lander where they were out of the public eye. See them come knocking on your door with a Bible, and you’d be liable to get your gun.
“He doesn’t look too Asian,” Frank said.
“Why would he be Asian?”
“Well, I thought Korea . . .”
“No, not Korea, the country. It’s Pinto Correia, with a C. Correia,” he said, rolling his r’s. “He’s Portuguese.”
“Italian mafia Portuguese?”
“His family are all dairy farmers in California.”
“At least that’s what he told you.” This guy was surely some mobster in the witness protection program.
“I helped him with his genealogy. His people came from the Azores islands.”
“Right,” Frank said. He was sure the Marshalls had done a real bang up job on this guy’s backstory.
He looked down at his phone. No call or text from Kim, nothing from Tony. It was 4:07 p.m., about an hour and a half since he’d gotten the call from Ed. That was ninety minutes of travel time for Ed. The circle was widening. Ed could be 120 miles from Rock Springs in any direction. Three times 120 squared—what was that? He brought up his phone, did the math. 45,000 square miles, give or take. Every minute widened that radius by another mile or so. Another hour and the circle would encompass—he did a little more math—an additional 80,000 square miles.
They needed to get in the air. Any longer and this was going to be searching for a hair in a haystack. Frank said, “Tony’s waiting. Whatever kind of Mormon thing you got going up here, as long as that plane flies and these two don’t carry garrotes, I’m good. Let’s go talk to yonder brethren.”
Frank and Sam walked toward the airplane shed. A big golden retriever trotted out from behind the house and barked. Sam called out to him by name, and Henry the dog switched to happy tail-wagging shimmy mode. “Come on,” Sam said, and the dog ran up to him for an old friend pet and scratch.
“You’d think you’re some long lost uncle,” Correia said.
Sam gave Henry one last pat, then stood. “Pinto,” he said and held up his hand for a homey hand shake.
But the supermax guy was a hugger. As was the baked cowboy. There were back slaps and man hugs all around. A real love fest. Then Sam introduced Frank.
Yonder brethren were cordial and shook hands. And Frank swore he’d met this Pinto fella in a bar somewhere as a bouncer.
Pinto turned to Sam. “So what’s with the 911?”
Sam filled them in on the details, running through them like he might a balance sheet, not missing a thing. Henry stood the whole time with the men, nosing a hand every now and again for some happy scratching. When Sam finished, Pinto said to Frank, “Where’s your sister?”
Frank held up his phone. “Not responding.”
“You sure you don’t want to call the cops?”
“Oh, I’ll call them. But not just yet. Dimes to doughnuts Ed has already convinced Tony he has his mother. So if I sic the cops on them, the girl won’t say anything because she’s illegal, and Tony, thinking his mom’s life is on the line, will swear up and down he and Ed are long-time friends, and that he and I had an argument or it’s a misunderstanding or whatever. And then what’s the cop going to do?”
“They’ve got protocol for suspected kidnappings.”
“They’re going to let him go. And Ed will know we called the cops and begin to think about liabilities and all those lonely Wyoming roads stretching out miles and miles into nowhere. No, Ed and I need a little one-on-one.”
“How do you know they haven’t switched cars?” Heber asked.
“If they steal a car, somebody reports it. Then the cops
would
be looking for them for sure. That doesn’t reduce their risk.”
Pinto nodded. “So let’s say we do find them. What then? Buzzing around in the air won’t do you one lick of good. We’ll just follow them until the plane runs out of gas.”
“I know,” Frank said. “This operation requires someone on the ground.”
“I can drive,” Sam volunteered.
“Naw,” Pinto said. “Two sets of eyes are better than one. You and Frank both know what you’re looking for. You both should be in the plane.” He looked over at Heber.
Heber nodded. “It’s way too windy for this cowboy’s stomach anyway. You guys go up in Pinto’s tin can; I’ll bring up the rear.”
“Use the minivan,” Sam said.
Heber said, “This is going to cost you a plate of those pink frosted cookies.”
“I’ll throw in some sprinkles,” Sam said.
Heber’s weathered face cracked a smile. “Now you’re talking.”
Was Sam slipping something weird into the cookies? Is that what was going on? Like narcotics on postage stamps, except the Mormons were putting it in the cookies? Frank said, “I think a support vehicle is a good idea. But Heber’s going to fall behind. Way behind.”
“Depends on where we find them,” Pinto said, “
if
we find them.”
“Even if Heber’s right there,” Frank said, “I don’t want you guys getting involved.”
“So what are you going to do? Parachute in and cling to the roof of the car? This ain’t James Bond.”
“Of course not. So we spot them and fly on ahead. You drop me off, and I take it from there. No reason for you to be involved past that point.”
Pinto nodded. “That could work.” The other two seemed to agree. “Of course, if these guys are as bad as you say they are, you going to need a gun.”
Frank shook his head. “I don’t have a gun. Can’t. One of those rights I forfeited when I decided to join the felon club.”
“You got a stick?”
“I’ll figure something out,” Frank said.
“One mind, any weapon, is that it?” Pinto asked.
Frank shrugged. “Basically.”
“Yeah,” Pinto said, clearly not buying it. In fact, Frank was picking up a bit of general wariness and suspicion from Pinto about the whole situation. He was obviously still assessing whether or not he could trust this ex-con Sam had dragged up to his front door.
Pinto looked over at Heber. Heber shrugged. Something was decided between the two of them without any words being spoken, and then Pinto said, “You need anything?”
“I’m good to go,” Heber said and patted his pocket.
Pinto nodded. “I’m not. Wait here a minute.”
He walked over to his garage, opened the small swinging door beside the main rolling door, and walked inside. A few moments later he came back out, holding two extra semi-automatic magazines, and shut the door behind him. He slipped the magazines into one of his copious bib overall pockets. Frank looked to see where Pinto’s holster was, but whatever he was carrying, it was well hidden under the yards of fabric required to cover the big man.
When he returned, Frank said, “Sam’s got a pair of binoculars in the van. We’re going to need another pair.”
“Already have one in the plane.”
“Then let me get Sam’s atlas.”
“Already on it,” Sam said. He hurried back to the van and fetched the binoculars and the atlas.
Frank looked at the time on his phone. 4:16. Another nine minutes had ticked by. He looked at Pinto and Heber. “Burning daylight.”
“Roger that,” Pinto said.
Sam handed his keys and a credit card to Heber. “For gas,” he said.
Heber took the keys and card.
“I appreciate your help in this matter,” Frank said.
“Well, we haven’t done anything yet,” Pinto said. “We’ll see if you’re thankful come nightfall.”
“Okay,” Sam said.
“All right,” Heber said.
“Ladies,” Pinto said, “let’s see if Yolanda’s in the mood to fly.”
8
Yolanda
PINTO MOTIONED AT the Cessna and said, “Each of you take a strut.”
The Cessna 182 had one wing that crossed over the top. Under each side of the wing, a strut connected to the fuselage. Frank took one strut, Heber the other. There were words painted on the cowling behind the propeller in a cursive script; they said, “Reach For the Sky.”
Frank thought they could be motivational. Or they could be referring to a good old-fashioned Western holdup.
Pinto went to the front and lifted up the end of a red tow bar. It looked like the long skinny version one of those old push mowers, except instead of holding rolling blades, its two-fingered claw held the nose gear just above the wheel covering. Pinto threw a lever to lock the claw in place, then grabbed the handle with both hands and leaned back.
Yolanda moved forward. Frank and Heber helped a little, pushing on the struts, but Pinto did all the work. He pulled the plane out onto the wide gravel drive and faced her toward the dirt runway past the house and barns, then threw the tow bar in the plane behind the back seat. Pinto pointed at Sam. “You ride shotgun. Frank, why don’t you sit in the back, a bit kitty-corner to even us out.”
Frank went around to the passenger’s side door and noticed the section of aluminum Pinto and Heber had been riveting on when he’d first rolled into the yard. Gum and baling wire. “What happened here?” he said.
“Buzzard,” Pinto said. “Should have seen him. He was a big old boy. A gust brought him right up into me.” Pinto shook his head. “What kind of idiot hits a buzzard?”
“Is it going to hold?”
“I certainly hope so,” he said.
Frank pictured the wing coming off and them falling from the sky, but he climbed into the back seat anyway. Pinto took his position behind the wheel in a seat that was adjusted lower than the passenger’s seat and scooted farther back to accommodate the man’s height. When he settled in, the leg of his overall hitched up a bit to reveal a portion of an ankle holster. So Pinto was a leg man. Or maybe that was just the backup. You could hide a whole lot of ordinance in those overalls.
Sam took the seat in front of Frank. Then there was a flurry of action, and Henry jumped in, climbed over Sam, and took a sitting position in the back seat next to Frank.
Frank looked over at Henry. Henry looked back. He was sitting prim and polite. But then he couldn’t contain his excitement. He grinned, shivered with joyful expectation, and thumped a happy tail. All that was probably Woofish for “dude, we’re in a plane!” Then Henry quieted again and focused forward like he was just one of the guys.
“We taking the dog?” Frank asked.
“No reason to leave him here to be bored,” Pinto said. “He usually sits up front.”
“Okay,” Frank said. He’d known about teams that had K-9s attached. Heck, there’d been a Belgian Malinois named Cairo with the SEALs that had dropped in on Osama Bin Laden at his Pakistani compound. Cairo had gone in completely suited up: protective vest, Doggles (goggles for canines), and an ear piece. Henry didn’t look like one of those serious dogs with mad warrior skills. He looked more like a party dog. Like if they went down, he’d do it saying “duuuude” in his own happy dialect.
Outside the plane, Heber gave them a two-fingered wave and headed for the van. Up front, Pinto checked his controls. The plane was immaculate inside. It smelled clean and pretty, almost as if a woman had been in here. Up front, a toy fairy with lacy wings hung from the ceiling. She was dressed in a green leaf outfit with the top of an acorn for a hat.
“Nice fairy,” Frank said.
“Isn’t she,” Pinto replied.
Frank could not figure this man out. Affixed to the wall above the passenger’s door was a small framed photo of a pretty woman. She was Black. She had a fine smile and luminous eyes. Maybe Pinto hung the fairy for her. Maybe it was her fairy to begin with. Or maybe Pinto just had a weird side.
Pinto’s checklist was laminated and inserted into a holder that kept it right in front of him. He primed the engine with three pumps, turned his beacon on, then turned the ignition. The motor kicked to life. Sounded like a lower pitched lawn mower. He radioed out a call and fiddled with a few more knobs and ran up the rpms. “Here we go,” he said.
Behind them, Heber started up the van and rolled out of the yard.
Pinto pushed in the throttle, the whine of the propeller climbed, and the plane started to move through the yard toward the dirt and weed runway. The wind was blowing the grass out in the fields, rolling it like waves. The windsock flapped, showing the wind was coming from the west.
“We’ve got about fifteen knots,” Pinto said. “This should be fun.”
“Fun?” Frank asked. “As in a wing falling off kind of fun?”
Pinto just smiled.
Frank began to suspect this was going to be a rough ride.
The plane bumped along. A gust shook them as the plane rushed across the fields and between the buildings. Pinto gave the plane more throttle. A few seconds later he was lined up with the runway, and gave it yet more gas. The little plane shot forward. Henry gave a woof.
They bumped down the dirt runway, the plane picking up speed. Another gust raced across the open land. It slammed into the plane, lifting it up in a nice little hop and setting it right back down. All of which demonstrated why you wore seat belts in these contraptions. No seat belts and that wind would have introduced his head to the ceiling.
The plane continued to pick up speed. Frank wondered momentarily what Pinto would do if they got too close to the end of the runway. But he didn’t need to worry. The plane began to lighten. A moment later there was one more bump, and then Pinto was pulling back on the wheel, and they were rising above the fields in a sliding float. Pinto pulled back a bit more and the Cessna began to climb at a fairly steep angle.
The houses and cars below them grew small, toy-like. The land stretched out until Frank could see Lander and the ranches beyond making their small quilts of green and brown patches in the middle of the sagebrush.
Another gust hit them. The tone of the propeller changed; the plane dropped a bit and then shot up like a roller coaster.
“Hoo!” Pinto said. “Put your hands in the air!”
Frank shook his head. Pilot humor.
They climbed into the wind for about another minute or two, the plane hopping and sliding every now and again, then Pinto leveled it off. The view of the Wind River mountains and the surrounding land was spectacular. Frank spotted Eden close to the southern horizon.
Henry looked out his window and let out a happy bark.
“Okay, Kemosabe,” Pinto said. “What’s our target? We’ve got about six hours of gas.”
Frank opened the road atlas on his lap. It was now 4:30 p.m. Ed had a two-hour head start. He made the calculations assuming Ed had taken the interstate, which meant he could be as far as 160 miles out. That was all the way to Elk Mountain if he went east. If he’d gone west, he’d be in Salt Lake City.
But Frank had already figured he was going east, mostly likely to Colorado because of the plates. There were three main ways into Colorado from Rock Springs. The first was Highway 191, which ran straight south into Utah. After sixty or seventy miles you came to Vernal; Ed could head east from there through Dinosaur on Highway 40. That route would take you right though mountains in eastern Utah and the Rockies west of Denver. That was a lot of mountain.
The second route was to head east a piece on I-80, turn south to run through Baggs to Craig, Colorado, and then hook up with Highway 40 there. That one avoided the mountains on the first leg, but took you right into the same twisting and climbing in the Colorado piece.
Something about all that mountain driving snagged in Frank’s mind. Why had Ed wanted to switch cars?
At first Frank thought it was because the car was dirty and the authorities were after him. Ed was trying to go to ground. But the presence of the kidnapped girl changed that.
The cops
might
be after him, but that didn’t feel right. If she was from a rival gang, then maybe her boys would be after Ed, but Ed had picked her up way out in Utah, not Colorado. Any of her homies would be way off their turf. Ed had to be bringing her back.
So why ask for a trade?
Maybe Ed had wanted to drop in, maybe make sure his info on Frank was good. But Frank didn’t think so. Maybe Ed had car troubles; something wrong with the radiator. Could be something else. But Ed couldn’t stop in and get it fixed, not with a girl tied up in the trunk.
The riskiest time guarding precious cargo was during transport. Which was why a sizeable portion of America’s gold was in Fort Knox—a fort. not in a bunch of vans driving around the countryside. It was why they kept felons locked down in another type of fort. There were too many uncontrolled variables when you were out on the road. And a kidnappee would only make things more risky. They’d drug her and keep her sedated so she was less likely to call out or make sounds. They had probably drugged Tony as well. But even with a drugged prisoner, things could go wrong. Tony had proven that when he’d walked by and sprung the girl. So Ed would want to be on the road as little as possible. And if his car did have troubles, he certainly didn’t want to be going up and down mountainous roads.
No, Ed was not going down to Highway 40. He was simply trying to get his cargo to its destination as quickly as possible.
I-80 stretched to the east, the quickest way to Colorado. Ed would be heading to Cheyenne and then straight down to Fort Collins and on to Denver, or whatever the destination was.
“How fast will this thing fly?”
“You’ve got ground speed and air speed,” Pinto said, “which are two different things. When you’re in the air, the plane’s like a boat in a river. If the boat can go twenty miles per hour, and the river is moving ten miles per hour with it, then the boat can go thirty, but maybe only ten if it’s going against the current.”
“We’re heading east,” Frank said.
“That would be with the wind,” Pinto said, “which means we can probably do 190 easy. Maybe 200, depending.”
Frank nodded. “You have a pencil?”
“In the pocket behind Sam’s seat.”
Frank fished in the pocket and came up with an old thing featuring an exceedingly dull point. Ed wouldn’t be going faster than the normal traffic because he wouldn’t want to attract attention. Wyoming cops loved pulling over out-of-staters. So Ed would probably cruise with the slower vehicles. In fact, 80 mph was probably too generous. Frank figured Ed had, maximum, a 160 mile head start, and that was if his gas tank was full and they didn’t need to make any stops and nothing broke down. Frank did a bit of math on the edge of the atlas. “We’ll catch up in a little less than two hours,” he said.
He measured the distance on the map. “I think we can get ahead of them if we shoot straight for Cheyenne. We’ll work back from there.”
“Roger,” Pinto said, dipped one side of the plane, and banked a soft turn.
“How far up are we?” Sam asked.
“About 5,000 feet.”
Behind them the tall peaks of the Wind Rivers rose into the sky. In front of them lay a line of small brown hills that didn’t rise nearly high enough to get the water the Wind Rivers did. Or maybe the Wind Rivers forced all the water out of clouds that passed over them, leaving nothing for the country beyond. A cloud shadow.
Pinto took a course that followed Highway 287 below, which ran between two lines of mostly barren hills stretching out roughly in the direction of Cheyenne. The hills were about four miles apart. A river squiggled its way between them, parts of it flashing like a mirror in the sun. The land was green for about a quarter mile on either side of the river, irrigated by a patchwork of ranches. Beyond that, the sage desert stretched forever.
Most of Wyoming was like that—farms here and there clustering thinly along the scarce small rivers that were probably what people back East would call creeks. Roads like a thin spiderweb connecting it all. Every ten, twenty, sometimes forty miles along one of those lines was a small town, sometimes nothing more than a couple of houses. Sometimes it was a mine or a natural gas plant. Tiny dots and threads of civilization in miles and miles and miles of huge, open, very often treeless, landscape.
Frank knew he probably wouldn’t be back to make his graveyard shift at Walmart. So he made a few calls and finally got someone to cover. The dispatcher back in Rock Springs called to follow up on his missing person report, but Frank told her what he told the officer and then set up a time the next day to bring Tony in as he told the officer he would. When he hung up from the last call, he was on the edge of nausea. The wind was pretty strong, and all the jarring was working on him. He used to have an iron gut, but something had happened in prison. He took in some big breaths and focused his vision on a wisp of cloud a few miles in front of them. It was now about ten to five. Ed
should
be calling soon. Unless he’d changed his mind, which Ed was wont to do.
There’d been an old guy in the prison. He was doing four years for battery with a deadly weapon. He’d taken a bowling ball to a big tough-guy neighbor who kept throwing dog doo in his yard. Nailed him as he went out to his car one morning. Ed had chummed up to the old guy and then turned on a dime. First he’d demanded the guy’s spot in the yard. Then he’d demanded soap. Food. He took socks, crayons. Whatever the guy had. He just kept pushing and pushing until one day old Bowling Ball had enough. He came at Ed, and Ed shanked him with a poker made from wire. It had been fast, and the guards hadn’t seen.
The code inside requires you keep your mouth shut, so Frank played like he hadn’t seen a thing. Which meant he had to listen to Ed glory in his big showdown. On and on about the goading and the attack. On and on about the fine feel of the wire as it broke through the skin and muscle. On and on, trying to get Frank to talk about the details of his own kills in the service, until Frank had told him that if he didn’t want to look like a friggin’ idiot, he’d stop crowing about throwing down on some old grandpa.
That had shut Ed up, for a while. It had also changed his demeanor, awakened some animosity that lurked in the corners of his eyes. Frank had never trusted Ed. He trusted him less after that. It was quite possible that Ed might have determined right then he was going to pay Frank back for the insult. Sooner or later, he was going to make Frank eat his words.