Judas Horse

he helpful?”

“Before he almost died of internal injuries? Yes, he put me in bed with Megan Tewksbury. He knows she’s an activist. That’s why he made a big point of introducing us, even though I had no clue what he was doing at the time. He must have thought I was a real lamebrain fed—” “He accomplished the mission. Calm down. I got Salvador Molly’s.” Donnato opens a fragrant bag of Caribbean takeout. “Have an empanada.” I do not calm down. “What’s going on? You look wasted.”

There are bruised dark circles beneath his eyes, sweat stains on his white shirt. We have met in a neighborhood of unreconstructed streets, dotted with bakeries and thrift stores, in a working-class part of Portland. The Econo Lodge, situated on a gritty avenue of easy-credit used-car lots, is a stucco relic of the sixties weathered to the color of a strawberry milk shake, a couple of salesmen’s hatchbacks parked outside.

You always have to worry about countersurveillance, so I trudged to the top floor carrying an empty suitcase, and casually unlocked room 224. Using an old FBI maneuver, Donnato was set up two doors down in 228. That way, nobody could put us as meeting together. The average bonehead would not realize the rooms were adjoining, because the Bureau had rented all three.

The connecting doors are still open, creating a triplet of empty cubes identically stocked and sanitized, down to the crispy tissue-wrapped plastic cups. Even the daylight looks dry-cleaned.

“My father-in-law threw a blood clot and had another stroke.” “I’m really sorry, Mike. How is he?”

“Back in the hospital. It’s touch and go. We’ve been up all night.” He draws the curtains to discourage telephoto lenses from neighboring rooftops, and turns the clock radio to NPR. Not because he likes their politics but because at this hour they provide a screen of background jabber so nobody can hear us through the walls. With the curtains closed, the place is dark as a theater. Weak pools of light drop from the table lamps like halos.

“I don’t know if we’ve got a cult here, or what,” I tell him. “The female was wearing a triangular silver necklace called a valknot.” “Asatru,” says Donnato.

“God bless you.”

“Don’t push it,” he warns.

“What’d I say?”

“Asatru is a modern-day religion based on ancient Norse beliefs.” He reaches for a habanero and cheese fritter. “Its adherents practice a pagan philosophy that talks about preserving nature. The white supremacists have adapted a form of it and switched it around to justify their views.” “There were neo-Nazis at the bar.”

“What were they doing?”

“One of them was eating an ashtray.”

This doesn’t register as anything strange.

“Barriers are coming down,” Donnato muses without missing a beat. “Interesting alliances are starting to form between terrorist groups. Right there you have a potential affinity between environmentalists and right-wing thinking. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that these groups could get together. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’” “You have blood enemies at Omar’s who should be tearing each other’s throats out.” “It’s called business.”

“You can buy anything there. Hookers, dope, hazelnut brittle—” “Hazelnut brittle? Pretty damn subversive. That’s it. Now I’m hooked.” He rolls his eyes.

“Shut up. Megan Tewksbury is our way in. She will lead us to FAN.” “Why?”

“She’s accessible. Funny. Openhearted. I liked her.”

“She is not supposed to be your mom.”

“I know that.”

“It’s my job to remind you that in isolation the bad guys can start looking pretty good.” “That’s not it. Look.”

I flash him the latest issue of Willamette Week, a liberal throwaway I snagged at the vegan Cosmic Cafe. There were piles of it near the bulletin board, underneath an unpleasant chart of a side of beef. The whole front page of the newspaper is a poster in the style of the Old West: WANTED — FOR GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER, with a photo of BLM’s deputy state director, Herbert Laumann.

“Megan gave me the heads-up that FAN would break the story, and here it is. Laumann has been illegally adopting mustangs under his relatives’ names and selling them to a slaughterhouse in Illinois.” Donnato studies the paper.

“She rescues animals on a farm; she’s hooked in. They don’t like visitors, which is an excellent reason for me to get my butt out there and see what’s going down.” He still doesn’t like it.

“Sounds weak. We commit the resources, and your friend Megan turns out to be a housewife who likes cat calendars.” Donnato brushes his tie of crumbs. He is maddeningly fastidious about his Calvin Klein suits and fine tasseled loafers, even in a sleazoid motel. But today his meticulous mannerisms are pissing me off.

“What would be solid enough for you?”

“Give me Bill Fontana.”

Bill Fontana is a leader in the movement who did two years in prison for setting fire to 250 tons of hay in an animal-husbandry building at UC Davis. Fontana is a scrawny, bright-eyed kid, still winning hearts and minds with his “fearless saboteur” shtick. The prison sentence only added to the mythology.

“Wonder Boy Fontana is speaking here at a big animal rights convention. I met with the Portland task force that has been assigned to FAN—” “Wait a minute,” I say stubbornly, interrupting him. “Can we go back to Megan? We’re looking for me to make my bones. This is a legit way in. Megan is a can-do person, the type who gets things done. I’m telling you, she’s good.” “She may be good, but Angelo will say she’s weak.”

I don’t like the innuendo. Weak because we’re talking about the two of us establishing a female relationship? Weak because she doesn’t fit the prototype of the male junkie informant guys like Angelo understand?

I lift my chin. “I’ve identified a true believer and I’m getting close to her. That’s procedure, absolutely! I need your help to find a way of getting out to that farm.” Donnato stands, thoroughly irritated.

“Tell me something, Ana. Why is it always your agenda?”

I am dumbfounded. “My agenda?” “You are fixated on this woman, and I know why. Not because it’s a knockout idea, but because it’s yours. Yours against mine. You against the badass bureaucracy. It’s been that way as long as I’ve known you.” My fastidious partner has never attacked me like this before. “What is wrong with you? I thought I was the one with the hormones. You’ve been touchy since I walked in the door.” Men hate it when you use the word hormones.

“Omar’s Roadhouse was Steve Crawford’s last known location,” Donnato insists. “And we still don’t know why he was there, and why he was not following procedure.” “Who said he wasn’t?”

“Marvin Gladstone.”

“You believe that? Marvin’s just covering his ass.”

“Why wasn’t Steve checking in?”

I shrug. “He was running his own game. The old-timer couldn’t keep up.” “What game?”

I snort slowly through my nose. I become aware of afternoon traffic. I wish we had some beer. Okay, I’ll be the one to say it.

“Maybe he was meeting a woman.”

Now Donnato is incensed. “Steve was a good father and a good man! What on earth would make you say something like that?” “It’s an idea,” I protest. “I don’t like the implications, either, but I throw it out for discussion, like any other case, and you go off on me. We all love Tina and Steve. Nobody’s trying to stir something up. Him getting it on with someone else — it’s just a theory. Why does it bug you so much?” The two of us arguing about Steve’s marriage in a sterile box in the middle of a strange city is suddenly absurd and strangely familiar. It reminds me of undercover school, and the dead-serious games they forced us to play. It is almost as if, against our wills, Donnato and I have been cast as a pair of ridiculous personages — I a naif named Darcy, and he all buttoned up in the Bureau uniform.

Or is it failure of will that has ignited Donnato? Could the true source of his distress be the unbearable frisson (God knows, I’m feeling it) of a man and woman who have worked together twelve years, alone in the late afternoon, in not one but three empty motel rooms? No, no — of course we have a lid on it. Donnato is back with his wife after yet another separation. Isn’t he?