Caravan of Thieves (4 page)

Shaw turned around. “The file I saw was pretty vague.”

“I don’t think civilians are allowed to know.”

Pongo spoke up. “We heard you went behind enemy lines. Alone.”

Perdy said, “Undercover. Is that right?”

“You should be a hero,” Shaw said. It made me sick to think how pissed off they were going to be and how quickly they were going to change their minds about me. “Why’d they choose you for the job?”

“I guess someone thought it’d be easy to believe I was crooked.”

“And then they couldn’t stop believing it?”

“Something like that.” I wasn’t going to tell it on cue. What happened in Afghanistan started out as a misguided adventure, but I thrived. It ended in a way I would never tell the MPs or Shaw. My desire for revenge on General Remington would stay private,
too. No investigation, even if it turned on him, could ever satisfy me. I was convinced that what happened there led directly to this mission to find Dan and the money, that the great General Remington was involved. I know I have to tell it and I will, for my own sake, as I need to, so I can see how it helped me and how it led me into the mistakes I made.

“I have a question for you, Agent Shaw.”

“Go ahead.”

“Why don’t you believe I’m crooked?”

“Because you don’t want to be anything like your father.”

I spent the rest of the ride wondering if he was really that simple.

J
anie still lived in the same cramped one-story brick house north of the university. A fenced-in front yard and a small patch of grass in the back. The neighborhood still smelled the same: highway exhaust and weeds. But I was glad everything was the same. I had escaped from that house dozens of times. I was certain I could do it again.

Pongo parked out front. Two small kids were playing in the front yard. They watched us hopefully as we opened the gate and walked up the two steps to the front door. As serious and imposing as we must have looked, I knew they wanted to leave with us. I knew they wanted out of this place. Shaw rang the bell. The door opened and there was Janie, almost as thick as she was tall. A monolith in beige. Beige skin, beige clothes, beige hair. And red lips painted on like graffiti. I once drew an arrow on the back of her pants and wrote her phone number. I figured it would smudge out before she noticed. I was wrong, but it did take three days for her to catch on. It still pleases me to think of all the people who saw it and said nothing to her. Maybe they thought she drew it herself.

Now her eyes narrowed in fake defiance to hide the fear at this unexpected show of authority at her door. I knew her brain was scrambling for excuses to match her vast list of violations and petty crimes.

If Shaw knew I had lied when I said she was the woman in the photo, he hid it pretty well. Janie flinched as he withdrew his credential, but Shaw smiled and said this had nothing to do with current foster children. She still did not want us to come in and she still had not recognized me. She was too busy deciding that Shaw’s smile meant he was weak. He turned to me.

I said, “If you don’t let us in, Janie, I’ll tell everything I know. Everything.”

She narrowed her eyes even more and looked me over. It dawned on her who I was, and she wasn’t impressed. Janie was a bully first and always. “Rollie? Yeah, I’d expect you to be in trouble with the government.”

“I’ll tell what really happened to Edgar Ramirez.”

“Can’t we please come in, ma’am? It’s just some questions about Rollie’s father, Dan,” Shaw said.

First Janie sneered at me, the red slash of her mouth widening as if being stretched by invisible bands. Now that Shaw had given her an excuse to relent, she could relax. She knew nothing about Dan. With nothing to hide on that subject, she could make up any lies she wanted without fear of revealing too much. I knew she would talk a lot, if only to keep me from bringing up that bad subject again.

Edgar Ramirez was a six-year-old foster child who came into the house just a few weeks after I did. He was scared and confused, like we all were. He was also a bed wetter. Of course, he didn’t tell
Janie what was going on, and she didn’t get close enough to the bed to touch it. The smell got bad. She changed the sheets and beat him a little. He kept peeing the bed and forgetting to mention it. The mattress had to go outside. Edgar slept on the floor; I cleaned up the puddles in the morning. But I knew Janie was worried because once in a while inspectors would show up and they would want to see where everyone was sleeping. No way was she going to buy a new mattress for Edgar to ruin. One night I heard movement and opened my eyes in time to see the beige nightmare bend over and lift Edgar into her arms. I don’t know if he was awake or not, but if he was, fear kept him quiet.

I didn’t see her actually accept the money, but I saw her hand him off to two men and later that night I saw her counting and recounting a stack of bills in the kitchen. In the morning, she pretended to be alarmed that Edgar was missing, called the police and made a big stink, saying he had run away. It wasn’t hard to guess that she hid the money in her lingerie drawer: who would want to go in there? I stole a twenty-dollar bill while she was dealing with the police.

Now Janie’s natural nastiness was going to be put to good use. We all stood in the middle of the living room. Shaw asked, “Is Mr. Wellington at home?”

“He has to work for a living,” she said.

She had not asked us to sit down and that was a good thing. It allowed me to pace while Shaw brought up the questions about Dan. Pongo and Perdy stayed near the front door. I looked at them for the okay to wander into the kitchen. Perdy nodded. I stepped into the hallway and then the kitchen for a brief look around. I was back in the living room in less than fifteen seconds.

Janie was telling whatever she thought she knew about Dan, impressions from long ago. “I always got the impression he just came back from Mexico, but he didn’t really confide in me. You might look for him down there.”

Shaw asked if Dan brought presents for me. Janie’s eyes narrowed again and I knew what that meant: her memory was vague, but she assumed she had stolen the gifts. I nodded toward Perdy again to indicate I wanted to check the bedrooms. He nodded okay. I slipped down the hallway and into Janie’s bedroom, which was at the rear of the house. Nothing had changed except that I had grown and the tawdriness now seemed smaller, more comical than when I lived here. I went into the lingerie drawer and took all her money. Then I removed the wooden pole that blocked the slider, unlocked the door, and off I went.

I knew the route by heart. The walls between yards were easy to vault. I expected a dog, a shepherd mix, in the third yard, but he wasn’t there. It was like being a kid again, that exhilarating feeling of cutting out, breaking free, ditching. Sneaking out of school early was always more satisfying than just not going. I hated every minute that I lived with Janie, hated most of my childhood, but I was thrilled at that moment to be back in that childhood. The moment I broke free, I felt superior, in charge of the game, as if I had fooled somebody.

I cut out in front, crossed the street, and went through two yards to the next street over. From there it was a short sprint to the mall. I was in the parking lot, searching for an open car, when I turned and saw Pongo and Perdy across the boulevard, coming toward me. I ran toward the mall and knew I would make it easily,
but Shaw pulled out in the SUV and blocked my way. The window was down.

“Get in.” I hesitated. Shaw said, “If you jump right in, we can lose them and go on our way. If you wait…”

I didn’t wait. And I didn’t look back to see the looks on Pongo’s and Perdy’s faces.

“Janie told us you usually headed for the mall,” Shaw said. Then he tossed the photo from Dan’s office in my lap. “Pretty good photographer to make her look like that. Where are we going?”

I
was sixteen and back sharing an apartment with Dan in Albuquerque. One night I came home around eleven and I noticed two rough-looking guys sitting in a car across the street. The apartment was dark when I walked in. Dan grabbed me immediately and whispered, “Don’t turn on any lights.” He counted out two hundred dollars. “I’ll be back in a few weeks. If anyone asks for me, just tell them you haven’t seen me.”

“Where are you going?”

There was no light, but my eyes had adjusted enough to be able to see his charming smile reshape his face, the smile he gave to someone who asked a completely stupid question. It was a mix of condescension and benevolence, which is pretty tough to stand from a scumbag. “I’ll be back in a few weeks.” And he counted out another hundred dollars.

I went into my room and pocketed my utility tool. I learned a couple of years before not to carry any kind of knife, not even a Swiss Army knife, even if you’re using it to butter your bread. Dan
did not ask me where I was going when I left the apartment. The rough guys were still in the car across the street. Could have been cops, could have been bad guys. Didn’t matter much. I walked a few blocks to Lomas Boulevard and strolled along until I saw a dark-blue Chevy up on Fifth Street. I broke in and stole the car. First thing I did was fill it up because I figured the trip was probably long and the biggest problem would be pit stops. Then I drove to the back of the apartment building, around the corner from Dan’s car. Around three a.m., Dan snuck out the back.

He drove west through Gallup and then turned north. I pulled off the highway a few times, then got back on at the same interchange. It was worth the risk of losing him to avoid having him make me. Truckers dominated the road in long packs that shifted positions according to mysterious rules. I hid behind them, just peeking out occasionally to keep Dan in range. He went all the way into Utah, toward Moab. Before dawn he turned west and pretty soon we were the only two cars on the road. I pulled off, found a gas station and a map. It looked like Dan was heading for Lake Powell, which I tried to turn into a logical deduction by remembering that he once mentioned having been in the Navy.

It took me almost a week to find him, running my rented speedboat up and down the coves and inlets of the lake and the Escalante River and, finally, the San Juan River. Not far up the San Juan I had to stop. There were rapids ahead. I pulled off as close as I could get and climbed a bit on the rocks to where I could see beyond the rapids. The river curved and smoothed out and widened for a while. There were no boaters and no rafters. These rapids weren’t featured on the map I had, so I guessed that meant
the tours didn’t bother with them. I climbed all the way up to the plateau. Far up the river, I could see a small houseboat moored near a beach. I knew it was Dan.

I walked to a spot where I could spy on him. He had a blond woman with him. Naked, too, which was fine until Dan decided to join her. For most of two days I watched them from above; then I took off. I never went back to Albuquerque and didn’t see Dan again until after I had enlisted in the Marines.

As soon as I could lose Shaw, I was going back to Lake Powell.

I had directed him toward the Grand Canyon. He kept asking me where we were making for and I avoided answering, so he said, “You just tell me where to turn.” Most people would have gotten irritated or tense, but Shaw stayed as relaxed as a guy with an expense account picking up a dinner check. I assumed he just wanted to show me he could be trusted. After a while, he said, “Why’d you join the Marines?”

It wasn’t really a question. He wanted to pretend to be friendly. “Same reason you joined the Treasury Department. They said they’d take me.”

“My father was a cop. And his father.”

“So you went into the family business.”

“I tried not to. Joined the Army right out of college. Stayed four years. Intelligence. Listening posts in Germany and Turkey. When I came home, I studied for the CPA exam, passed, got a job, hated the job. Everybody in the family said join the force, but I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. So I went looking for a job out of town and found the Treasury.”

It was a believable story. I had never hired an accountant, but I think I would want one who was a little more uptight. Shaw
was more like the accountant’s partner who played golf with the clients.

“Where did all this happen? The family part?”

“Lexington, Kentucky. So…I ended up the same, only different.”

“Are you saying I’m the same as Dan?”

“I asked why you joined the Marines. You could have easily joined a gang.”

“But the Marines gave me food, clothing, and free guns. And, until now, no cops bothering me.”

Shaw smiled. He seemed to think I was joking. That was fine. As soon as he turned his eyes back to the road, I slugged him hard with my left. His head slammed against the window and he was out. The SUV shimmied left, then right onto the shoulder. I grabbed the wheel before we went off the road and straightened it out. I pulled his right leg back so his foot came off the accelerator. The car slowed down and I eased onto the shoulder. At ten miles per hour, I yanked the parking brake.

Shaw was still unconscious. I took his gun and cell phone and pocketed them. I grabbed him under the arms and dragged him out the passenger side. While I was catching my breath, he started to come to. “You’re only twenty miles from Tusayan. You look respectable enough. Someone will pick you up,” I said.

His eyes focused and he rubbed his jaw. “Just stop and think about what you’re doing. The Marines are already chasing you. Now you’ll have the feds, too. It means jail for sure. You’re ruining your life for him. For him.”

This wasn’t the moment to stop and explain to Shaw that I was not doing this for Dan. I was doing it because Dan had boxed me
into this position just the way he always did, and this time I was going to change that forever. “If I find the money, I’ll call you. And by the way, Dan would never have slugged you. He’d have talked you into giving him the car.”

The SUV had GPS installed so I had to ditch it. Shaw would be in touch with the rental company within a couple of hours. Pongo and Perdy were probably already on it. And then there was McColl, who was chasing Dan. Shaw had not wanted a government car because he thought McColl could trace that. So Shaw believed McColl had friends in the Treasury Department. McColl probably had active military friends, too. Why not? What did friends cost? A few drinks and an hour with a whore? Maybe a thousand in cash? They could buy a lot of friends with twenty-five million dollars.