Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

‘A few months back I sent a package from LA to a Janet Roanhorse at General Delivery,’ Thorne beamed. ‘I was wondering if you have any record that she ever received it?’

Rosie didn’t have to look anything up. ‘Sure did. Roanhorse, that was her daddy’s name. Her folks had a little cabin in the woods a few miles out of town. They died a few years back. She came back to take the place over, and calls herself Janet Kestrel now.’

‘I’m just in town for the day, and I was really hoping I’d get a chance to see her...’

Rosie shook her head, making her curls dance, and beamed confidentially at him. ‘We can’t give out folk’s home addresses. But you can catch her at work, AQUA River Tours, at a little spot called Casa Loma. Right on highway 120 north, you can’t miss it. The only building there is called the River Store. It’s set back on a little knoll. There’s a cutout of a big blue coffee cup on top of it.’

He thanked her and left. It was just nine a.m.

Janet loved it on the river, narrow, twisting, fast, here dark and deep and swirling, there white and shallow and boisterous, throwing up spume and leaping over sharp half-submerged rocks with joyful exuberance. It took great skill to keep the rafts from hitting anything.

But the letter had come from the Sho-Ka-Wah Casino. Today was her last ride down the river as a guide. Tomorrow, she would catch a bus to Hopland and find a place to live and start work at the casino as a blackjack dealer. She felt a sadness at leaving the river-rafting she knew and loved for an indoor casino job dealing blackjack, something she also knew but had never loved. But it paid better than rafting, and she had to start building a new life. At least this would be at a casino run by her own people. And she might never get that call on her cellphone from Hal to go retrieve her 4-Runner.

They stopped for lunch at one p.m. at a pre-arranged spot that in another month would be sun-washed and toasty. No more snow lingered in the steep mixed oak and pine forests flanking the river, but in here under the trees it was still chilly. They lit fires and ate their sandwiches around them.

Jimmy, the fifteen-year-old boy who couldn’t get enough river lore, attached himself to Janet. As they ate, he kept plying her with questions about rafting and about what seemed to him the wilderness they were passing through. He ate quickly, so after they finished, she walked him around, naming the various trees and bushes. He reached out for a red-leafed vine curled around one of the oak trees, and she grabbed his arm.

‘That’s not sumac, Jimmy. It’s poison oak.’

He jerked his hand back. ‘That stuff gives you a rash.’

‘I’ll tell you a secret.’ She picked one of the leaves. ‘There’s a way you can develop immunity for it.’ She ate the leaf. ‘You do that for a while, carefully, and pretty soon—’

‘Oh wow! That’s way cool.’

‘But don’t you try it,’ she cautioned. She suddenly giggled, in the boy’s world. ‘Your mom would hunt me down and kill me dead if you did.’

Thorne parked the 4-Runner on the blacktop in front of the River Store and checked out the other vehicles: a white van with a big metal luggage rack on the roof, and a pale green camper with a dark green plywood box on top to hold belongings. There was also a three-year-old Suzuki and a ’94 Chevy Astrovan. Inside, he was greeted by the rich smell of espresso and a big old man with a grey handlebar mustache and a long grey ponytail.

‘Sam Arness,’ said the man. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘A cup of coffee for starters. Is Janet Kestrel working today?’

‘Yep, and nope. She’s working, but she ain’t here.’ Arness gestured down the store to a door in the back wall. ‘AQUA Tours. She’s a damn good white-water rafting river guide for them, one of the best. AQUA does class four trips — toughest is class five. They’re off down the river on a one day trip and’ll be back after dark.’ He squinted at the store’s electric clock. ‘Might catch ’em at the Put-In Spot down on the river, but I doubt it, they’re usually on the water by eleven.’

‘I’ll drive on down. I’m just waiting for Janet anyway.’

‘Hope you got four-wheel, road’s mean as a damn snake.’

Sam Arness was right. Thorne needed the four-wheel all right on the incredible five-mile dirt track to the river thousands of feet below, a narrow slanting cut down the steep side of an immense brown tree-covered slope. The hillside rose on one side, fell away into infinity on the other. Roll your vehicle here, and you’d still be rolling at sundown.

Around the next turn he braked sharply. A golden eagle was in the road, a jackrabbit clutched in its talons. It flapped away in wide-winged, indifferent dignity. As he neared the valley floor, the air got cooler. He could hear the distant rush of the river. The road levelled out and there it was, the Tuolemne, its banks overarched with pines and angled hardwoods.

He found a tiny park area with a gently-sloping earth ramp down to the river. The Put-In Spot. As Sam had warned, the rafters were long gone. Just rustic restrooms and a signboard posted with pet-leashing and fishing regulation notices, and a stern red-edged warning about hazardous, turbulent waters and sharp edged rocks beneath the surface and WEAR YOUR LIFE JACKET.

A quarter mile downstream he sat down on the grass between the road and a leaky old boat, minus oars, hidden in the bushes, leaned back against a tree with his eyes shut, and listened to the rushing water.

Just how much jeopardy might he have put Janet Kestrel in by trying to track her down? Hatfield would ferret out her address in Groveland from Houghton’s office staff, would know Thorne was ahead of him, and would come rushing down Thorne’s backtrail trying to find her — probably with his ball-breaker Hostage Rescue/Sniper Team in tow.

Marlena Werfel was bursting with news and enthusiasm.

‘The package was taken from the locker by one of Dr. Houghton’s nurses. Mary Coggins.’

That lying bastard! Hatfield had just known Houghton was holding out on him. But it was easy to go around him.

‘Outstanding!’ he exclaimed. ‘Just one more question, and I’ll let you get back to work. Does Dr. Houghton have afternoon rounds here at the hospital today?’

Werfel checked the schedule. ‘He does. At three o’clock.’

‘Oustanding,’ Hatfield said again, this time softly.

It was 3:15. There were two patients in Houghton’s waiting room, and two nurses behind the glassed-in check-in desk.

‘Mary Coggins?’ Hatfield demanded.

The petite brownette he remembered from last time looked up. He pushed through the door beside their cubicle and as it closed behind him to shut them off from view of the waiting patients, he grabbed her arm, half-dragged her down the hall to an empty examination room and shoved her inside.

She started to protest, but he slammed the door and snapped, ‘You’re in a lot of trouble, lady. Federal trouble. Aiding and abetting a possible terrorist fugitive fleeing to avoid prosecution.’

‘I did no such thing!’

‘You unlawfully removed a package from a Cedar’s-Sinai locker and sent it to Janet Amore. She’s a federal fugitive, so your action is aiding and abetting. You’ll be detained at the Federal Building in Westwood, in the morning you’ll be arraigned in federal court...’

‘I’ve got a five-year-old daughter at home!’

‘Leaving a child alone is a criminal offense—’

‘She’s not alone. My mother’s with her. You can’t—’

‘Can and will if you don’t tell me everything.’

She was frightened now, crying. ‘We... I didn’t know anything about a fugitive warrant. So when she called and asked if we... I... could get her bearskin and send it to her—’