Joe Gores: Glass Tiger

Wallberg was slanting a look at the envelope. ‘Something?’

‘The usual suspects — their undying love and devotion so they can be riding the gravy train as it leaves the station.’

Wallberg knew his man too well to believe this. It was in Jaeger’s heavy voice, in the small, hard eyes that dominated the meaty face. He waited patiently until the door to the suite’s bedroom closed behind his wife, then snatched the envelope from the hand of his Chief of Staff.

‘Now let’s see what’s so damned important you had to...’

He ran down. One line, laser-printed on standard letter-size paper so it had no identifying characteristics the FBI lab could analyze. Mailed yesterday from Truckee, California.

‘Who has seen this?’

‘Me. As one of the new boys in town, I was being shown how the White House mailroom guys X-ray all incoming for poisons and explosives and biohazards and all that crap. I saw his name on it and snagged it unopened after they ran it through.’

‘What’s the temperature going to be for the ceremony?’

‘Twenty above. With wind-chill, five above.’

‘Tell Shayne O’Hara I agree with his Secret Service lads. At five above, it is more prudent to go with the closed limo.’

An hour later, Wallberg was standing before Chief Justice Alvin Carruthers, his right hand raised, his left hand flat on an open Bible. He was hatless, the icy wind ruffled his hair as he recited the oath of office after the aged jurist.

‘I, Gustave Wallberg... Do solemnly swear... That I will faithfully execute... The Office of President of the United States... And will to the best of my ability... Preserve, protect and defend... The Constitution of the United States...’

As he repeated the sacred words, that mad message burned in his brain: CONGRATULATIONS TO A DEAD PRESIDENT. CORWIN. Dear God. Would he have to shift priorities for his first weeks — months? — in office to accomodate the nearly unthinkable fact that Hal Corwin might still be alive?

The late March air was icy. Hal Corwin shivered as he crawled out of his sleeping bag to restart his fire. His campsite was a calculated quarter-mile off the ridge trail above California’s King’s Canyon National Park, at the edge of the sub-alpine zone where ponderosa pines crept up to mingle with old-growth Douglas firs and Engelmann spruce.

He sat on the hollow fir log that dominated the clearing as he waited for snow-melt to heat for instant coffee. The log was six feet in circumference and twenty-five feet long. It had been rotting there for four hundred years. The scattered droppings of countless generations of tiny deer mice, shrews and voles living in its depths had nourished the root fungi that laced its open end.

As he breathed the icy air as deep as his damaged lung would allow, he massaged his bad leg.

He stepped away from the tree and was struck a terrific blow below the left knee...

The stalking beast of his dreams didn’t exist, but he knew in his gut that tomorrow the searchers, lesser men, would come.

At two minutes after midnight, a red Chevy Tracker turned off California 180 to stop in the puddle of pale light by the antique gas pumps fronting Parker’s Resort. Two men got out to walk toward the rustic bar-cafe. One was six feet and hard-bitten, the other short, round, red of face. Both wore insulated coats and hunting caps with the earflaps down.

Seth Parker had just finished scraping the grease into the trap underneath the grill. He was a tall, stooped, skinny man, with wary brown eyes and a drooping ginger mustache. The rolled-up sleeves of his long-johns showed tattooed forearms. He stepped into the open doorway, his shadow cast long before him. His 12-gauge leaned against the wall two feet away.

‘No gas tonight, guys,’ he called. ‘Sorry.’

Except for the cafe, he and Mae weren’t really open for the season until the weekend, yet here were these two showing up at midnight on this lonely stretch of highway.

Big Guy stopped, said disarmingly, ‘How about a cabin?’

‘That we might be able to do. Depends on—’

‘How about something to eat?’ said Short and Round.

‘Just closed down the grill.’ But Seth’s wariness was gone. Obviously, for Short and Round, munchies were more important than mayhem. ‘Toasted cheese sandwiches?’

‘With bacon in ’em? And fries?’

‘Bacon we got. No fries tonight. Potato chips, pickles.’

While Seth grilled the sandwiches, they wandered around the old chinked-log building, drinking Miller Lite and looking at the deer and elk heads over the bar, the Chinook salmon mounted above the wide stone fireplace with its still-glowing hardwood embers.

Seth joined them at the table to have a beer himself. He never could get to sleep much before two a.m. anyway.

Short and Round, washing down his sandwich with his beer, said primly, ‘No private facilities are allowed in national parks, but this place sure as hell looks private to me.’

‘Run down, you mean?’ Seth chuckled. ‘My grand-daddy built it before the park went in. Sure you guys wouldn’t be happier at Grant Grove Center? It’s official, open all year. New cabins, a lodge, gift shop, grocery store — and you can get gas there.’

Big Guy shoved his plate aside, shook out a Marlboro, slightly raised it and his eyebrows. Seth nodded. He lit up.

‘Walter and I were trying to hook up with an old friend back at Cedarbrook, somehow we missed connections.’ He took a photo out of his shirt pocket. ‘Maybe he stopped by here?’

Seth studied the proffered picture, said reluctantly, ‘Feller come by ten, twelve days ago. I ain’t sure, but it could be him.’ He felt them tense up while trying to hide it. He returned the photo. ‘He come back three days ago.’

‘What for?’

‘Stock up. Instant coffee, Granola bars, Cup of Noodles, like that. And beef jerky. Lots of beef jerky.’

Big Guy asked, ‘Where’s he camped?’

‘Said he’s been bivouacked up off the ridge trail.’

‘Sounds like we’d better get an early start to catch him in case he’s thinking of moving on.’

Seth stood up to pull on his wool shirt and anorak. In the mountains in late March, the outside nighttime temperature was still in the ’teens, with snow still deep under the ponderosas.

‘Breakfast’s seven to nine, but Mae’ll open up at six.’

As he crossed the dimly-lit gravel drive to fire up the propane heater in cabin six, he thought, Friend my ass. Heat, most likely Feds. He could smell a cop like a bean fart at a girls’-school social.

Another dawn. Corwin sat beside his final fragrant spruce fire, drinking coffee. The searchers would be coming up the ridge trail from Parker’s place, moving slowly, silently. They’d be good. He knew that he was better.

A winter wren gave a sleepy cheep in the juniper thicket at one edge of the clearing. A pygmy nuthatch made tiny scraping sounds on its first upside-down journey of the day down one of the ponderosas. High above, in the tree’s crown, the band of resident crows was waking up with muted, grumpy squawks.

Soon they would head out to the lower-elevation meadows to forage, drift back up here to their roost at dusk. He would miss them. His name, Corwin, meant ‘friend of crows’ in Old English.

He kicked the fire to embers, got out the last of the beef jerky. As he had done every morning since coming here, he scattered pieces of it over the log. Several choice morsels he squashed with a thumb down into the deepest furrows of the bark.

When three quick, light caws identified him as Crow Three, eight sooty birds floated silently down through the branches. The breeding male, big as Poe’s raven and shiny as a stovepipe, landed on the log itself. In high school, Corwin had ended up as Bird Crow, and had passed the name on to the breeding male.