Randy White - Dead Silence

Tomlinson said, “Some people attack their old lives to validate their new ones. Valid point, though. Skull and Bones is a one-way religion.”

I placed the frame on the desk and began going through a stack of magazines as Tomlinson opened his hand, showing me the Indian figurine.

“There’s not a strip mall in the country that isn’t built on Indian bones. Geronimo was a shaman. Marion, they stole his head. I know you don’t believe, but I’ve seen it work too many times. It’s a different kind of power.” He paused. “The Apache graveyard is in Oklahoma. Did you know that?”

“No. Now that I do, I’ll try to forget it.” The man had littered my mind with so much oddball trivia that I was trying to do some housekeeping.

“Geronimo lived in Florida, too. With a bunch of imprisoned Florida Indians before they were all shipped west. You told me Will Chaser was from a reservation in Seminole County, Oklahoma. Synergy, man, it’s becoming clear to me now…”

I knew what Tomlinson was implying but didn’t want to hear his fairy-tale notions of spirituality and noble Indians. I was more interested in an article I had found. After years of court battles and injunctions, Skull and Bones had recently been forced to allow in female members.

“This magazine’s only a few months old,” I interrupted. “Someone’s been here.” I handed him the magazine, then looked at another that was folded open.

Tomlinson began to grin. “Women, the source of reason and light. Also, the ultimate ball-breaker cannibals. Skull and Bones has finally had its cherry busted. Older members, they’ve gotta be mad as hell. In a room full of Bonesmen, I bet Charles Manson would seem bedrock solid, the last nickel bargain in CEOs.”

“Even for you, that’s absurd.” I was trying to concentrate. “Do you know if your brother ever visited Cuba?”

He appeared surprised. “Not when I knew him.”

“Your father?”

“Same answer.”

Tomlinson had been to Cuba at least twice. No need to ask.

I continued going through magazines. Obsessive people dog-ear pages, use a highlighter, underline passages. Someone-maybe one of the Tomlinson men-circled things. He’d been keeping track of the females petitioning to get into Skull and Bones. He’d also been following the battle for Castro’s confiscated files. Key names had been circled.

I said, “On the fraternity roster, did you notice some of the other names? A couple of members helped plan the Bay of Pigs invasion. The country’s first attempt to take down Castro after he came to power. A generation older than your brother, but still…”

“You’re looking for a connection. Cuba, a kidnapping, Bonesmen.”

I said, “I don’t look, I collect-or try to. The Bay of Pigs was a disaster. Someone in a top spot tipped off the Soviets. No one’s ever figured out who.”

“A traitor.”

“Depends on which side you’re on.”

“It’s what I’ve been thinking all along. Castro’s papers could expose the wizard behind the curtain. Like Judas-that’s what I was telling you on the plane. The Tenth Man… Tinman. Same thing.”

I said, “Since 1959 there have been a lot of men behind a lot of curtains.”

Judas, the tenth disciple. J -the tenth letter in the alphabet-Tomlinson loved all symmetrical intersectings that suggested the world was orderly, design-driven.

I hadn’t told him that the real name of the covert operative, Tinman, had been confirmed. But which Tomlinson?

“That song was in the dream- Tinman! The dream that pulled me back to the old homeplace. ‘But Oz never did nothing to the Tin Man/That he didn’t, didn’t already have – ’ ” An old habit, perhaps, he reached for the harmonica in his pocket.

Before he got to it, I asked, “When you were in the Hamptons last week, who did you tell that you knew Senator Hayes-Sorrento? Or that I was meeting her for dinner last night?”

“A couple of people, I guess.”

“Barbara and I made our dinner date almost a month ago. Any late-night gabbing? Or text-messaging with your Long Island pals?”

He said, “Hey!,” offended. On his computer, Tomlinson had pasted a cryptic note: “No Es or Cs while D amp; S”-No E-mails or Calls while Drunk and Stoned. It had saved him money and cut down on next-day apologies.

I tossed the magazine into Tomlinson’s lap and watched his face change as he read.

“Sonuvabitch. It’s them. Bonesmen are behind the kidnapping deal.”

I said it again: “Fraternity boys don’t participate in murder just because of a secret handshake.”

“Well… it means my brother’s involved, at the very least.”

I said, “Is he?,” studying his reaction. I was thinking about the Cuban Program, scanning for a way to link it with an Ivy Leaguer from the Hamptons. If there was a connection, what completed the triangle?

Tomlinson stood. “We’ve got to search this place. I mean, really search it.”

I told him no, what we had to do was seal off the area as best we could until an FBI crime team arrived, plus the local cops and more search choppers.

I added, “I want to go back to that horse farm. If the trainer wakes up, you’ll do the explaining.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Why? All day the cops were there.”

“Because… Just because.”

I didn’t have an answer, but it was true when I told him that the helicopters were equipped with heat-sensing radar. The corpse of a dead horse, still cooling, could mask the heat signature of a live human.

I told him to find a phone or I’d get mine from the car.

“Call in the cavalry,” the phrase I used, unaware of the irony until I referred to Will Chaser, adding, “Saving the Indian kid takes precedence.”

I watched Tomlinson’s hand become a fist, squeezing the little bronze statue of Geronimo.

“I’m taking this with us for luck.”

I replied, “Good. Something to keep your hands busy,” which he chose to ignore.

A harmonica…?

Someone’s playing a damn harmonica!

Uh-huh. Like a cartoon. Some doofus swallows a harmonica and makes haww-heee… heee-haww notes as he walks.

Will Chaser could picture it, although he couldn’t see.

A man. No, two men, talking. Close.

Nothing he could do but listen, until the sound of the harmonica was transformed in his head and began to resemble Cazzio’s wheezing scream.

Harmonica. Sounded like a donkey bloated on helium, something he knew about because he’d joked around with some girls using a helium balloon a few years back at the fairgrounds in Oklahoma City. Native American Rodeo Championship. Senior Division, even though he was twelve at the time. The Yavapai Apache team had brought him in as a ringer. How could he lose riding Blue Jacket?

“The kid wants to wager how much…?”

Skins off the Rez loved gambling and vodka-vodka because bosses couldn’t smell it on the job. The more booze in their bellies, the stupider they got, which was fine because Will had cashed in. Made.. . six bills? About that.

Shak-oh-pee!

A word from the old language. Another thing about Skins when drunk. They’d throw together the few phrases they remembered, getting belligerent, as their eyes glazed, pretending to be real Indian warriors like in the movies that Old Man Guttersen watched. Just as fake, too.

An excuse for acting like assholes, is what it was. Same as when they passed out, curling up in some alley-Will had seen it-then later, claimed they’d been on a Vision Quest. Visited by the Old Ones in their dreams.

Vision Quests. Dreams. All bullshit.

Haww-heee… heee-haww.

The harmonica again. Or maybe he was dreaming now? A nightmare, all of it. Which meant he was imagining men’s voices, too.