The Triggerman's Dance Page 2

  Driven by curiosity, she glanced once at his time card to find that Joshua had officially charged no hours at all to his private investigation. The idea crossed her mind that she might be the only one who even knew about it. She certainly wasn’t the only one who knew about his long telephone calls, since all Bureau calls were recorded and saved for an unrevealed period of time.

  All she knew for sure was that he talked almost inaudibly during certain calls (the longer ones), with his thin shoulder blades hunched up like a vulture’s wings, his neck down and his back to her. He would then hang up and swivel his chair around to look at her with a kind of fierce nonchalance before going back to his work. For all Sharon Dumars knew, Josh could have been talking to his mother back in Brooklyn.

  Then, on a blazing September morning six months after the death of his betrothed, Joshua Weinstein rang off from one of his near silent telephone conversations, stared blankly for a moment at Dumars, then stood, locked his files and put on his suit coat.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  Following Joshua’s lead, Dumars left the building with him, failing to sign out or say a word to anyone. Never in her three years with the Bureau had she done anything so bold and so flagrantly against procedure.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Sharon Dumars drove her white Bureau Ford because Weinstein asked her to. They headed in silence out toward Riverside on the 91, then picked up Interstate 15 south to Temecula, then branched southeast on State 79. The highway ran along a green valley rimmed with estates on the left, oaks and pastures to the right, fruit stands and white fences. The stables of a well known Arabian horse ranch passed by on the right.

  “Where are we going, Josh?”

  “We are going by context.”

  “What case do I bill this context to?”

  “Personal Time.”

  “There’s no case called Personal Time, last I checked.”

  “Just pay attention, and later, I’ll ask you what you think.”

  Finally, they hit State 371, which took them east and higher in elevation. Dumars handled the car well on the curving, rising road, passing a cement mixer and a pickup filled with hay bales without taking her left hand from the armrest. In fact, her shoulder holster and 9mm were uncomfortable enough against the left side of her rib cage without moving around any more than she had to. There were just a few houses out here, set far back amidst the boulder-strewn hills. They looked planted. Occasionally, a dilapidated trailer peeked into view from a deep ravine or precipitous hilltop.

  “I guess the people who move out here don’t like anyone around them,” Sharon offered. The landscape was quite pretty in an austere way.

  “Or no one likes to be around them,” said Josh absently.

  They passed a sign that said “Cahuilla Indian Reservation”, then, a few miles on, a sign for the city of Anza Valley, elevation 3,918 and population less than that.

  The town appeared ahead of them. Dumars cut her speed to fifty. They passed a real estate office that was closed, a hardware store that was open, and a liquor store that had three pickup trucks parked in the dirt patch out front and windows filled with beer posters featuring beautiful women.

  “We want Olie’s Saloon—it’s on the left,” said Josh.

  They drove past the market, the gas and propane station, a tire and brake center and the Feed Bin. Dumars slowed behind a faded gold Mercury four-door slung so low to the asphalt it looked like its trunk was filled with bowling balls. She could see through its dirty rear window a passel of dark-skinned children in the back seat, a huge female with raging black hair behind the wheel, and beside her a graying head lost in a cowboy hat. Dumars thought of the current battle back in Orange County between two tribes claiming rights to the land—the Gabrielenos and the Juanenos—and all the backbiting, corruption and betrayal in the name of federal funds and perhaps a bingo palace. Dignity is a hard thing to come by anymore, she thought.

  “Is this reservation land?” she asked.

  “Not the city. But all around it.”

  Olie’s was a fragile-looking structure of dark wood, with a sagging roof and a hitching post out front. There were more pickup trucks in the dirt lot. It was either built to look like something from 1870, thought Dumars, or actually was. She pulled in and parked where Joshua pointed. The air outside the car was clear, dry and hot. An Indian in a white shirt watched them as they pushed through the saloon-style doors and into the late afternoon darkness of the bar.

  They took a booth along one wall and studied the plastic-sheathed menus. The chili cheese omelet was being heavily discounted that day. The waitress was a thin, dry looking woman in her fifties who smiled tightly at them and talked about the omelet. They ordered soft drinks. Dumars thought that they couldn’t have been more conspicuous if they had dressed in sequins, though it hardly mattered.

  “So, you come here a lot?”

  “I want you to listen, and corroborate when you can. What I want, when we’re finished, is a candid, honest, and hopefully helpful opinion.”

  “Joshua, does this have to do with Rebecca?”

  “This has to do with everything. He’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  In fact, he was there in less than ten minutes. He came through the saloon doors with a soft clunking of boots and, like the regular he was, walked straight for a row of bar stools that stood along one window, facing the street. He set his fedora on the counter beside him.

  Joshua had covertly situated Dumars so that she would see his entrance. Joshua easily followed the reflection of John Menden, former Journal writer, in the bar mirror, as he arrived at his usual time, took his usual route to his usual stool, and put his hat down next to him. Joshua studied him, as those in law enforcement do, for some change, some new intelligence that might illuminate a subject. He found none. Menden looked as always, tall and on the slender side, with the easy, gliding gait of an athlete or, as Weinstein knew, a hunter. He wore the long denim duster he preferred for warm weather, the scuffed moccasin-style, flat-soled boots, the work shirt and brown cotton vest in the pockets of which he kept his cigarettes, lighter and pen. Weinstein quite frankly didn’t know what to make of John Menden’s style of dress. It was like something out of the past, part cowboy, part Indian and part gangster, maybe, what with the hat. The clothing seemed to suit him. Weinstein had observed John here, in his daily post-work lair, a total of five times, and the costume John wore had come to seem less foppish than simply eclectic and functional. As for Weinstein’s own clothes, he had come in various guises—businessman, golfer, tourist, local—wanting neither Menden nor the regulars of Olie’s to remember him. Joshua noted again that John’s hair was the mix of brown and blond common to those who spend a lot of time outdoors, and it was kind of shaggy, falling onto a forehead from which he often had to push it back. His eyes were a pale gray. Like a lot of tall people, Menden stooped slightly, a habit developed early to help him fit into the pack, Josh decided. He smiled rarely and appeared relaxed. But Joshua had noted long ago that Menden’s eyes were always alert and busy, whether he was choosing a bar stool, lighting a cigarette or taking a sip from the shots and beers he drank. Weinstein had learned from a routine medical history check that Menden’s uncorrected eyesight was 20/15, impressive for anyone, especially a thirty-four-year old who made a living reading and writing. Yes, Weinstein had decided, John Menden’s physical nonchalance was good camouflage for his greedy, gathering eyes. Weinstein was pleased to see the interest in Sharon Dumars’s expression as she watched Menden sit down. He had expected no less.

  The waitress approached John with a hearty, “Hello, handsome.”

  “Hi, gorgeous,” John said back, again as usual.

  If anyone ever wanted to do a number on John Menden, it would sure be easy, Weinstein thought for the hundredth time. He’s reliable as cement. Weinstein glanced through the smudged window to Menden’s pickup truck outside in the shade and the brown Labrador retriever standing in the bed. Th
e big dog was diligently regarding the saloon doors through which he had watched his master disappear. Menden called him Boomer. Beside Boomer was a yellow Labrador, smaller and female. Weinstein, not a dog man, was pretty sure this one was Bonnie. Not visible, but surely laying in the truck bed somewhere, would be the old black lab that John called Belle. Weinstein had yet to see Menden go anywhere without this herd. Yes, thought Weinstein, Menden is predictable as a country song. We would have to change that.

  And this was certainly not the biggest of Weinstein’s worries about John Menden. What disturbed him most was his belief that Menden’s easy charm and rough good looks—so adroitly used on women, no doubt—were the tools of a man who could take no pressure. A coward. And his drinking. God, the fellow could put the stuff away. But again, like so many times in the last six months, Joshua was way ahead of himself.

  During the time it took Weinstein and Dumars to drink one cola each, the waitress brought John Menden two beers and a shot of something. Weinstein and Dumars talked shop for a while.

  Then, abruptly, Weinstein got up and made his way across the room to the window where John Menden sat.

  Weinstein had been imagining this moment for almost two months now. As he approached he could feel the slight speed-up of his heartbeat, and the warmth that always came to his ears when something was important, or dangerous, or much desired.

  When he had been around Rebecca Harris, for example, his damned ears had been on fire all the time. But Weinstein was now better at divorcing himself from his own symptoms. He saw himself standing beside the stool with the hat on it, viewing up close for the first time the man he hoped might someday help accomplish the greatest mission of his—Joshua Weinstein’s—life.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said.

  Menden looked him straight in the face, then starting down at Joshua’s black wingtips, gave him a longish assessment that ended with his eyes again on Weinstein’s own.

  “Then I guess you better get started. This is your fifth time in here if I’m counting right, which I am.”

  “I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My name is Weinstein, and I want to talk to you about Rebecca Harris.”

  “Good enough.”

  The tone rang false to Weinstein, and he wondered again what Rebecca had told John Menden, and what she had not. For his purposes now, it didn’t matter.

  “I’ve got a table over there, and someone I’d like you to meet. Please.”

  Menden took his hat and his half-full beer glass and followed Weinstein to the booth. Joshua introduced him to Sharon Dumars, who stood and offered her hand. He watched carefully as their eyes met, because how a man comes off first—at that very first moment of encounter—can set the stage for everything that will follow. Menden’s light gray eyes betrayed little.

  When the waitress came, Weinstein ordered another round of drinks for his guest, and beers for himself and Dumars. He disliked alcohol, but he was also aware of the irrational distrust that drinking people often reserve for those who aren’t. After the waitress had delivered the drinks, he picked up his glass, touched its bottom lightly to the rim of Menden’s, then Sharon’s, and took a sip of the cold, bitter brew.

  “That’s good,” he muttered without conviction.

  John Menden sipped and nodded.

  Joshua took off his glasses, pressed the two dents they had long ago engraved on either side of his nose, then set them on the table beside his glass. He looked again out to Menden’s pickup truck, but it was just a blur with a bunch of dogs in it.

  “I’d like to talk for a while, and for you to listen. Do you have, say, a couple of hours to give us?”

  “I’ll give you a minute at a time.”

  “That’s how the hours pass, Mr. Menden.”

  Later, when Sharon Dumars thought about it and had finally realized the scope of Josh Weinstein’s plans, she admitted that she had never seen him so impassioned about anything in his life. Focused, yes, Weinstein was always focused, his large dark eyes drinking you in from behind those glasses. Serious, certainly: the man actually seemed to possess no sense of humor whatsoever, and if possible, even less than that for the last six months. Convincing, totally, because no matter what Joshua Weinstein said it was difficult to believe it was anything other than the truth. But the passion was new to him, or at least to her. She wondered later that night, alone in her bed in her suburban Irvine condo, her big tabby Natalie purring on her chest, if passion was even the right word for it. She tried out other nouns: conviction, emotion, desire, hope. But none of these was what Joshua had offered up that late afternoon to her and John Menden. She had turned out the light and scrunched down under the comforter before it came to her, in that brief span of lucidity that leads us into sleep. It was not really passion, she realized with a deep sigh. It was the flip side of passion. What Josh had shown her today was a deep and resounding hatred.

  And what she had said to Joshua was, “he’s perfect.”

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  “As you know, Mr. Menden, on March 22, a little over half a year ago, Rebecca Harris was killed in the Journal parking lot. She was shot at long range by an assassin. The bullets were intended for her boss, Susan Baum. Whoever fired the shots either didn’t know exactly what Susan looks like—unlikely—or couldn’t distinguish her at three hundred and fourteen yards from Rebecca. After all, she was wearing a heavy raincoat and hat, and their general coloring, shape and hair color were similar. After all, she was getting into Susan’s car. After all, an assassin’s heart must be beating awfully hard at that time, wouldn’t you guess?”

  “I would guess that.”

  “So, as he let the air out of his lungs to steady his trigger finger, the last thing on his mind was that the woman in his crosshairs might not be the right one. Rebecca died; Susan didn’t. It was one of those things that qualify as tragedy, because Rebecca had a tragic flaw that allowed her to die. Her flaw was that she was kind, considerate and attentive. She’d agreed to bring around Ms. Baum’s car, and it cost her her life. The fact that Susan Baum suffers from gout and is no triathlete must have made Rebecca’s decision easy. None of this, I expect, is news to you.”

  Menden looked at Weinstein, then sipped again from his beer. “I was a reporter once, but news is always news.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. Now, what I’m about to tell you is what we, the Bureau, have learned in the six months since Rebecca Harris’s death. Some of it you may have read in the papers, but most of it I guarantee you have not. Right now, I need a promise from you, or we can’t continue. You’re editing the newspaper down here, the Anza Valley Lamp. Correct?”

  “That’s my career.”

  “I need your word that nothing I’m about to tell you will come out on those pages, or any other, or from your mouth, ever. No matter how many shots and beers you’ve downed on a Friday night. No matter how dull the Indian you’re talking to here on some quiet Sunday afternoon seems to be. No matter how close a lover may come to you.”

  Menden smiled with a certain obvious condescension, then drank off his shot and waved the waitress for another. Weinstein’s insides withered a little.

  “Do I have that promise?”

  “If it’s what you need.”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.” At that point, Weinstein glanced at Dumars, and his expression demanded the same of her, a promise. She began to suspect that his bringing her here under “personal time” and their abrupt exit from the office—no sign-out, no destination, no emergency number other than her pager—was a way of keeping her out of the official loop of Bureau intelligence. She looked away from Weinstein with what she hoped was a conditional yes.

  “Right now,” Joshua continued, “this is what we have that’s solid. The bullets were .30/06 caliber, soft-nosed, factory made at Hornady. They did not come from the cartridge shells left at the scene. You heard about those, I assume.”

  “Two of them.”

  “Did you kn
ow that they had been engraved?”

  Menden shook his head.

  “One said, ‘When in the course of human events—’, and the other said, ‘it becomes necessary—’ The engraving was professional, or by an expert amateur. The script mimicked that of the Declaration of Independence. Each phrase started at the bottom of the shell, and went toward the neck.”

  Menden frowned and drank from his glass again. “But they weren’t fired?”

  “Of course not. That would add to our evidence, and they weren’t willing to let us do that. God only knows where the gun itself is right now. The bottom of the Pacific, maybe. They took the real casings with them and left behind two shiny brass shells with their little warning on them. Their patriotic . . . signature.”

  “Their call for revolution.”

  Weinstein snorted. “They’re not revolutionaries. They’re agents of the status quo.”

  “Like you.”

  The shot arrived and John arranged it in front of him. The waitress studied Joshua as she made change, then walked away.

  “I’ll ignore that for now, and address it later. We’ve got more, but not much. The van, alleged to have been used by the shooter, was found ten miles away from the scene, behind a donut shop in Westminster. It had old plates on it, from a wrecking yard, likely—plates that hadn’t been used in a decade, since they graced a Volkswagen bug totalled in 1985. Strictly a disposable vehicle. Nobody saw it drive in; nobody saw who picked up the driver and or passengers. There were fingerprints in it and on it, but very few, and those were all partials. We found traces of talc on the wheel and interior door handles, window knobs, shift lever.”

  “The old latex glove trick.”

  “Likely. Hair and Fiber back in Quantico got all the samples we collected and worked them hard—nothing interesting, really, nothing that points a finger. We’ve got corroborative evidence now—things that don’t mean much unless we can match them with a suspect. Nothing primary.”