The Master Falconer (joe pickett) Read online

  The Master Falconer

  ( Joe Pickett )

  C. J. Box

  A dramatic short story of justice both old and new from the New York Times — bestselling author of Cold Wind. The West is not the way it’s portrayed in the movies. But when a man from the East brings trouble for Nate Romanowski and his friend Joe Pickett, a little frontier-style justice may be just what’s called for. An exciting new addition to the series that people hails for “combining harrowing adrenaline rushes with complex morality, humor, and a landscape described so vibrantly it seems to have a life all its own.”

  C. J. Box

  The Master Falconer

  “Man has emerged from the shadows of antiquity with a peregrine on his wrist.”

  — ROGER TORY PETERSON, Birds Over America

  In the midnight forests of the Bighorn mountains, below timberline, all movement and sound ceased with the approaching roar. Elk quit grazing and raised their heads. Squirrels stopped chattering. The increasing roar caused the ground to tremble. And suddenly the stars blacked out as the huge aircraft skirted over the mountaintops, landing lights blazing, landing gear descending, the howl of jet engines pounding downward through the branches into the earth itself. The tiny town of Saddlestring, Wyoming, was laid out before the nose of the plane like a dropped jewelry box, lights winking in the night against black felt, the lighted runway just long enough for a plane this size to land on, but just barely.

  * * *

  The next morning, Nate Romanowski slipped out of Alisha Whiteplume’s quilt-covered bed on the Wind River Indian Reservation, pulled on a loose pair of shorts, and searched through the cupboards of her small kitchen for coffee. He tried not to wake her. There were cans of refried beans and jars of picante sauce, home-canned trout in Mason jars, but no coffee except instant.

  As two mugs of water heated in the microwave, he opened the kitchen blinds. Dawn. Early fall. Dew and fallen leaves on the grass, dried into fists. A skinned-out antelope buck hung to cool from the basketball hoop over the garage.

  Nate was tall, rangy, with sharp features and a deliberate, liquid way of moving. His expression was impassive, but his pale blue eyes flicked about from the hollows of his sockets like the tongue of a snake. Sometimes they fixed on an object and forgot to blink. Alisha said he had the eyes of a hunter.

  “What are you doing out there?” she said from the dark of the bedroom.

  “Heating water for coffee. Want anything in it?”

  “Not instant. There’s a can of coffee under the sink in the bathroom.”

  Nate started to ask why she kept coffee in the bathroom, but didn’t.

  “Bobby has been coming over in the morning and stealing it,” she said in explanation. Bobby was Alisha’s brother, known to Nate as Bad Bob. “I hid it so he has to go steal it from someone else.”

  Nate found a five-pound can of Folgers under the sink, and set about making a pot.

  While it dripped and the aroma filled the kitchen, she came out of the bedroom wrapped in a blanket so long it brushed the floor. He glimpsed her thin brown feet and painted nails, and looked up to see her naked shoulder, a valentine-shaped face, bed-mussed black hair. Her eyes were obsidian pebbles perched over her cheekbones. He had yet to tire of simply looking at her.

  “Did you hear that big plane last night?” she asked.

  “I heard a roar. I thought it was me.”

  She smiled. “You did roar, but earlier. You were sleeping when the plane came over us. It seemed really low. I felt you tense up when it came over, like you were going to jump out of bed and grab a gun.”

  Nate didn’t respond. She padded over and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Do you know who is in the plane?”

  He shrugged and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Are you going to say?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “You drive me crazy,” she said.

  “You drive me wild,” he said, putting his own hand over hers.

  “I’ve got to take a shower,” she said, slipping from his touch and reaching out to hook a strand of his long hair over his ear. He liked the intimate familiarity of the gesture. “I’ve got to get to school by seven thirty. Playground duty.”

  “I’ll bring you a cup of coffee when it’s done.”

  “That would be nice,” she said, and left.

  Alisha taught third grade and coached at the high school. She had a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a minor in American history and had married a white golf pro she met in college. After working in Denver for six years and watching her marriage fade away as the golf pro toured and strayed, she divorced him and returned to the reservation to teach, saying she felt an obligation to give something back. Nate met her while he was scouting for a lek of sage chickens for his birds to hunt. When he first saw her she was on a long walk by herself through the knee-high sagebrush in the breaklands. She walked with purpose, talking to herself and gesticulating in the air with her hands. She had no idea he was there. When he drove up she looked directly at him with surprise. Realizing how far she had come from the res, she had asked him for a ride back to her house. He invited her to climb into his Jeep, and while he drove her home, she told him she liked the idea of being back but was having trouble with reentry.

  “How can you find balance in a place where the same boys who participate in a Sun Dance in which they seek a vision and pierce themselves are also obsessed with Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty: Black Ops?” she asked. Nate had no answer to that.

  She said her struggle was made worse when her brother Bob intimated that he always knew she would come back, since everybody did when they found out they couldn’t hack it on the outside. She told Nate that during the walk she had been arguing with herself about returning, weighing the frustration of day-to-day life on the reservation and dealing with Bobby against her desire to teach the children of her friends, relatives, and tribal members. Later, Nate showed her his birds and invited her on a hunt. She went along and said she appreciated the combination of grace and savagery of falconry, and saw the same elements in him. He took it as a compliment. They went back to her house that night. That was three months ago. Now he spent at least two nights a week there.

  Nate was tying his hair back into a ponytail with a rubber band when Bad Bob Whiteplume entered the kitchen from outside without knocking. Bad Bob was halfway across the kitchen before he saw Nate in the doorway.

  “I smelled coffee,” Bad Bob said, squinting at Nate and looking him up and down. “You’re here again, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Boinking my sister?”

  “Say that again and we’ll have to fight.”

  Bad Bob was shaped like a barrel and had a face as round as a hubcap. His hair was black and it glistened from the gel he used to slick the sides down and spike the top. He was wearing buckskins with a beaded front and Nike high-tops. Bob owned Bad Bob’s Native American Outlet convenience store at the junction that sold gasoline, food, and inauthentic Indian trinkets to tourists. He also rented DVDs and computer games to boys on the reservation. The back room was where the men without jobs gathered to talk and loiter and where Bob held court.

  Smiling and holding his hands palms up, Bob said, “Okay, I won’t say it again. But your scalp would look good hanging from my lance.”

  “Why are you talking like an Indian?”

  “I am an Indian, Kemo Sabe.”

  “Nah,” Nate said. “Not really.”

  Bob poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it, looking over the rim at Nate. “You haven’t commented on my garb.”

  “I was waiting for you to bring it up.”

  “Ten of us are in a television commercial,” Bob said. “They’re shooting it up on the rim. The new Jeep Cherokee, I think.”

  Nate took a moment to say, “I guess they don’t build a Northern Arapaho.”

  “No,” Bob said, grinning, thrusting out his jaw. He was missing every other bottom tooth, so his smile reminded Nate of a jack-o’-lantern. “I’ll suggest that to them, though. You should see the director. He’s from L.A. He’s scared of us.”

  “Must be the Nikes.”

  Bob laughed, the sound filling the room. “We told him we wouldn’t do it unless they increased our talent fee from five hundred a day to seven-fifty. We scowled. He caved.”

  “Congratulations.”

  From the bathroom, Alisha called out, “Is that Bobby?”

  “Good coffee!” Bob yelled back.

  “Bobby, I need my television back! You’ve had it for a week!”

  Nate looked at Bob.

  “Mine went out,” Bob explained. “We needed to watch the poker tournament.”

  Bob drained his cup and refilled it. While doing so, he saw the digital clock on the microwave. “Shit, I need to get going. They wanted to shoot with the sun at a certain angle. The director loves dawn light.”

  Nate said, “Who doesn’t?”

  “If we miss the dawn light, we just sit around until dusk and smoke cigarettes and shoot then,” Bob said. “It’s a good job.”

  “That’s what counts,” Nate said.

  “Hey, did you hear that plane last night?” Bob asked, backing out the door so he wouldn’t spill his coffee. He was taking the mug with him.

  “No.”

  “I heard there’s a big-assed jet sitting at the airport,” Bob said. “Some kind of foreign writing on the fuselage.”

  With that, Bo
b left.

  To himself, Nate said, Damn.

  * * *

  Nate Romanowski lived in a small stone house on the banks of the Twelve Sleep River, in the shadows of hundred-year-old cottonwoods and a high steep bluff across the water. As he crested the long rise from the east, his place was laid out in front of him — house, round pen, sagging mews where he kept his birds. He could tell instinctively that someone had been there.

  Pulling off the two-track, he climbed out of his Jeep and walked back over to the road. Three sets of fresh tire imprints cut the night crust of the dirt where a vehicle had gone in and out and back again to his home. The tracks were wide — an SUV or pickup. The tread was sharp, indicating new tires or a brand-new vehicle. Then he saw what had triggered his suspicion in the first place: the mews door was slightly open. Meaning his falcons had been disturbed or were gone. Which meant somebody was going to get hurt.

  He stood and squinted, determining whoever had come onto his place had parked their vehicle on the side away from his house so it couldn’t be seen from the road. And that they were waiting for him.

  Slipping his .454 Casull handgun from its holster under his seat to his lap, Nate drove down the rise. As he approached his house, the front door opened and a man walked out. Nate recognized the man as Ben “Shorty” LaDuke, a sometimes ranch hand who resided mainly on stool number four at the Stockman’s Bar in Saddlestring. Shorty had been to his house before, when he was briefly employed by Bud Longbrake. Looking for strays, Shorty had said. Shorty was diminutive with a hunched, gnome-like posture that made him look even smaller. He wore torn Wranglers and boots and a hooded Wyoming Cowboys sweatshirt.

  Nate parked under the cottonwoods with his open driver’s-side window framing Shorty, who ambled over. The .454 was gripped in Nate’s hand, the muzzle an inch below the window.

  “Nate, how are you?” Shorty asked.

  “Not pleased that you’re trespassing,” Nate said.

  “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t sure where to find you. There’s a feller inside who—”

  “Raise your hands and turn around. Put your hands on top of your head.”

  Shorty grimaced. “Ah, Nate, buddy, I don’t mean no trouble here.”

  “Then don’t walk into a man’s house or fuck with a falconer’s birds. Do what I said.”

  Shorty sighed theatrically, turned, and laced his hands on top of his King Ropes cap.

  Nate walked up to Shorty and reached around him and patted him down. No weapons. He shoved the barrel of the .454 into Shorty’s back to urge him toward the house.

  “I had nothing to do with taking your birds,” Shorty said. “The gentlemen inside said you owed them and they were just retrieving their property. I just said I’d make the introduction, is all.”

  “Don’t talk,” Nate said, pushing the gun into Shorty’s spine.

  “Be careful that don’t go off,” Shorty said. “It’d likely cut me in half.”

  Nate said, “Then you’d be really short.”

  He pushed him through the door, keeping the ranch hand in front of him. Over Shorty’s shoulder, Nate saw two men sitting at his table with cups of coffee in front of them. They were Saudis.

  “Greetings from my father,” the younger of the two men said. He was olive-skinned, well groomed, and well dressed in a crisp white shirt, charcoal slacks, and tasseled black loafers. He had a thin perfect mustache over white perfect teeth. The lens of a pair of wire-framed sunglasses poked up from his shirt pocket.

  The other man was older, thicker, darker, wearing an open-collared yellow shirt and a black blazer. He didn’t smile. His eyes were locked onto Nate’s face. He had a thicker black mustache and his hands were under the table. Nate turned Shorty slightly so the older man would have to shoot through Shorty to get to Nate.

  The younger man noticed what Nate had done and shook his head from side to side as if trying to alleviate a terrible misunderstanding. “No, no, none of this is necessary. Please put the gun away and let Mr. Shorty go home. We can all be good friends here.”

  Nate didn’t move.

  “I’m Lamya Abd al Saud,” the man said. “Everybody I graduated with at Stanford calls me Rocky. You know my father. He says you’re a talented, amazing man, but he’s disappointed in you. He asked me to come here to invite you to see him to explain your recent insult.”

  “You know them?” Shorty said to Nate. “Jesus.”

  Nate ignored Shorty, keeping his eyes on the older man, watching the man’s shoulders for even the smallest bit of motion from his hands hidden under the table.

  “This is Khalid,” Rocky said, gesturing to the dark man. “He’s with me because my father asked that he come along. Khalid, please greet Mr. Romanowski.”

  Khalid nodded his head, but never broke his stare.

  “Let me see your hands,” Nate said to him.

  Khalid shot a glance to Rocky. Rocky nodded back. The older man withdrew his hands from beneath the table and put them flat on the surface.

  “There,” Rocky said. “Are you happy now?”

  “Nope. Where are my birds?”

  “They’re safe. My father is admiring them.”

  Nate said, “Admiring them?”

  Rocky nodded.

  “Shorty, hit the trail,” Nate said, pushing the man aside.

  “I don’t have a vehicle,” Shorty protested. “I came out here with Rocky and—”

  “Hit the trail, Shorty,” Nate said. “And as you walk away from this place, forget you were ever here. If anybody ever asks you to bring them out here again, your answer will be that you don’t know where it is.”

  “They said—”

  “Hit the fucking trail, Shorty,” Nate said through clenched teeth.

  * * *

  Khalid drove and Rocky was in the passenger seat of the rented white Cadillac Escalade. Nate sat in the backseat. Khalid had asked Nate to leave his .454 at home before he would drive them.

  “I’ve never seen a handgun like that,” Rocky said. “Five cylinders. I wish to fire it.”

  “Wish denied,” Nate said.

  Khalid shot a glance at Nate in the rearview mirror.

  “My father is looking forward to seeing you,” Rocky said affably, turning in his seat.

  Nate nodded. “Did he come here in his 727?”

  Rocky shook his head. “That was his old plane. The new one is a 737. It is very luxurious, very well appointed. He prefers staying on the plane because it’s more comfortable than the hotel accommodations you have here. You’ll like it.”

  “I just want my birds back.”

  Rocky laughed. “I’ll never understand the fascination you and my father have with falcons. It’s a mystery to me. I prefer fast cars and fast women. Blond women with big lips. And movies. I’m a great fan of American movies. Especially the gangster movies and the Westerns. I love the Westerns. I don’t see why your people don’t make them anymore.”

  Nate didn’t care what Rocky liked.

  Rocky gestured out the window at the sagebrush plains, the foothills, the slumping shoulders of the Bighorn Mountains. “This looks like a place for a Western movie. I expect to see a cowboy ride up any minute.”

  As they passed Shorty walking on the road, Nate looked out the back window. Shorty was chasing the car, his arms outstretched. Thinking that somehow they hadn’t seen him.

  Rocky said, “Poor Shorty.”

  Nate wondered if his birds were worth this.

  * * *

  The outsized private jet sat brilliant white and gleaming in the morning sun on the concrete apron of the Saddlestring Regional Airport. Two-foot-high Arabic writing was scrawled the length of the fuselage along with green Saudi Arabian flags. Private small planes had been moved to accommodate the craft and were parked under the wings of the 737, looking like small white offspring.

  Khalid had a key to the lock on the gate and he drove the Escalade to the base of the aircraft.

  “Please,” Rocky said, gesturing to Nate to get out and ascend the stairs into the jet.

  Al-Nura Abd Saud, Rocky’s father, sat in an overstuffed leather armchair in a book-lined private office paneled with dark rich woods and gold fixtures. A monitor and DVD player were mounted on the wall next to stacks of movies. Nate glanced at the titles, noted pornography and dozens of old Westerns. Fort Apache, Red River, Shane, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers. Al-Nura was grossly fat and soft. His robes were cream-colored cotton and they shimmered and draped as he stood up. He wore the distinctive red-and-white-checked gotra head covering held in place with a common agal band, as befit a descendant of the Royal House of Saud. Al-Nura beamed and struggled to his feet when Nate was shown into the room by Rocky.