Smoke Signals (A John Tall Wolf Novel Book 4)

Smoke Signals

A John Tall Wolf Novel

Joseph Flynn

Stray Dog Press, Inc.

Springfield, IL

2016

“Flynn is an excellent storyteller.” —
Booklist

“Flynn keeps the pages turning.” —
Houston Chronicle

“Flynn propels his plot with potent but flexible force.” — Publishers Weekly

The President’s Henchman

“Marvelously entertaining.” —
ForeWord Magazine

Digger

“A mystery cloaked as cleverly as (and perhaps better than) any John Grisham work.” —
Denver Post

“Surefooted, suspenseful and in its breathless final moments unexpectedly heartbreaking.” —
Booklist

“An exciting, gritty, emotional page-turner.”— Robert K. Tannenbaum,
New York Times
Bestselling Author of
True Justice

The Next President

“
The Next President
bears favorable comparison to such classics as
The Best Man, Advise and Consent
and
The Manchurian Candidate
.” — Booklist

“A thriller fast enough to read in one sitting.” — Rocky Mountain News

The full list of Joseph Flynn’s titles.

The President’s Henchman, A Jim McGill Novel [#1]

The Hangman’s Companion, A JimMcGill Novel [#2]

The K Street Killer A JimMcGill Novel [#3]

Part 1: The Last Ballot Cast, A JimMcGill Novel [#4 Part 1]

Part 2: The Last Ballot Cast, A JimMcGill Novel [#4 Part 2]

The Devil on the Doorstep, A Jim McGill Novel [#5]

The Good Guy with a Gun, A Jim McGill Novel [#6]

The Echo of the Whip, A Jim McGill Novel [#7]

McGill’s Short Cases 1-3

Nailed, A Ron Ketchum Mystery [#1]

Defiled, A Ron Ketchum Mystery Featuring John Tall Wolf [#2]

Impaled, A Ron Ketchum Mystery [#3]

Tall Man in Ray-Bans, A John Tall Wolf Novel [#1]

War Party, A John Tall Wolf Novel [#2]

Super Chief, A John Tall Wolf Novel [#3]

Smoke Signals, A John Tall Wolf Novel [#4]

Kill Me Twice
, A Zeke Edison Novel [#1]

The Concrete Inquisition

Digger

The Next President

Hot Type

Farewell Performance

Gasoline, Texas

Round Robin, A Love Story of Epic Proportions

One False Step

Blood Street Punx

Still Coming

Still Coming Expanded Edition

Hangman — A Western Novella

Pointy Teeth: Twelve Bite-Sized Stories

Smoke Signals

A John Tall Wolf Novel

Joseph Flynn

Published by Stray Dog Press, Inc.

Springfield, IL 62704, U.S.A.

Copyright © kandrom, inc. 2016

All rights reserved

Visit the author’s web site:
www.josephflynn.com

Flynn, Joseph

Smoke Signals / Joseph Flynn

59,362 words eBook

ISBN 978-0-9908412-6-5

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s Note

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Book design by Aha! Designs

Cover photo courtesy of www.istockphoto.com

In memory of Dad.

Catherine, Cat, Anne and Susan do their level best to catch all my typos and other mistakes, but I usually outwit them. Please be kind. Even Ty Cobb didn’t get a hit every time at bat.



This is a work of fiction. Neither the characters nor the Native American reservations named in the story are real. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, of course, exists within the United States Department of the Interior, and within the BIA its Office of Justice Services is “responsible for the overall management of the Bureau’s law enforcement program,” but my research turned up no one who has the job description I gave to John Tall Wolf. This mixture of fact and fiction falls under the heading of literary license. If you’re a purist who demands complete realism, I recommend you stick to nonfiction, and good luck finding an author in that field who doesn’t make mistakes or omissions.

As to a white male writing about Native American characters, that involves a bit of license, too. From my point of view, that license is rooted in our common humanity. If writers were to focus only on characters who shared their own backgrounds, we would establish a regime of literary apartheid.

By the time Bruno “Beebs” Bandi heard the crack of the rifle shot, the bullet had already zipped past his head, close enough for him to feel its passage. To Beebs’ credit, he reacted in exactly the right way. He dived face first to the forest floor, instinctively throwing his hands out to keep his head and the camera dangling at his chest from harm. A second shot rang out. Beebs didn’t feel this one whip by, but he had the distinct feeling there would have been a large hole in some vital part of him had he remained on his feet.

He rolled to his right, one hand shielding his camera, the other protecting his face. A third shot chased him into the Christmas tree shadow of a Douglas fir. The projectile scattered pine needles, humus and dirt inches from Beebs’ backside. A fourth shot chewed off a chunk of bark sending splinters into the back of his left hand. He gritted his teeth to repress any cry of distress that might give away his position.

He didn’t know who was shooting at him or why the SOB was doing it. All Beebs had been doing was walking in the freaking woods, taking pictures for the guy who owned the land. That dude, a young Silicon Valley tech billionaire, wanted Beebs to bring him some pictures of scenic spots which he might develop into sites for new communities of affordable housing. Cripes, who could get a hard-on about that?

Not that going off-road anywhere in the U.S. wasn’t dangerous. Beebs had done his homework before he took the gig, which to be fair was paying him ridiculous money for what amounted to nothing more than assembling a landscape portfolio. Not that his pictures wouldn’t be
great,
because they would. Beebs was a highly talented photographer.

He was somewhat notorious, too. Financial hardship had briefly nudged him into the sordid world of the paparazzi. He’d once climbed a tree in the resort town of Goldstrike, California to snap photos of a pair of young movie stars in the most intimate of moments. Those images, along with the camera he’d used, had been confiscated by the cops and never made public. Even so, word of what he’d done had gotten out and
imagining
what the coupling had looked like became an Internet game of global popularity.

The faces of the young actors were Photoshopped onto the bodies of innumerable porn performers. Beebs had been horrified and ashamed. He wished there might be some way he could make amends. He’d started his long slog to redemption by vowing never again to photograph anybody or anything except in the most flattering of lights.

That despite being offered a small fortune to work for Giles Henry, crown prince of tabloid reporters. For a moment, Beebs had been tempted, but then he’d learned Henry had been the prick who’d spread the word about Beebs going up that tree.

In spite of Beebs’ decision to leave the dark side of the photographic arts, someone was now doing his damnedest to kill him. Christ, was it one of the young stars he’d humiliated? Or maybe it was
both
of them. The Internet game had pretty much run its course, but waiting for time to pass might have been the smart thing to do. The defamed parties would put distance between themselves and Beebs’ murder that way.

The shooter, though, was getting closer. Beebs heard crunching leaves and snapping twigs, clear indications that footsteps were drawing near. The fact that the guy with the rifle wasn’t even trying to be stealthy said that he’d seen Beebs was unarmed. Probably had a scope on his weapon. He’d lined Beebs up in his crosshairs and …

Missed?

What a goober. Beebs had never pulled the trigger of any firearm in his life, but he was sure if he’d had someone dead to rights he could have made the kill. So this dude must be really unskilled. That might have been enough to give Beebs a moment of hope. Only it wouldn’t require
any
expertise to press the barrel of a rifle against someone’s noggin and blow a hole in it.

On the other hand, if Beebs fought back that might put the sucker really off his game. While Beebs didn’t carry a gun, he hadn’t gone into the woods without any protection. There were wolves, bears and mountain lions in the Cascades; his research had told him that much. Not wanting to become a photographer tartare entrée to the fang and claw set, he’d taken precautions.

Beebs’ cousin, Noah, owned a shop that sold novelty items, including stink bombs. For special customers who wanted to get even with people who deserved a special measure of vengeance, Noah concocted what he called
nuclear
stink bombs. There was no mushroom cloud, but Noah boosted the active ingredient, ammonium sulfide, and added several other noxious irritants.

“These things will stop a wild animal?” Beebs had asked his cousin.

Noah chuckled. “Knock King Kong right on his ass. You hold your nose, break the seal, throw it and run the hell away as fast as you can.”

Praying his cousin had things right, Beebs added a grace note of his own to that plan. He got quietly to his feet. When he heard the guy who’d shot at him get maybe ten feet away, he gave his best impression of a blood-curdling scream. It was effective enough to get an immediate shot in reply. The bullet whistled past the tree providing Beebs’ shelter. Immediately thereafter, Beebs leaped out from his hiding place. Startled by Beebs’ sudden appearance, a stocky, round-faced Hispanic-looking guy holding a rifle without a scope took an involuntary step backward, tripped over some forest debris, landed on his back and lost hold of his weapon on impact.

The rifle came to rest equidistant between the two men, but Beebs didn’t want to get into a wrestling match for it. The other guy might be stronger or have a knife. Beebs did exactly what Noah had told him to do. He threw the nuclear stink bomb at the shooter and ran the other way as fast as he could.

As he beat feet, Beebs heard the guy screaming.

The Honorable Marlene Flower Moon, Acting Secretary of the Interior, smiled when John Tall Wolf entered her new office. John gave the furnishings a perfunctory once over. Lots of polished wood and high grade leather reflected the room’s flattering lighting. A nine-foot long Lakota Sioux hunting lance tipped with a metal spearhead and fletched with eagle feathers was mounted on the wall behind Marlene’s desk.

The Sioux and other Great Plains tribes used such lances to hunt buffalo, which by no coincidence, was the emblematic animal of the Department of the Interior. Marlene’s symbolism couldn’t have been more clear. In a bureaucracy employing 70,000 people, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and John Tall Wolf himself, she was the great chief who decided who lived and who died.

Professionally, of course.

Then another iconic item caught John’s eye. On a bookshelf was a striking photo in a silver frame: the silhouette of a coyote in profile howling at a rising full moon. As an infant, John had been rescued by his adoptive parents from a coyote that had been about to have him for breakfast.

“Nice digs,” John told Marlene, taking a guest chair without having been asked to sit. He glanced out a bank of windows at the Foggy Bottom landscape aglow in fall colors. “Terrific view.”

Marlene beamed, revealing her oversized incisors. She’d considered her old office to have a lesser view than the one John’s office had, once he’d been promoted to co-director of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services, making him her bureaucratic equal. For a short time, anyway. Now, as her new office clearly showed, her official position was far superior to his.

Not that he gave a damn about such scaling of bureaucratic heights.

Taking a seat without her leave made that clear. Then again, Marlene would never be where she was without his intercession. John Tall Wolf was the White House’s golden boy of the moment. Marlene took her seat and asked him, “How’d you do it, Tall Wolf, get the president to nominate me?”

“She asked who I thought would be good for the job.”

“The president, not the vice president, asked you?”

“Right. I gave her your name, and Vice President Morrissey seconded my choice.”

Marlene paused to consider that. Not just how much power-by-association Tall Wolf had acquired but how she might make the best use of his connection to the Oval Office.

“You don’t have to say thank you,” John told Marlene.

She didn’t, instead asking, “Do you think the vice president will win the election next year?”

Become the next president, she meant.

John took a moment to give the question serious consideration.

“Always hard to answer that one. I think the other side will try to out-tough her with a macho candidate, but I don’t think that will work. So, as a betting proposition, I’d have to give Jean Morrissey the edge, but not a big one.”

“She’s going to run on the Cool Blue ticket.”

John hadn’t heard that, wondered how Marlene had found out.

But then Marlene was Coyote, who always had her ways.

“If that’s the case,” he said, “I’d bump her edge up just a bit.”

“But Cool Blue would limit her to one term.”

“Didn’t know that either.” He thought Marlene should really serve the country as the Director of National Intelligence. The U.S. would be a much safer place if that happened. Focusing on the moment, though, he asked. “Are you already thinking of succeeding Jean Morrissey in the White House.”

“It pays to plan ahead,” Marlene said, “but I don’t know if the country would elect
three
women in a row as president.”

“Why not? The voters elected
forty
-
three men in a row. And women are a majority of the electorate. They might think it’s time to even things out.”

Marlene smiled again, liking Tall Wolf’s reasoning.

But she said, “You’re cautioning me against trying to sabotage the vice president’s campaign.”

“That would be a terrible idea. Politically and personally.”

Coyote was wily enough to understand both halves of John’s message.

“Politically,” she said, “because if Jean Morrissey loses, there will have been only one female president and that could be made to look like a regrettable fluke.”

“Right.”

“Personally, because I’d be fighting the vice president and you.”

John didn’t reply directly, only got to his feet and said, “If you asked me to stop by and see your new office as a social occasion, let me say again, it’s terrific.”

Marlene said, “Glad you like it, but sit back down. I have a job for you.”