White Wolf McLeod Page 22

  The Marshal looked at the photo and Simmons alternately. “Yes,” he affirmed tight-lipped.

  “So, I’ll ask again.” He grinned like the cat that had just caught the bird unawares. “Who’s the woman?”

  “An old friend.”

  “Your wife know?” Simmons seemed to leer in triumph, as if he had just found a chink in McLeod’s armor.

  “It was a long time ago, before I got married. She’s just a friend.”

  “Nice friend,” he said sarcastically. “We think she’s connected with the Constanza family.” Simmons paused to observe a reaction from McLeod, but he had not reckoned with an Indian before. McLeod sat impassive before him, his emotions tightly controlled behind a granite mask. What the Deputy Director had not calculated on was that he had just given the Marshal information regarding who sent the tail and why.

  “That brings up the final matter with Director Welsh,” Simmons quickly moved to the next subject on his agenda. “Where did you get the damning evidence on him? And why did you give him a copy of your evidence?”

  “I need to protect my sources, so they remain confidential as well. As to giving the Director what we had, I guess I had a moment of weakness. I wanted to give the man a chance to turn himself in, to make amends, if you will, before I had to turn the evidence over to the Justice Department. I had no real loyalty to him, but, after all, he was the Director.”

  “Who gave you this case?” he queried, meaning the Marta.

  “I assumed that it came from Director Welsh.”

  “You didn’t know for sure?”

  “No, sir. Should I have?” McLeod was beginning to add two and two together to complete the picture that had been eluding him.

  “Do you make it a habit not to know who assigns the cases given to you?”

  “I just take the cases as they are given to me,” he answered testily. “I don’t think much about where they come from. I just investigated them as they were handed to me. If I had questions about a case, I brought them to the attention of the Director.”

  Simmons leaned back into his chair again and folded his arms across his chest. He contemplated McLeod for several moments. “You’ve got a problem. The way I see it, I believe I can make a case that will not only relieve you of your badge but also cause you to spend a few years behind bars. That would be rather interesting, I would think. Cons have a different kind of hard-on for cops, dirty or not.

  “But you interest me, McLeod. I think I can use a man like you. You see, you did me a favor by getting rid of Welsh. It clears the field for me. I’m due for a promotion, anyway. You team up with me, McLeod, and you might go places.”

  “What’s in it for me?” The Marshal decided to play along to see how much more the Deputy Director was willing to reveal.

  “For starters, you get to keep your badge. Then, I want you to bury everything you dug up on this case. I want you to give me every scrap of paper, every note, every file, every memo. Then I want you to forget everything you learned. From now on, you’ll be reporting directly to me.” He paused before adding, “We have an agreement?”

  “I’d like some time to think about it.”

  “Sure. Take a day. But, if your wife is anything like mine, I don’t think she would take too kindly knowing that you were keeping an old girl friend happy on the sidelines.”

  McLeod had to stifle the sudden urge to leap out of his chair, reach across the desk, and hand the Deputy Director his head. No one talked to him like that or talked about his wife in that manner either and still remained healthy. This battle was not over, and he was going to be the last man standing again when it was over. He would have Simmons’ scalp on his belt, literally, if he had his way.

  “You’re a man of many useful talents, McLeod. I’d hate to see them go to waste. What you did to Welsh was a pure stroke of genius. You see, I can’t afford to have you behind my back.” His voice turned menacing. “I’ll have to either have you on my team or put you out of the way.”

  McLeod pushed the chair out from behind him. “You’ll have the documents this afternoon.” He strode out of the room without a perfunctory good-bye and stormed downstairs to his office.

  Tim cringed when he saw McLeod enter, and he tried to duck under the desk. But it was a futile effort for he knew that with his bulk nothing smaller than an elephant would have helped to hide him.

  “Mary,” McLeod barked, noting Tim’s sigh of relief.

  “Yes, Sam,” she responded, rising up from her desk and grabbing a notepad.

  “I want to find out everything about Welsh’s supposed suicide. Get buddy-buddy with the locals. I want everything, and I mean everything.”

  Mary gave her boss a quizzical look, but she knew better than to question his motives, especially in his current mood.

  “Specifically, I want to make sure it was a suicide.”

  “Understood.” She was already reaching for her large handbag and coat.

  “Charlie, any chance that you can ask your contacts to do one more favor for us?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I kind of doubt it. I’ve used up all my influence, including a threat or two, to get what I got. Why? What else do you need? Maybe I can work something out.”

  “Deputy Director Simmons,” McLeod spit out the name like it was a piece of rotten meat.

  “Oh! Well then, you’re in luck.” Charlie opened his briefcase, which just happened to be sitting on his desk, and pulled out yet another memo. “Will this help?”

  “What’s that you got there?” the Marshal pointed to the case. “A crystal ball or a magic lamp?”

  “I just like to be thorough,” Charlie declared, feeling a little misunderstood. “I like to get the whole story the first time. You never know when information that doesn’t make sense now will be useful later.”

  “So, why didn’t you give me this memo during our meeting?” McLeod asked, accepting the new memo. For the first time since he had come back to Washington, D.C., he was beginning to feel better.

  “You didn’t ask,” Charlie presented as his defense.

  McLeod allowed a chuckle to escape from his lips. “Now I know why I pay all you guys the big bucks.” But then he was all business again.

  “Tim,” he finally turned on him, putting him back on the proverbial hook. “You have a meeting place set up for me yet?”

  “Sure do, bossman,” he responded nervously. He handed McLeod a memo with the name of the rendezvous point. It was a private airport in Virginia close to the CIA Headquarters.

  “When do I meet them?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock sharp.”

  “Good. Now, you and Charlie get every scrap of information associated with this case and put it on my desk by noon, except what we got from the Seriglios. And don’t make any plans for tomorrow. I want you with me.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHINO’S FREEDOM

  MCLEOD AND HIS team caravanned out of Washington, D.C. with the Marshal riding in Tim’s car and headed towards Virginia. Mary and Charlie each drove their own separate cars and kept a discreet distance from Tim’s to avoid the appearance that they were a group, lest they were being watched, which was in keeping with the paranoia of the CIA. The plan had been simple: McLeod and Tim would talk with the CIA operatives while Mary and Charlie protected the perimeter. Still, he wished that he were bringing an army, for he did not trust the CIA any further than he could throw the Headquarters building into the Potomac River. Charlie had found a topographic map of Virginia, and they were able to locate the private airport in question, note the roads that serviced it, and determine tactical surveillance positions close enough to respond to the unexpected.

  Three hours later, Tim drove onto the service road that allowed access to a single runway. A thirty-foot tower and two small hangars were the only buildings that gave the casual viewer an idea of the true purpose of the facility. There were no airplanes parked either in or around the hangars, however, and the airfield appeared tempora
rily abandoned.

  “Now what?” McLeod asked testily.

  “We wait,” Tim responded upbeat with the obvious. He had parked the car in front of the nearest hangar and turned off the engine.

  “It’s nine o’clock,” McLeod declared, looking at his watch. As if on cue, a solitary man stepped out from behind the partially closed hangar door and appraised them.

  “That’s Doris,” Tim expounded. “You want me to wait in the car?”

  “Yeah.” McLeod started to open the door. He wondered why he was doing this. But more importantly, he wondered also what it was going to cost him. It was not his nature to compromise, and it certainly went against his grain to give in to anyone, especially a White Man and the Government he had created that oppressed the People. He preferred action, and if he could get away with it, he would kick the Company’s collective ass until he was too tired to lift hand and foot and take names later.

  But Chino is his boy, one of his team, hand-picked because of his talents. Sure, Chino is a born killer, but he admired the quiet self-control the man had learned under his tutelage and consistently exhibited. He was also unquestionably loyal to the team, and as a weapon he was perfectly suited for several of the jobs McLeod needed to have accomplished from time to time. Taking any personal feeling out of the equation, to the Marshal he was an irreplaceable asset, not just to him but the Department as a whole.

  CHINO REMINDED HIM of a puppy he had once found in the woods near his house. A she-wolf bitch had dropped a litter of one, a half-breed from a not-too-common liaison between a wolf and a domesticated collie. White Wolf immediately felt an affinity for the hapless pup. They both had something in common, he reasoned: born of both worlds but not able to completely fit in either one. He decided to take him home, knowing that the pup could not survive alone in the forest.

  A wolf is a wolf, and it is at home in the woods, not in the city. But a half-breed would not be accepted by the wolf pack, and if the wolves did not kill the pup, it would certainly die of starvation. At the same time, humans have an incomprehensible, in-born fear of wolves, and they had passed a law on the books that prohibited people from trying to domesticate a wolf. That included dogs that were part wolf. White Wolf had to protect the pup from his neighbors and keep them from finding out the true pedigree of the dog. There was one telltale means to determine the difference: a wolf does not lap up water like a dog; it curls its tongue and sucks water up like through a straw. That is why he had to make sure that the pup never drank water anywhere except on his Father’s property.

  The dog eventually grew into a large collie. He had a snout that was a good twelve inches long. From the looks of him, people never suspected that he was a wolf, unless they tried to enter the house uninvited. The dog did not bark. Howled? Yes, every full moon. And his growl sounded like a freight train. Only the family knew the truth, but as long as he trained the dog and kept him under control, his Father ignored the fact that the dog was illegal in the eyes of the law and should have been destroyed.

  Sometimes his Father would chain the dog up in the cellar, especially during the full moon. He would howl with a pitiful sound that reverberated throughout the house.

  “Junior, shut that dog up,” his father told him irritably.

  “He’s lonely,” White Wolf explained. “I’ll bring him up to my room.”

  “No, you won’t. You can go down and sleep with him in the cellar. Just shut that damn dog up!”

  White Wolf grabbed a blanket and his pillow and slept in the cellar with the dog. He did not mind the inconvenience at all. And neither did the family, for his presence kept the dog quiet.

  There was also the time when a cat had become caught up inside the bumper of the family car, wedging itself tight. White Wolf had worked for more than an hour extricating the cat from its predicament. And what was his reward? The cat bit and scratched him. It then bounded out of his arms and scampered across the yard. But it was not fast enough for the dog, which it had apparently forgotten about. Before White Wolf could blink, the collie’s jaws clamped down on the spine of the cat, and a sickening crunch signaled the end of the cat’s life.

  “You dumb dog!” White Wolf chastised him without any real anger in his voice, nursing his wounds.

  The dog laid down, his head on his front paws with his tail tucked between his legs in an act of contrition. He hurt you, he seemed to say. I was protecting you.

  Yes, he was, McLeod conceded. It was one lesson he had to learn of many about the nature of dogs. They were a great deal more predictable than people, and a lot more loyal, with the exception of his team. Whatever happened this day, he had to bring Chino back safe and sound back into his fold.

  “YOU MCLEOD?” THE operative asked him imperiously.

  The Marshal nodded.

  “You’re not alone,” he accused.

  “Your instructions did not stipulate that I had to come alone,” McLeod challenged back. “Is that a problem?”

  The operative gave him a feral smile. “Not unless you make this—uh—arrangement more difficult than it needs to be. Your friend stays inside the car.” He accepted McLeod’s nod. “Come inside.” He led McLeod to the center of the hangar where a box had been set up as a makeshift table. Two metal chairs sat next to the table.

  “Let’s sit,” the operative suggested, his tone more of a command. “We have something to talk about before the plane arrives.”

  The Marshal sat down, noting that the man carried a weapon in a holster fixed to the back of his belt. “I didn’t think we would need firearms. Now I feel undressed. I didn’t bother to carry any.”

  Doris shrugged. “It’s a part of me. I don’t go anywhere without it. If we can be reasonable men, I probably won’t have to use it. Besides, from what I’ve heard about you, the last thing you need is a weapon. You’re quite a weapon all by yourself.”

  “Why all the threats?” McLeod tried to keep the anger out of his voice. “I came here out of simple faith that you would return one of my people to me. Nothing more.”

  “Let’s just say that you stuck your nose into something that shouldn’t have concerned you.”

  “If I am correct, no one was holding a gun to your head when you told Tim Robbins information that should have been kept within the Agency.”

  “I told Tim that information to get you people off our backs. Nothing more. It wasn’t an invitation to get involved.”

  “Then, let’s just say that I have a prurient curiosity about certain matters and leave it at that.”

  Doris laughed mirthlessly. “You’re an oddball, McLeod. You know, I do know a lot about you, believe it or not. That was quite a touch with the Seriglio family. Of course, you don’t know how much you set us back with our efforts to exploit them and the opportunities they represent.”

  McLeod did not respond but eyed the operative coolly, wondering what kind of sound his neck would make when he broke it. Being that this operative was already dead from the neck up, he imagined that it would probably sound very much like a dried up twig.

  “I want to know the real reason why you sent Chino to Miami to infiltrate the Mendendez family.”

  “Look. It wasn’t my idea to dump a body in Boston on my front doorstep. The public doesn’t like murders, and they particularly dislike unsolved murders. It makes them nervous, and they tend to take out their discomfort on people like me, as if we weren’t doing enough to protect their pampered lifestyle. Tim said that you admitted that someone in the Company killed the Alvarez boy. Personally, I think you boys were sloppy. You could have got your message across to the Tanelli’s and the Cantinelli’s without all the publicity. Then I wouldn’t have become involved, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Now, when do I get my boy back?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” McLeod hated to admit it, but he was beginning to admire the operative’s tenacity. He exuded a calm, almost emotionless outward projection, and he wondered what it would take to set him off or, at least, unb
alance him.

  “I didn’t? Then maybe you weren’t listening. Okay, let’s go back to school. I know that the CIA is now up to its armpits in drugs. Why? I don’t really give a damn.” He punctuated his words with the curling of his lip in anger. “That’s your business as long as they stay out of the United States. You boys may think it’s fun to start a little war in Colombia, but you also don’t know when to quit. You brought your piss-ante little conflict into this country, so you can play your cat-and-mouse games. But it’s guys like me that have to clean up your mess. I don’t like being a janitor, especially when innocent people get caught up in the middle, and I hate being the one that has to explain to the grieving relatives that their kin needlessly died in a seemingly random act of violence, when we both know the real reason why they died. To answer your question succinctly, I needed to have my finger on the pulses of the three principle families involved, so maybe I could avert most of the bloodshed when you boys lost control.”

  Doris shrugged. “Maybe you should have trusted us more. If you had come to us in the first place, as you said, we might not be here having this conversation.”

  McLeod wanted to say, I wouldn’t get into the same bed with you people if you paid me a million dollars. But he held his peace. The distant roar of a single-engine airplane approaching the runway caught his attention.

  “Ah, your boy is arriving,” the operative announced. The two men sat in silence as they watched the airplane land on the strip and brake to a halt. Then it taxied back to the middle of the runway, shut off its engine, and remained there parked. No one exited the airplane nor made any attempt to.

  “What’s the next move?” McLeod prompted the operative.

  “We conclude our business,” Doris declared simply. “Before you think about some kind of rescue, like bringing in the Marines, I should tell you another one of our closely held secrets. You’ve probably heard that each of our agents carries a cyanide pill in case they are captured, so they can die a hero’s death without revealing any secrets. That’s a little romantic, I think. A good agent doesn’t get captured in the first place. If he—or she, I’ll add—is in a tight spot, he’s expected to get out of it. You see, you’re not the only one who can boast of leaving a string of bodies in their wake.