The Echelon Vendetta (47 page)

There was a low rocky mound a thousand yards out. Some sort of pole had been stuck into it, and a scrap of cloth flickered in the wind. Irene began to whimper. Dalton turned to stroke her flat blade-shaped head. She was shaking now and her nose was working, her nostrils wide, breathing in, her broad chest heaving, her eyes wide.

“What’s with the bitch?” asked Horsecoat. “She smells something.” “Fuck yeah,” he said, with a honking snigger. “Fucking corpse,

man. Guts bubbling. Worms crawling. Eyeballs rotting. That’s what that cunt-dog is smelling.”

They reached the mound in a few minutes. By now Irene was trembling violently and her mouth was wide open, her pink tongue working. Dalton brought the truck to a halt a few yards from a mound of river rocks about five feet high and eight feet long. A pole

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had been driven into the top of the mound and a small flag, red, carrying the crest of the United States Marine Corps, shredded by the endless prairie winds, fluttered and snapped at the top. As he opened the driver’s door Irene scrambled out of the cargo space and vaulted out of the truck. She raced across the sweetgrass and clambered up onto the rock pile, her head low, snuffling and growling. Out in the darkness a coyote yipped. Bats flicked and whipped in the sky, small fleeting patches of utter black against a glowing field of countless stars.

Horsecoat got out of the pickup and came around to within a few feet of Dalton, staring at the mound, watching Irene as she padded up and down the mound, whimpering, scratching.

“What’s with your dog?” “She’s not my dog.” “Whose dog is she?” he finally asked. “She belongs to the man in that grave. Moot Gibson.” Horsecoat’s body tensed and he said nothing for a time. “Yeah?”

he said, defiantly. “And who’s Moot Gibson when he’s at home?”

Dalton looked at the skinny young man, his hands shoved into his back pockets, his face shiny with sweat. Irene stopped moving, sat back on her haunches, lifted her muzzle to the stars, and began to howl. The skirling, soaring wail rose up and echoed across the plains. The far-off coyote stopped yipping and the bats fluttered away.

Irene, settling deep into her grief, howled and howled. “Shut her up, will you. Cunt-dog’s giving me the creeps.” “You talk like that again and I’ll knock you down.” They stood there, listening to Irene, for a long while, and then

Horsecoat shook his head. “Can I say something?” “If it’s polite.” “You’re CIA, right?” “That’s right.”

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“Are you here for Pinto?” “You told the Colorado state cops that Pinto was dead.” More silence, while Horsecoat tried to work out a way of dealing

with his present situation; although barely twenty-seven, he’d had years of practice in the deceitful arts, honing his manipulative powers on a succession of band counselors and social workers and youth justice advocates and probation officers, and although he wasn’t brave he had a lot of low cunning, which is sometimes a lot more useful, at least in the short run.

“That true, what you said about the Ruger?” “Yes.” “I can go to death row just for having it?” “Absolutely. And I will personally guarantee it.” “Did a guy really get shot in the head a couple a days ago?” “Yes. With this gun.” “But I didn’t
have
it a couple days ago. I loaned it to a friend.” “What friend?” “What’s in it for me if I talk to you?” “I won’t kill you.” Some sort of sly internal voice persuaded Wilson Horsecoat that

now was the right time to show Dalton a little ’tude, a touch of

moxie. Horsecoat was poorly advised. “Hey! Lick my dick, you fag. You can’t do nothing to me.” Dalton looked at him, at the young man’s bony underfed body,

his thin pretense of street fighter’s toughness. He backhanded the boy across the cheekbone, knocking him backward into the sweet-grass.

He scrambled to his feet and backed away from Dalton. “I told you not to swear,” said Dalton, his tone gentle. “Are you
nuts
? Do you
wanna
die?” he said, his voice breaking,

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his round eyes showing white. “I’m not the problem. It’s not me.

It’s Pinto. He’s the
problem.
I talk to you, Pinto will come for me.”

“Pinto’s not here. I am. Why did you kill Moot Gibson?”

“I didn’t. Pinto did it.”

“Why?”

Dalton watched while the young man worked out the angles, the desperation clear in his pale wet face. There had to be a way to handle this, he was thinking, some way to get around it. He looked at Dalton’s stony face, his cold hard stare, and saw nothing there but sudden death. It was either die now or
maybe
die later, and
maybe
dead later was way better than certainly dead here and now. Hell, it really didn’t matter
what
he told this mean-tempered son of a bitch, because Pinto was going to gut and flay the guy before first light no matter what happened here. The idea here is stay alive, keep the guy talking, and shuffle the deck. He shrugged, wiped his face with both hands.

“Okay. Why not? Pinto needed the guy’s
life.
He needed to
be
Moot Gibson. So he could move around and do what he had to do. Pinto’s an ex-con, got no passport. Gibson had all of that. They were about the same size, and Gibson had real tanned skin, wore his hair long, dressed like a Wannabe Indian, so Pinto killed him. Made it look like a suicide. Out there in that pickup. Windows open so the crows would fuck him up. Me and Ida told the cops it was Pinto’s body. We had to, or he’d have killed us.”

“Pinto had a passport with Gibson’s name on it. How?”

“Pinto knows guys from when he was in Deer Lodge. Guys in that business. They also give him a Wyoming driver’s license. He and Gibson looked a lot alike anyway, same build, same size.”

“And the money? Where does all his money come from?”

“The church. Our church. Pinto ...Pinto is a priest. A road-man, for our church.”

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“What church?”

“Goyathlay’s Throat.”

“Goyathlay was Bedonkohe Apache. You’re Comanche.”

“Yeah, but now we’re all part of the same church, all of us, Kiowa, Apache, Comanche. We all serve Goyathlay, who speaks through Peyote himself. Pinto is the new voice of Goyathlay. Pinto made a new way of calling Peyote. Instead of mescal buttons he had something new—datura root, also crystal meth, and this plant called salvia. Pinto used to run a meth lab over in Colorado before the DEA got on to him, and he studied on ways to make Peyote stronger. He found a whole new Peyote to preach with. So the word got around and our church grew. People began to come from everywhere, and Pinto charged a lot for the ceremony. I helped. We made good money.”

“How?”

“People will pay a lot to talk with Peyote. Also from their confessions, when they see the god Peyote. Some people talk too much when Peyote is in their hearts. Pinto listens. Later, he tells them that the way to atone for the really bad sins is to give their money to our church. If they don’t give the money, Pinto says that Peyote will come to the sinner’s family, Peyote will tell the family what he did. If their sins are bad enough, the sinners will always pay.”

“What does this have to do with Moot Gibson?”

“Like I said, Gibson was a white man who wanted to be a Comanche. He came down here six months ago, from up in Wyoming, he was angry with the U.S. government, they took away his horse farm, whatever, and he wanted to find out how to have magic power against them. He had heard about Goyathlay’s Throat from some Apaches out in New Mexico, and he came here to see about being a part of a sing. Pinto let Gibson into a sing. They shared the new god Peyote. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Gibson said something during the telling of sins, and Pinto went totally nuts.”

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“What did he do?”

“He took Gibson out to a hut near here, doped him up, real nice and respectful, got him to talk all about what his sins were—Gibson was like you, he was CIA. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Pinto told me later that Gibson had killed his little sister Jewel and his niece Amber. Down on Interstate 25, maybe ten years ago, back in ninety-seven, they were trying to kill someone else—another Comanche, a woman named Consuelo Goliad. Anyway, Pinto got it all out of Gibson: who the other guys were, where they lived, all except the guy who went into the Jeep and broke her neck. Gibson called him ‘the man in the long blue coat.’ Swore he didn’t know the man’s real name. Said he was called ‘Cicero.’ Like a code name. Cicero. Gibson told Pinto that only Goliad was supposed to die, but things went haywire.

“Did Gibson name the man who was running the operation?”

“Somebody named Cole. Bob Cole. Something like that.”

“And who was the actual killer? The man in the long blue coat?”

“
Cicero
was all he could get out of Gibson. Gibson never knew his real name. He wasn’t a full-time member of their unit. Gibson called him ‘the parachute pro.’ Said he wasn’t needed. Pinto talked him into trying to find out Cicero’s real name, said that he couldn’t be pure and find his spirit power unless he atoned for all of his sins.”

“When was this?”

“Maybe three months ago. Man, by that time, Gibson was a real head case. Pinto dosed him up almost every day while he was getting the story out of him. Pinto can be real nice, talk low and soft, he can make you think he’s a sweet guy, but he is
not
a nice guy.”

“Did Gibson find out who the inside guy was? The man in the long blue coat?”

Horsecoat shook his head, lifted his palms. “No. And Pinto pushed him hard. Even when he was talking to Peyote himself, the guy had no idea. Pinto told him that there would be no forgiveness

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without atonement, and that could only happen when
all
the people who helped to kill Amber and Jewel were dead. But Gibson couldn’t find out. He tried. Gone for days. But there was no way.”

“That’s not true. The man in the long blue coat is dead.” “I know. Pinto told me. Pinto went to England to find him.” “But you don’t know how Pinto got Cicero’s real name?” “No. Maybe it was something in the wreck?” “What wreck?” “There’s a big old Suburban down by the Apishapa. Been there

for fucking years. Black. Has a corpse in it. That’s where I found the Ruger, man. Honest. I didn’t know it was illegal. I found it in the wreck.”

“You found the wreck? Not Pinto?” “No. I found it. I showed it to him later.” Dalton gave the man a long hard look and decided he was telling

the truth. It made no sense, but it had the ring of truth. “Okay. Where do I find Pinto?” Horsecoat laughed, a strangled, mirthless rattle in a tight throat. “Find Pinto? Pinto’ll find
you,
man. He’ll find us both.” “Where’s this wrecked Suburban?” “Like I said. Down there by the Apishapa. About a mile.” “Show me.”

IRENE WOULDN’T LEAVE
Moot Gibson’s grave. When Dalton tried to take her by the collar, she bared her teeth at him, so Dalton left her there. It was deep-blue dark under a sky full of stars by the time they reached the dry wash of the Little Apishapa, a broad gully worn out of the grassland by the meandering course of the creek.

He stopped the pickup truck at the edge of a drop-off and they got out, Horsecoat walking a little ahead. A low line of sorrel and

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sage marked the edge of the arroyo. Horsecoat stopped there and looked back at Dalton, his eyes glittering in the glare of Dalton’s flashlight. He extended his arm and pointed down.

“It’s down there. Been there for ten years.”

Dalton shone the beam downward into the darkness. The undercarriage of a large SUV, rusted and scaled, four tires coated in mud, part of a side panel that had once been black.

“You first.”

Horsecoat led them as they slipped and slid down the bank, holding on to shrubs and skidding on their boot heels. Dalton came up hard against the rusted side of the Suburban. The ground was littered with broken glass, scraps of faded blue cloth, pieces of bone.

Dalton shone the flashlight beam into the interior of the truck. The skeleton of a large man was hanging upside down in the overturned truck, still strapped in. The skull had dropped off the vertebrae long ago, to be carried away by some large animal, and the torso had been attacked by crows and other foragers. Dalton looked at the rags and bones still suspended from the ceiling and knew that he was looking at the remains of Milo Tillman. He pulled his head out of the truck and stood there, looking at the wreck, while Horse-coat slouched against the bank. Did Milo Tillman get lost while going cross-country to avoid the cops? Did he just blunder into this arroyo and die here?

Or had he been killed by Porter Naumann, just to seal the case shut. Dalton figured he would never know.

One truth remained: Porter Naumann was the man in the long blue coat. The killer brought in to make sure Consuelo Goliad died in the accident. That’s what Naumann did for years, before being reassigned to Burke and Single. Fremont’s unit were not trained killers. But in this case they needed one and Langley had provided.

Dalton had read and reread Barbra Goldhawk’s notes on the ac-

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cident. It had been witnessed by hundreds of people. A man named Lewis Dolarhyde, one of the witnesses, told the Colorado state police that he had seen a man, a large middle-aged white male, tanned and muscular, with blue eyes and a prominent, sharply beaked nose, very well dressed, wearing a long blue overcoat, coming out of Consuelo Goliad’s wrecked Jeep. The description matched Naumann perfectly.

Consuelo Goliad’s neck had been snapped, and the EMS crew had noted that there were glove marks on her cheeks, marks still visible in the coating of explosive residue from her deployed air bag. One hand on the cheekbone, the other under the victim’s ear. Set yourself, two or three hard jerks, down and up and down again—a broken neck. Any strong man, any man trained to do it, could accomplish it in seconds.