Call Me Joe (17 page)

"New? Old?"

"Looked brand new to me," she said definitely. "Well, maybe not new, but clean, y'know? Everybody's cars are dirty around here, with all the rain and mud. This car was gleaming."

"Did either Jeff or Billy handle the ballots?" Jack asked.

"No," she said, shaking her head vigorously. "It was my assignment."

Something occurred to me.

"Candace," I said slowly, "how do you get the ballots back?"

"What do you mean?" Candace asked.

"They just sign a sheet of paper and hand it back?"

"No," she said quickly. "I mean, they're votes. They're private, y'know? They go into these red envelopes and get sealed by the council members. Little gold foil seals with their name and the tribal seal embossed on 'em."

"So you get it back sealed?" Jack blurted.

"Yeah."

"So you have no way of knowing if they actually signed them or not," I pointed out.

"No, that's not how…" she stammered. "I mean, they were both sealed! That means they were signed."

"But you never saw an actual signature," I replied. "You got the envelopes from Lucille and Marcus."

"Yeah!" she yelped. "I mean…see, they leave the envelopes in a box on their front door. They fill them out and seal them and put them in the box. That's how we know they voted."

"You don't actually see them fill out the ballot?" I said.

"The votes are private!" she protested. "I mean… technically, we're just supposed to drop the ballot in the box and pick it up from the box but…well, they're all friends of ours, y'know?"

"Who opens the envelopes?" I asked.

"Y'mean here?" she replied. "Well…that'd be Moonie, I guess. Mr. Moon, I mean. We leave them in a locked ballot box. That one right over there."

She pointed to an oak box about the size of a wine case. It was obviously handmade and sported a serious looking master combination lock on a sturdy brass hasp.

"We'll ask him about that," I nodded. "Candace, I'm just curious about something."

"What?" she said warily.

"You're a member of this tribe. You hear the talk and you know these people. What do you think happened?"

She was quiet for a long time. When she spoke, it was barely more than a whisper.

"This meant so much to everybody," she murmured, "so much. Jobs where there are no jobs. Lotta young people here commute back 'n' forth to Spokane everyday and they eat most of it up in gas. All of a sudden, we could have a couple hundred good-paying jobs 20 minutes up the road. We'd run a casino, a truck farm, stables, ATV repairs, my dad could reopen his café. It wasn't just some wild-haired notion somebody cooked up. It was big money, big plans. Everybody was almost high off it."

"I love Lucille. She's like the grandma I never had. But it was wrong of her and Marcus to keep clinging to this wait and see attitude when we need it so much! She wanted more study, more time, more concessions. If Hap Gilyard hadn't forced the vote, hell, we'd still be studyin' and waitin'."

"This reservation has been waiting 100 years. We're all sick of waiting. Like I say, I love Lucille to death, but…I think she signed it and either forgot she did it, or she's claimin' she didn't so we can "study" some more. Lucille can forget stuff, let me assure you of that. Tabitha is my cousin's baby by Lucille's grandson. She's conveniently forgotten about Serena. Never speaks her name. Lucille can forget stuff…when she wants to."

We questioned Moon about the ballot count. He showed us the actual ballots and all nine were signed, dated, and properly filled out. He compared Lucille's and Marcus' signatures from old ballots and, to my under-trained eye, the signatures were a match.

My inability to shake loose a culprit made me cranky and hyper. In my experience, crimes are usually far more mundane and less of a mystery than you see on TV. The vast majority of them respond beautifully to my standard brand of benign thuggery. When it doesn't I have to actually work for a living.

I hate it when that happens.

"You buy that part about Lucille claiming not to have signed so she can buy time?" Jack asked.

"Buy time for what?" I snorted. "I'd buy forgetting a lot faster. What's the point in delaying the process? They have money now and will have a lot more, sooner rather than later."

"Any other reason a delay would make sense?" Jack mused.

"Not that I can think of," I muttered. "Anything worth skimming in your operation?"

"Well, not until we started," Jack chuckled dryly. "You want to skim, better to have something there to skim from, huh?"

"Then she forgot," I shrugged. "You saw the signatures. Nine of 'em. The election is legal. Hell, Lucille even admits it's her signature. She thought the project was a good idea. You see her suing you to stop it?"

"Now really," Jack groaned.

"But this is the sort of loose end that winds up bringing down empires."

Twenty-One

Joe was enjoying the hell out of Soho. Safely decked out in his flaming red hair, brothel creepers, jeans and a succession of plaid shirts, Joe talked the talk effortlessly and walked among the colorful crowds with a feeling of security he had seldom known. He drank Guiness and Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter, played darts, shot pool, and spent a wholly uncharacteristic amount of time just thinking. He was homesick but comforted by the knowledge that he was doing something effective to save his house and land.

The furor over Kensington would hit crescendo in about two days and then begin to abate, he knew. He planned to stay two weeks, let the news turn to fresh disasters, and then do the next one. Katja had already sent him maps and timetables. He'd leave Soho as Tufnal, do the job, and then move on to Coventry, to a new identity.

Katja was traveling around Europe, playing tourist, moving every two to three days to reduce the possibility of having a cell or laptop traced.

The first night in Soho, his satellite phone rang, very late. As he picked it up, he heard the muted strains of Mozart in the background and knew immediately that it wasn't Katja.

"Not exactly according to plan, was it?" the voice said softly.

"That wasn’t a plan," Joe replied. "That was giving up."

"She didn't like it," the voice said flatly.

"It wasn't her decision," Joe said calmly.

"But this
is
her idea," the voice replied. "What was it we said in Laos, Joseph? 'Break the pattern'. You've worked all these years by changing everything, every time out."

"There's no pattern here," Joe signed.

"Joseph," the voice continued, "the pattern is not the disguises, the hardware, the methods. The pattern is what you'll have to do. Kensington could be explained. One can be written off as the random act of some kook. As each of them goes, the pattern emerges."

"They should see a pattern. That's good. It gets me what I want," Joe shot back. "They won't see me."

"You know Interpol has a file on you," the voice replied. "If they have it, Scotland Yard has it."

"They don't have my real name and they don't have a picture."

"That you know of," the voice sighed.

"Okay," Joe said evenly.

There was a tense silence. Joe was dying to clear his throat but he wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"You're changing hardware?" the voice asked.

"Barrel and ammo, cached by third parties," Joe said patiently.

Another silence. Joe sat quietly and waited. He knew there was no rushing him and wouldn't have tried anyway.

"If you go down," the voice said softly," I go down, too, in some very real ways."

"I won't go down," Joe said simply. "You should know that…trust that."

"I hope that," the voice said quietly. "I really hope that."

The line went dead and then hissed softly in Joe's ear. It momentarily reminded him of the wind along his ridge back in Washington, down from Canada, fresh and crisp, whispering secrets in the language of the pines.

Twenty-Two

Aaron Weber was out of the hospital.

Jack and I ate lunch at a large, airy bar and grill called Barney's Junction, situated at the west end of the bridge leading to Washington Route 20 and the main entrance to his site.

Now that the pace of what we were doing was falling into a rhythm, I was able to drop the blinders a bit and take a look around us.

Kettle Falls, the tiny community straddling Route 395, just west of Colville, now registered as a town, instead of just a speed zone. Neither of us had paid any attention to it—or Barney's—on the way in, but now I noticed the Meyers Falls Market, an organic food store and antique mall, occupying what appeared to be a renovated feed store or warehouse in the center of town. I got a bag of wonderful pumpkin-spice granola there for quick snacks, while Jack bought several bags of mixed nuts.

"Those nuts are fatty as hell," I needled him.

"Up yours, granola boy," he grinned.

Barney's turned out to be a bit more of a beer joint and hang-out than a grill, but the food was decent and the crowd was chatty and good-natured.

Halfway through my turkey club, I signaled Jack to keep quiet. We both ate in silence and tuned into the adjacent booth.

"…Weber and his buddies outta the hospital in Spokane this morning," a stocky, bearded guy said. "Dave Carroll seen him gassin' up at the Chevron. Said he had a bandage acrost his nose looked like a hockey mask. Wearin' one of them neck collars, too, where that guy messed up his voice box."

"Now, there's a goddamn public service, right there," a small, dark guy with a flat top opined. "Worst thing about that boy was his stupid mouth."

"No," a fellow in a Mariners cap, said assertively. "Worst thing is his fuckin' mean streak. Little bastard run his own mother off. Damn near run his grandpa off, too, 'cept the old man was even meaner than him."

"So, where's he at?" the flat-top asked. "Still out there off 25?"

"Where the hell else would he be?" beard laughed. "Stayin' with friends?"

That got a laugh and a couple of high fives.

"I wouldn’t have been broke up none if that ol’ boy had just killed him outright,” Mariners cap chuckled. “You know somebody will, sooner or later.”

“Aw, now, Duncan,” beard sighed, “I mean, yeah, he’s a fuckin’ menace an’ all and I’m glad he finally walked into the fan blades, but c’mon…you know what he came from. Just take a look at that God’damn ‘sculpture’ out in front of the house. Wasn’t him that did that. That was his mama. You think the poor kid ever had a chance?”

“I ain’t no fuckin’ social worker, Jimmy,” Duncan observed. “Ain’t important to me how he got that way. What's important is that he gets his shit outta this area. If he don't learn from this ass-whippin' – and he won't – somebody will shoot him and won't nobody look too hard for who did it."

Jack and I were quiet when we got to the car. I drove slowly back toward town until we saw the Chevron up ahead and the turn-off to Route 25 to our right.

On impulse, I swung onto 25 and accelerated under a low railroad bridge, into a corridor of tall pines.

"Weber?" Jack asked mildly.