White Wolf McLeod Read online

“Husband,” Clover turned on him, “just because there are things that you don’t understand, don’t make fun of them. It is well known throughout the various tribes that some individuals are gifted with different powers and instincts than other beings.”

  “Your wife is correct in this,” the Medicine Man expounded. “I realize that you are mostly a White Man, and you see with a White Man’s eyes and heart. But surely, down deep inside your spirit you can see the truth in these matters and in your son.”

  “Look,” Ernest exclaimed with exasperation. “He’s my son, and I ought to know my son. I don’t believe he has ESP or any other kind of weirdo gift. If he does, I’ll soon take care of that. He has to learn how to grow up and conduct himself in a man’s world. Otherwise, the world will just pound him flat into the ground.”

  “You mean the White Man’s world,” the Medicine Man countered. “He has the true world the Great Spirit intended for all men regardless of color to live in. But the White Man has perverted Creation. I doubt that Slippery Eel [using White Wolf’s child name] will ever be at peace in the world you have chosen. Perhaps, rather, it would be better that your son remain with the People. He has been accepted by his people as having been blessed. In due time, he will replace me.”

  “Look!” Ernest turned on the Medicine Man. “His mother and I are his people. We have come to get him and bring him home. That’s the law! And if you or anyone else is hiding him or preventing him from coming with us, I’ll get a posse of my own, and we’ll tear this place apart until we find him!”

  “That will not be necessary,” Grandfather interjected. “The boy will be found, and he will be returned to you.”

  “When?” Ernest challenged.

  Grandfather raised his hands in a gesture that indicated he did not truly know. “We must wait upon the will of the Great Spirit.”

  While Ernest continued to fume and exhibit the traits of an angry and impatient White Man, the Medicine Man exited Grandfather’s teepee with a heavy heart and started towards his own home. He prayed to the Great Spirit, questioning not only the meaning of this event, but also the reason for this intrusion of the disturbing influences of the White Man’s world on the Land. If Slippery Eel, who was born in the White Man’s world, must return to the White Man’s world, he conceded, how would this fact help or hurt the People? “Why has this small boy been chosen for such a fate?” he asked over and over again. And when the Medicine Man had stopped praying, he listened for an answer and witnessed an almost imperceptible sign in the sky. Then he knew that the Great Spirit had answered him and told him what he had to do next.

  But on his way back to his teepee, a young Brave stopped him and asked: “If Slippery Eel is not to become our new Medicine Man, what are we to do?”

  “We will follow the will of the Great Spirit,” the Medicine Man answered simply. He did not tell the other man that the Great Spirit’s will was calling him to action as well or what the consequences of that action would bring.

  White Wolf remained missing for seven days. Grandfather eventually allowed Ernest to go out and look for him but always in the company of village Braves. He did not wish to bring further grief to his daughter, but he recognized that the fact that her husband was doing something towards finding her son, being that he was a man of action, would help console her troubled heart and mind.

  On the seventh day, the Medicine Man rose up from his sleeping mat and took three Braves with him into the woods. The Braves did not question the Medicine Man’s purposeful pace and direction, for they trusted him and the Great Spirit who guided him.

  When the four men had walked until the sun was almost directly above them, they found White Wolf walking between the trees and flanked by the she-wolf and one of the young wolves of the pack. Almost immediately, the boy discovered the presence of the Medicine Man and stopped in his tracks. The she-wolf bared her fangs and growled deeply in her throat, for she would not willingly allow the man-things to take away her charge given to her by the wolf-spirit.

  When one of the Braves raised his rifle to shoot the she-wolf, White Wolf, his hand on the wolf’s mane, stepped in front of the wolf and cried out to the Brave. “If you shoot her, you’ll have to shoot me!”

  “Lower your weapon,” the Medicine Man commanded the Brave. Then addressing White Wolf, he spoke, “It is time for you to choose your destiny. The Great Spirit has given you a choice. But, He has also given you a free will to choose between the path that He has willed and the path that you wished willed.”

  The young boy understood the Medicine Man’s words, and he turned to the she-wolf. He recognized that the time had come for him to choose his destiny. “Thank you, Mother, for all that you have done for me. But it is time that I return to the pack of my own kind. Return to your own pack and take care of your own children and family.”

  The she-wolf looked up at the boy, and in his mind he heard her words. “I will be with you from this time forward. My spirit will be beneath you and above you and all around you. You will never need to fear any living creature that is a part of the world, except for this two-legged kind. But even then, I will be there to protect you.”

  The she-wolf looked at the Medicine Man, and for a moment they too communicated and spoke of the Will of the Great Spirit. Satisfied in the end, she turned and walked deeper into the woods.

  “Come, Slippery Eel,” the Medicine Man called him, holding his hand out to the boy. When Slippery Eel came up to the Medicine Man, the elder lifted the boy’s chin and gazed into his eyes.

  “You have been given a powerful medicine,” he declared. “Be thankful all your life. Do not misuse this medicine, for it will return back to you twice fold, maybe even three-fold.

  “You were given the name Slippery Eel when you first came to us because you were so slippery and difficult to catch. But today, you have earned a new name more fitting with your destiny. You have walked and communed with the wolves. Even now, you are clothed with their protection, their powerful medicine. You will need that medicine when you enter the White Man’s world, for it is a much more dangerous place than these woods. To live among these strange creatures who call themselves men, you will need the courage, tenacity, and cunning of the wolf. All those things and more the she-wolf has freely given you. Therefore, I now name you ‘White Wolf.’ ‘White’ because you will have to wear a false robe to mimic the White Man to confuse him of your true nature. ‘Wolf’ because you will need all the positive characteristics of the wolf to survive the White Man’s world of temptations.

  “I will constantly pray for you, White Wolf, that you keep the true world in your heart and mind, and that the Great Spirit walk with you all the rest of your days.”

  Slippery Eel—now White Wolf—silently accompanied the Medicine Man and the three Braves back to the village and to his Grandfather’s teepee where he was finally united with his real mother and father. Yet, as much as they tried to love him and raise him in an alien world, he was not really a part of their world. With the cunning, guile, courage, endurance, awareness, and the patience of a wolf, he survived adolescence in the White Man’s world, while he never lost touch with the real world, for it sustained him and protected him from the guiles and evils this strange world used to tempt him away from the Great Spirit’s blessings.

  LOOKING OUT THE back window of the Ford pickup, the boy fought back tears as the only home he ever knew receded in the distance. One didn’t cry at death, for in death comes new life.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE LAWYER

  CHARLIE GONTY ARRIVED in New York and headed towards the office of Roger Mandellori, Attorney at Law. He easily found the law firm located on the fourteenth floor of a modern building in uptown Manhattan. In fact, it occupied the entire floor. Family money must be pretty good, he wisecracked to himself, observing the finest furnishings money could buy decorating the hallway and office interiors.

  He introduced himself to the receptionist, handing her his business card. The nameplate at the fron
t of her desk read “Alvina Robertson.”

  “Just a moment, please, Mr. Gonty,” the woman in her late thirties told him a tone that reminded him of his high school homeroom teacher. It was not so much a request as a command that brooked no disobedience. She picked up the intercom and buzzed the inner office. “Mr. Mandellori, there’s an officer from the U.S. Marshal’s Office by the name of Charlie Gonty. He requests a moment of your time.”

  She listened a moment and then concluded the conversation. “Understand, sir.” Ms. Robertson turned to Charlie and returned his card. “Mr. Mandellori does not wish to see you, sir. He’s tied up with several important cases, and he has no time for chit-chat.”

  “When will he have some free time?” Charlie queried, having expected the refusal.

  “I’m afraid that he will be tied up for several weeks.” Ms. Robertson tried to make her remark sound final.

  Charlie fished a slip of paper McLeod had handed him before his departure for New York out of his jacket pocket and pushed it towards the woman. “Give Mr. Mandellori this, please,” he persisted.

  “I just told you that he is not seeing any visitors!”

  “Just give him the paper, or I’ll get a warrant, and you both can entertain a whole company of officers. And they don’t care how much of Mr. Mandellori’s precious time they waste.”

  Mandellori must have been covertly listening at his office doorway for he opened it partway and told Ms. Robertson to accept the paper from the lawman and give it to him. Taking the paper from her outstretched hand, he read the name on the slip, and a nonplussed look transformed his countenance.

  “Would you mind stepping into my office, Mr. — ?” he invited suddenly.

  “Gonty,” Charlie provided, walking purposely towards the open door. So much for a change of heart, he thought to himself. Once inside, he observed an expansive room replete with bookcases lining both the right and left walls. A large oak desk stained black sat in front of set of large windows with a sterile city view of other skyscrapers and the busy street below.

  Mandellori pointed at his telephone and mouthed the word “bugged” to warn Charlie that whatever he said aloud was not to be taken at face value. Then he said, “Am I supposed to know this person?”

  “He said you owe him a favor.”

  Mandellori raised his hand cautiously. “I don’t recall the name. What’s he look like?” At the same time, he reached over his desk and picked up a notepad and scribbled down the name of a restaurant: “Gilly’s Bar and Grill.” Then he added the time of twelve o’clock.

  “Short, about five-four, sandy hair, blue-green eyes. You’d know him if you had ever met him.”

  “Sorry,” Mandellori apologized as he handed the note to Charlie. “I don’t know anyone of that description. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Charlie nodded, pocketing the note after glancing over it cursorily. “Okay. Guess I’ve come to the wrong office. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “I trust you can see your way out,” Mandellori ended the conversation and returned to his chair behind the desk.

  Ms. Robertson eyed Charlie with a stern look as he crossed the foyer and tipped his hat in her direction before exiting the office. She left him with the impression that if she could will him dead with just a look of hatred she would attempt it. She watched him enter the elevator and returned to her typing.

  At eleven-thirty, Mandellori stepped out of his office wearing his overcoat and hat. “Going to lunch,” he told his secretary. “Hold all my calls till I get back.”

  She wore a noncommittal expression on her face as she acknowledged his departure. It was not unusual for her superior to step out for lunch, but he usually did so in concert with a meeting with a client. The unexpected intrusion of a officer of the Court seemed too much of a coincidence, and she started adding two and two together. She watched him disappear into the elevator before picking up the telephone and dialing a private number she had been given just in case she suspected an act of impropriety on Mandellori’s part.

  Fifteen minutes later, Charlie entered a dive that sported a faded, paint-peeling sign bearing the name Gilly’s Bar and Grill and sat down near the middle of the establishment, facing the front entrance at a wobbly wooden table that had seen better days. Its surface was marred and scarred with the initials of long-past patrons along with a few obscenities carved amongst the graffiti written there. A plump middle-aged woman with the demeanor of a surly truck driver sauntered over with a greasy menu, which she literally tossed onto the table in front of him, and asked in a smoke-damaged, scratchy voice, “Whatcha drinking?”

  “Beer. Whatever you have on tap.” He pushed the menu back towards here. “I’ll have a Reuben on rye.”

  She wrote down the order in her scrawly shorthand and retrieved the menu in a miffed sort of way before waddling over to the order window that looked into the congested kitchen where she barked Charlie’s order to a cook who looked like an old Puerto Rican male with a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips. Then she pulled a mug off a drying counter and filled it with a dark-brown fluid that flowed languorously from a tap connected to the bar. She poured off the head, filled the mug to the brim, and brought it over to the table, spilling a little of it as she set it heavily down on the table. From her apron pocket, she pulled out a couple of wadded napkins and tossed them down next to the beer. Then she sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand before turning away to attend to other customers who had just entered the establishment and sat down close to the front. Gonty got the impression that they were regulars.

  Mandellori entered ten minutes later and immediately espied Charlie. He looked furtively around at the people sitting at the other tables to see if he recognized anyone. Satisfied that he was not being tailed, he walked over to Charlie and sat down opposite him, removing his coat and hat and setting them down on the bench next to him.

  “McLeod’s got a lot of balls sending you to see me,” he hissed angrily.

  “He wouldn’t have if he didn’t think it was important,” Charlie responded dryly.

  The infelicitous waitress walked back to their table to take Mandellori’s order: a chef’s salad and an iced tea. “Gotta watch my weight,” he explained to the lawman as the waitress lumbered away, sniffing even more loudly than before.

  “Just out of curiosity,” Charlie reopened their conversation, “how do you know my boss?”

  Mandellori relaxed a little, feeling comfortable with small talk. “We were in Korea together. He saved my butt.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “Of all the people I have met in this world—some good and some not so good—he’s the strangest person I have ever met. And probably ever will meet. He is proud of his Indian ancestry, but it wasn’t like he lorded it over the rest of us. He was simply different, and he didn’t care who thought he was different. Just don’t cross the man and tell him so, because as likely or not you’d have to dig your head out of the ground.

  “Well, we were on patrol near what they now call the ‘Z.’ McLeod was a queer duck. He would lie down, stretch out, and never move the entire time he slept. He also made a habit of cocking his .45 and holding it on his chest with both hands, his right index finger on the trigger. Never could figure out why he liked to do that until the one night we were jumped by three Chinese infiltrators. They managed to slit the post’s throat and started systematically killing each man in our patrol while we slept. McLeod was supposed to be the third man to die, but when the Chink leaned over him to do the job, that .45 barked, sending the Chink’s face into and through the back of his head. McLeod jumped to his feet like something catapulted him up off the ground. He pumped two more rounds and killed the two remaining Chinks before the rest of us could grab our rifles and figure out what was happening. We all owed him a life after that, and he knew it. But, to tell you the truth, I had always dreaded the day when he would call in his marker.”

  “Why is that Mr
. Mandellori?”

  “You wouldn’t be asking that question if you weren’t here talking to me, Mr. Gonty. And I’d doubt that you would be working with McLeod if you were that obtuse.”

  Charlie nodded, accepting the chastisement passively. “I’m not so interested in your activities, Mr. Mandellori, as I am in some information you might be able to tell me.”

  Their conversation was put into hiatus as the waitress plopped their order on the table accompanied by the rattle of the dishes. They waited until she passed out of hearing before continuing between bites. The fare was not exceptional but palatable.

  “Now, why have you come all the way from the Capitol to see little ol’ me?” Mandellori opened the gambit with a poor imitation of a Southern dialect.

  Gonty noticed with interest the transformation of the man from a casual acquaintance perspective to that of an all-business lawyer. “I’d like to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind. We’re investigating a case. You might have read about the body found on the Marta that had docked in Boston about a week ago.”

  “Oh, my God!” he breathed, and he pushed himself away from his plate. Then he regained his self-control and composure. “Information always carries a price, Mr. Gonty. I’m not willing to pay for it with my life.”

  “Understood. But I need whatever you can give me.”

  “As long as it doesn’t touch on certain subjects, I’ll tell you what I can. Just understand that much of what I do is privileged information.” He glanced over his shoulder nervously before returning to his food.

  “We have on good account a rumor that says there’s a war brewing in New York.”

  Mandellori paused in lifting his fork to his mouth. “Who told you that?”

  “Like you said, Mr. Mandellori, some information is privileged. I just need to verify if the rumor is true and, if it’s true, why would the families be willing to risk closer scrutiny by the Feds than they already have.”

  The lawyer stuck the fork into his mouth and chewed absently. He swallowed and offered, “If I give you some names, what’s the Government’s angle.”