Tall Man in Ray-Bans (A John Tall Wolf Novel) Read online

  “Why the hell didn’t we think of that?” the reporter asked Randy. “Just refuse to let the fuckers come ashore in the first place.”

  Randy was raised by an aunt and uncle who didn’t particularly care for him but surely appreciated the envelope of cash that arrived each month to pay for his support. By anything but reservation standards it wasn’t a lot of money, but it came right on schedule, year after year. The feds found out about the surreptitious child support only well after Randy learned of it.

  Initially, he’d demanded only a small percentage of the money from his aunt and uncle. As he grew older, though, he upped his share and finally claimed all of it. That was when his uncle kicked him out and ratted him out. Confronted by the FBI, Randy claimed he’d received money only once and as it came in an unmarked envelope he had no idea if his long-missing mother and father had sent it. If there had been more payments, they should check with his uncle. He must have kept them and spent them on himself — serve the old bastard right if the feds set him up to roast slowly over an open fire.

  That was when Randy was eighteen, had just graduated at the top of his high school class, and had gotten a job at the Mercy Ridge Times to support himself. The editor he’d talked to there had asked what he could do. “Get rid of all the damn spelling errors and mangled grammar,” Randy had said. “That and make sure the stories are at least semi-factual.”

  He was hired as the paper’s copy editor and outraged all the reporters with his red pencil and fact checking.

  The other reservation demographic Randy drove to distraction was the female population, aged eighteen to forty. By near unanimous consent among that group Randy Bear Heart, aka Randy Heart Throb, was the most handsome red man the Great Spirit had ever created. Outside of his job, Randy couldn’t be bothered with reservation politics or civil rights for his people. He was busy with the ladies and the white man’s popular culture.

  In particular, he became obsessed by the movie “Bonnie and Clyde,” a print of which had found its way to Mercy Ridge. After the movie had finished its public run, Randy had bought the print and paid a few dollars for private screenings in the wee hours of the night.

  He’d sit in the dark, either alone or with a girlfriend of the moment, and imagine himself as Warren Beatty playing Clyde Barrow. He looked at Faye Dunaway and … well, there weren’t any natural blondes on the rez, but there were certainly women who cleaned up nice. Two in particular who did.

  Watching the film until the print wore out, Randy developed a more general interest in Depression era outlaws. He came to admire a number of them, but he always came back to Arthur Penn’s rendition of Clyde Barrow. He just loved the way Beatty inhabited the role. So he was seriously disappointed when he came across a picture of the real life Clyde. The gangster was a little hillbilly looking guy with jug ears and no upper lip. And the real Bonnie Parker? To say she was homely was being kind about it, and she was so scrawny you had to wonder how she ever hefted that Thompson submachine gun.

  The way Randy saw the bigger picture, the rez was stuck in a permanent Depression. So he’d be just as justified going out and robbing banks as any of those hard-time white boys had been … and in all the years that had passed since the real Bonnie and Clyde had been on their rampage — or even since Penn’s movie had been made — bankers had forgotten what a cool bank robber looked like.

  These days it was all punks with nylons or Halloween masks over their faces. No-style assholes poking their little handguns at tellers who had every right to think they might get shot by accident as easily as on purpose. Where the hell was the cool old-time robber with a sense of fashion? For that matter, was there any robber who looked every bit as good as a movie star?

  That thought put Randy in mind of his parents. George and Nellie had looked great. He’d missed them after they’d first run off. He understood that they’d had to leave him behind; they might have gotten caught if they’d been busy worrying about him. They could have gone to prison and … he might have wound up somewhere worse than living with his aunt and uncle.

  He still wondered what had happened to his parents, though. They must have done something to make the money they’d sent back to the rez all those years. And somehow, after his uncle had ratted him out to the feds, they’d known to stop the payments. Not give the feds anything to work with. So you could be an outlaw and outsmart the guys with the badges.

  In the case of George and Nellie, you’d probably look cool doing it, too.

  Randy figured what he ought to do was follow in the traditions of both Arthur Penn and Mom and Dad. He bought himself a lightly used navy blue double-breasted suit and a pearl gray fedora. As contemporary grace note, he added a pair of cool shades. But, growing impatient, he started robbing banks before he could find a pair of spats.

  At the end of the Bear Heart file, John found mention of one of Randy’s favorite girlfriends. Her name was Annie Forger. She lived in Rapid City, South Dakota.

  John left Darton to pursue the investigation in Austin.

  He headed out to Rapid City.

  Chapter 6

  Rapid City, South Dakota — July 10, the present

  “Randy was all kinds of smart and more kinds of crazy,” Annie Forger told John.

  The woman had informed him upon meeting that you used the French pronunciation for her last name: Forzhay. John had studied French in college and could manage that. The two of them were seated in a booth at a 50s-themed diner called Arnold’s. Annie told John that her ticket out of the rez was getting the grades to be admitted to the University of North Dakota.

  While she was there, she met and fell in love with Vern Forger, the star center of the Fighting Sioux ice hockey team.

  “Emigré from Quebec?” John asked.

  “Mais oui,” Annie said. “French dad, Mohawk mom. Poor Vern lost them both to heart attacks, within a year of each other. He said he thought with his dad it was more of a broken heart than anything else.”

  John told her, “You’ll have to excuse me, but I don’t follow hockey. How’d Vern do?”

  She gave him a smile and shook her head. “I don’t know how you could pick up the sports section of any paper and not have heard of Vern. He went pro with Vancouver. Was an all star his rookie year.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “He gave me two beautiful sons.”

  “That’s even better, but you sound like … are you divorced?”

  “Vern died.”

  John said, “I’m very sorry.

  “So was I, but that was quite a while ago.”

  “Was it another heart problem that took him?” John knew that some young athletes discovered heart anomalies only by dropping dead from them. And if there was a family history…

  “No, it was a car wreck. Vern and the team were in L.A. for a game. They won and afterward he and his line-mates went out to celebrate. The guy who was the designated driver hadn’t understood that not drinking also meant you weren’t supposed to smoke any dope either.”

  “That’s terrible,” John said.

  Annie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It was hard enough to lose the man you love. It was worse telling the boys. They couldn’t believe that Daddy wouldn’t be coming home. Simply refused to believe it for quite a while.”

  “So you came back home?” John asked.

  Annie Forger gave him a hard look. “I’m never going back to the rez.”

  “But South Dakota?”

  “Vern left me with a beautiful house in Vancouver and three million dollars from the life insurance. I thought the money would last longer here. There’d be a nice amount to leave the boys.”

  “Did it help them, coming here?”

  Annie laughed without humor. “They hated it. Wanted to be back in Vancouver playing hockey like Dad. But things worked out. They both earned college hockey scholarships. Guy’s at Boston College; Louie’s at the University of Maine.”

  John turned the conversation back to Rand
all Bear Heart.

  “How did Randy show his smarts?”

  “We both worked at the Mercy Ridge Times. I was a gofer and obit writer saving for college; Randy was the copy editor. He said I was the only one at the paper besides him who could spell worth a damn. He could also spot whenever a reporter was BS-ing. Randy could fact check like he had Google before there was a Google.”

  Annie smiled at the memory.

  “You and he …” John left the thought unfinished.

  “Yeah. Randy and me and just about every other pretty girl on the rez.”

  “Couldn’t be many others as pretty as you.”

  John figured Annie Forger had to be mid-to-late forties, but she looked ten years younger. Her skin was smooth and unblemished, her smile white and even and her jet black hair had a stylish cut that surprised John. Or maybe played to his prejudices. He wouldn’t have thought a look like that could be found in Rapid City.

  “Are you a rich man, Special Agent Tall Wolf?”

  “In every way except money.”

  Annie laughed. “You drink?”

  “Not alcohol.”

  “Smoke dope when you should be driving sober?”

  John shook his head.

  “My mom’s a curandera, among other things. She told me if I ever wanted to get high she’d give me some good stuff. Not classified illegal. Known only to a few. Wouldn’t scramble my brain, kill my liver or leave me dying for more.”

  “Damn,” Annie said. “She’s got something like that, she ought to bottle it. You would be rich.”

  John said, “It’s not that I don’t trust Mom, but it seems to me there ought to be a price for feeling good. Hard work, money, a hangover … something. I never took her up on her offer.”

  “You’re happy being who you are?”

  “More often than not.” John sipped his orange juice. “So how many serious rivals did you have for Randy’s affections, one or two?”

  “One. Lily White Bird.”

  John frowned, remembered the file he’d read on Randy Bear Heart the day before.

  “Wasn’t that the woman he kidnapped?”

  Annie shook her head. “Randy never kidnapped anyone. Lily loved Randy’s craziness. I said goodbye to him when he showed me the Tommy guy he’d bought. There were all sorts of guns on the rez, but normal ones, you know. Rifles, shotguns, pistols. Randy was the only one with an old-fashioned gangster machine gun. He thought he was Warren Beatty.”

  “The actor?”

  “The one who played Clyde Barrow.”

  She leafed through her wallet, took out a photo and slid it over to John

  He saw Randy Bear Heart decked out like a 1930s gangster. The description of him in the police reports was “a dude with a big fucking gun.” Probably weren’t a lot of cinema fans among small-town bank employees in the Dakotas back in those days. Standing next to Randy wearing a beret and a blonde wig was …

  “Is that you?” John asked Annie.

  She nodded. “I didn’t mind a little dress up. But when Randy showed up later with the Tommy gun and wanted us to take a picture with it, I said no. Lily said okay.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Annie dug in her purse and pulled out a photostat of another picture, this one eight by ten. It featured the same Bonnie and Clyde motif, but this time the gun was in the picture, as was a different girl playing Bonnie. She wore the beret and the wig, and both she and Randy had their hands on the weapon.

  The second girl was just a bit prettier than Annie. Maybe. Depending on your taste.

  Annie said, “We took the pictures in the newspaper offices, after the grownups had gone home. You can keep the copy of that picture if you want.” She took her wallet-sized picture back.

  “Both of the photos were taken before Randy started robbing banks?” John asked.

  Annie nodded. “They were, but I had a bad feeling once I saw that gun. I didn’t want to be part of anything that happened. Randy was smart but I was the one going to college.”

  “Wise choice,” John said.

  “You going to come back to Rapid City again?” Annie asked.

  John said, “Don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

  Annie shrugged. “I might remember something else to tell you.”

  “If you do,” John said. He gave her his business card.

  Annie took it, read it and nodded.

  Decided she had one more thing to tell John.

  “There’s this rumor about Randy. Word was he got away with maybe thirty-five thousand dollars total from his bank jobs. That wasn’t bad money back then. It’s still more than most people on any rez ever saw before the casinos started opening. But there were whispers Randy stole something a lot more important than money. Not from the banks, from the rez.”

  John asked, “What?”

  “A ghost shirt and a peace pipe. Maybe other sacred items.”

  John knew if there was one sure way, anywhere in the world, to cause bloodshed it was to disrespect the beliefs other people held as holy. Randy Bear Heart, if the rumors Annie Forger had heard were true, had trampled on the beliefs of his tribe.

  He said, “Damn, would he really do that?”

  “I told you right off Randy was crazy,” Annie said.

  Chapter 7

  Austin, Texas — July 10, the present

  SAC Melvin sat in the office he’d been lent in the Austin federal building, skimming the initial medical reports on the remains found in the dry bed of Lake Travis. The distribution list for the material also included John Tall Wolf and Darton Blake, but all paperwork relevant to the case was routed through him. He was the one to decide what information the other two received.

  In a world where terrorists had climbed to the top of the Bureau’s most wanted list, a smalltime bank robber who had vanished decades ago was far from a priority. Truth was, the assignment was a none too subtle slap at Melvin. He’d been given the job because he wouldn’t be missed elsewhere, not having him work an important case was a good use of resources.

  Bastards.

  Might as well have told him to retire the first day he was eligible; there wouldn’t be any point in sticking around. Certainly no promotion. Maybe he could find a second career as an assistant VP of security at Walmart. Get himself a nice employee discount.

  Fuckers.

  Melvin’s laptop chimed. He had mail.

  John Tall Wolf had sent a message, a one-paragraph summary of his interview with Annie Forger. What stuck out for Melvin was the rumor that Bear Heart might have been stealing from other Indians. A ghost shirt, whatever that was, and a peace pipe, which Melvin had always thought was something invented by Hollywood. Neither item meant a thing to him. Not that his opinion was important. It was how the Indians felt that mattered.

  Melvin sensed a new opportunity here. He was already counting on some good publicity for closing a case that would bring comfort to relatives of the dead cops. Now, in these ethnically sensitive times, if he could restore some cultural trinkets to the Indians, that should be worth some good ink and airtime, too. Maybe, with a bit of luck, he could return a headdress to a chief. That’d make a cool picture.

  You gave Gil Melvin a sack of fertilizer, he’d hand you a bouquet of roses.

  Unless, of course, credit went to Tall Wolf.

  That big SOB with his sunglasses had made it plain he wasn’t going to knuckle under. Given he was an Indian, too, Tall Wolf had to have a better understanding of Bear Heart and the significance of the things he’d stolen from his tribe. If Melvin had to go back to Washington with his tail between his legs and Tall Wolf the hero, he was done.

  Done in by a BIA agent.

  He’d be a joke.

  He ate his gun, he’d hear the laughter over the shot that killed him.

  So failure was not an option. The thing to do was … well, he’d already recognized that Tall Wolf was no dummy. And he recognized that Tall Wolf had an insider’s edge on the Indian angle. The way to play it, th
en, was to show the guy some grudging respect. Let that become collegial acceptance. Maybe even drop a hint or two of camaraderie. Get him looking the other way.

  Then swoop in and grab all the credit.

  Melvin wrote a reply to Tall Wolf, thanking him for his information. Telling him he’d received the first of the medical reports. Did Tall Wolf want them emailed to him? Or did he want to read them when he got back to Austin?

  He revised that to: The reports were available upon request.

  Wouldn’t want Tall Wolf to smell a rat.

  Chapter 8

  Santa Fe, NM — June 27, 1975

  Haden and Serafina decided to sleep on the matter. See if they weren’t being rash about choosing to become parents. After all, it wasn’t every day you saved an infant from a wild animal. In a situation that dramatic, maybe wanting to keep the child was just a reflex. When they awoke, however, their minds remained unchanged. They were going to keep the baby. They would keep the name John Tall Wolf, too. Anglo on each end with a Native American ring to it nonetheless. Haden suggested they could add a Latino name to round it out, but Serafina said that wasn’t necessary.

  They would use a Spanish word for the child’s secret name.

  The one that would keep him safe from those who might wish to curse him.

  The Wolfs knew they would also have to take more mundane precautions to retain custody of John. The law would have to be served. They couldn’t simply keep the boy. They called their lawyer; he called a judge. The judge brought in an outside pediatrician and the police.

  The cops listened to the Wolfs’ story and went out with Haden and found the remnants of the platform on which John had been abandoned. They saw the coyote’s footprints all around the fallen structure. They smelled the animal’s urine, understood that it had staked its claim. All others had better stay away.