James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

“What you done to have this kind of luck, man?” Negrito asked, caressing Cody’s cheek with the back of his wrist. “Maybe you just act like you’re a funny man. Maybe you’ve done some things you want to tell me and Krill about. Things that make you feel real bad. You’re a nice boy. We’re gonna be good friends.” He leaned close to Cody’s ear and whispered, his breath like a feather on Cody’s skin. Then he withdrew his mouth and smiled. “You gringos call it pulling a train. But in your case, I’m gonna be the train, the big choo-choo in your life, man.”

Hackberry Holland had given the paper plate used by Krill to the FBI. That was on a Monday. The next day he heard nothing but marked it off to the workload that beset all law enforcement agencies. On Wednesday he began making calls, none of which were returned. Nor were they returned on Thursday. Late Friday afternoon Maydeen Stoltz came into his office. She had fat arms and wore too much lipstick and smelled of cigarettes and took a pagan joy in her own irreverence. Hackberry had been reading a book he had checked out of the public library. He closed it and let his arm rest on the cover. “That fed was on the phone,” Maydeen said.

“Which fed?”

“The one who uses the department to wipe his ass on.”

“Good heavens, Maydeen-”

“If it was me, I’d slap him upside the head, I don’t care how old he is.”

“Would you kindly tell me who we’re talking about?”

“Ethan Riser, who’d you think?”

Hackberry rubbed his temples, his gaze fixed on neutral space. “What did Agent Riser have to say?”

“That’s the point. He didn’t say anything, except you should call him. I told him you were in your office. He said he didn’t have time to talk with you right now. He said you can call him back later on his cell phone.”

Hackberry tried to process what he had just heard, then gave up. “Thanks, Maydeen.”

“Want me for anything else?”

“Nope, but I’ll tell you when I do.”

“I’m just passing on the conversation.”

“Got it,” he said.

A half hour later, Ethan Riser called again. “Why wouldn’t you talk to me a while ago?” Hackberry asked.

“I had an incoming call from Washington. I thought I explained that to your dispatcher.”

“Evidently not. Did your lab get some prints for us?”

“Come down to the saloon. I’ll buy you a drink.”

“You’re in town?”

“Yeah, I have to be over in Brewster tonight. But I like the saloon and cafe you have here. It’s quite a spot.”

“I’m glad you were able to find time to visit. You have a reason for not coming to my office?”

“Can’t do it, partner. That’s the way it is,” Riser said.

“I see. My dispatcher is named Maydeen Stoltz. If you run into her, just keep going.”

“Care to explain that?”

“You’ll figure it out.” Hackberry hung up the telephone without saying good-bye. He got up from his desk and went into Pam Tibbs’s office. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

When they entered the saloon, Riser was eating a hamburger and drinking beer from a frosted mug in a back booth. His gaze slipped from Hackberry’s face to Pam’s, then back to Hackberry’s. “Order up. It’s on the G,” he said.

Pam Tibbs and Hackberry sat down across from him. The saloon was dark and cool and smelled of beer and pickled sausage and ground meat frying in the kitchen. The floor was built from railroad ties that had been treated with creosote and blackened by soot from prairie fires, the heads of the rusty steel spikes worn the color of old nickels. The mirror behind the bar had a long fissure across it, shaped like a lightning bolt, so that the person looking into it saw a severed image of himself, one that was normal, one that was distorted, like a face staring up from the bottom of a frozen lake. Riser drank from his beer, a shell of ice sliding down his fingers. “I like this place. I always stop here when I’m in the area,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s five stars, all right. How about losing the charade?” Hackberry said.

“I do what I have to do, Sheriff.”

“I’m not sympathetic.”

“Okay,” Riser said, setting down his beer, pushing away his food. “The guy who ate off that paper plate doesn’t have prints on file in the conventional system. But you knew that or you wouldn’t have given it to us. You were trying to use us, Sheriff.”

“I gave you the paper plate because I had a professional obligation to give it to you,” Hackberry said.

“Deputy Tibbs, can you go up to the bar and get whatever you and Sheriff Holland are having and bring another beer for me?” Riser said.

“No, I can’t,” she replied.

Riser looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He finished his beer and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “This guy Krill is in the computer at Langley. Before 9/11 we didn’t have access to certain kinds of information. Now we do. A couple of decades back, our administration had some nasty characters working for us in Central America. Krill was one of them. He was of low-level importance in the big scheme of things but quite valuable in the bush.”

“What’s his real name?” Pam asked.

“Sorry?” Riser said.

“Are you hard of hearing?” she asked.

“Sheriff, we have a problem here,” Riser said.

“No, we don’t have a problem,” Pam said. “The problem is you treat us like we’re welfare cases you keep at bay with table scraps. Sheriff Holland has treated you and the Bureau with respect. Why don’t you and your colleagues pull your heads out of your asses?”

“I had hoped we might establish some goodwill here,” Riser said.

“I think Pam has a point,” Hackberry said.

“I don’t make the rules. I don’t make our foreign policy, either,” Riser said. “Nobody likes to admit we’ve done business with crab lice. Our friend Krill’s real name is Antonio Vargas. We don’t know that much about him, except he was on the payroll for a while, and now he’s off the leash and seems to have a special hatred toward the United States.”

“Why?” Hackberry asked.

“Maybe the CIA paid him in Enron stock. How would I know?”

“You need to stop lying, Mr. Riser,” Pam said.

“Ma’am, you’re way out of line,” Riser said.

“No, you are,” she said. “We bagged up that guy’s dirty work. You ever pick up human fingers with your hands? Anybody who could do what he did has a furnace inside him instead of a brain. For us, these guys are not an abstraction. We live on the border, in their midst, and you’re denying us information we’re entitled to have.”

Riser picked up his hamburger and bit into it. He chewed a long time before he spoke, his face looking older, more fatigued, perhaps more resigned to serving masters and causes he didn’t respect. “This saloon reminds me of a photograph or a place I saw on vacation once,” he said.

“The Oriental in Tombstone,” Hackberry said. “It was run by the Earp brothers. That was just before the Earps and Doc Holliday blew three of the Clanton gang out of their socks at the O.K. Corral, then hunted down the rest and killed them one by one all the way to Trinidad.”

“You guys must have a different frame of reference, because I’m never quite sure what you’re talking about,” Riser said.

“The message is we don’t like getting dumped on,” Pam said.

“This has really been an interesting meeting,” Riser said. He got up from the booth and studied the check. He wore a brown suit with a thin western belt and no tie and a cowboy shirt that shone like tin. He didn’t raise his eyes from the check when he spoke. “I love this country. I’ve served it most of my life. I honor other people who have served it, particularly someone who was a recipient of the Navy Cross. I also honor those who work with a man of that caliber. I’m sorry I don’t convey that impression to others. I hope both of you have a fine weekend.”