Judas Horse (8 page)

“No,” I say patiently. “The subject plainly stated that he was born in DeKalb, Ohio, and picked corn when he was in high school. He provided a detailed description of lying on a mattress on a contraption with wheels—”

This being his first counterterrorism case, Jason is anxious to make everything right on the status report he will send to headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“Sorry, ma’am, but it doesn’t track.”

“Which doesn’t?”

“He might have picked corn in
Ohio,
but the DeKalb Company is based in
Illinois.
They have a corn festival every year. I won the Diaper Derby when I was two years old.”

Donnato and I exchange a look and say nothing.

Jason fumbles. “I know. The Diaper Derby. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

Another pause.

“Ana?” Donnato asks finally. “Are you sure you heard Mr. Phelps correctly?”

I glare at him.

“I heard it right.”

“Run Megan Tewksbury and Julius Emerson Phelps through NCIC,” Donnato instructs the kid. “Search the databases for birth certificates, Social Security numbers, driving records, military records, and arrests for Phelps in Illinois
and
Ohio.”

We hang up and sit in silence in the motel room, where the once-savory remains of Caribbean takeout are starting to smell like a back street in the Yucatán.

“I need you to trust me,” I say after a while. “Why do you second-guess me in front of a rookie?”

“I’m not second-guessing you.”

“You are. Not only on Megan as a source but on a simple piece of intel, too. Did the subject say
Ohio
or
Illinois
?”

My voice is rising. My heart is beating fast.

“Look—” He takes off his reading glasses and rubs his forehead.

“Here’s the thing—”

“I know the thing. You shot a guy. A lot of people didn’t share that judgment call, or the way it worked out with OPR. So you’re feeling…scrutinized.”

“But not by you?”

“Not by me,” says my partner, and his eyes are soft.

Eight

Against a wash of middle-aged do-gooders perking along through the lobby of the convention hotel, with their important name tags and goodie bags of giveaways, radical leader Bill Fontana stands out like a gangsta hit man.

He has shaved his head since our most recent surveillance photos, which makes his cheekbones seem wider, and ears, with multiple earrings, stick out like a Chihuahua’s. Tall and muscle-bound, he is dressed in black, with heavy work boots meant to rip the shit out of laboratory doors. Despite a throng of groupies, he looks less like a media star and more of what he really is—an ex-con. You can spot it a mile away. He’s got what they call a “joint body”—the overdeveloped torso, the bullying prison strut.

I am not here alone. Undercover detectives from the Portland police department have mixed with the crowd, some posing as reporters to document the faces. You can bet if these good liberals knew they were being covertly photographed, they’d scream violation of civil rights. To protect my identity, the local cops do not know I exist; if my face surfaces in their reports, we’re doing something right. Donnato, disguised by a couple of days’ worth of beard, gold-rimmed glasses, and a beat-up denim jacket, is somewhere nearby.

This is not one of your great moments in espionage. All we did was walk through the door. The hotel is on a strip near the airport. You go up the escalator to the convention suite and buy a ticket for thirty bucks. If it’s easy for us, it is easy for FAN, whose members, you can bet, are also working the room.

These people—excuse the expression—are sitting ducks for recruitment by terrorists. The affable retirees with big bellies and gray beards are not likely to be fashioning Molotov cocktails in their home entertainment centers during the commercial breaks, but the young guard, the lean and hungry male youth who gather around Fontana, with thin grasping fingers, and tattoos, and “I’ve-been-up-on-speed-for-thirty-six-hours” hair, just want to be bad—any kind of bad. Well, so does Darcy DeGuzman in her ratty purple parka.

“I’m a great admirer of yours,” I tell Fontana, shaking his hand. “Going to prison, that was really brave.”

“It isn’t brave. It’s the only choice. The earth is our only home and fighting for its constituency is a sacred war.”

I give him a bedazzled smile and hold his brown eyes. “Bill, tell me how to fight and I’ll do it.”

“Create chaos,” he advises. “On the edge of chaos, that’s where change begins.”

I’m glad that I am close enough to get a good look. His eyes are at once vacant and hostile.

“Radical resistance comes in lots of ways,” he says. “Walk through these halls.” He indicates the booths for farm sanctuaries, and organizations that save ducks from having their livers turned into foie gras. “You’ll find your path.”

Not surprisingly, given his glib style, Bill Fontana has a handler, a pretty Asian woman in a nice suit, who maneuvers him toward a couple of print reporters who ask about the story in
Willamette Weekly
about corruption at the BLM.

“Our wild horses are not for sale for the personal profit of government drones,” Fontana says as their pens fly. “We refuse to allow free spirits of nature to become pawns in an elitist scheme to benefit the corporate ranching interests.”

Donnato must be watching, because my cell vibrates.

“Fontana’s on in fifteen minutes and the ballroom’s packed,” he reports.

“How’s the crowd?”

“Tense. Something’s up. I’m hearing Herbert Laumann from the BLM is going to show.”

“Why?”

“He wants to debate. About the wild horses.”

“That’s not smart.”

“Your hazelnut friends are in the food aisle,” Donnato says, and we click off.

In spite of myself, the fragrance of rice soup and fried lentil crackers draws me to the food concessions. Among them is a booth for Willamette Hazelnut Farm, and sitting at the table behind golden piles of hazelnut brittle is Megan Tewksbury, stacking flyers.

“Megan! It’s Darcy!”

She glances up and breaks into a smile. Then a big warm hug.

“You were awesome at Omar’s the other night,” she gushes. “That was thinking on your feet. You liberated over three hundred dollars.”

“Hey, the cash register was open.”

“The mustangs will benefit, I promise you that.”

“What are you doing?”

“Organizing. Julius is too impatient for this kind of stuff.”

Megan is more fluffed up than she was at the bar, wearing her business attire: a white shirt with an Indian vest embroidered with tiny mirrors, her hair loose and frizzy, lots of chunky silver jewelry.

I pick up a flyer. “Save Our Western Heritage” appears above a photograph of the most stirring animal I have ever seen, “Mesteno, legendary Kiger stallion.” His ears are erect, his neck strong, and he has a fine muzzle and intelligent eyes. He is dun-colored, with darker legs, and the musculature of his body is athletic. His long flying mane and tail remind me of a children’s book illustration.

“This is a mustang? He is stunningly beautiful.”

“That’s because he’s free.”

I have fallen in love with a horse. It is peculiar as hell.

“We’ve forgotten what freedom is,” Megan goes on. “Mesteno is saying, This is the way it’s supposed to be.”

Something inside me melts. “It breaks your heart,” I say, not quite understanding why.

“It
softens
your heart,” Megan replies, correcting me. Her moist green eyes hold mine. “Will you come to our rally? We want to call attention to the deputy state director of the BLM slaughtering these animals. And
profiting
from it.”

“Where?”

“At his son’s school. When all the kids are getting out.”

“I don’t know. What about the son?”

“Nothing to do with him—nobody wants to hurt a child. We’ve been tracking Laumann. We know his routine and when he’s there.”

“Okay, I’m in. Hey, Bill Fontana’s speaking. Are you going?”

“If Julius ever stops jabbering. He admires Fontana, and he wants to get over there. Just never ask him a question about the law.”

The big man is holding forth with another guy his age. He is wearing a fresh pinstriped shirt and jeans, the frayed red suspenders, and a beanie over his ponytail because of the air-conditioning. His pal has asked if the school can legally force his daughter to dissect a frog. Now he’s listening to Julius’s answer with acute concentration, arms crossed, one hand thoughtfully pressed against his cheek. I can see why. Julius Emerson Phelps’s intelligence is a breath of clarity in a sea of nutcakes.

“If your daughter is averse to cutting up a frog in biology class,” Julius is saying, “I’m afraid she’s on her own, Ralph.”

Ralph ponders. “Can we argue it’s against her religious beliefs?”

“Great thought, but there’s no
legislation
in place to protect that belief when it comes to student dissection. Trust me. I have
written
model laws regarding alternatives to dissection in the classroom, but to my knowledge, no statute has ever been enacted.” He checks his watch. To Megan: “We’d better head over to the ballroom. It’s going to be a showdown.”

“I’ll close up,” she says. “You get seats.”

Julius, still lecturing, hurries off with his friend.

“Julius is a lawyer? I thought he was a farmer.”

“He went to law school, but he doesn’t practice. He helps folks out for free. Figures the advice is worth what they pay for it.”

My cell phone buzzes.

“Just got a call from L.A.” Donnato’s voice is urgent. “Where are you?”

“At the hazelnut booth.” I smile at Megan. She is locking the cash box.

“We have a situation,” Donnato says. “Julius Emerson Phelps is an alias.”

“That’s interesting. I can’t wait to talk to you about it.”

“When the status report went to headquarters—bingo—the alias hit the computers. Julius Emerson Phelps was an infant who died of meningitis in DeKalb, Illinois, in 1949. This guy is an imposter who has taken on the name.”

I watch the big man disappear down the hall. The last I heard, Ralph was asking for free counsel on his divorce.

“At this time we don’t know who Phelps really is, or why he’s living under an assumed identity. Exercise caution.”

“Okay, Dad,” I say cheerfully. “See you there.”

I close the phone.

“That’s my dad. He loves hazelnut brittle. Could I get a couple of pounds?”

Megan has already shouldered her handbag.

“You’re packing up,” I say apologetically, pocketing a card with the farm’s phone number.

“Chocolate or regular?”

“Regular. Thank you.”

She puts her bag down.

“I know we’re in a rush, but—sorry—would you mind wrapping it up with some ribbon?”

“For a friend of the horses? Of course,” Megan says graciously, and unrolls the cellophane.

Her fingerprints will be all over it.

Nine

A weighty mist invades the city, rain without really raining, beading up in beards and hair. The deserted streets are mirrorlike and slick. We, the protesters, are staked out for the anti-BLM rally in an artsy, mixed-race neighborhood dominated by gangs; even at 2:30 in the afternoon, the place feels edgy. A dozen of us huddle in a staging area beneath the defunct neon marquee of the Excelsior Theater, a plaster-work movie castle built in the twenties, long boarded over.

Megan is on the cell, listening to Julius track the target.

“There he goes. It’s Laumann!” she reports excitedly as a burgundy government sedan sweeps by.

For a moment, we glimpse a profile of the BLM’s deputy state director, a thin fortyish white male wearing a tan raincoat—like a character actor in a supporting role, cast because his unremarkable looks will not draw attention from the leading man. But, of course, all he desires is to be the leading man, which is why he squared off with Fontana at the convention. You can see it in the tense shoulders and self-important squint, like he’s driving a vehicle of distinction, and, as the taillights flash in a spray off the road, in the decals that declare his support of the sheriff’s office, the police and fire departments.

Herbert Laumann travels in the brotherhood of heroes.

“Where’s he going?” I ask. “The school is the other way.”

“He’ll park in the red zone at the coffee place. He stops there every day, and every day he gets a refill of Irish vanilla,” Megan replies. “Then he jumps back in the car and makes it over to the school just in time to cut a few people off and get a good spot in the car-pool line.”

“You know his pattern.”

“Julius taught us to do our homework.”

“It was
so
easy,” mocks a young man with a long neck and heavy black-framed glasses. “Laumann always gets a refill in his Bureau of Land Management nifty commuter mug.”

Other protesters giggle and snort.

“To show he cares about the environment?”

“Because he’s such a good guy.”

I smile and nod approvingly. What a bunch of dipshits.

“What’s the plan?”

“When Julius tells us, we head up the hill. St. Luke’s is on the right. The kids will just be getting out.”

“Is there security at the school?”

“This is Portland, Darcy.”

“Okay, but what about Laumann’s son?”

“Alex?” Megan says the name as if she’s somehow claimed it.

“How’s he going to react?” I ask eagerly.

Darcy craves action. Excitement. Blood on the walls.

“Nobody wants to hurt a child, but
hopefully
Laumann will be so humiliated in front of his son that he’ll finally get the message.”

Her cell again. She looks up with eager eyes. “Julius is at the school. It’s a go.”

A swell of anticipation sends people rushing to their cars to retrieve homemade signs and lock up watches and rings and wallets in the unlikely event of arrest.

L
aumann rolls down a fogged-up window and sets the hot coffee mug in the cup holder. He makes sure to flash the BLM logo every place he gets a refill, eager to set an example of earth-friendly recycling. As deputy state director, he
is
the government—not an easy role these days.

Just this week, the psychos at FAN accused him on its Web site—and it made the legitimate press—that he has been stealing the horses he’s supposed to protect. Since then, the phone and fax lines to his office have been jammed with threats of violence against
anyone
who supports the Wild Horse and Burro Program—including secretaries, suppliers of tack and hay, even veterinarians. He thinks he kicked that poser Bill Fontana’s ass pretty good at the animal rights convention, calling the story “a fabricated radical conspiracy,” but in truth, Herbert Laumann needs the money. His civil service pay grade is way out of line with tuition for a private Catholic school, and Laumann and his wife want the boy to have a good education, and to be safe. Even in this transitional neighborhood, where angry white youth patrol the streets, Laumann (who grew up in a farming community) believes his son is less likely to come into harm’s way than in the public schools.

St. Luke’s is on a hill, protected by wrought-iron gates—a shabby plot of dull redbrick buildings and a couple of elms. The bright spots on campus are a Romanesque Church built in 1891 and the indoor tennis courts. Laumann’s twelve-year-old son is a talented player, and St. Luke’s has a good team, which makes it almost worth the price tag. Waiting for scrawny, long-legged Alex to come through the gates in his blue plaid uniform, toting his racket in a junior varsity bag, yakking it up with scores of red-cheeked, cheerful friends, allows Laumann to believe, for fifteen minutes in the car-pool line, that his insanely overstressed, overburdened, slightly criminal life might be worth something.

C
arrying signs but silent still, we reach the entrance to the school. The gates pull back automatically, right on time, and the sidewalk becomes alive with the random energy of a couple hundred bouncing children in blue plaid uniforms. The engines in the line of waiting cars fire one by one, and Laumann sits up with anticipation. They have a new baby girl at home who isn’t doing well—respiratory problems, underweight, and waking in the night. Whenever he stops moving, even for a minute, he falls into an exhausted daze. The weather is still soupy and the wipers make it worse, so Laumann hasn’t turned them on. Looking through the watery glass, he never sees us coming.

At first, we mix in with the crowd—all of us with the same greasy hair, grungy denim, and attitude as the neighborhood types. Many of us are not much older than the miscreants on the corner, or the seniors at St. Luke’s. Moving in clusters of three and four, we wave our banners:
MURDERER
!
WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
!

The schoolchildren slow down.

“Save the wild horses!”

“Save our American heritage!”

Chanting in unison, we, the protesters, bulldoze through the students, whose faces have softened with confusion and fear.

My heart is beating hard. The adrenaline rush has hit both sides. Parents are getting out of cars and clogging the sidewalk. Laumann jumps into the role of deputy state director, striding through the scene with cell phone to his ear, reporting the action to 911. He has been through this before, and means to assert his authority, but then on the police recording, later, in the midst of a calm recital, you will be able to hear his naked panic:
“They’re going after my son!”

Two agitators have surrounded Alex, chanting,
“Your daddy kills horses!”

Alex’s blue eyes are wide as he stares at one angry face, then another.

“Your daddy kills horses!”

Louder, closer, not giving way. One of them, a girl with a couple of nose rings, tries to force Alex to take a stuffed horse, dripping red.

Harassing a twelve-year-old was not the game plan.

Nobody wants to hurt a child.

But Darcy is committed to the cause.

“Free the horses!”
I shout.

“Fuck you, motherfucker,” the boy yells, and hits the girl with the nose rings in the knees with his tennis racket and keeps on swinging.

Laumann’s running through the mob, awkward in a business suit and the raincoat, face contorted with desperation, screaming at someone behind me to stop. I turn and catch sight of a streaking figure—a young man wearing a backpack and a denim jacket with neo-Nazi ornamentation. I had not seen him in the staging area under the marquee, but now he is barreling like a missile directly for Alex.
POP!
Like a firecracker, and the child staggers, eyes in shock, splattered with blood.

The small explosion triggers utter terror. Parents there to pick up their children find themselves grabbing them and rolling under cars, or dragging them away, running wildly.

I stay where I am for one slow-motion fraction of a second as Laumann gets to his son.

“Alex, are you shot? Show me where!” he cries, frantic hands all over the boy, who is breathing hard but standing on his feet.

“I’m okay, Dad—they didn’t do anything.”

“Didn’t do anything?”

Laumann pulls Alex—he’s walking—out of the crowd. The white shirt of his school uniform is streaked with crimson, which has grotesquely stained the sidewalk, along with Laumann’s raincoat and Alex’s pale and freckled cheeks.

“I’m o-
kay!
” He twists away from his father’s anxious touch. “Leave me alone! It wasn’t a gun; it’s just red paint.”

But where Laumann grew up, you slaughtered your own meat, and he knows the slippery consistency and sickly iron smell. It’s blood—real cow’s blood. Filthy, unclean putrescence, degrading innocent children.

The father’s hands become fists. “They’re dead,” Laumann vows. “They are
dead.
Come with me; let’s wipe this off.”

Someone has found a water bottle, and now Laumann attempts to soak a tissue and cleanse his son’s face, but his hands are shaking and the tissue dissolves.

“Dad, you have to chill,” instructs his twelve-year-old soldier.

Laumann wipes his own wet eyes and whispers hoarsely,
“Where are the police?”