and dinner. “Maybe sooner than you suspect.” I sipped my tea and rested the glass back in the perfect circle of condensation on the counter and then picked up my burger. “You wouldn’t happen to have a set of old keys to Tribal Headquarters, would you, Albert?”
It wasn’t easy to break into the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Headquarters since the damn thing was completely surrounded by roads, parking lots, and dusk-to-dawn lights. We’d parked Rezdawg at the rear of the building with an unhappy Dog sitting on the bench seat; it was going to be difficult enough to go about breaking and entering without being accompanied by a prairie grizzly.
Albert Black Horse sorted through a ring of keys that looked like a holiday wreath. “It’s one of those square- head, do-not-duplicate ones; I always keep one of them.”
I stood with my back to him in order to provide a blind and keep a lookout. “Wise decision.” After a few moments, I asked. “Any luck?”
“I think Long might’ve changed the locks.” There was a jostling. “Nope, got it.”
I listened as the heavy security door swung wide, just as an aged Plymouth rolled by with about a hundred people in it. They stared at me, and I waved, figuring a bold crook is a successful crook. After they’d chugged around the swerve in the road, I turned and followed Albert.
“Something?”
I shook my head and carefully closed the metal door. “A war party in a minivan, but I think we’re safe. What are they going to do, call the police?”
He nodded. “They could call the FBI.”
“They’re busy having dinner in Billings.”
“The BIA?”
“There’s that. Do you have any friends over there?”
He smiled with the one corner of his mouth. “A few, but not many-they’re all from other tribes.”
It was true, the BIA was staffed mostly with members of other tribes. I followed him through a hallway I didn’t know existed, and we approached a stairwell. “The crow’s nest is in the basement?”
“Yeah, more like a crow hole.” Albert called over his shoulder as we went down the steps to open a second door. We turned right into another hallway that ran lengthways underneath the building with storage spaces and adjacent utility rooms. Albert reached over and flipped on the lights, bare bulbs hanging from conduit holes along the metalwork in the ceiling. “I don’t think we have to worry about being seen down here.”
He walked along the hallway with his shoulders stooped, stopping in front of a nondescript door with a small, wire-mesh window. It looked like there had been an identifying plaque on it, but all that was left was the adhesive where the sign had been.
Albert fumbled with more keys as I leaned against the concrete wall. “Sounds like Loraine Two Two doesn’t care for Barrett Long.”
“Loraine Two Two doesn’t care for anybody who shows an interest in Inez, and that would be about half the tribe.”
“The male half?”
“Pretty much, but that kid.” He shook his head as he turned a key in the lock. “She’s a tough one.” He pushed the door open with a scraping sound from the hinges, noisy from lack of use. “Here we go.”
He brushed a hand along the wall, and I heard a switch being flipped but it was unaccompanied by illumination.
“Damn it.” I heard him shuffle closer to me. “Hold the door open, and I’ll steal a bulb from the hallway.”
I watched as he went out, licked his fingers, and reached up to untwist one of the bulbs, only to let it escape from his grip and pop on the concrete floor with a surprisingly loud sound. I glanced at the army of retreating lights. “Looks like there are plenty more to choose from.”
He nodded, advanced on the next one, and was more careful this time. Cradling the bulb in his hand as he entered the room, he undid the old bulb, handed it to me, and screwed in the borrowed one. The room flashed into view and so did the dust and cobwebs of the abandoned security center. There was a single chair, a counter, and small monitors in a shelf system, along with a rack of recording decks that looked as if they might’ve never been used.
“Looks like you were right; nobody’s been in this place in years.”
“Do you mind if I ask what it is you are looking for?”
I took a few steps toward the rolling chair, placed the burnt-out bulb on the counter, and studied the monitors that studied me back like gigantic, myopic eyes. “Nothing, really, I was just thinking.”
There was a portion of one of the audio recording decks where some of the dust had been wiped away, as if by accident. I reached behind it and nudged it forward-something brushed against the back of my hand. I caught a couple of cables. “Should these be unplugged?”
He shrugged. “They’re just the usual RCA cables, stereo-one red and one white, and this place hasn’t been used in years.” He paused for a moment and then fingered the end where another Y-shaped cable joined the other two and combined them into one small, thin junction plug. “Hmm.”
“What is it?”
He ignored me and leaned around the side in order to study the back and then turned with a puzzled look on his face. “It’s disconnected from the junction box, but that’s not the only funny part; that splicer on there is to connect the cables into a modern computer.”
I fingered the cable end. “You didn’t have anything like this back when you wired the place?”
“No, this is a USB connector.” He glanced up at me. “You don’t know a lot about computers, do you?”
“Next to nothing.” I looked at the monitors. “Albert, are the audio and visual surveillance systems connected or separate?”
“Separate; we had a lot of money back then but not that much.”
“Is every office in the building wired for sound?”
He shook his head. “No, just the communal areas.”
“Like reception?”
“Yes.”
I held up the cables. “Are these the ones connected to Human Services?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there any way to find out?”
He shrugged. “Sure, there should be a location code on the junction box, and then we just need the code off of the mic at the reception desk.” He leaned behind the rack and ran a hand up the wall to a large, open junction box in the ceiling. His eyes raced down the small black and white labels. “R-7.”
I was about to speak when it sounded like one of the heavy metal doors to the stairs opened and, after a few seconds, closed. Albert and I froze, looking at each other and then toward the audio room door which we’d lodged open.
Albert looked more worried than me. “Should we close that door and turn off the light?”
“We’re the good guys.” I listened, but there weren’t any more sounds. “But maybe we can catch a bad guy.”
He nodded, went to the doorway, and peered around the corner, then turned back to me. “Should I go down the hall the other way and up those stairs, double back and come down behind them?”
I pulled the. 45 from the small of my back. “Do you have a weapon?”
He reached under his black satin jacket and held out one of those antiquated, garage-door-opener style Tasers. “I have this.”
I looked at the thing doubtfully. “Well, let’s hope it’s not a gunfight.”
He nodded solemnly, went down the hall the other way, quickly made a right, and disappeared. I could hear him climb the stairs. As he moved away, I flipped off the switch in the security room.
Albert was gone for about a minute when the rest of the lights also went out.
I edged to the doorway and kneeled, placing my shoulder against the jamb. It sounded as if someone was moving to the left, the grit of the hard floor twisting underneath leather soles.
My eyes closed, because there wasn’t anything to see there in the subterranean part of the rambling complex, and I wanted to give my ears all of my attention. Whoever was out there was out there in the dark along with me, and it was also possible that he didn’t care for the thought of bullets ricocheting in the confined, concrete
