April Smith - Judas Horse

“Steal it from the base and collect it over time.” I nod. “That sounds like Stone. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been planning the Big One since he split the Bureau.” “I really wish you’d been wearing a wire when he handed you that jive. I’d give anything to hear his version of events.” “Here’s what I think: We drove him crazy.”

Donnato believes I’m joking and cracks another potato chip.

“We didn’t know our ass from our elbow, and the country was in a revolution. Dick Stone is a casualty of war.” “I’m glad you’re not wearing a wire.” “Is it treason to tell the truth?”

An immaculate RV has pulled up, and a portly gentleman wearing a bow tie has disembarked, along with two magnificently groomed Cardigan Welsh corgis, who hop down the ladder like a pair of princes. Show dogs, rehearsing their stuff. The trio trots ludicrously around our table, the dogs keeping stride with their master’s swaying gut.

As they pass, Donnato switches to upbeat gossip.

“Kyle Vernon’s son is moving back from Virginia.” My mood perks up, hearing of old buddies on the bank robbery squad.

“Didn’t his son just graduate from UVA?”

Donnato nods. “He’s moving to California. Looks like he sold a script to the movies about a black kid whose dad is a black FBI agent….” We sit for a while at the weathered picnic table under the shimmering boughs of pine, while the dogs rebelliously bark at squirrels, and Donnato does his job of bringing me out of the dream I’ve inhabited on the farm, back to my grounding in the Bureau family.

“Your friend Barbara Sullivan is pregnant again. They did the test. It’s another girl.” “That’s great. Will she quit?”

“It’s doubtful she’ll come back from maternity leave. You two ever talk?” I shake my head. This will be our final passing. Barbara Sullivan will retire just as I reenter the Bureau, and we will let each other go.

The RV pulls away. I get up from the table, but Mike Donnato stays where he is. He is looking at his fingers, which are peeling the bark off another twig. I notice there’s a pile of naked twigs on the ground between his feet.

“What’s the matter?”

“We have a situation, Ana.”

I sit back down.

“I had lunch with Rosalind.”

“Oh, really? Where’d you go?”

“Factor’s Deli.” He squints in the wash of sunlight. “Do you have to know what we ordered, too?” “I know what you ordered. A grilled chicken sandwich.” Donnato goes on, beleaguered. “Rosalind had good information. Dick Stone had a brother who died in Vietnam.” “I know. I’m a few steps ahead of you, bud.”

“What you don’t know is that Toby Himes and Peter Abbott served together in Vietnam. We were going to tell you.” No need to answer that.

“Rosalind said Dick Stone’s brother served on the same squad as Himes and Abbott. All three of them. Only two made it back.” “Does Peter Abbott know that Toby Himes is a person of interest to Operation Wildcat?” Donnato hedges. “He reads the reports young Jason Ripley sends out.” “Why didn’t Peter Abbott tell us about the link between himself and Himes and Dick Stone’s brother? Why’d we have to find it out from a secretary?” “Believe me, Galloway is asking the same questions.” Donnato finally reveals their suspicions. They put a trap on the deputy director’s phones and discovered Toby Himes has been calling Abbott on his private number. This is so explosive that neither of us moves. My partner remains seated at the table, elbows on knees, in profile. The sun glints off the top of his wavy hair and the short curve of his forehead.

“Stone’s a former agent; I know his game. But Abbott scares me. What’s he up to, and on what level?” “I promise we’ll find out. Let us face the task before us. I’m here to tell you that headquarters has authorized the hit on Herbert Laumann.” “How can I go through with it after what you’ve just said?” I lower my voice. “That the boss could be involved in a conspiracy?” “You’ll have full backup. I’ll be there, Ana. I’ll be running the show.” But deep uncertainty has hit me in the gut. Not just about them but about myself, too. My ability to pull the trigger. Already I am feeling queasy. I kick at a mound of sawdust at the base of a tree stump, chewed up by bugs. It takes a moment to refocus.

“Laumann. Okay.”

“You specified a Colt.45?”

“Stone’s gun, right.”

“Jason got this for you.”

Donnato fishes inside his pocket. A family with three little kids comes screaming toward the restrooms.

“How good a shot are you?” he asks, his voice clear despite their earsplitting shrieks. “Because the first bullet in the chamber will be live.” He holds out his hand. I hold out mine. Our palms touch in slow motion, and the magazine for a Colt.45 is transferred. I slip it smoothly into my pocket.

Jason provided a magazine filled with blanks. When Dick Stone gives me his gun, I will switch magazines. But the gun will have already been loaded, one live bullet already ejected into the chamber, requiring my first shot to be precisely accurate. When I approach Herbert Laumann — on whatever darkened street, or maybe in the middle of the day — I must hit him squarely in the bulletproof vest.

The parking lot in the rest area seems filled with smoking vehicles, each exuding a black cloud of burned brake lining. The noise of the engines is raw. The tuna fish was bad; it’s making me sick. The sun is hot; it’s making me weak. My mind unhooks and ruminates on the detective I shot. The world fragments and he is everywhere. My heart pounds. The magazine of blanks in my pocket is heavy as the weight of original sin. Donnato is throwing the garbage away. I’m back in the spinning car, bloody and gruesome, looking at the detective’s unseeing eyes. The blind foal is nursing. Sirocco’s tail whips the flies and the pasture vibrates with bees. The cicadas are singing on the battlefield.

When young boys came home from the Civil War and lay at night in the safety of their featherbeds, their pulses would still race unaccountably. It was a condition doctors recognized, even way back then, as “soldier’s heart.” No bad judgment.

No mistakes.

No cowgirl stuff.

On his last day on earth as BLM deputy state director, before a radical animal rights activist named Darcy DeGuzman murders him in front of his own house, Herbert Laumann is still fighting the fight — not just the massive traffic over Portland’s Broadway Bridge but also call after call through the headset as the droning voice of his assistant bombards his brain with end-of-day problems at the office. Idling on the bridge at rush hour, trucks and buses blocking the river view, he must be wondering if the FBI, an agency he believes in, is leading him into an even worse predicament.

Can he trust anyone? He must be insane. Yes, that’s fine. Walk up and shoot me, whatever fits your bill. But he has no right to question. He has failed to protect his family. He is a hollow man in the wrong skin — his son’s skin — that has become a searing penance, night and day. It was the promise of world-class medical treatment for Alex that sealed the deal with the all-too-understanding FBI men. But they still won’t say which burn center he will be admitted to, in which part of the country. Or what type of new job Laumann will be given.

They keep promising a painless death and peaceful afterlife.

Maybe secretly he wishes the bullets would be real.

We, the assassins, follow.

Dick Stone, down to fighting weight and back on his meds, is a force of nature, like those glacial rivers roaring down from Canada. I never saw until today how the fragments come together — the loyalty that made him an FBI agent, and the demonic intelligence that opens the soul’s unwilling gate to murder.