Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

‘That’s the goddamndest story I’ve ever heard.’

‘He got me away from Arnie. He... valued me. Made me value myself. We never made love. I tried, at first, but he couldn’t do it. His wife had been killed by a drunk driver years before, and he still felt guilty about it.’

Kate asked, ‘It’s because of him that you’re in trouble?’

‘Yeah. Him and Arnie. The FBI is looking for me.’

‘What the fuck did you do?’

‘Nothing. I lent Hal the 4-Runner in January and haven’t seen him since. A man named Thorne showed up at AQUA Tours last night, driving it. Said the federales were after me.’

‘How did he get it?’

‘I don’t know. But he was right — the FBI was waiting at my cabin. Thorne held them up so I could get away. I told him to meet me here, but then I heard shooting at the cabin. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I have to know.’ She smiled wanly. ‘And I have to ditch the 4-Runner. So you’ve got a built-in babysitter for the next few days.’

‘What I’ve got is a lot of trouble right here in River City.’ Kate was on her feet, a glint in her eye. ‘You can trade Fat-Arms LeDoux pink-slips, even-up, your 4-Runner for one of those Harley clones he always has around.’

Still no sign of Kestrel or the 4-Runner. Ray Franklin had gone through her place again, and had torn it apart looking for a paper trail. He found one item: a letter from the Sho-Ka-Wah Casino north of Santa Rosa, offering her a job dealing blackjack.

‘You think that’s where she went?’ Ray demanded eagerly.

‘We’ll check with them, but I doubt it. I think she heard the gunfire by her cabin, and drove hard all night to get away. She could have been in Mexico before we got out the BOLO. Easy for an Indian to hide in Mexico. I’ll ask Spaulding to see if her 4-Runner was logged through the border near Tijuana.’

‘Why is she so important?’

‘Because she was important to Thorne.’

An hour later, the Seeking Information Alert for Kestrel under any of her names came up with something. Kestrel — under the name Amore — had, for the past three years during the winter months, been a licensed dealer at one of the casinos in Reno. No negatives on her from the casino or the cheap rooming house on South Virginia Street where she lived.

She had also worked in Reno for part of the previous summer, and in July was ‘present’ at a bar brawl in a joint called The Golden Horseshoe. A hardnose named Arnie McCue had been beating her up and some old guy rescued her. Both she and the old guy had disappeared, presumably in tandem, just as the cops arrived, and hadn’t been seen since.

On the surface, nothing. But McCue’s interview was provocative: ‘He was just an old fart, drunk at the bar. Had a limp, but he sure could move quick. Quicker than me.’

Old guy. A limp. Moved quick. Corwin. Had to be.

Hatfield had his connection. Amore had been running with Corwin from July until the Delta murders in November. No wonder she had changed her name to Kestrel. Somehow Thorne had found out about her, and had gone looking.

None of it helped much. He didn’t know where Kestrel was. He didn’t know where Thorne was. Or even IF Thorne was.

Thorne was. Barely. He had never been so cold and wet as he was right then, shooting the Tuolemne in a disintegrating rowboat without any oars. Not even as a kid when he and his best friend Wally would shoot the Chino River in a rubber raft when the ice went out in the spring and took all of the Fairbanks bridges with it.

The rowboat kept riding lower and lower in the water, until just the gunnels were out, but it was keeping afloat. Then the sodden craft hit a jagged rock broadside and flipped over. Thorne got ten minutes out of clinging to the largest piece of wreckage before he was knocked loose. It was like getting caught in the surf in Panama; he didn’t know which way was up, tried to grab breaths when his face broke water, kept curled up like a shrimp to avoid shattering his limbs on the rocks.

One foot struck gravel. He tried to bury his fingers in the shifting bottom, but was ripped away again. More rocks. More foaming white water. Pebbles! He bellyflopped into foot-deep water on a sloping stony bottom. Crawled up a few feet onto the beach where the eddy had thrust him. There, the rushing river couldn’t catch his legs and drag him back again.

The sunlight through pine boughs felt warm on his back. His clothes started to steam. He shut his eyes. He slept.

Walt Greene burst in. ‘Old guy runs the Casa Loma store had a break-in last night. Also at the AQUA River Tours facility in the same building. The perp stole dried food and water and first-aid stuff. He also stole a car an overnight camper had left parked by the store.’

‘How far is it from Casa Loma to Kestrel’s cabin?’

‘Couple of miles.’

‘Shit! Did you get out a stolen vehicle report?’

‘Didn’t have to. We found the car abandoned by the Tuolemne River, down five miles of the damnedest road you’ve ever seen. That’s the spot where AQUA River Tours puts in their river-rafting rubber boats.’

Hatfield demanded sharply, ‘Why is that significant?’

‘Janet Kestrel is a river-rafting guide with AQUA. Arness says Thorne came around yesterday morning looking for her.’

A major screw-up. In their rush to get Kestrel’s home address, they hadn’t asked the Groveland postmaster where she worked. Thorne had. That’s how he could have beaten them to Kestrel — if he had. He could have waited for her at AQUA Tours, alerted her to the fact that the FBI was looking for her.

‘We took Arness down to the river to look around. He said that a half-stove-in rowboat was buried in the weeds there for a couple of years, and now it’s gone. No oars, but even so...’

‘Okay,’ snapped Hatfield. ‘First light we start searching down both sides of the river. We’ll have to use the other river guides, and the local police and sheriffs, too. If they find Thorne alive, we push the National Security button to keep them from starting any interrogations of their own.’ He paused. ‘Meanwhile, I’m authorizing an affirmative on Compromise Authority for Thorne for everyone involved.’

Compromise Authority: shoot on sight. Shoot to kill.

It was mid-afternoon when Thorne was awakened by the chill. The sun was low in the sky so its rays no longer warmed him. He moved his arms and legs, checking to make sure everything was working before staggering to his feet. His side ached abominably, but ribs eventually healed themselves. Just don’t breathe deep.

For the moment, his fever had disappeared. But his meds and food also had disappeared, with the boat. So his fever might return. He started working his way downriver toward Ferry Bridge, walking on stone or gravel that would take no footprint, resting often against a tree, sitting on a rock. He ripped his stolen life jacket with his knife, draped it off a dead, half-submerged aspen, then plodded the sun down the sky to dusk.

Hatfield would discover the abandoned car. Tomorrow they would search the riverbanks, with luck find pieces of the missing boat and the life jacket. The river emptied into Don Pedro Lake, where a body could easily disappear for weeks. He could only hope that’s what they would think happened to him.

Janet might have driven straight for Canada or Mexico before they had time to get out a BOLO on the 4-Runner. But he had to assume she would be in Oakdale, waiting.

Shadow fell across him. He looked up. He was under the bridge. He waited until full dark and beyond, when there would be no traffic on Ferry Road. Scuffing out his tracks as he went, he used the bridge supports to haul himself up the steep earth slope. Get to Big Oak Flat five miles away, crawl unseen into the back of a truck at the gas station, and get taken away.