Witness Rejection Read online

  “I noticed,” Satin said. “Mine, too. You want something to eat or not?”

  “Not yet. Waiting for Clete.”

  “Oh. Your friend is on the way?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay,” Satin said, and scurried off.

  Crockett watched her hustle to the restroom, purse in hand. In a few moments she emerged with touched up makeup and lipstick, her hair in a fresh ponytail and a bounce in her step. Through the windows he saw a tan Cadillac Escalade ease into a parking space out front.

  Cletus Marshal never seemed to change. He came through the front door wearing wheat jeans with a slight flair over honey colored Justin’s with a riding heel, a lightweight tan windbreaker over a pale yellow t-shirt and, most probably, a .40 caliber Sig Sauer auto-loader in a hi-rise holster over his right kidney. Crockett grinned and stood up. Clete saw him, returned the grin, and sauntered back to the booth. They hugged in a brief and manly way and sat. Coffee pot and cup in hand, Satin materialized out of nowhere before they even had a chance to speak. She put a menu in front of Cletus and raised an eyebrow.

  “Would you care for coffee?” she asked. Her voice was soft and very feminine.

  Clete inspected her briefly but carefully, and smiled. “M’am,” he said, “I can’t imagine what could ever make me say no to you about anything. Coffee’d be just fine.”

  She dimpled, poured his coffee, and sashayed away. Clete’s eyes followed her retreating form.

  “Handsome woman,” he said.

  “She’s the friend that almost got blown up,” Crockett said.

  Clete shook his head. “That would have been a damn shame. Where’s the other one?”

  “Staying with her for the time being. The way things are going, we may have to pull Carson Bailey out of here, though. This place is too small to be secure. The Feebs and the bad guys both managed to find me. I have no contact with Carson, but, sooner or later, whether they get to me or not, they’ll locate her.”

  “May have to get both of ‘em outa here,” Clete said.

  “Yeah. That’s kinda what I thought.”

  “What now, ya reckon? Find whathisname? The ol’ boy that usta work with the witless dejection program. Joe Beckner?”

  “Next step, I guess.”

  “Your ID an’ stuff should be in your mail today. His address an’ directions are in the same package.”

  “Good. We’ll head that way tomorrow and see what we can see.”

  Satin returned to the table at that moment and looked at Crockett.

  “What’ll ya have?” she asked.

  “Gimme a short stack and corned beef hash,” Crockett said.

  Satin turned to Cletus. “How ‘bout you?”

  “Two over easy, hash browns, crisp bacon, an’ wheat toast, m’am. Thank you.”

  “Satin,” Crockett said, “may I present the honorable Cletus Marshal. Clete is a man in whom I have complete faith and who has protected my life on more than one occasion. Clete, this is Satin Kelly. She is a fine woman that I both love and trust, and I am fortunate to call her my friend.”

  Clete stood up and inclined his head in subtle acknowledgement. Satin extended her hand. They both seemed a little embarrassed.

  “M’am,” Clete said, taking her hand. “I never heard Crockett say nicer things about anybody. I’m proud to know ya.”

  “Cletus,” Satin said. “His opinion is good enough for me. I’m glad to meet you. And stop calling me m’am.”

  Clete grinned at her and they stood there for a couple of beats before releasing each other’s hands. Satin scurried off toward the kitchen. Clete sat down and looked at Crockett.

  “That there is a powerful woman, son,” he said.

  “She’s as good as they come. I hold her in very high regard, Texican.”

  Clete smiled. “Don’t have to hit me with no brick, pard. I git it.”

  When Satin returned with the food, Crockett asked her to sit down for a moment. She scanned the room briefly, then took a seat beside him.

  “Clete and I are gonna leave town for a day or two tomorrow,” he said. “When we come back it will possibly, no, probably be necessary to get you and Carson out of here for a while. Can you take off for a week or two? Maybe more?”

  “I can be gone as long as I have to. Do I have to?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Okay. Where am I going?”

  Crockett looked at Clete and raised an eyebrow. Clete nodded.

  “You are going to visit a lady named Ivolee Minerva Cabot in northern Illinois, near Barrington Hills. You and Carson will stay at Ivy’s until Clete and I sort this thing out. Consider it a vacation. A luxury, all-expense paid, vacation.”

  “I never had one of those,” Satin said. “Not sure I want one either. But I guess I can work it into my social calendar. You guys gonna be there, too?”

  Clete grinned. “Part of the time,” he said, “that is if ol’ Crockett here can stand it.”

  Satin looked puzzled for a moment before recognition swept across her face.

  “Oooohh,” she said. “That’s where his old friend Ruby is staying, huh?”

  “You betcha,” Clete said, his eyes sparkling. “Could git right interesting.”

  Satin slid against Crockett and leaned into him. “How you gonna handle that, honey?” she asked.

  Crockett glared at her, and she kissed him on the cheek. “I’m gonna start a We Hate Girls Club,” he said. “The one I launched back in third grade did well. How’d you like to be our poster girl?”

  Satin tickled his ear with a finger. “Me? A poster girl?” she said, her voice breathy and low. “I don’t know? I don’t wanna look cheap. Would the photographs be tasteful? What would I get to wear? Will I need to wax? Can I have a copy for my bedroom? How big will it be? The poster, I mean.”

  Clete rested his chin in his hand and stared at Satin. “Leave me outa the membership drive, Crockett,” he said. “I just may be in love.”

  Satin stood up, fanning herself with a hand. “Oh, my,” she said. “Is it hot in here, or is it just me? I’m so warm. You boys enjoy your breakfasts. I have to go pat myself down with some cool water. I feel all flushed.”

  She departed then, putting more swing in it than was necessary. Clete grinned at Crockett. “That there is a hell of a gal,” he said.

  “She’ll do,” Crockett grunted.

  Shit.

  Cletus spent the rest of the day and night with Crockett in the Pequod. The following morning they dropped Dundee off with Sharon at Carter Kennels and headed south on Highway 71. They stopped at the Hen House in Clinton, Missouri for a late breakfast, then took Missouri Route 13 into the north side of Springfield, where they picked up I-44 East to U.S. 65. It was a beautiful day for a drive, as long as the windows were rolled up and the air conditioning was on. By early afternoon they had encountered U.S. 60 and stopped in Mansfield, Missouri for lunch at a KFC, where Crockett slipped his cell phone into the bed of a pickup truck with Iowa plates. At Mansfield they took Missouri 5, which carried them south until it became Arkansas 5 at the state line. Hills, whoop-de-doos, and wifferdills eventually delivered them to Mountain Home, Arkansas. With the help of Clete’s GPS unit, they wound their way about twelve miles on 62/412 until they came upon the Robinson Point Cutoff. Clete turned right, drove about two miles, occasionally catching glimpses of Norfork Lake, passed the entrance to Rockin’ Chair Resort, and located Joe Beckner’s address, just off the road, perched on the edge of a bluff about five hundred feet above, and a half mile distant from, the lake.

  The place had originally been a cabin designed for vacation and weekend use. It was a small clapboard structure, probably no more than five hundred square feet in size, flanked by other cabins that appeared to be empty or abandoned. The yard was weedy and overgrown showing the occasional patch of bare rocky earth, surrounded by a sagging woven wire fence with missing gate. A rusty Chevy pickup sat beside the structure between the posts of what had once been a ca
rport. A fan rattled in the window next to the front door. The outside storm door had no screen or glass.

  “Shall we?” Clete asked.

  “Let’s,” Crockett said.

  Clete stopped on the edge of the road, and he and Crockett picked their way through various bits of refuse and trash to the small concrete stoop. Clete pulled his ID from a hip pocket and knocked. After a long moment the door opened about ten inches. A veined and jowly face with bloodshot eyes beneath a full head of scattered gray hair peered out at them.

  “Yeah?” The voice was full of gravel and apprehension.

  “Joe Beckner?” Clete asked.

  “Who wants ta know?”

  Clete showed his badge and ID. “Clint Marsh,” he said. “Secret Service. I need to talk with you. Can we come in?”

  Beckner hesitated, then sighed. The door opened the rest of the way. “Sure,” he said. “’Scuse the mess. I ain’t feelin’ too good.”

  Old trash and longneck Bud bottles were scattered around the small living room. There was no air conditioning. Beckner, dressed in ragged khaki shorts, a sleeveless undershirt and loafers, brushed newspapers and magazines off a couple of chairs and motioned for Clete and Crockett to sit down.

  “You guys want a beer?”

  They both declined.

  “Welcome to the world of retirement,” Beckner said.

  “I thought the Feebs paid a pretty good pension,” Clete said.

  “They do, if ya got full years in. I didn’t make it. Got forced into retirement by a new director’s policies five years early. Then I got diabetes and my heart started acting up. Got medical bills out the ass. I was gonna fish my golden years away. Now I can barely make it to my truck. Land of the free and the home of the brave, my ass.”

  “The name Mary Lou Shaffer mean anything to you?” Clete asked.

  Beckner’s eyes darted upward and to the left.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Mary Lou Shaffer.”

  “Naw. Never heard of her.”

  “How ‘bout Carson Bailey?”

  “Never heard of her, neither.”

  Clete smiled. “Wrong response, Joe. You shoulda said you’d never heard of him. You were Mary Lou Shaffer’s case leader, weren’t you?”

  “I said I never heard of her.”

  “She’s heard of you, Joe. Gave my partner here both your name and description. Mary Lou, or Carson if you will, is in a lot of trouble, Joe. Somebody gave her up, Joe. Now her old man is out and looking for her, Joe. Damn near killed an innocent bystander a couple of days ago. Who do you suppose would do a thing like that, Joe? Who’d make a deal with somebody like Phil Metzger to turn him loose and let him kill his ex-wife. Anybody you know that’d broker a deal like that, Joe?”

  “Why don’t you assholes just get the fuck outa my place. I don’t know anything. I’m retired, for crissakes!”

  Crockett stood up and advanced on Beckner where he sat on the couch.

  “A bad heart and diabetes,” he said. “What do you bet I won’t even leave a mark, and can still stress you out so badly that you’ll blow a tire right here and right now.”

  “Aw, c’mon. I don’t know anything!”

  “Natural death, Beckner. Hell, you don’t have a lot to live for anyway. Four or five days, somebody’ll find your corpse by the fuckin’ smell. Maybe I’ll pop out a screen or two. Lotsa raccoons and possums in this neck of the woods. They’re both meat eaters. How you think you’ll look when some fisherman finds you next week, you shithead?”

  The man cowered in his seat, rubbing his left bicep. “Jesus! You wouldn’t do that. Nobody’d do that.”

  Crockett smiled. “I’m with the Department of Justice,” he said. “Justice is my business. I like to administer a little whenever I can. You are a prime candidate, Beckner. How are you at running? Got any legs left? How’s your heart right now? Little pain in your arm?”

  Beckner began to pant. Whadaya want? Just tell me whadaya want!”

  “Who’d you give her up to?”

  “Guy with long black hair an’ a fucked up face showed up here four or five months ago. Offered to kill me if I didn’t tell him where she’d been relocated. Offered me ten grand if I did. I got a lot of medical bills. Had a bulldog with him. No neck, big hands. He slapped me around a little. What could I do? I can’t fight guys like that. I’m sick, for chrissakes. I got a lotta medical bills!”

  “My heart bleeds. What’d you tell him?”

  “I told him she’d been relocated to Kansas City and bought into some store or somethin’ on the Plaza. Only thing I could remember for a name was Carson. I had to tell him. He was gonna kill me!”

  “You notify anybody in the Bureau?”

  Beckner swallowed and looked at the floor. “Naw,” he said. “I just took the money and shut up. I didn’t say anything. Not a word.”

  “How’d you get that information? That’s outside the FBI’s bailiwick.”

  “Had a pal in the relocation program that told me. I kinda liked Mary Lou. Wanted to know where she was going. He died a couple of years after she went underground.”

  Clete shook his head. “Christ,” he said. “Let’s get outa here. I’m startin’ to itch.”

  “I hope you guys can help,” Beckner said. “She was a classy lady, y’know.”

  “I’m touched by your concern,” Crockett said, and turned for the door. Halfway to the car they could hear Beckner’s protest.

  “I got bills, you high and mighty sons-a-bitches! I got a lot of medical bills!”

  On the way to Mountain Home to find a motel, they passed a restaurant at Highway 44 and the 101 cut off with the unlikely name of Fred’s Fish House. Without a doubt the best catfish and hushpuppies either of them had ever tasted. A little after dark they staggered into their respective rooms at a Clarion and, worn down by the drive, Joe Beckner, and the marvelous food, collapsed into bed.

  The next morning Clete and Crockett enjoyed a breakfast as good as Fred’s catfish at a little hole in the wall called Brenda’s. After they ate, they toured the lake area, stopped back by Fred’s for lunch and, at Clete’s insistence, dropped by Joe Beckner’s place to see if he had any more information. When Clete knocked on the front door, it swung open a few inches. Instantly his pistol was in hand and he slipped around the jamb. They found Beckner gagged and duct-taped to a kitchen chair with his throat cut.

  Clete gave the place a cursory walk through, picked a cell phone up off the floor, and headed out the door. Crockett took a moment to kick out a kitchen screen before he followed Clete to the car.

  Justice was served.

  They were snaking their way through Mountain Home heading back to Arkansas 5 before anybody spoke.

  “Looked like a pro hit,” Clete said.

  Crockett grunted, still a little queasy from the sight of Joe Beckner duct taped to the chair.

  “They’d used him some before they did the deed,” Clete went on. “Couldn’t have been to get info out of the guy. He’d have told them anything to save himself. Musta just been for fun.”

  “Probably the same charming couple that came to my place,” Crockett said. “Eight to five the one that used the knife was the greasy fucker with the long hair. The other one was a puncher. He would have just beaten Beckner to death. Wouldn’t have taken more than a couple of good shots. Old Joe didn’t have far to go. Poor bastard. Not a ghost of a chance.”

  “Only it wasn’t a mob hit, Crockett. Had to come from Phil Metzger, and Metzger ain’t real popular with the mob, I bet.”

  “Maybe he’s got his own troops,” Crockett said.

  “Take some big money. This wasn’t some sixteen-year-old kid from a China Town Tong who’d do the job for a thousand bucks. Hitters of any decent quality don’t come cheap. Them ol’ boys is pros.”

  “Metzger’s got somebody inside,” Crockett said.

  “You think Beckner was in on the deal?”

  “I doubt it. He was just a scared old man. He told u
s that Kanga and Roo paid him a visit a few months ago. The inside guy fingers Beckner. Kanga and Roo show up, get what little info he had, pass it on to Metzger. Metzger sends some talent to Kaycee to find out more, and off we go.”

  “Yeah, but what about the Feebs that had the woman staked out when she called you? How’d they get involved? Usually, once somebody is installed in witness protection, whoever set ‘em up pulls out, moves on to the next project, and leaves ‘em for the U.S. Marshals. The Feebies can’t keep track of everybody. That’d take a small army. Too much manpower, too much expense. Besides, Charlie Boster ain’t supposed to be with the titless deflection program anyway. He ain’ no marshal.”

  Crockett stroked his ‘stash. “What if the talent Metzger sent to Kansas City wasn’t Kanga and Roo?” he asked. “What if he’s connected enough to have someone in the Bureau do that for him?”

  “He’d have to have somethin’ big on somebody, or more bucks than Bill Gates’ butler.”

  They stayed silent until Clete made the turn onto Arkansas 5, each with their own thoughts, before Crockett spoke again.

  “I noticed you picked up a cell phone on scene.”

  Clete nodded. “Yeah. I know a guy. I’ll see if we can get some info on the last couple of calls Beckner made before them button men zotzed him.”

  Crockett smiled. “Before them button men zotzed him?”

  “Couple a real goombahs. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom. Fahgedaboudit.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Crockett laughed. “Now you’re a wise guy?”

  “Watched a Goodfellas and Godfather double feature the other night,” Clete said. “Can’t help myself. Somethin’ about that big-assed lake that reminded me of sleepin’ with the fishes.”

  “Christ, Marshal. Let me make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like shut the fuck up.”

  Clete grinned. “Are you talkin’ to me?” he said. “Are you talkin’ to me?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Crockett Candy