Another Man's Moccasins

Virgil’s head inclined, and he leaned forward, just a little. “Niyate kin tanyan icage. . . . Canhanp hanska etan maku wo-ptecela onzoge?”

Brandon choked out a laugh, finally turning to look at us. “This is my uncle, who used to call me Begs-for-Candy-in-Short-Pants. ” His eyes strayed from Henry and me, and he looked toward Eli, motioning him to step forward so that he could introduce him as he stood and spoke to Virgil again, but this time in Crow. “Hená de dalockbajak, Eli?”

As Eli stepped around the corner, Virgil slowly rose, standing almost a full head above the other two. Eli stepped to the bars and looked up into the face of the giant and, to our utter amazement, he spit.

I’ve been spit on—it’s a part of law enforcement that you never get used to, but it hardly ever comes completely unexpectedly. This did, and it was a mouthful.

I stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, there’s no need . . .”

He shrugged me off and lunged at the bars where he got a hold of Virgil’s hair and pulled his face into the metal. Virgil offered no resistance, but Brandon grabbed Eli’s other arm and pulled it, as the younger man yanked Virgil’s head into the bars again. He screamed at him. “Vasica! Tuktetanhan yau hwo?! Tokel oniglakin kta hwo?! Taku ehe kin, ecel ecanu sni! ”

With Henry and Lucian’s help, we got Eli away, but the effort threw all of us off balance and onto the floor in an agitated version of Twister. Eli was the first to stand, and he spit on Virgil again, whose face was bleeding from a busted lip.

Eli stopped as we all scrambled to get up and made a dismissive gesture. “Le tuwa ta sunka hwo?!” He slammed his fists against the bars, then turned and strode out of the room and down the hallway. He pushed Vic back as he went. I was the first of the pile to the door and loped after Vic down the hall after Eli.

We found him on the hardwood floor at the bottom of the stairs in a reverse wristlock with Tran Van Tuyen’s knee lodged at the small of the Indian’s back. Dog was barking from behind Ruby’s desk, and she stood with her open mouth covered with her hand.

I looked at the man in the black leather jacket and black slacks, who looked particularly small in comparison with Eli White Buffalo. He smiled a flat smile up at me. “Is this the man who killed my granddaughter? ”

I shook my head. “No, it isn’t.”

The sickly smile faded, and his eyes turned back to the large man he’d incapacitated. “Then, perhaps, I should let him go?”

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968

Baranski and Mendoza stood away from the bars and watched me impassively. “Why don’t you tell us what you were doing out there near the old fort with a dead girl?”

I could feel a cooling in my face, and my hands steadied. The security police had put a pretty good set of lumps on my head and evidently somebody had stood on my hand while they’d cuffed me, because most of the skin on the back of my fingers was gone. There was a metal desk by the doorway leading to the brig, where I was being held. “Let me out of here.”

Mendoza sat on the edge of the desk and thumbed the crease in his uniform pants. “Near as we can tell, you left the lounge a little after Mai Kim, and the APs at Gate 055 said you came by there.”

“Open. This. Damn. Door.” My eyes stayed on them as they looked at each other.

“They said you weren’t alone, man.”

“Now.”

Mendoza sighed and reached behind him and picked up my sidearm, wrapped in the Sam Browne holster, and handed a large ring of keys to Baranski. “The major is getting your papers together; looks like you’re headed back, pronto.”

I didn’t say anything but just stood there looking at them with my hands chiseled into fists; Baranski shook his head and stepped forward, unlocking the bars and stepping back and out of the way as I pushed the cell door open. They followed me out, down the hallway, and through the front door of the security headquarters onto the sunny streets of Tan Son Nhut’s miniature city. Mendoza hung back but handed my holstered Colt to Baranski, who quickened his pace to pull up beside me.

“The CO says they would have shipped your ass out today, but with the heightened security and the holiday, they couldn’t make arrangements to transport you back to BHQ.”

The CID man reached up and grabbed my shoulder, but I slapped his arm away and pulled up short. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and leveraged him across the dirt street and into a corrugated sheet-metal wall. Mendoza grabbed my arm, but I elbowed him and pushed him out of the way.

I turned back to Baranski and, without my even having time to notice, he had pushed the blunt barrel of my sidearm under my chin. He held it there. He smiled, and I heard the unmistakable sound of the .45 being cocked.