3 - Buffalo Mountain: Ike Schwartz Mystery 3 (6 page)

Chapter 10

Colonel Robert Twelvetrees stared at the predicament he had created with his car. It hung halfway in the driveway and halfway in the street, its rear end buried in a low snowbank that he had not seen, a snowbank created by a well-meaning neighbor plowing the street. Successive melting and thawing during the previous day had turned it into nearly solid ice. Now he could go neither forward nor backward and he needed to get to the store. He stood alone in the cold, squinting at the sunlight reflected off the car’s windshield. He’d mislaid his gloves somewhere. Luckily, his neighbors had all left for work or were warm and safe indoors. Had they been outside and nearby, they would have heard some United States Army Cavalry language that would have made a sailor blush.

He stood with his back to the street and told his battered Buick what he thought of snow, snowplows, and the weather in general. He did not notice the car that stopped a few yards from him. Rose Garroway called out, “Colonel, can we give you a lift anywhere?”

He spun and squinted in the direction of the voice.

“Who’s that?” he barked.

“It’s Rose Garroway from church,” she replied. “Do you need any help?”

“My car’s stuck in this dad-burned snowbank. I can’t get her loose and I need to get to the store.”

“Come with us and when we get back, T.J. will help dig you out.”

“Who’s T.J.?”

“My nephew. Hop in.”

The colonel hesitated. He did not like being helped and he especially did not like being helped by women. But he had no choice. He made his way to the car and climbed in next to a woman he took to be Minnie.

“Buckle up,” T.J. directed. “Can’t move until everyone’s buckled up.”

Colonel Bob struggled with the rear seat belt. Grunting and mumbling under his breath, he finally got himself secure and the car moved on. T.J. sounded like an old master sergeant he had in Korea. He could only see the back of his head and that only dimly. He rubbed his eyes to clear them. It did not help. He was having a particularly bad eye day.

They stopped at a grocery store just off the Covington Road, not the one he usually patronized. He preferred the market a bit closer to the highway. He knew his way around that one, and the clerks knew him and what he liked. If he wanted an inch-thick filet mignon—filly mig-nons he called them—they would cut it for him specially.

In this store, he did not know where to find anything. He bumped into a cart and made his way tentatively down a side aisle, nearly knocking several cans of pumpkin pie filling on the floor before he got himself centered. He knew he needed a plan. This new store would not give up its secrets easily. Coffee, steak and potatoes, and a few cans of vegetables would hold him, he figured. His eyes should be better tomorrow and then he’d unstick the car and get the rest.

He picked up a can and peered at the label. He held it close to his face. He knew it was green, but peas, beans, or spinach? He moved uncertainly down the aisle searching for familiar labels and boxes, dropping likely candidates into the cart. When his nose told him he had reached coffee, he grabbed a bag and peered intently at it. He covered one eye with his left hand. The brand name swam into view. It was not one he recognized.

Rose Garroway wheeled her cart up beside him.

“Colonel, are you all right?” the concern in her voice evident.

“It’s these glasses of mine,” he grumbled. “I must need a new prescription. Can’t see a thing today.” He held the bag of coffee near his nose and studied the label.

“T.J.,” Rose called, “see if you can give the Colonel a hand here. His glasses aren’t working.”

“I can help,” T.J. said and took the handle of the cart. “What do you need, Mister Colonel Bob?”

“Just tell me what this label says.”

“Fol…ger’s High Mountain de…caffeine…ated coffee, thirteen oh zee…”

Bob turned to look more closely at the boy. Blurred as his vision was, he saw the broad forehead and wide-set eyes.

“You can read okay, T.J.?”

“Oh, yes, I am the best reader in my class.”

“You are, are you? Well, if this don’t beat the witches. The Halt and the Blind. All we need now is the Lame and we’ll have a complete set.”

“A complete set of what?”

“It’s from the Bible, boy. Never mind.”

“Okay. What else do we need there, Mister Colonel Bob?”

“Well, son, you can take us to the bananas. Do you like bananas?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

They finished shopping. Colonel Bob explained to T.J. that oh zee meant ounces and el bee ess meant pounds. For reasons he could not understand but he guessed some fancy-pants psychologist could, he had taken a liking to the boy. By the time they met Rose and her sister at the front of the store they were as chummy as two ice fishermen in a small hut on a frozen lake in Minnesota.

***

“So, T.J., you think we can get this buggy dug out?” Colonel Bob asked. His vision had cleared up a bit. He knew it would not last, that the blurriness would return soon. The doctor had said macular degeneration. He knew enough about that to know he would be blind in a matter of months, a year at the outside. He looked at his stranded car and wondered if it made any sense to dig it out. He could barely drive it now. And without the car, he would be alone, isolated, unable to get to the store, or anywhere. His heart sank.

“Yes sir, Mister Colonel Bob, we can get her out.”

“T.J., drop one or the other of those titles, will you? Either no colonel or no mister.”

“Okay, which one?”

“Drop the mister. Now, how about I back up a little—see if it can move.”

“No, don’t back up.”

“Why not? The front is on solid ice. Back is the only way she’ll go.”

“No back up, Colonel Bob. Let me dig out the front.”

Colonel Bob walked to the rear of the car to explain to T.J. why backwards was preferable to forwards. The blurred image of his mailbox swam into view. It hung at a thirty-degree angle off dead center, snug against his rear bumper. Back would have flattened it.

“Oh, I see,” he said. “Listen, T.J., I’m going to get my mail out of that box and go inside. Here are the car keys. You dig it out and park it in the driveway. Then come in. We’ll figure out what I owe you. Oh, and if you see my gloves anywhere, bring them in, too.”

“Okay, Colonel Bob,” T.J. said and slid the shovel under a pile of ice and snow.

Inside, the colonel could make out the fire flickering on the grate. Its warmth cheered him a bit. He always left the television on when he went out. He had an idea that anyone thinking about breaking in would assume that there must be someone home if the TV was on. He did not watch much television anymore except the news. He mostly listened. News programs were talking heads and he could hear them. If he turned his head sideways and looked at a spot a few feet to the left of the screen he could make out faces on it. Occasionally he managed to watch an old movie, one he had seen many times before so that the images were familiar and he did not miss the focus.

Colonel Bob snapped off the television and turned his attention to the fistful of mail. It consisted of a stack of Christmas cards the senders of which he probably would not be able to identify, bills with sums he could not read without his magnifying glass, and a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles. He retrieved his glass. This would not be good news. He read and reread the letter. Then, a decision made, picked up the phone, and carefully punched in the number on its oversized buttons.

***

Nearly an hour had passed when T.J. pushed through the kitchen door. Colonel Bob waved in the general direction of a packet of cocoa mix on the table and the steaming tea kettle. T.J. blew on his hands and sat momentarily unsure what Colonel Bob wanted him to do.

“Colonel Bob, I found these gloves in the snow. They must be yours because mine are not this color.”

“Thank you. They’re mine. T.J., I want to make you a proposition.”

“Make me a proposition?”

“A deal, an offer. I just talked to Miz Garroway, and she said it would be fine. She said you are one heck of a driver and handy. She hopes you will be living over her garage in a month or so, and helping her and your great aunt Minnie. But she can’t pay you anything. I need a driver and a helping hand right now. This is a letter I received from the Department of Motor Vehicles. It says I have to take a retest to renew my driver’s license. I’ll never pass. I can’t see any better’n a bat. I want to hire you to drive me around, help around the house and so on. What do you say?”

“Aunt Rose said it’s okay?”

“Yep, starting right now. She said I should pay you half and the rest is to go into an account she will set up for you at the bank. That suit you?”

“Yes, sir, Colonel Bob.”

T.J. let his considerable forehead fall into a frown.

“Aunt Rose is who she is. You are Colonel Bob, and I’m just T.J. Shouldn’t I be something T.J.?”

Colonel Robert Twelvetrees, once a very young soldier in the ranks with George S. Patton himself, a graduate of the Citadel, and decorated combat veteran of several wars, gazed at a boy who would never be any of those things and saluted.

“Thomas Harkins,” he announced solemnly, “by the power invested in me as a colonel in the United States Army, I hereby promote you to the rank of master sergeant. From now on you will be Sergeant T.J. This is a field promotion, you understand, and subject to subsequent approval by CICUSA, that’s commander in chief of the United States Army. The paperwork may take some time. I’ve got some old stripes around here somewhere.”

“Sergeant T.J.” the new non-com said, his face beaming. “Yes, sir, Colonel Bob.”

Chapter 11

Sam swallowed her irritation at being left out of the loop or whatever Whaite and Ike had going. She felt like a fool. Something big had happened and she was being treated like some airhead prom queen instead of a colleague. When Whaite arrived she gave him a grunt for a greeting. He smiled, waved to everybody else in the office, and took her by the elbow. “Boss’ office. He wants to see us. Actually he wants to see you.”

“This had better be good.”

“Oh, it will. You’re going to love it. At least at first, then when you see the work ahead, you may want to change your mind.”

***

Ike sat with his back to the glass panels that formed most of the wall that separated him from the world. His mind wandered over possibilities. He stared at Charlie’s secure cell phone and drummed his fingers. He jumped when Whaite rapped on his door, setting the glass panels rattling.

“You ready for us, Ike?”

He waved his two deputies in and asked them to sit. Whaite knew the general outline of the problem. What he had to say primarily concerned Sam. He spent the next fifteen minutes filling her in on the details. Sam listened at first with a frown on her face, then a look of amazement.

“I still don’t see how this…Kamarov is connected to you. I know you were CIA but what has that got to do with this man?”

“It’s enough to know that I left the Agency because my wife’s death was part of a cover-up in the Agency. Kamerov apparently found out the general outlines and tried to tell me, I think. He disappeared and we supposed he’d been eliminated. We were wrong.”

“So now he’s part of a…what did you call it…a black program?”

“He
was
part of a black program. The question is whose?”

The three sat quietly, each absorbed in his or her thoughts.

Sam shifted around in her chair. “So what do we do now?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? There’s an enormous amount of work ahead of us but I’m not sure we can do it.”

“Why not?”

“Sam, I have to ask you something and it’s personal.”

“This is about Karl, isn’t it?”

“More or less. Where is he now?”

“Oh my God. He’s been reassigned. I thought he’d been assigned to another witness protection program dropout, but this could be Kamarov, couldn’t it?”

“He’s part of a group looking for someone?”

“I’m not sure now. I thought so. I mean, that’s what I heard.”

Essie Falco at her desk and some clerk from the Town Council were the only occupants of the adjoining room. Whaite stood and closed Ike’s door, anyway. “Better safe than sorry. If it’s our man, it means the program is FBI.”

“Back to Karl. Sam, what happens if we confirm the black operation is the Bureau’s? You will be working against them and not in a nice way. Can you do that?”

“You mean could I pursue whatever measures I’m called on to do even if it means compromising or putting Karl at risk?”

“In a nutshell—yes.”

“Oh my. I’ve only known him for a couple of months but I thought this weekend he would…”

Ike waited. His heart went out to her. She was bright and quick and loyal. He had a feeling that her relationship with Karl Hedrick could be the first really serious one she’d ever had. At the same time her dream of becoming a law enforcement officer was at stake as well. Ike sighed, afraid he would be the one to break her heart. She swallowed. “If it’s about murder and my job is to find that out, then Karl will have to understand. If he doesn’t, I guess he’s not the person I think he is.”

“You don’t have to do this, Sam. I can take you off this case and find something else.”

“I’m in.”

“Okay. Here’s what we do next.”

***

An hour later the three separated. Whaite headed to Floyd County to track down Donnie Oldham and Steve Bolt. Somewhere in the county someone knew what had happened to Kamarov/Harris. The smart odds were not on Bolt or Oldham, but you had to start somewhere. Ike explained how the secure phone worked. Whaite looked at its bulk and declined.

“Look, I’ll just use the normal one to call you, Ike. The town ordinance probably doesn’t carry down there and even if it does, who’s going to know?” Ike nodded and Whaite slipped out the door.

“Okay, Sam, now you understand why I didn’t want you on the internet or poking around in law enforcement databases. The minute you started, whoever is behind this would disappear into thin air. We’d never find out what happened.”

“We’re good. The only possible hit is with the driver’s licensing people and, worst case, they think they were hit by a hacker.”

“Sam, what can you do with that system of yours?”

“It depends on what you have in mind. But if you’re asking, can I go deep into programs and sites—yes, I can.”

“How deep?”

“Pretty nearly anywhere. I have the latest and the best software. In a way, we are a black program ourselves.”

“How’s that?”

“Like your former colleagues in the government, we are almost completely off-budget and we don’t have to take low bid. Most of this software came to me from friends and acquaintances in the field. Some of it isn’t even registered anywhere.”

“You can out-do the CIA, FBI, DIA, and NSA?”

“I didn’t say that. To do that, we’d need a quantum computer. You don’t want to know the price tag on one of those. What I said is, we have the capacity to get in anywhere. I presume they do, too.”

“I see, I guess…okay, see if you can track down the black program…but be careful.”

***

Hollis settled in front of his father’s computer. He turned and looked at Donnie. “You don’t have his driver’s license?”

“It wasn’t in the wallet.”

“Man, I can’t do anything without someplace to start.”

“You’re stalling. You have a name. Don’t you just swipe that thing and read the PIN off the back?”

“It isn’t that easy.”

“How often have you done this, Hollis? I mean, you know what you’re doing, right?”

“I watched the old man a couple of times.”

“You watched. That’s it?”

Hollis gazed at the blue-green screen and tried to remember what he had to do next. He opened his father’s files and began to look for one that had a name that might tell him what it was. His father had not left a pathway. He knew his father’s password—period. He felt Donnie’s anger building. Donnie was crazy. You didn’t want him angry at you. He had some notion he really was a throwback to the old mountain men that used to live in the area and he was as likely to shoot you as look at you. At least that’s what Hollis believed.

“Whatcha doin’ at Dad’s computer, dork?” Dermont asked.

“Looking for something, stupid.”

“Yeah? What?”

“None of your business.”

“We want the thing that can read PIN numbers,” Donnie said.

“What’ll you give me if I tell you?”

“You know?” Donnie and Hollis said in unison.

“Yep.”

“Ten bucks.”

“For a PIN number. You got to be kidding.”

“Okay,” Donnie thought for a moment. “You know Dolores over at The Pub?”

“The one with the big boobs?”

“Yeah. I’ll fix you up with her.”

Dermont’s hormones had kicked in the previous summer and the thought of an hour or two with Dolores was more than he could resist. The fact he was only thirteen, skinny, and barely five-six, while Dolores went five-eleven and one hundred sixty-five pounds and might overwhelm him, so to speak, did not deflect his ambition. He’d fantasized enough erotic behavior in the last six months to persuade himself he’d be the match for any and all.

“Get out of the way, Hollis.” He slid into the chair and in ten minutes had the PIN numbers for all of the cards, Randall Harris’ social security number, and his zip code as well. He turned to Donnie. “When?”

“When what?”

“When to I get to do Dolores?”

“I’ll let you know. She’s in Richmond visiting her sister this week.”

“I seen her this morning.”

“She left this afternoon.”