Call Me Joe (38 page)

"Shit," I muttered.

"Yeah," Joe nodded.

We were quiet for several minutes. I could think of a thousand questions but not a damned thing to say.

"Colonel," he said finally. His voice could have been any age. I could hear a lonely, different little boy in it; a quiet, brooding teen; an earnest young recruit lost in the fractured neverland of Viet Nam; the hesitant 30-something; the ambitious 40-year-old; and the 50-ish seeker sitting beside me. They were all still there, I realized. He probably wasn't introspective enough to shed skins. He simply wore them all in layers, walking amongst them like a man lost in a blizzard. "Colonel, was I a good solider? Or was I just a dupe?"

"Good god, man," I sighed. "I'm still trying to work that out about myself. What's a good soldier? The simple view? You follow orders. So, did you?"

"Always," he replied. "To the letter."

"Then you were a good soldier, in most people's eyes," I nodded. "So was I. That works until you start to ask if what you did was right. I've got a lot of blood on my hands, too, Joe. What for? Did it improve the planet? I made widows and orphans, Joe, and then came home and bought a jet ski."

"I'll never know, will I?" the lovely, different kid asked.

"No," I answered. "Neither will I. But, the truth? It's too big a question. Lotsa people believe they did the right things but belief and knowledge are two different things. All I can say with a certainty is that, after all the thinking and worrying are done, you still have to look at yourself in the mirror every morning while you shave. And it's kinda hard to shave a monster."

The distant horizon was swallowing the sun. It was making a last desperate stand, painting the descending blue with shafts of orange and gold flame, bursting from the purple soup of the far hills.

"It's perfect," Joe said quietly. "The best I've ever seen."

"Amen," I nodded.

"Back in my cabin," Joe murmured, "floorboard to the right of the hearth. You'll see nail heads but they're fake.

"Joe," I said firmly, "get up, walk down to the Blazer, get in and go. Don't even pack a bag. You have cash at the house, take that."

I handed him the ignition wire. He laughed softly.

"Colonel," he said without moving, "I wish I had met you in Laos. I'd like to think we would have been friends."

"We're friends now, Joe," I implored. "That's why I want you to go,
now
."

"That's good," Joe smiled, the quiet, brooding teen and the seeker rose through the smile and infused it with wonder. "I made a friend."

I was just turning to say something else, something desperate, desolate, half-baked, unconnected to his destiny. It certainly wouldn't have amounted to anything useful.

His hand came up in an almost leisurely way but incredibly fast. The Beretta made its genteel bark as I looked into his eyes, at the dying sun reflected there.

He didn't even flinch. He nodded slightly sideways and his hand, still gripping the gun, fell straight into his lap. His head came back to vertical but the sun was now reflected by closed windows, blank walls, a drying pool.

He slumped forward and then found balance and sat like a man who had nodded off while doing yoga.

I started to remove the gun, to do something to tidy up, improve something, commemorate a passage. Some gesture.

Finally, I settled for watching the last moments of his sunset, from his aerie, struggling to do it through his eyes.

I left him there, the only place he ever really wanted to be, and stumbled down the trail to the cabin.

The floorboard came up easily. A black leather satchel was wedged into the space between the support timbers. I lifted it up and out. A pair of keys on a blank ring dangled from the handle. Beneath the satchel was a brand new Beretta, same model, in a wooden presentation box. I lifted it gently out and sat with it in my lap for a few seconds, thinking. Then I laid it into the valise and got up slowly, suddenly feeling very old and tired.

I helped Simmons to his feet and led him down to the Blazer. He grunted and squealed until we were past Colville and then subsided into a sulky silence.

I drove up to the federal building in Spokane and reached across him. I popped the door, stuck two hundred dollar bills into his pocket and shoved him out.

He sprawled on the sidewalk, glaring at me malevolently.

"You got what you wanted," I growled. "As you'll find when you go back there. For the record—and tell your buddies in D.C. I said this—he was worth the whole fucking lot of you. As for me, you make a deal out of this, I'll go straight to the Colville cops, the state patrol, and any newsroom that'll listen. You're getting a break here and it's more than you deserve. From now on, you see me coming, you run the other way. We get face to face, you'll leave in a bag."

I slammed the door and drove to the airport. I abandoned Joe’s Blazer in the long-term parking lot and walked the quarter-mile to private aviation. I chartered a plane to Salt Lake and sat up front next to the pilot.

As I strapped in, my cell vibrated once, stopped, and then vibrated twice.

"No shit," I whispered. "No shit."



In Salt Lake City, I had about two hours to kill, so I holed up in a lounge in the main terminal and ordered a burger to go with my double Glenfiddich. When it got down to about 30 minutes, I went to the Enterprise counter and rented a Toyota RAV4 on a dead-end to Spokane. It cost a small fortune but I didn’t figure Jack would mind if it would help me wrap up this whole mess within the next 24 hours. I picked it up at their holding lot and drove it back to short-term parking, getting as close to the terminal as I could manage, and left it with the doors unlocked. If everything went right, I’d have my hands full and would need to hit the road immediately. After driving Jack’s rental Blazer, it felt like riding in a covered wagon but as long as it would cruise at seventy, I was willing to put up with it.

The 12:47 from Dallas was right on time. There were six women on it; three were over 70, one was in a wheelchair, and one was about eleven.

I walked up behind a slim woman with reddish-brown, spiky hair and ripped jeans and shoved the Eagle into her ribs.

"What…" she gasped.

"Joe is dead and I suspect you're to blame," I hissed into her ear. "I'm about as fucking pissed off as I've ever been, so you got one chance to survive. Walk out of here right now. Leave your bags. You don't need them. Nod if you understand and don't say a word."

She nodded. I steered her out a side door that would have been manned by a rent-a-cop if he hadn't been flirting with a rental car agent. The girl's head tracked him in faint hope but he never glanced our way.

I put her in the Blazer and handcuffed her to the door handle.

I got in and fired it up.

"Where are we going?" she asked, a curious, quasi-Dutch accent coloring her vowels.

"A family reunion," I growled. "No more talking."

I got us on to the interstate and floored it, heading north to Spokane, about 12 hours away.



As soon as the sun broke over the eastern mountains, along about central Oregon, I called Jack. He was still asleep but rallied quickly. I asked him to make one more phone call to Nat West and to ask West to contact our friend Ogburn. I told him to wake Art and get the Wrights and Kastens into his office about 10 a.m. Jack made a few loud noises when I refused to tell him anything but agreed to help.

I veered off I-84 at Milton-Freewater and drove into Walla Walla. I stopped at a nice restaurant and went in for carry-out. From the restaurant's window, I could see the girl struggling with the cuffs, finally giving up and settling into a pout that registered clearly across 30 feet and through two panes of glass.

I climbed into the Blazer and handed the girl a Styrofoam box.

"How am I supposed to eat?" she asked indignantly. The odd accent was slipping a bit.

"One-handed," I replied.

She picked sullenly at the pancakes and sausage but hunger finally got the better of her.  She finished all of it, right down to the syrup, and settled back in the seat.

"My wrist hurts," she snapped.

"Think of it as karmic adjustment for all the damage you've done, Ms. Kasten," I said lightly. "After last night, you're lucky I'm not driving a corpse back right now."

"My name's Katja," she sneered.

"Your name is shit if you mouth off to me again," I barked. "I'd dearly love to pull this car over somewhere outside of town and beat you to within an inch of your silly, worthless little life. Your fucking name is Joanne Kasten, sister of Jane, daughter of Gene and Abigail, better known as Katja Saren, free-lance loony, real daughter of Serge Dageneau. You are also the poisonous asshole who sicced Joe on Pembroke & Hawkes."

I whipped out the cell and scrolled through my recent calls. I redialed one and eyed her steadily.

"John Calvert."

"Inspector, this is Truman North. I have your girl here in my car. We're in Walla Walla, Washington, headed to Spokane. How soon can you be here?"

"Good god," Calvert gasped. "We thought we'd lost her. The Orly passport…"

"Inspector," I interrupted, "I'm short on time. Do you want to come get her? Want me to hand her off to the F.B.I.?"

"I'm on my way," he said firmly. "How on earth did…never mind. All that for later. What can I do for you?"

"Your network include anyone in the C.I.A.?" I asked.

"Indirectly, but quite solidly, I'd say," Calvert replied.

"Here's what I'd like you to do," I smiled. I told him and could hear him gasp across the Atlantic connection. The girl was pie-eyed.

I rang off and pocketed the phone.

"That cannot be right," the girl murmured.

"It may not be," I shrugged. "But I've been right so far…haven't I?"

"What I was doesn't matter," she shrugged. "What I do is what I am."

"Well," I smiled, "asshole kinda sums it up then, huh?"

"Typical," she sniffed. "Just one more thug with no concept of geopolitical…"

I reached across and back-handed her sharply across the mouth.

"Don't,” I hissed, "even think about giving me some high-minded political screed.  You, your buddies in Hamas, the I.R.A., Brigatta Rosso—trash, all of you. You don't have an ideology. You have a kink, you like killing, so you find a convenient rationale to justify it. Save that facile shit for the gullible. I'm not buying and you're officially out of the business of selling."

She lapsed into a wounded silence. She glanced back into the rear seat and grunted with surprise.

"Joe's valise," she said brightly. "You found it."

"He told me where it was," I replied, "right before he shot himself."

"I don't believe you," she choked." He'd never tell anyone…"

"Shut your obscene face," I barked. "You don't speak of him anymore. You have no right. You used him until he was used up. One more little job and then Joe could be discarded, right? He was a poor, confused, simple man who spent his whole life doing what people told him was right. It never occurred to him that those people would lie."

"I never lied to him," she spat.

"Your whole life is a lie," I murmured. "You might want to watch the scenery. You won't be seeing anything like this again."