Bluetick Revenge (2 page)

“I appreciate your help with this,” he said. “The dog means a lot to my client. She’s under tremendous pressure, and the dog’s
her only friend.” I said nothing. “Did you have any trouble?”

I shook my head. “You think I never stole a dog before?”

He reached into his desk drawer, removed a white envelope, and handed it to me. I thumbed through it. It contained twenty
hundred-dollar bills. “That cover it?” he asked. He picked up half a stogie from a ceramic ashtray—one his kids had probably
made years ago—inserted one end into his mouth, and lit the other end with a gold-plated lighter. It reminded me of Roger
Miller’s old song “King of the Road”:… Smoke old stogies I have found, short but not too big around …

“Two thousand is fine,” I said. I placed the envelope in the pocket of my blue blazer.

“To get right to the point,” he said, “some things have happened and I need your help.” I folded my hands and waited for him
to continue. “I’ve kept most of this from you because I thought your role would be limited to getting the dog, but it’s become
more complicated.” He paused to consider his words.

“Start at the beginning,” I said.

“Right,” he said. He puffed on the cigar. “I don’t do as much criminal law as I used to,” he said.

“Who needs it when you can bill corporate clients three hundred bucks an hour?” He nodded in agreement.

“When I do take a criminal case,” he continued, “it usually involves some kind of white-collar crime. Antitrust, regulatory
offenses, things like that.” He leaned forward and placed his hands on the desk, still holding the stogie in his right hand. “About a month ago a woman named Karlynn Slade came to see me. Turns out her common-law husband is Thadeus Bugg, the leader
of the Sons of Satan.”

“The guy I stole the dog from. You told me this before.”

“You know anything about the Sons of Satan?”

“Just what you told me,” I said. “It’s a biker gang that consists mostly of thugs who live in the mountains. Bugg lives a
few miles out of Ward, about fifteen miles north of Nederland. Way out in the boonies. He’s got a meth lab in a cabin behind
his house, by the way.” There could be no other reason for the abundance of antifreeze containers and the periodic trips to
the cabin by the man with the machine pistol.

“He has meth labs all over the West,” Matt said, “and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. These are bad guys. They’re into
drugs, prostitution, fencing, weapons, loan-sharking, and murder for hire. Some are on the fringe of the White Power movement.
They’re not the largest gang in Colorado, but they are the most violent.” He paused. I’d seldom seen him display anything
other than supreme confidence, but this morning I detected concern.

“The feds have gone after Bugg before,” he continued, “but they’ve never been able to make anything stick, because key witnesses
keep turning up dead. They think he played a role in the death of an ATF agent in Wyoming about six months ago.”

“Didn’t they kill one of their own a few years back?”

“A guy named Rankin, a probationary gang member. Bugg somehow found out he was working for the feds. They found his body in
his cabin. He had been secured to a support beam with radiator clamps, then blow-torched. His dick was in his mouth when they
found him.”

“I remember that,” I said. “They never identified a suspect.”

“And they probably never will,” he said. “The Sons of Satan are like brothers. The penalty for betrayal is a slow, painful
death. That’s why each member has ‘SPD’ tattooed on his left wrist. You can’t look at your fuckin’ watch without being reminded
of what awaits those who are disloyal. There are men sitting in maximum-security prisons as we speak because they’d rather
spend the rest of their lives behind bars than betray the Sons of Satan.”

I sipped my coffee in silence as I stared out at the city. I despised the Sons of Satan and others like them, but I felt grudging
admiration for the value they placed on loyalty.

“Anyhow,” Matt said, “this broad comes to me because the day previously two FBI agents visited her and told her she was going
to spend a long time in prison if she didn’t become an FBI informant.”

“What do they have on her?” I asked.

“Enough to make life unpleasant,” he said. “She lived with Bugg for seven years, knew what he was doing, and used his money
to buy lots of nice things for herself. I spoke with the new U.S. attorney after she retained me, and he made clear that the
Sons of Satan are number one on his priority list. He’s got his eyes on a Senate seat, and he’s going to use the Sons of Satan
to beef up his law-and-order credentials. They’re going to nail Bugg on something eventually, and when they do they’ll indict
her for aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact, conspiracy, and misprision of felony. She also ran a blue-collar prostitution
ring that provided just about anything you can imagine to working men up and down the Rockies, so they’ve got her on conspiracy
to violate the Mann Act if nothing else.”

“She have a date for New Year’s?” I asked. Matt forced a smile.

“She comes to me and doesn’t know what to do. She’s not thrilled with the prospect of prison, but if Bugg finds out she’s
working for the feds she’ll end up in a fifty-five-gallon drum at Monster Joe’s Truck and Tow. It’s not really my cup of tea
and I’m thinking I should refer her to someone else, when she opens a briefcase filled with twenties, fifties, and hundreds.”

“How much?” I asked as I sipped my coffee.

“Over three hundred thousand,” he said.

“That’s a lot of blow jobs,” I said.

“Very funny,” he replied. “It’s drug money. As soon as the feds left, she took all the cash she could find in the house and
went into hiding.”

“Then she decided she needed an attorney?”

“Yeah, the money is in my safe.” He swiveled in his chair and gestured to show that the safe was in the credenza behind his
desk. “It’s possible she took even more and just hasn’t told me about it. I guess Bugg doesn’t like banks. Anyhow, it didn’t
take long for me to realize she had a serious meth habit, and I knew the feds would consider her more credible if she got
clean, so I urged her to enter a treatment program. There’s no way she can go back to Bugg, but she could still be of immense
help to the feds. I told her the Witness Protection Program was her only chance, but she’d have to be drug free. She pitched
a fit, so I told her to find another lawyer. She finally agreed to enter a thirty-day residential program on the condition
that I get the dog for her.”

“And recalling that I am unemployed and moderately adventurous, you hired me to snag the dog formerly known as Prince for
your kinky, drug-addicted, dog-loving client?”

“Yes,” he replied. I finished my coffee and he asked if I wanted more. I said I did, so he punched the intercom button with
one of his beefy fingers and asked the receptionist to bring me a refill.

“How is Prince?” he asked.

“He’s fine,” I said. “His lot in life has improved greatly in the last fifteen hours. He’s asleep on the couch in my basement.”

“You didn’t leave him outside?”

“Can’t,” I said. “Don’t want word getting out that I recently acquired a bluetick coonhound. Dog like that would stick out
in Nederland.”

“How come?” he asked.

“When’s the last time you saw a hippie hunting raccoons at eight thousand feet?” Nederland sits 8,236 feet above sea level.
It is widely known as one of the last hippie towns in America, though it is also populated by cowboys, miners, professionals
who work in Boulder, and the occasional ex-Marine JAG who just wants to live in a small mountain town and not be bothered
by anyone. Ninety-nine percent of the dogs in Nederland are descended from malamutes, huskies, or wolf hybrids.

“I get your point,” Matt said. “Does he get along with your dogs?”

“Seems to,” I said. I have two dogs, Buck and Wheat. Buck is a cross between a Great Dane and a Rhodesian ridgeback. Wheat
is purebred schipperke and resembles a black fox.

The receptionist brought my coffee and took back the empty cup and saucer. I flashed my pearly whites and thanked her. She
remained pleasant but professional. “Cold,” I said, after she had departed.

“The coffee or Theresa?”

“Theresa.”

“I thought you had a girlfriend,” he said.

“I do,” I said. “I was just making an observation.”

“Anyhow, she’s not your type.”

“My type is hard to find,” I replied.

“I’ll bet,” he said. “You can get beauty and brains if you’re lucky, but beauty, brains, philosopher, and redneck is hard
to come by.”

“I’m an enlightened redneck,” I said. “I own a gun, but I vote Democratic.”

“Getting back to the business at hand,” he said. I met his eyes to signal I was listening. “While Ms. Slade was in treatment,
I worked out an agreement with the U.S. attorney. She gets immunity but has to tell all in front of a grand jury, then testify
at trial. When it’s over, they’ll relocate her and give her a new life.”

“Do the feds know she took money from Bugg?” I asked.

“I’m sure they’ve heard she took some money,” he said, “but they haven’t really asked about it and I haven’t volunteered it.
It may come up as they begin to prep her for the grand jury, but for now I think they are content to let her keep whatever
she took as long as she cooperates. And they understand that I need to get paid somehow.”

“Sounds like you earned your money,” I said. “She stays out of prison and starts life over with three hundred grand.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, “but when I went to visit her a few days ago, she was having second thoughts. She’d been
in jail when she was younger and wasn’t looking forward to being babysat by federal marshals in a Ramada for the next year
or two while the feds build a case.”

“I don’t like what I see coming,” I said.

“It would just be for a few weeks,” he said. “I’m working on an arrangement that will enable the feds to relocate her now
and just bring her back when she has to testify. That has to be approved by some deputy assistant something or other at the
Justice Department, and that takes time. In the meantime, I need someone to protect her from Bugg—and from herself.” I let
out a long sigh.

“There are people more qualified than me,” I said. “Security professionals, bodyguards, retired cops.” He sat up straight
and looked me right in the eyes.

“I’ve practiced law for nearly twenty years,” he said, “and I’ve employed a lot of those types. Most of them are dumber than
shit. You read Wittgenstein for fun and have more balls than anyone I know.”

“It doesn’t sound like this is going to involve much philosophical analysis,” I said.

“No, but you’ll be well compensated.”

“How much did you have in mind?”

“I was thinking two thousand a week,” he said. “And as much money as you need for expenses. She left Bugg with little more
than the clothes on her back, so she’ll need some new clothes and some personal items.” He looked at me, waiting for an answer.
His eyes give him only slightly less moral authority than the Uncle Sam portrayed in those wonderful World War I recruiting
posters.

“All right,” I said.

“Good.”

“When do I meet her?”

“In about twenty minutes,” he said. “She finished treatment this morning. My paralegal is headed over there now to pick her
up.”

T
HE DRIVE BACK
to my mountain home was tense. Karlynn and I had not gotten off to a good start. After Matt had introduced us and told her
I had recovered Prince, her first words had been “What kind of name is Pepper?” That was strike one.

“It’s the name my parents gave me,” I said. She sighed, then sat down in one of the chairs opposite Matt’s desk and lit a
cigarette without asking. That was strike two. Matt’s cigar was one thing, but cigarettes were another.

Matt and I took our seats, and he explained what was happening with the feds and what my role would be. FBI agents had interviewed
Karlynn at the treatment center before finalizing the immunity agreement. Those agents and federal prosecutors would question
her again several times in the next few weeks, and those sessions would lay the foundation for the case against Bugg and the
Sons of Satan. Her statements would provide the probable cause needed to obtain permission to install wiretaps and to subpoena
bank and phone records. Then the feds would begin building a case from the bottom up. “If things go as planned,” Matt told
her, “you and Prince will be living a new life before the end of the year.” That sounds like more than a few weeks, I thought.
When it was time to seek indictments, Matt continued, the feds would bring her back to testify to a grand jury. Then they
would make arrests. The first trials might not take place until a year later.

As Matt began to tell her about my background and qualifications, I sized her up. She was five-five and weighed only about
115. Blue eyes. Her breasts were disproportionately large for the rest of her sleek body. Her dark, stringy hair was of medium
length. She wore tight, faded jeans, a pale yellow T-shirt with the name of a bar emblazoned across it, and black boots with
spiked heels. No makeup that I could detect. About thirty-two years old, I guessed. She turned and looked at me.

“You don’t look like a bodyguard,” she said. I wore tan slacks, a blue oxford shirt, a navy blazer, and cordovan loafers.
No tie. At five-ten and 215 pounds, I was hardly small, but nobody was mistaking me for a professional wrestler.

“Mr. Keane can handle himself,” Matt assured her, “don’t worry about that.” He paused to make sure he had her attention. “The
important thing is for you to stay drug free and to cooperate with the feds. If you screw this up, Karlynn, there’s not going
to be anything that I or any other attorney can do for you. Do you understand?” She nodded like a teenage girl trying to pacify
her parents.

“I mean it,” he said.

“I heard you,” she said.

Now, as we headed west on the Boulder Turnpike in my truck, she sat in silence and smoked a cigarette. At my insistence she’d
cracked her window and was holding the cancer stick up to it. I was listening to Jim Rome’s nationally syndicated sports talk
show. The show has a vernacular of its own, and regular listeners are referred to as “clones.” I suppose I’m a clone, though
I’ve never called the show. Much of the show consists of clones putting down other clones, and it is often downright hilarious.
Currently we were listening to Roger in Buffalo suggest that Clarence in Oakland should spend less time calling the show to
explain why the Raiders would win the Super Bowl, and more time looking for a job.