Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (22 page)

Tiny bells over the door announced his entrance, but he doubted anyone inside heard him. An engine roared as the throttle cracked from the shop area. Manny took in the tiny office in a glance: the black suit jacket sticking out of a green nylon dry cleaner’s bag. He bent and opened the drawstring. The jacket was wadded around a pair of black slacks, white shirt, and red tie. Manny set it back beside a captain’s chair shoved under the desk.

The motor noise coming from the shop drowned out Manny’s footsteps as he walked through the door into the shop. Joe Dozi sat on a short, wheeled stool, his ear cocked too close to the motorcycle engine, one hand on the carburetor throttle, the other clutching a screwdriver. He let off the throttle and the motor smoothed to an idle. “No need to sneak around,” he called over his shoulder, never looking at Manny but concentrating on adjusting the carburetor primaries.

Manny shut the door behind him. “Did Judge High Elk call and tell you I’d be visiting?”

Dozi grounded the spark plug against the engine and the motor died. “What was that?”

“We need to talk.”

Dozi stood and wiped his hands with a shop rag sticking out of his pocket as he gestured to the motorcycle. “Ariel Square Four. Getting it ready to show at the rally.”

Manny bent and ran his hand over the seat, which smelled of recent reupholstery. “Cast iron heads. But this is a midproduction motor. ’39?”

“So?”

“This is a ’38 Square Four? They had cast iron heads in ’38, but switched to aluminum heads the next year.”

“You know your bikes. Ride?”

Manny laughed. “I have a hard enough time keeping four wheels between the lines and out of the wrecking yard. My uncle used to take me to the rally every year to watch the races and drool over the bikes.” Unc would save up for a month before coming to Sturgis for the rally, saving a little gas every week so he and Manny could make it. Manny hadn’t been so interested in motorcycles then: he’d been more interested in spending time with Uncle Marion. And with the double-decker ice cream Unc always managed to have pocket change for. “You might have trouble if the judges spot the switch in heads.”

Dozi’s high-pitched laughed bounced off the confines of the small shop. “Even the most stringent purist won’t spot the difference.”

“I did.”

Dozi’s smile morphed into a deep frown as he scooped GOJO from a bucket and began cleaning his hands. “Maybe you won’t be around for the races.” Dozi worked the cleaner into knuckles swollen by fights, into fingers that had grown calluses from years of hard work. Or wet work in Special Forces, if Reuben’s assessment was correct.

“That a threat?”

“Naw.” He smiled. “It’s just you FBI types are most likely
to be assigned anywhere. Now what is so important you have to come all the way up here to see me?”

“Your Secret Service credentials for starters.”

Dozi shrugged. “Let’s talk in the office. As much as I love the smell of oil and gas, I’m sure you don’t.”

Manny followed Dozi into his office, careful not to step onto the GOJO that was dripping grease off his hands and hitting the floor in tiny, brown orbs. He wiped his hands on the shop rag still sticking from his back pocket and dropped into a captain’s chair behind a gunmetal gray desk. He wadded the rag and tossed it into a cardboard trash can beside his chair. “Now what’s this shit about Secret Service credentials?”

“First let’s start with that Oglala Sioux Tribe Durango getting keyed in front of the Alex Johnson the day I met with the judge there.”

“That supposed to mean something to me?”

“It means something to Officer With Horn.”

“That big, dumb Indian that was eye humping me there in the lobby, the one I put the run on?”

“Don’t sell Willie short. He’d be your match, should you decide to push the issue. And it’s important to him ’cause his police chief’s going to make him pay to get it repainted. And Willie doesn’t make a whole lot.”

Dozi tilted his head back and laughed, the high pitch almost a squeal. “If I wanted to screw with him, I wouldn’t do a juvenile thing like key his car. If I wanted to mess with him I’d stomp a mudhole in his ass right there in the lobby.” He rubbed his flattened nose as if to emphasize his threat. “Now we got that bullshit out of the way, tell me the real reason you’re here.”

“I’m investigating Gunnar Janssen’s death.”

“Ham said he’d been found with a bullet hole to his head someplace in the Badlands.” Dozi chuckled.

“You don’t sound too upset.”

Dozi shrugged. “Gunnar always was a chickenshit. I always thought that bastard fled to Canada when he lost his school deferment.”

“What do you know about his death?”

“Nothing.”

“Judge High Elk said Gunnar may have upset some hawks with his anti-Vietnam activities. That piss you off back then?”

“Not enough that I would hurt the little bastard for it. We argued now and again, but we always parted friends.”

“I understand you hiked that part of the Badlands where Gunnar’s body was found back in your college days. Even Judge High Elk said you were both on Pine Ridge looking for Gunnar the week after he went missing. You with the judge all that time? Maybe Gunnar was alive when you found him back then.”

Dozi dropped the feet of his chair onto the floor and stood. He was several inches shorter than Manny, but put together like he could safely walk Harlem or Watts at night. Even Pine Ridge during a powwow. “You accusing me of offing Gunnar?”

“Maybe you found him in 1969. And he was alive then. Or maybe you’re protecting someone else that found him alive.”

“Why would I have wanted Gunnar dead?”

Manny scooted the chair away from the desk. “Who knows. But it’s more than coincidental that you and the judge went to the reservation the same week he went missing. Too coincidental, like someone fitting your description waltzed into the Spearfish PD and seized the arrest report along with the microfiche. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“What arrest report?”

Manny had gotten used to interviewing people who lied for a living, professional criminals who could weave tall tales while they wept, or feign anger as they swore on their mothers’ graves or to God on Bibles. Manny recognized Dozi had
evolved beyond that category of professional liar, into the realm of someone who was comfortable lying and believing it. His expression remained flat until a slight grimace broke across his face. “You sure it was me?”

“Sure enough that we could take a ride to the police department in Spearfish and let the records clerk eyeball you.”

“What makes you think it was me? She mention grease?”

“Why would she?”

Dozi jabbed his thumb in his chest. “The way I reek, someone could smell grease on me a block away. Hardly what a Secret Service man might smell like. And these.” He pointed to his oil-soaked combat boots.

“Let’s say you clean up pretty good.”

“How’s that?”

“Looks like a black suit waiting to go to the cleaners.” Manny kicked the laundry bag under the desk, and the shoes beside it. “Nice pair of polished wing tips. I’ll bet you look just fine in your black suit and shoes, dark aviator glasses that’re around here somewhere. I’ll bet you could fool any secretary at a small police department.”

Dozi’s hand went to the bulge in his shirt pocket. “Got no time to waste driving to Spearfish. Sturgis Bike Week starts in two weeks. And I have to help Ham prep for Senate hearings before that. Besides, Ham don’t like his friends being harassed.”

“You saying Judge High Elk would interfere with an open homicide investigation? Now how would that look in front of the Senate hearings?”

The smile fled Dozi’s face and his brows merged into a menacing stare. This must be the scary look Helga referred to, Manny thought, because a tingle of fear crept up his spine, and his elbow brushed his Glock in the holster under his jacket. Dozi leaned across the desk and his thick, callused hands rested on the edge as if he intended to spring over it.
Thoughts of being locked in an angry gorilla’s cage kept creeping into Manny’s mind. “I don’t want any of this entering into the hearings. Got it, Agent Tanno?”

“I’ll do my job. If it lands on the steps of the Capitol during the Senate confirmation hearings, so be it.”

Dozi stepped around the desk, and Manny felt the pistol with his forearm, gauging if he could draw it before Dozi had him by the throat. He concluded he couldn’t. “Maybe I did make that arrest report disappear. Maybe I can make most anything disappear.”

“Maybe you made Gunnar disappear.”

“And maybe I can make weasels that fabricate lies about Ham disappear.”

“
Now
you’re threatening me. Maybe I go to the federal prosecutor and get a warrant out for you. They don’t take threats on federal agents lightly.”

Dozi sat on the edge of his desk, his eyes narrowed, fists clenched, and Manny expected him to spring over the desk. Let him, he thought, his hand falling on a crescent wrench at the corner of the desk.
The son of a bitch might get a meal, but I’ll take a good bite out of him on the way down.

“Do what you need to, but I don’t expect Gunnar’s death to taint Ham’s chances of that appointment.”

His eyes locked with Manny’s for a long moment before Dozi turned on his heels and disappeared into the shop. Manny wasn’t aware he’d been holding his breath in anticipation of Dozi’s attack. He breathed deep now, knowing he’d come close to fighting for his life. He’d wanted to tell Dozi he had nothing that would come out in the Senate hearings, no proof that he or Ham knew about Gunnar’s murder, a murder apparently swallowed by the Stronghold, a place that kept all its secrets safe.

FALL 1934

Senator Clayton Charles drew in a deep breath, holding it for a long moment before letting it out. His horse snorted as he stood in the stirrups glassing the Badlands with his binoculars. “It’s great to be out of the city.”

“Too many people, huh?” Moses Ten Bears looked down into the valley, scouting for the telltale movement of antlers among the cactus and sagebrush and dead cottonwoods dotting the dry creek bed below.

Clayton massaged his backside and handed his binoculars to Moses. “As hard as this is sitting the saddle for the last week, it beats being in D.C. People make me nuts there. I tried driving there, but all I manage to do is go in circles and get lost.”

“Maybe you legislators should straighten out the roads there. Pass one of those cockamamie laws you rush through when it benefits the
wasicu
.”

“Now don’t get started on that again. Roosevelt has appointed John Collier secretary of the Interior. Good man. Very pro-Indian. He’ll push for laws that’ll help the tribes. Besides, the traffic in D.C. is a local problem—not one for the U.S. Senate. But let’s find that buck out there with Samuel’s name on it.”

“Where is Samuel?” Moses looked around for the boy, finally spotting his roan gelding picketed beside a rock outcropping. “There is his horse, but where is he?”

Clayton accepted the binos and let them dangle by a leather thong around his neck. He pointed past the gelding to a large mesa, large and lifeless like the rest of the Badlands. “Renaud spotted a nice buck grazing with some does close to your cows. He and Samuel took off across country.”

Moses cursed under his breath. Wakan Tanka
keep me from hurting that ignorant White man from New York when I catch up with him.
“I knew I should have refused to let that blowhard come hunting with us.”

Clayton exaggerated a pained look, his mouth drooping down sadly. “He only wanted to bag a buck he could hang in his office. What did he do wrong?”

Moses ignored Clayton and dismounted, tying his mule to a clump of sagebrush. “Leave your horse. Quickly.” Moses slung his rifle across his back and started on a steady trot toward the saddle of hills Clayton had pointed out, looking at the ground as he turned toward the sun, reading shadows, imperfections, places that pointed where Samuel and Renaud had gone.

Clayton ran to catch up. “Slow down.”

Moses glanced over his shoulder but didn’t slow. Clayton was a running back in college, but he struggled to keep pace with the steady gait Moses set.

Moses came to the crest of a hill and shielded his eyes from the light. Clayton stopped beside him, doubling over for breath
as he held his side. “What the hell’s the rush?” Clayton sucked in air, wheezing. “Samuel knows how to get back to the cabin. He won’t lose Renaud.”

“I’m not worried about that. They are headed toward where the cows go when they thirst. They are going to the place where the bad rocks live.”

“What the hell you talking about, where the bad rocks live?”

“The place where
wakan sica
—the evil sacred ones—live. There.” Moses pointed to two tiny figures walking up a hillside leading to a saddle of dirt. Moses started toward them when Clayton grunted. Moses glanced back as Clayton stumbled over a cactus before losing his balance on the popcorn shale and tumbling to the ground.

“Catch up when you can.” And Moses disappeared over the hill.

Moses caught movement to his right. Samuel and Renaud had crawled to the rim of the saddle nestled between two high hills. Renaud struggled to get the rifle off his shoulder, the sling hung up on his shirt that was more suited for an African safari than a Badlands hunting trip. Samuel shouldered his own rifle, taking aim at a deer in the distance, when Moses yelled, clamoring up the dirt hill beside them, waving his arms. The buck eyed them for a brief moment before darting over the ridge.