Counterplay

“You suspect a traitor?”

“Well, something’s fishy,” Tran answered. “The federal agents who got shot were set up. How else would professionals allow two truckloads of armed men to drive up and shoot them without a fight?”

“Maybe someone else got there first and shot them before the trucks arrived,” Marlene suggested.

“We thought of that, too,” Tran said. “But Ned saw the trucks approaching and then heard the shooting. And don’t forget the murder of Fey. Someone told the killer where to find him and that was something only the federal agencies had knowledge of. There’s one more thing, John’s guys swear that the photograph the terrorists had of him had been taken for his police identification card, which they said was only on file in their office and with the FBI…. I don’t think they were likely to give it to anyone; they loved that man.”

“I did, too,” Marlene said. “And karma or not, Buddhist or Indian spirituality or not, I’m going to do my best to kill the bastard who did this…. Jaxon thinks there’s a mole in either his agency or Homeland Security, too.”

She recalled a conversation she’d had with the agent that afternoon. It was believed that the terrorists had entered New Mexico from Mexico near the town of Gallup.

About thirty thousand people are caught sneaking across the border there every year; many more aren’t apprehended, Jaxon had said. Most of them are just poor laborers trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. However, it’s also popular with drug smugglers and apparently, as we just found out, terrorists. Two men with the Minuteman organization-a bunch of civilians down on the border trying to help the Border Patrol spot illegals-disappeared about five days ago, their bodies were found this morning; they’d been shot to death. Probably stumbled on the terrorists and paid the price.

The deaths of the Homeland Security agents were being kept very hush-hush. Jon Ellis, who’d arrived in town with Jaxon, was positive that his men had been ambushed before the truckloads of terrorists arrived. He’d even questioned whether Jojola was playing “both sides of the field” until Marlene had angrily straightened him out.

Did they give you stupid pills? she’d said. My friend died saving my daughter and her boyfriend after your guys were caught asleep at the wheel. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead- those two men are gone and can’t defend themselves-but you have to wonder why they’re sitting there like clay pigeons when they’re supposed to be keeping an eye on my daughter.

Jaxon started to intervene, but Ellis apologized. It’s okay, she’s right. He added, I’m asking myself those same questions.

Tran nodded and thought for a moment. A coyote howled outside the gate. “I have to go,” he said. “I’m leaving for New York; you know how to contact me there. But I wanted to warn you. The hospital is being watched. The reservation is being watched. You’ve been followed since you got to Albuquerque. So far these watchers haven’t tried to infiltrate the reservation, and it wouldn’t be healthy for them if they did. But take care, Marlene. Trust no one.”

Marlene hugged her old friend again. “Thank you, Tran,” she said. “In case I’ve never told you, I love you, too. So be careful; I couldn’t stand to have you both on the road without me.”

Tran nodded and smiled. She thought there was even a hint of a tear in his eye as he led the way out of her room. “Don’t grieve too much,” he said, turning to her. “We need to look ahead, not behind. I suspect there will be many surprises still in store for all of us before this is over.”

With that, the former guerrilla slipped out of the gate and into the gray light just before the dawn. A coyote, the one who sounded like a man imitating a coyote, howled and was answered from farther away by, she thought, the real animal.

Out in the sagebrush, a shadow emerged and joined Tran. “You need to work on your coyote-speak, my friend,” the shadow whispered, “she almost shot you.”

21

July

Detective Clarke Fairbrother drove slowly down Eden Street in Bar Harbor, Maine, looking for the address he’d located by calling a pal with the NYPD union’s pension fund and asking where they sent retirement checks for former Detective Brian John Bassaline.

He didn’t remember Bassaline, even though they were about the same age and had come on the force about the same time. But that wasn’t all that unusual, they’d worked out of different precincts and Bassaline had mostly stayed with homicide, while he’d spent the bulk of his detective years chasing after the mob-racketeering, vice, drugs, with of course a few murders thrown in.

At last he spotted the house number on a mailbox outside of a light blue cottage near the waterfront. He could see the gray-green waters of the harbor fifty feet beyond the house and a small quay with a sixteen-foot sailboat tied up next to it, but it was difficult to see much farther as the fog left over from the night before had not yet melted away in the morning sun. Getting out of the car, he inhaled deeply, catching the salt air mixed with a slight tinge of fuel oil. Somewhere in the fog a buoy bell tolled. It was peaceful, almost a throwback to a simpler time, and he understood why a former NYPD homicide detective might want to retire to such a spot.

Fairbrother had considered the retirement thing himself. He was eligible, but after his wife, Marge, took sick and passed away a few years back, there was nothing for him at home. They hadn’t been able to have kids, so it was just a big empty house without even the sound of his wife puttering around in some corner. He and Marge had talked about selling their old place in Yonkers when he retired, buying a Winnebago and then traveling around the country, but it wasn’t something he wanted to do by himself.

Trouble was, he didn’t feel like he fit in down at the precinct either. In fact, he felt like a dinosaur with all the new hotshots coming in with their college degrees in “criminal justice” and the newfangled technology and ways of doing things. The officers humored him, but it was clear that they were all just waiting for him to toddle off to the old folks’ home or maybe keel over at his desk.

So he’d jumped at the chance when V. T. Newbury called and asked if he wanted to work in the DAO’s office for his anticorruption unit-with the option of staying on even after the department eventually kicked him out. He hooked up with Ray Guma, a tough, hard-nosed prosecutor he’d done a couple of mob prosecutions with back in the day, to work on cold cases-icing on the cake. Real detective work again.

Still, ol’ Brian has got himself a nice place here, Fairbrother thought as he walked up the path toward the cottage. He was glad to see there were only a couple of stairs to the porch as the arthritis in his hips had been acting up. Reaching the steps, he looked up as a man appeared at the screen door accompanied by a large German shepherd.

A low-throated growl emanated from the dog as the man with him, a pug-ugly archetypical Irish cop with a face as gnarled as the piece of driftwood decorating the front lawn, said, “Whaddya want?” The dog growl even louder.

“If you’re Detective Bassaline, and I’m guessing by the Bronx accent that you are, I’d like to ask you a few questions,” Fairbrother answered, holding up his gold detective badge. “Clarke Fairbrother. I’m working with the DAO.”

“I got nothin’ to say,” Bassaline replied and started to turn around. “Come on, Fred.”

“It’s about the Teresa Stavros case,” Fairbrother continued.

Bassaline hesitated at the door. “I still ain’t interested.”

Fairbrother knew he was losing the battle and decided to take a chance. “I guess not,” Fairbrother retorted, “since you dropped the ball the first time.”

The detective thought perhaps he’d taken too great a chance when Bassaline whirled and snarled, “Who the fuck says that?” The dog picked up on his master’s anger and lunged at the screen door in full-throated roar with his teeth bared.

“Fred, down!” Bassaline commanded. The dog immediately stopped and lay down.

“K-9 unit,” Fairbrother said. “Didn’t know you worked that division.”

Bassaline looked down at his dog with undisguised affection. “I didn’t,” he said. “Fred here is a hero. He took a bullet for his handler, but it made him shy of loud noises…unfit for duty. They were going to put him down. But I