Tall Man in Ray-Bans (A John Tall Wolf Novel) Page 8

  “Might give us another possibility for the body in the lake bed,” Darton said.

  “That, too,” John agreed.

  Darton told him, “You know, I’m pretty good about attending the annual Fallen Officers fundraiser. I don’t recall seeing a Native American lady among the honored guests. Not surprising if she wanted to preserve her anonymity. She just sends in a check with the name Lily White on it, we might think she was a Daughter of the Confederacy. Show up in person, she’d change all that.”

  John got to his feet, “Let’s see if we can find Ms. White. Pay her a visit.”

  Darton stood and said, “I already have a lead on that. Her donation checks were drawn on a business account.”

  “What’s the name of the business?”

  Darton said, “It’s a place called Go Native.”

  Go Native was a boutique in Austin’s SoCo neighborhood. It featured contemporary artists who fashioned Native American themed art, furnishings and accessories. Its location in the hip South of Congress location couldn’t have been better. But the lights in the shop were dimmed, the door was locked and a sign said closed for inventory.

  No one was present in the showroom, but there was a light on in a back room.

  Darton called Austin Telephone, identified himself, gave his badge number and asked if Go Native had an unlisted business number. He wanted the line the store used to make outgoing calls, not the one that would be answered by voice mail, telling him what he already knew: the store was closed. He got the number he wanted.

  A second call and a minute later, a good-looking fiftyish blonde stepped out of the back room and crossed to the front door. She made sure she got a long look at both John and Darton’s badges, before she let them inside. She relocked the door behind them.

  She was more interested in John than Darton.

  “You’re with the BIA?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll turn up the lights in the shop. You can check every item I have. As far as I know, there’s nothing in the store I’m not supposed to have.”

  Darton was confused. “What kind of items are you not supposed to have?”

  John told his new friend. “I believe the lady is referring to ceremonial objects white people are not meant to see much less buy and sell.”

  The woman nodded, then realized she’d forgotten her manners.

  “I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Barbara Larson. I own Go Native.”

  She shook hands with both men.

  John told her, “We have no question about the goods in your store, Ms. Larson. Don’t worry about that.”

  “Then what would the BIA want with … Is this something to do with Lily?”

  “You know Lily White Bird, Ms. Larson?” Darton asked.

  “Of course, I do.” She paused to look at a couple peering at the goods in the shop’s display window. “Would you mind if we talk in back? I really can’t open to the public right now.”

  She led John and Darton to an office in the back, got them seated and seemed relieved that they didn’t want anything to drink.

  Sitting behind her desk, Barbara said, “Of course, I know Lily. I worked for her; I bought the store from her. When she decided to sell, two years after I started here, I talked to my husband, Bob, and we bought the place. I run it.” She took a moment to think and look at Darton. “You said Lily White Bird, but this was the only place she used her full name. Everywhere else she was just Lily White.”

  John said, “Did Ms. White say why she wanted to sell the business?”

  “She said she wanted to move to the San Diego area and open a new shop there. We agreed we could both use the name Go Native. We joked that maybe we could go national, build a whole chain of …” Barbara Larson’s face took a sudden fall. “Please don’t tell me something bad has happened to Lily.”

  “We don’t know of anything like that,” John said. “We’re looking for her regarding another matter. Have you heard from her since you bought the store?”

  Barbara shook her head and the corners of her mouth turned down.

  John had failed to reassure her.

  That or some other unhappy thought had entered her mind.

  “Something occur to you just now, Ms. Larson?” Darton asked.

  “Yes, it did. Lily never said so but I got the feeling she was going to California to get away from her husband.”

  “Just your opinion?” John said.

  Barbara Larson took a deep breath and let it go slowly.

  “I might be all wrong about this. It was one of those situations where there are holes in the conversations you have with someone you’re coming to know. Things you can feel the other person isn’t telling you. With Lily, it was her husband. I recognized what she wasn’t saying because that was how I was with my first husband.”

  Darton said, “If you don’t mind us asking, Ms. Larson —”

  “I don’t talk about Roy because, to put it in plain Texan, he was a cheatin’ sumbitch. The kind that won’t ever change.”

  John said, “You don’t think you’re wrong, do you, Ms. Larson, about Lily’s husband being her problem?”

  Barbara looked John in the eye.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Chapter 18

  Austin, Texas — July 13, the present

  Coy Wilson was operating on three hours of sleep when the limo pulled up in front of her house. The driver offered to carry her suitcase and guitar case to the door. Coy thanked him, tipped him and said that wouldn’t be necessary. She had heard stories of limo drivers in L.A. toting luggage to a woman’s door, pushing in after her and raping her. California was ahead of the curve with most things, including innovative predators, but Coy didn’t want to take any chances that the bad guys in Austin weren’t quick learners.

  She’d no sooner stepped out of the limo than she saw she needn’t have worried. Two big men stepped up to her holding their badges. Cops. Most likely. There had been cases of psychos impersonating cops in L.A., too. But when she saw one of the men in front of her was from the Bureau of Indian Affairs her knees started to buckle.

  A cop caught her under each arm. The Indian guy in the sunglasses — she could see he looked Native American now — caught her guitar case, too, before it hit the ground.

  The limo driver popped out of the car, wanting to make sure Coy was all right.

  Darton turned his badge in the driver’s direction. “Austin PD. The young lady is perfectly safe. Thank you for your concern.”

  The driver read between the lines. He got in his car and left.

  But not without making a call, Darton saw. No doubt to the police to check on the story he’d been given. Good man.

  Coy looked at John. “Is this about Jackson? Is he dead?”

  Coy invited the two cops into her home, but she didn’t offer them food or drink. She was surfing a wave of fear and adrenaline, but fatigue still tugged at her eyelids. If the cops had something bad to tell her, she’d just give in and black out.

  She didn’t want to repeat her question, so she just looked at the Native American cop.

  John told her, “We’re hoping to find Jackson White, Ms. Wilson. We don’t know whether he’s alive or not.”

  “You think I know?” Coy asked. “After what I just asked you?”

  Darton told her. “Some people try to mislead the police, Ms. Wilson.”

  She’d heard him tell the limo driver he was a city cop. “I’m not one of them. Lying to you would be stupid.” She turned to look at John. “But lying to you would be a crime, right? You’re a fed.”

  “I am, and it is a crime to lie to a federal officer. People still do, though. I’ll take you at your word that you’re not one of them.”

  She gave him a look and said, “Because musicians are so trustworthy?”

  “Because I don’t think you’d drop your guitar on purpose,” John said.

  Tears formed in Coy’s eyes. “No, I wouldn’t. Jesus, let’s get some co
ffee. I hope you can stomach the instant stuff.”

  “Jackson’s father is dead?” Coy asked, stirring a second spoon of sugar into her coffee.

  Neither John nor Darton had accepted her offer of a cup.

  Nor had they told her that maybe it was Jackson’s body that had been found.

  What Darton said was, “Randy Bear Heart had been wanted by the FBI for bank robbery. He’d been flying under the radar for a long time, but my son found remains in the Lake Travis mud that appear to be his.”

  “Your son?” Coy asked.

  “Strange old world, isn’t it?” Darton said.

  Coy turned to John, “And you got involved because Randy was Native American?”

  John said, “One of the three cops he killed was on the Mercy Ridge Reservation.”

  He didn’t say the cop’s name was Red Hawk. Didn’t want her to break down.

  “Oh, God. Did Jackson know all this stuff?”

  “We don’t know,” John said. “He was very young at the time.”

  Darton told Coy, “A forensic anthropologist came up with a sketch of the victim’s face based on the contours of the skull.” He handed a copy to Coy.

  Anticipating a reaction, Darton reached for the coffee cup Coy held; John moved close to make sure she didn’t slip off her chair, but it was the woman’s jaw that dropped and nothing else.

  “My God,” she sobbed. “It is Jackson.”

  Darton took the cup from her, just in case.

  John handed her a copy of the photo of Randy Bear Heart and Lily White Bird in their Bonnie and Clyde attire. Coy’s sorrow turned to anger in a flash.

  “Who the hell’s the bimbo with Jackson?” she demanded. “And what’s with the cos—” The tirade stopped in mid-word as Coy realized what she was looking at. “That’s Lily, Jackson’s mom, under that blonde wig. Looking a lot younger than when I knew her. Is the guy with her Jackson’s dad?”

  John nodded.

  “I never met him. Damn, they couldn’t look more alike.”

  John and Darton exchanged a glance. They had yet to find a photo of Randy Bear Heart as an adult. They watched as Coy reexamined the anthropologist’s sketch and compared it to the photo of Randy Bear Heart.

  She looked up at Darton.

  “That body your son found could be either of them.”

  “Can you guess why Jackson left town, Ms. Wilson?” John asked.

  “I don’t have to guess, I know. Partly anyway. Jackson and I were in bed when he got a call from Lily. I know because I answered the phone. All she said to me was could she talk to her son, but it sounded like she was trying hard not to cry. Jackson listened a minute and told her he’d be right over. When he got off the phone he had a look on his face like nothing I’d ever seen before. He just told me he had to go.

  “I asked when he’d be coming back. He said as soon as he could, but he never did. All I could think was he and his mother had gotten into some terrible trouble and had to run.”

  “You never went to the police?” Darton asked.

  Coy looked at him. “And say what? I didn’t know what happened. Shit, there are times when I’m down on myself that I think it was all a real mean joke the two of them played on me.”

  John asked in a soft voice, “If it were a joke, wouldn’t Jackson have continued his musical career?”

  The epiphany hammered Coy. “Of course, he would have.”

  She looked back at the sketch of the dead man and began to cry.

  Before Coy could sink too deeply into despair, John asked, “The look on Jackson’s face, the one you’d never seen before, would it fit with a man thinking of killing someone?”

  Coy’s sorrow was derailed by the new surprise. “That was exactly what it looked like.”

  Before they left, Darton went to get Coy’s neighbor, Lloyd Rucker, to come sit with her.

  SAC Gilbert Melvin sat in his borrowed Austin office and reviewed the latest information to come from the medical specialists who’d examined the skeletal remains taken from Lake Travis. Somebody named Antoinette Portis, M.D. had figured out the age at death of the murder victim. There was an explanation of the reasoning that led to her conclusion, laid out in words a layman could understand.

  Science these days was amazing stuff, Melvin thought.

  Things might get to the point where the people in the lab coats and the guys in the SWAT squads were the only cops anybody needed.

  Right now, though, he had an edge on John Tall Wolf.

  Oh, he’d make the information available, upon request.

  Maybe he’d send it postal mail to Tall Wolf.

  Meanwhile, he left a voicemail at Darton Blake’s number telling his counterparts he’d been in touch with Marlene Flower Moon. Let them think he was passing the good stuff along promptly.

  “Ms. Flower Moon told me the people at Mercy Ridge informed her that none of their sacred relics is missing. Maybe that’s all she’d tell … someone from another agency.” Melvin wasn’t about to say all she’d tell a white guy on a voice recording. “Perhaps Special Agent Tall Wolf should contact her directly and see if she has more details for him.”

  Melvin ended the call just as another thought occurred to him.

  What if Bear Heart had stolen something special, and the Indians had caught up with him and gotten their goods back?

  Melvin was going to keep that thought to himself.

  If it turned out to be true, it was going to be a political hot potato.

  That he’d toss to Tall Wolf.

  Chapter 19

  The Road to Austin, Texas — August, 1986

  Lily White Bird came to regret killing her husband, Daniel Red Hawk, but not immediately. When she’d had her last argument with Randy, a month before she’d married Red Hawk, Lily had summed up her feelings by telling Randy, “I don’t want to see you again until you’re old and ugly.”

  After Randy had sent the unsigned note apologizing to her, he’d come to her house and greeted her by asking, “Old and ugly enough for you yet?”

  Randy still looked so good he made her heart race.

  Before she could have any second thoughts, he leaned in close and kissed her.

  To feel his lips again was all it took. She pulled him inside the house, took a look to make sure no one had been watching and closed the door. Drew the threadbare curtains, too.

  In bed, afterward, he admitted to her, “I haven’t changed, but I’ve slowed down some.”

  Lily laughed.

  “What?” Randy asked.

  Lily told him, “Wish I knew how to write music. That’d be a great song.”

  Randy laughed, too. “A country song, darlin’, I haven’t changed, but I’ve slowed down some.”

  He tried to hum a melody and that made them both laugh.

  “The one good thing about me being a sonofabitch?” he said.

  “Probably, there’s just one.”

  “Maybe two. The first is, I can say you’ve always been my favorite. Always will be.”

  “I stand out in a crowd, huh?”

  Randy laughed, and Lily joined him.

  “The second thing,” he told her, “is you’re damn near as crazy as me.”

  Thinking about the two of them fucking in a cop’s bed, she had to agree.

  “Tell me another good thing,” Lily said.

  “Okay. I’m going to get off the rez, make myself a good life, and I’m taking you with me.”

  Lily said, “Just me?”

  “Just you.”

  Turned out Jackson would go with them, and after Randy had robbed his third bank they had some real money to call their own.

  Lily, Randy and Jackson went to Canada first. Let the cops try to find three Indians in all the woods they had up there. But heading north was only a fake-out. They got on a plane in Calgary and flew to Seattle, took another flight down to L.A.

  In Los Angeles, Randy bought fake IDs and they took a bus to Flagstaff. In Arizona, they made a cash purchase of a u
sed car and drove to Austin.

  Settling in Texas, Randy used most of their money to buy a bar in a Latino neighborhood. There were three rooms in the back where the family could live. Randy became the genial host and bartender. Lily worked as the comely waitress. People liked the handsome couple and their cute little boy. Everyone agreed the new owners were much more simpatico than the old pendejo who used to own the place.

  The bar prospered and after serving as the site of a wedding reception with a small band Randy got the idea of having live music as a weekend draw. Why not? Everyone else in Austin had live music. It turned out Randy had a good ear, recognized musical talent even at its earliest stages of development. The acts he booked filled the house.

  At least once a night, when a band was playing, Randy would step out from behind the bar and take Lily away from waiting tables and lead her out onto the dance floor. People would give them space, whistle, cheer and clap their hands in time with the music.

  Lily loved dancing with Randy so much there were times when she’d pull him out from behind the bar. The women all loved her boldness. They all but swooned when Randy took her in his arms at the end of the dance and kissed her.

  Jackson often watched his mother and father from the hallway leading to the back rooms, though he was supposed to be asleep. He always sneaked out to listen to at least some of each band’s performance. Some he liked better than others, but he loved the idea of making people happy by making music.

  Those were the happiest years of Lily’s life. She had a larger claim on Randy than any other woman. Not that she had sole possession. At irregular intervals, he would leave Lily and Jackson at the bar with someone he trusted to help with the customers and go scouting. Looking to see if any cops had gotten on to them yet, he told Lily.

  She knew any cop Randy might spot would be female and the only thing she’d be looking for was a good time. More likely, he had someone special stashed somewhere. When she found out that there was an outside favorite and learned who the woman was she actually approved.