3 - Buffalo Mountain: Ike Schwartz Mystery 3 (8 page)

Chapter 15

Whaite eased the Chevelle to a stop. It had taken him several days to track down Steve Bolt. Nobody would admit knowing him. The community around the mountain may have been civilized in the early 1940s, but the part of the culture that remained suspicious of outsiders endured. Whaite knew people from the area, but closer in on the mountain—it had been a while since he moved among them, and they hesitated.

Bolt owned a cabin set back a hundred yards or so off a gravel road. Whaite sat in the car, its motor and heater running while he studied the still snow-covered driveway glistening in the sun. He focused binoculars on the cabin’s roof. No smoke arose from the chimney. He left the car’s warmth and picked his way across the icy road to its junction with the driveway. A single set of tire tracks either coming in or going out marked its length. He held the binoculars to his eyes again and studied the entire area. No garage but a carport of sorts. A rusted De Soto, up on blocks, rested under its sagging tin roof. The tire tracks began eight or ten yards from the house. He focused in on the steps. One set of footprints. He adjusted the focus and looked again. He couldn’t be absolutely sure, but the footprints seemed to be heading away from the house. He swung his vision to the beginning of the tire tracks. There were small piles of snow on either side. It appeared Bolt had walked around the vehicle at least once.

Whaite shivered and returned to his car. Bolt had come out of his house, brushed the snow off his vehicle, and driven away. No smoke meant he’d been gone for a while. Whaite knew he could not stake out the house in a bright red street rod, so he did a careful three-point turn and headed down the road to a filling station at the bottom of the hill where he would be less noticeable.

He pulled the car around the leeward side of the building. From there he could see the road leading to Bolt’s cabin, but not be seen. He cut the engine and stepped out into the cold. The wind had picked up. A general merchandise store was attached to the gas station. He jogged to the building and an old-fashioned bell over the door tinkled as he let himself in. Coffee and something to eat. He didn’t hold out much hope for the food but he knew these country stores generally brewed a decent pot of coffee. He bought a hot dog. The coffee was only passable. The clerk behind the counter looked familiar.

“Say, aren’t you Wick Goad?”

The clerk looked up and smiled. “That’s me. Who might you be? Hold on, I got you. It’s old ‘Wait-a-minute Whaite.’ You had that hesitation step—wait a minute—when you played football. Where you been?”

“Well, I’m deputying up in Picketsville.”

“Well, I’ll be. You’re a police. Who’d a thought? Why I remember one time you and Randy Swank took that car and—”

“We can let that’un go if it’s all the same to you, Wick.”

“Well, I reckon. You here on official business? You’re a little out of your jurisdiction, ain’t you?”

“Just poking around. We got us a dead fella up to Picketsville with a Floyd County address and I figured the place to start is down here.”

“Don’t know of anybody gone missing.”

“Listen, I can’t stay in here too long. Does this road connect with any other? Can someone get in to, say, Bolt’s place from up the mountain?”

“Maybe in the good weather but not today. There’s a dinky little road that runs over the mountain but it ain’t much more than a foot path. You after Steve?”

“Just to ask some questions. He knows somebody we’re interested in for the shooting and I want to hear what he has to say.”

“Well, Steve came through here two days ago. He said he had to go north for a while. I ain’t seen him since. But look here. You can sit in the window and see him coming. He’s going to stop here anyway. His house’ll be colder than a tax man’s heart and he’ll stop by for kerosene and grub. He’s been fixing up that old place but there’s a wait to get a propane tank so he’s still using one of them old space heaters. Lots of folks back up the mountain do.”

“What’s he driving?”

“Old VW Beetle. I reckon he’s swapped the engine out of that buggy four, five times by now.”

Whaite drank his coffee and several more cups. He waited until dark and gave up. Bolt might come back in the dark, but he doubted it.

Something was wrong.

Chapter 16

As a rule, breakfast was the only meal Ike ate at the Crossroads Diner. He believed it nearly impossible for anyone to ruin breakfast. A succession of Flora Blevins’ short-order cooks-of-the-week proved the exception. Yet, he kept going back, hoping each new spatula wielder would turn out better than the last. The latest teetered precariously on a stepladder that qualified as an OSHA “what not to do.” Swaying dangerously on the top rung, he attempted to hang an antique string of large-bulb Christmas lights across the top of the mirror behind the counter.

Ike, resigned to bad weather and closed businesses, had to eat dinner in the diner. He regretted it almost immediately. The plate of fried chicken, mashed potatoes swimming in beige canned gravy, and a side of suspiciously green coleslaw curled up in his stomach like an overweight cat. He longed for a real restaurant within striking distance of town. The new French restaurant, Chez François, hadn’t really mastered anything more complicated in French cuisine than baguette rolls and
boeuf rôti
, which to Ike’s mind was lunch. Even so, had it been open, he might have given it a dinner try. Now, he wished he’d saved the dreary sandwich he’d been offered at the cafeteria. He wished he knew how to cook. He speed dialed Ruth’s number, watched the ladder begin to splay at its base, and wondered if this cook would end his employment with a workman’s compensation suit.

“Change of plan,” he said.

“What plan?”

“Me protecting you from the bad guys all night.”

“Oh…about that…”

“Change your mind?” Ike winced as the ladder collapsed and the cook sprawled, unhurt, on the floor.

“How will it look if your car sits outside my house all night, every night for who knows how long?”

“Exactly. That’s the change.”

“Same problem, if you’re suggesting I come to your place, which, by the way, I have never seen…why is that?”

“I’m afraid you won’t approve of my collection of kama sutra wall posters. No, the plan now is my folks’ place. No hint of scandal. Abe and my mother will be there and everything will be very proper.”

“But what will my people say?”

“Tell them the truth, sort of. You received some threats and the sheriff has asked you to stay out of sight temporarily.”

“What happened to your equal and opposite benefit?”

“Bad seeds—never sprouted, although—”

“Although what? You’d better tell me now, Schwartz. If you sneak into my room at three a.m. to surprise me, you might get a knitting needle between the ribs.”

“I didn’t know you knit.”

“I do now—big number ten needles. Those are the big ones, aren’t they? Never mind, you know what I mean.”

“I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

“Do you really have kama sutra wall posters?”

“Would you like me to?”

“Some other day. You know this move isn’t going to fool anybody.”

“It’s not supposed to fool anyone, it’s intended to put a face of propriety on the whole business and, if you are right, the bad guys will know what’s up and know that we know, and will have to revise their plans as well.”

“Why don’t I feel reassured?”

Ike disconnected and started toward the door. Flora Blevins, the diner’s ancient proprietor, skewered him with a look that would sober up a drunk. Eyes narrowed and chin set, she railed into him about the citified people who came into her establishment, didn’t order anything, but said they thought the diner ought to be torn down or moved.

“They think the diner is ugly.”

“They have no taste, Flora.”

“They want to build a Holiday Inn in its place.”

“Hardly a move upward.”

“You tell them for me, Ike, if they come around here fixing to touch the Crossroads, I’ll get out my old scattergun and show them what I think of a motel here or anywhere else.”

“I’ll tell them.”

***

Sam was still at her desk, eyes glued to the screen, and watching as another set of numbers in columns flickered downward. Ike started to tell her to go home and try again tomorrow, but she held up her hand and then motioned for him to come and see. He watched for a moment. The numbers looked like the ones he’d seen before.

“They at it again?”

“It’s a different group looking for the same thing. That’s two separate probes after the same information.”

“You’re sure this has something to do with our guy.” Not a question, Ike already knew what she would say. Sam was good.

“While you were out, I backtracked the first group and I got something.”

“What?”

“Does the word or term ‘cutthroat’ mean anything to you?”

“Not since I gave up reading pirate books in the fourth grade.”

“I’m serious, Ike. I caught just a piece of the address before it blanked out. They had a sensor looking for hackers. Anyway, cutthroat is what I got. It doesn’t ring any bells?”

“Sorry, no. The problem with a name like that is, it could be anything or anybody. It could be another hacker like you, who uses it as a—whatever you call them—moniker, nom.”

“It could be. I ran it through a little program I have that stores names as I run across them and it isn’t in there. Of course, that doesn’t mean—”

“Sam, enough already.” Ike was beginning to sound like his father, a sure sign he was tired. “We’ve all had a long day. Shut this down and tackle it in the morning. If you want to work on it, give it some thought time. Find out what your instinct is trying to tell you.”

“I don’t do instinct, Ike.”

“Time to start. Good night. I’m on my cell phone tonight if anything comes up.”

The door whooshed shut as she left and an inch of cold air spread across the floor to cover Ike’s feet. He checked his watch. He still had a half hour before Ruth would expect him. He retreated to his office to think through the past week. He was no closer to finding out how Kamarov ended up in the woods than when he’d started. All he knew for certain, he wasn’t the only one looking. That did not make him feel better. And Ruth’s suggestion that Charlie, or more likely Charlie’s superiors, might be involved worried him more than he’d guessed it would—scared him, in fact. He and Charlie had a history. He didn’t relish even the possibility that Charlie might…He shook his head. He needed some answers—now. And why hadn’t he heard from him, anyway? Unless…The phone rang.

“Why isn’t your new phone on?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Turn it on.” Charlie hung up. Ike retrieved the phone and turned it on. It vibrated almost immediately.

“Tango blue leader, this is foxtrot, over.”

“Stop horsing around, Ike, and listen. This is what we know so far. Whoever had Mr. K. on their payroll does not know he’s dead.” Charlie sounded tired, edgy.

“We figured that.” He’d pretty much come to the conclusion that the columns of figures Sam had been watching must belong to Kamarov. They were tracking his credit cards or bank transactions.

“You know? How?”

“Someone has been tracking his credit or bank cards and they’re active. Here’s something else for you. There are two other groups following those accounts. One yesterday and another joined in today. That’s not counting us, of course.”

“Two…just two?”

“Two, besides us, right.”

“Good. You’re tracking and you found that out how?”

“You have the power of the Agency’s super computer, I have Sam the hacker. It appears, on balance, I have the edge.”

“I’m impressed. Sam, you say?”

“You try to recruit her away from me and I’ll—”

“No, you won’t, but I’ll resist stealing your guy—”

“Woman.”

“Woman…at least for the time being. I’m afraid to ask, but have you turned up anything else?”

“Maybe. Who or what is Cutthroat?”

“Sam again?”

“Charlie, I’m waiting. Please don’t tell me you don’t have Cutthroat on your radar screen.”

“Thanks for the lead. How about out in the field. Anything there?”

Ike thought a moment and then told him what Whaite had been doing. The Steve Bolt lead had gone cold and that seemed odd. Charlie said he’d do an all-points search for Bolt—hotels, airports, buses, the works—and call back in the morning. Ike told Charlie he would not be reachable—would be incommunicado. He told him why. He owed him that. After a silence that seemed to last minutes, Charlie said he understood—sort of. He sounded hurt but did not protest. He did insist that the mole definitely went down but beyond that, whether there might be more people involved, he could not confirm or deny. The answer died with their man.

“Okay, Ike, you keep your lady safe from us, and anyone else for that matter. I won’t try to find you.”

“Thank you for that. You know what I want to believe.”

“You didn’t last long in the field by being stupid. Who knows, Ruth might be right, at least in principle.”

Ike thought he ought to feel better. He didn’t.

Chapter 17

Picketsville hung its Christmas decorations a week after Halloween. In years past, they would have gone up later, but a warehouse fire that destroyed the town’s surplus office equipment and its only working snowplow had also consumed the array of plastic pilgrims, turkeys, and autumnal icons that formed the nucleus of the Thanksgiving display. Rather than replace them, the Town Council moved the Christmas setup forward a month.

The Jeep’s wipers flicked erratically across its windshield. Squinting through its slush-smeared surface, Ike noticed that one of the candlesticks and two of the stars set in the center of wreathes festooned at irregular intervals across Main Street were dark, their bulbs already burned out. Along the sidewalk, lights twinkled, flickered, or raced in mad circles around display windows. Rudolph in several guises flashed his red nose at passersby. Bing Crosby and a dozen imitators moaning “White Christmas,” competed with an equal number of jolly voices narrating the unlikely itinerary of “Frosty the Snowman.”

Christmas was not Ike’s holiday, but he did enjoy the season. True, the crime rate, suicides, and fatal accidents always escalated in the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s—The Month of Heavy Eating, his mother called it—but for most people it was a time of good cheer and remarkable generosity.

Ruth sat huddled, grim faced and shivering, in the Jeep’s only other seat. Its heater functioned more or less, but worked best if you also had the foresight to wear a down-filled jacket, boots, and gloves. She wore only a thin wool overcoat, fashionable but relatively useless, leather gloves, and heels.

“Tell me again why I am freezing to death in this relic.”

“The roads are slick. This has four-wheel drive, and Abe hasn’t had time to plow his driveway. So, it’s more likely to get us there.”

“You could have warned me, you know.”

“I did
.
I told you we were going to the country. I figured you’d dress accordingly.”

“Going to the country? Do you consider Picketsville the big city? It’s all country out here.”

They passed the Crossroads Diner and he caught a glimpse of Flora shaking her finger in the face of someone Ike could not recognize—probably one of the people who wanted her establishment relocated.

“Point of reference only, ma’am. You big-city folks reckon all of us out here must is hillbillies but the troof is—”

“Don’t start, Schwartz, I’m too cold to play games with you.”

“Nevertheless, for the people who grew up here, Picketsville is the city, or as close as they want to get to one. For them, country is out in the valley, on the farms, or up on the mountains. Have you been up there?”

“Skyline Drive count?”

“Just barely.”

“I went with you to that restaurant, Le Chateau, once. It’s out in the sticks.”

“Better.”

“How come you never took me there again?”

“It’s a restaurant for first meetings, celebrations, great occasions and…”

“And what?”

“You are very hard to pry away from your desk and duties. It takes time to eat a fine meal correctly.”

“So, it’s my fault?”

“Um…I had dinner at the Crossroads Diner tonight. I may not eat again for a week.”

“That bad?”

“You have no idea.”

“Good. It serves you right for not taking me to Le Chateau tonight before we decided to mush to Nome.”

“You think you’re cold now. Try two and a half hours, maybe three, over unplowed mountain roads to that place.”

“You have a point. You’re forgiven.”

***

Sam slouched down in her chair until her chin settled on her chest. She eyeballed the phone on the coffee table in front of her. Guilt is not an uplifting emotion. In her case it made her wish she could continue her downward slide and disappear into the floor. She had not told Ike everything. She would eventually, but she needed to talk to Karl first. She’d halfway expected to hear from him by now, but since reading what had popped up on her screen this afternoon, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Her problem, the source of her guilt—her guilts, to be precise—had two parts. The first stemmed from what she had discovered, or thought she had discovered, while looking for traces of Kamarov. She knew for a certainty that Cutthroat was not someone’s internet alias. She had seen more. Cutthroat had people assigned to it and those people had names which meant it must be a group, a program, a…a black program? Her second had to do with one of the names she saw, only for a split second, in fact, but long enough to recognize—
Hedrick, K.
The name had jumped out from the screen like a happy puppy. Only it did not make her smile. Hedrick, K. could only be Karl, and that signaled his involvement in the search for Kamarov. That, in turn, meant the program they feared resided deep in the FBI and, again, meant the Bureau could be the enemy. She flinched at the thought. Less than a week before, she’d scolded Whaite for using that term about the FBI and now…If what she assumed to be true could be confirmed, everything Whaite said would be correct, and, worse, she stood to lose the brightest spot in her life.

She picked up her phone and held it against her cheek. What would he say? No, what could he say? If he had been assigned to a black program, he probably would have to lie to her. On the other hand, if she didn’t call, she might never know and then they could go on as usual…“Just call me Cleopatra, da queen of de Nile.” Hoping it would just go away wouldn’t help. She considered blotting out what she knew from her memory—if that were possible. If she called, it all could end. Ike said something about finding out what her instincts were telling her, and she’d said she didn’t do instincts. So what now? “Just the facts, ma’am.” She dialed his number.

***

All the windows on the first floor of the farmhouse were lighted when Ike pulled up at his parents’ place. He helped Ruth down and retrieved her overnight bag from the back of the Jeep. Together they climbed the steps to the porch and the front door swung open as they reached it. A gust of warm air enveloped them along with Abe Schwartz’s famous baritone.

“Well, now, it looks like you all made it just fine. Come in, come in.” He circled Ruth’s shoulders with one arm and swept her into the hall. “Ike, you take that case up to the front room.” He led Ruth into the front parlor. “It’s got its own bath, Ms. Harris. I figured you might want that.”

Ruth shed her coat and gloves. A fire danced on the living room grate and she moved to it, holding her hands toward the flames.

“Your son made me sit in that ridiculous truck of his all the way out here. I nearly froze.”

“He brought you here in his old Jeep?”

“He did.”

“Must’ve had a reason.”

Any thought Ruth had that she might receive a sympathetic ear from Abe Schwartz evaporated. As much as Ike and his father argued about every topic from politics to the funny papers, at their core they were as alike as two peas in a pod. Ike returned and gave his father a brief hug.

“I got no solace from your father about the cruel and unusual punishment you subjected me to on the way out here.”

“Call the ACLU.” He turned to Abe. “City folk, they just never will learn that Gucci and Dior just aren’t fit clothes for country folks.”

“Well now, Ike, you know we got some sensible working clothes in the back closet. I reckon we could tog the lady out, if you think. Hate to see her suffer.”

“You two stop it right now or so help me, snow or no snow, I will walk back to town.”

“Not a good idea,” the two men said in unison.

“Why do I have a feeling I just signed on to ride to California in a converted Hudson Super Six with the Joads?”

“I’ll fix you a drink and then I want you to meet my mother…before it gets too late.”

Too late was to be understood in more than one way.