Leaphorn thought about it. The guard would have been incredulous. Yelled at him, probably.
Right. Asked him what the hell he was doing. Warned him he’d shoot. And by the time he did shoot, Tull had the putty in and of course it was some sort of plastic explosive with a radio activated fuse. And then the guard didn’t shoot until Tull had it worked in and was running away.
Then bang! Leaphorn said.
Right. Bang. Blew the door off, Witover said. When the police finally got there, the neighbors were giving first aid. Tull had a bullet through the lung, and the guard and the driver were in pretty bad shape from blast concussions, and the money was gone.
There must have been a bunch of them, Leaphorn said.
Altogether probably six. One to put out the detour signs to create the traffic jams, and whoever got on the helicopter, and Kelongy, and the one dressed as a cop who diverted the armored truck and followed it down Acequia Madre, and Tull and the guy driving the car behind the van. And each one of them faded away as his part of the job was done.
Except Tull, Leaphorn said.
We got Tull and an identification on the one who wore the police uniform and had the motorcycle. The driver and the guard got a good look at him. He’s the guy who called himself Hoski up at Wounded Knee, and something else before then, and a couple of other names since. He’s Kelongys right-hand man.
This Tull, Leaphorn said. Was he in on that Ogden bank robbery? If I remember that one, didn’t they pull it off because a crazy bastard walked right up to a gun barrel?
Same guy, Witover said. No doubt about it. It was another money transfer. Two guards carrying bags and one standing there with a shotgun and Tull walks right up to the shotgun and the guards too damned surprised to shoot. You just cant train people to expect something like that.
Maybe its a bargain, then, Leaphorn said. They got a half-million dollars and you got Tull.
There was a brief silence. Witover made a wry face. When Tull was in the hospital waiting to get the lung fixed up, we got bond set at $100,000 which is sort of high for a non-homicide. Figured they were tossing Tull to the wolves, so we made sure Tull knew how much they had from the bank, and how much they needed to bail him out. Witover’s blue eyes assumed a sadness. If they didn’t bail him out, the plan was to offer him a deal and get him to cooperate. And sure enough, no bail was posted. But Tull wouldn’t cooperate.
The shrinks warned us he wouldn’t. And he didn’t. When no bail was posted, there was a theory that the Buffalo Society had lost the money and that Tull somehow knew it. That explained why they couldn’t find .the copter. It had crashed into Lake Powell and sunk.
Leaphorn said nothing. He was thinking that the route of the copter, if extended, would have taken it down the lake. The red plastic lantern with Haas stenciled on it was a floating lantern. And then there was the distorted story that its finder had seen a great bird diving into the lake.
Yes, Leaphorn said. Maybe that’s it.
Witover laughed, and shook his head. It sounded plausible. Tull got his lung healed, and they transferred him to the state prison at Santa Fe for safekeeping, and months passed and they talked to him again, told him why be the fall guy, told him it was clear nobody was going to bond him out, and Tull just laughed and told us to screw ourselves.
And now Witover paused, his sharp blue eyes studying Leaphorns face for the effect and now they show up and bail him out.
It was what Leaphorn had expected Witover to say, but he caused his face to register surprise. Goldrims must be Tull, new to freedom and running to cover before the feds changed their minds and got the bond revoked. That would explain a lot of things. It would explain the craziness. He calculated rapidly, counting the days backward.
Did they bail him out last Wednesday?
Witover looked surprised. No, he said. It was almost three weeks ago. He gazed at Leaphorn, awaiting an explanation for the bad guess.
Leaphorn shrugged. Where is he now?
God knows, Witover said. They caught us napping. From what we can find out, it was this one they call Hoski. He made a cash deposit in five Albuquerque banks. Anyway, Tull's lawyer showed up with five cashiers checks, posted bond, got the order, and the prisoner was sprung before anybody had time to react. Witover looked glum, remembering it. So they didn’t lose the money. There goes the theory that the copter sank in the lake. They leave him in all that time, and then all of a sudden they spring him, Witover complained.
Maybe all of a sudden they needed him, Leaphorn said.
Yeah, Witover said. I thought of that. It could make you nervous.
» 12 «
T
he right eye of John Tull stared directly at the lens, black, insolent, hating the cameramen then, hating Leaphorn now. The left eye stared blindly upward and to the left out of its ruined socket, providing a sort of crazy, obscene focus for his lopsided head. Leaphorn flipped quickly back into the biographical material. He learned that when John Tull was thirteen he had been kicked by a mule and suffered a crushed cheekbone, a broken jaw and loss of sight in one eye. It took only a glance at the photographs to kill any lingering thoughts that Tull and Goldrims might be the same. Even in the dim reflection of the red warning flasher, a glimpse of John Tull would have been memorable. Leaphorn studied the photos only a moment. The right profile was a normally handsome, sensitive face betraying the blood of Tull’s Seminole mother. The left showed what the hoof of a mule could do to fragile human bones. Leaphorn looked up from the report, lit a cigarette and puffed thinking how a boy would learn to live behind a façade that reminded others of their own fragile, painful mortality. It helped explain why guards had been slow to shoot. And it helped explain why Tull was crazy if crazy he was.
The report itself offered nothing surprising. A fairly usual police record, somewhat heavy on crimes of violence. At nineteen, a two-to-seven for attempted homicide, served at the Santa Fe prison without parole which almost certainly meant a rough record inside the walls. And then a short-term armed-robbery conviction, and after that only arrests on suspicion and a single robbery charge which didn’t stick.
Leaphorn flipped past that into the transcripts of various interrogations after the Santa Fe robbery. From them another picture of Tull emerged wise and tough. But there was one exception. The interrogator here was Agent John OMalley, and Leaphorn read through it twice.
OMALLEY: You’re forgetting they drove right off and left you.
TULL: I wanted to collect my Blue Cross benefits.
OMALLEY: You’ve collected them now. Ask yourself why they don’t come and get you.
They got plenty of money to make bail.
TULL: I’m not worrying.
OMALLEY: This Hoski. This guy you call your friend. You know where he is now? He left Washington and he’s in Hawaii. Living it up on his share. And his share is fatter because part of its your share.
TULL: Screw you. He’s not in Hawaii.
OMALLEY: That’s what Hoski and Kelongy and the rest of them are doing to you, baby.
Screwing you.
TULL: (Laughs.)
OMALLEY: You ain’t got a friend, buddy. You’re taking everybody’s fall for them. And this friend of yours is letting it happen.
TULL: You don’t know this friend of mine. I’ll be all right.
OMALLEY: Face it. He went off and left you.
TULL: God damn you. You pig. You don’t know him. You don’t even know his name. You don’t even know where he is. He never will let me down. He never will.