Carbines and Capacitors 5/14
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Chapter 5
Fresh Eyes
Cheyenne’s life fell into an easier routine after that first day, especially once he was out of danger from the concussion and Miss Shaw no longer needed to stay close by. There was still a considerable amount of settling in to do, of course, and fittings for suits and a ballistic vest and a shoulder holster, and he’d just about learned his way around Reese’s gigantic apartment when Mr. Finch declared him well enough to live alone and gave him his own apartment in Midtown, which was smaller but no less fancy. Reese and Miss Shaw also supplied him with his own arsenal of handguns and repeating rifles, all very different from what he was used to, and Reese took him to a firing range most Saturdays to help him get comfortable with the weapons. But once Jim Merritt’s life was sufficiently well constructed, Cheyenne’s main duty was studying both the layout of New York and enough of how modern life ran to be adequate backup if and when Mr. Finch called him into service.
That gave him an excuse not to go out on his own much, for which he was grateful. He still hated New York, the more so the more he learned about its criminal element, and he was a long way from comfortable with most of the technology that seemed to be everywhere. He also hated the fact that he couldn’t carry a gun openly, even with a permit—in fact, the sheer number of rules and regulations meant to stop people from living as they pleased boggled his mind. And he wasn’t particularly looking forward to skulking around town wearing a suit that looked like something to get buried in, with his gun tucked under his arm (he was still working on drawing from there with anything like his usual speed) and no hat. He could wear his usual hat under other circumstances, of course, but it was distinctive, and Reese didn’t wear a hat at all, so Cheyenne couldn’t wear one with the suit. Reese also kept his gun holstered at the small of his back, but Cheyenne didn’t feel safe having to reach that far, despite Reese’s repeated assertion that speed of draw hardly ever mattered anymore.
Even so, there were things Cheyenne appreciated about the present day, and a vest that stopped bullets was at the top of his list, followed closely by air conditioning and indoor plumbing. He also discovered that he liked hamburgers, hot dogs, and Italian and Chinese food, although he couldn’t stomach falafel or shawarma, despite Fusco’s best efforts. And while he didn’t enjoy television all that much, he did accept a radio so that he could listen to the baseball games… when Reese didn’t take him to one in person, that is. Modern professional games had changed a lot from the way Cheyenne had learned to play in small towns and forts across the frontier, and actually being at the stadium wasn’t as pleasant because of the crowds, but it was still a fun sport to watch and listen to.
There was an upside to being Jim Merritt, too, the same one there had been the first time: people seemed to like to hear him sing.* Once Cheyenne’s ribs had healed enough that he could take deep breaths without being in agony, Mr. Finch had supplied him with a guitar (he had learned to play but had never owned one before) and a home studio and asked him to record some songs, and while Reese had had to handle the technical side, Cheyenne had gladly recorded practically every song he knew. Mr. Finch had then arranged the sale of several “albums” with a good twenty songs on each—Cheyenne didn’t know why he’d expected single-song wax cylinders when everything else had moved on so far, but there it was—and Reese had taken some photos of Cheyenne with his guitar to advertise them, and apparently they sold reasonably well. The official story was that Thalia Rep was using the proceeds to recoup the losses from Wagons West, but actually, Mr. Finch used them to endow a scholarship fund for young scholars among the People to study first at Chief Dull Knife College and then at the university of their choice. Cheyenne had been moved to tears not only to learn that there was a college named after Morning Star—in Montana, no less—but also to be able to help young people study there, and Reese had helped him arrange to send what he could spare of his own wages into that fund as well.
“Do you think Mr. Finch’ll mind?” Cheyenne had asked at one point.
Reese had chuckled. “Finch knows I only keep 10% of what he pays me and give the rest to charity. Not only does he not mind, I think he’s glad.”
Still, Cheyenne had the nagging sense that God, or Maheo or whatever power had sent him here, had meant him to do more than just sit around studying maps and singing songs and learning how to work one of these newfangled… saving-typewriters.** Whatever that purpose was, he hadn’t hit on it yet. Even the idea of being the second Man in the Suit didn’t seem quite like the full story.
Cheyenne had been in New York about six weeks, long enough for children to start back to school and for the team to need him as an extra gun on a couple of cases, when a knock at the door one Saturday morning turned out to be Miss Carter, who had a courier’s bag slung over her shoulder. Wide-eyed and wearing a silly smile, she held up one of his albums on what they called a compact disc.
“May I have your autograph, Mr. Merritt?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at him.
“Why, of course, dear lady!” he replied, and they both laughed as he ushered her in and offered her coffee. He did sign the disc, and then they sat and chatted amiably about light subjects like her son Taylor’s entering the eleventh grade and Cheyenne’s opinion of who might be going to the World Series.
The conversation lapsed when he went to the kitchen to refill both their mugs, however, and when he came back, Miss Carter’s smile seemed strained. So as he handed back her mug and sat down again, he said, “Much as I enjoy your company, ma’am, I suspect this isn’t just a social call.”
She took a fortifying sip, swallowed, and answered, “No. I, uh… I need your help with something.”
He sat back and waited.
“I guess our mutual friends have told you about HR.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’ve been after them for some time, but every time we think we have them stopped, they rebuild.” She sighed. “Right now, I’m looking into the murders of two of my friends on the force. Bill Szymanski was a detective with the Organized Crime task force. HR tried to frame him, and when that didn’t work, they killed him. And then they killed the narcotics detective they’d used to orchestrate the frame, Cal Beecher. He was….” She paused, looking away both to think and to blink back tears. “I guess you’d say he was my gentleman caller. We’d had our disagreements, but… I was just beginning to hope we could work things out, and then….” She broke off again, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what else there was to be said.
She took a deep breath. “The point is, HR keeps rebuilding because we never manage to cut off the head. Looking into these two murders is getting me closer, but… I just… I need some fresh eyes on the case, and I wondered….”
“I’m not the best detective in the world,” he cautioned. “But if I can help you, I’d be happy to.”
She smiled, relieved. “Thanks.” She reached down to the bag she’d dropped beside her chair. “Mind if we do this at the table? Might be easier to spread out there.”
He agreed with a nod, and they adjourned to the dining room, where she laid out what she knew, which was fairly complicated in terms of who she knew was complicit and whom she suspected. Laskey, it seemed, reported either to a Det. Raymond Terney or to an Officer Patrick Simmons; both were in HR’s inner circle, and Simmons appeared to be the ramrod of the whole operation. But try as she might, Miss Carter hadn’t been able to pin down who Simmons reported to.
Cheyenne drank his coffee, listened, and considered. When she’d finished, he suggested, “Let’s start with the first murder—what did you say his name was?”
“Szymanski.” She sighed heavily. “Szymanski took the lead in arresting Peter and Laszo Yogorov, sons of Ivan Yogorov, who was the head of the Russian mafia until Elias had him killed. HR struck a deal with Peter: they’d get him and his brother out of jail if the Russians would partner with them. But in order to do that, they had to get rid of Szymanski. First they tried planting some dirty money on Szymanski, but I managed to prove that it wasn’t his. The same day he got out of jail, he and Melinda Wright, the assistant DA assigned to the Yogorovs’ case, were invited to dinner with Alonzo Quinn, who’s the mayor’s chief of staff.”
He nodded slowly, not liking where this was going.
“The official story was that someone wearing a mask broke in during the meal and shot all three of them. Szymanski and Wright were killed with two shots to the chest each; Mr. Quinn got shot once in the right shoulder. Then the shooter ran out the back of the room.”
He frowned. “That’s kinda strange, wouldn’t you say?”
She froze. “What?”
“Well, even with a mask on, why would the killer leave a live witness?”
Her eyes widened in horror. “Quinn,” she breathed, looking down at the chart she’d brought. “He… he was Cal’s godfather….” She grabbed a clean sheet of paper and a pen and began sketching a rectangle with a circle near one corner.
“Ma’am?” he asked in concern.
“Hold on.” She wrote Bookcases along one edge of the rectangle near the circle, Window on the next side, and then Q, W, and S around the circle with Q next to Window, W a quarter away next to Bookcases, and S directly across from Q. As an afterthought, she labeled the locations of the doors, one directly behind S and one opposite Bookcases. “I don’t have access to the file anymore,” she said then, “but I remember the pictures of the crime scene.”
He studied the diagram, then picked up a pencil to point with so as not to smudge the ink. “You say these two were shot in the chest,” he said, pointing to S and W, “and Quinn was shot in the shoulder.”
She nodded.
“Well, now, if the shooter was standin’ here”—he pointed to a spot behind the empty seat at the table—“or fired from the back doorway with a rifle, there’s no reason why he couldn’t have killed Quinn before he ran. If he’d shot from the main doorway, he’d have hit Szymanski in the back. If he’d shot from the window, he’d have hit Quinn in the back.”
“But if… if Quinn was the one shootin’ from over here….” She pointed to a spot between Quinn’s seat and the bookcases and traced lines of fire without touching the pen to the paper.
“Who was the first on the scene?”
“Terney. He was the lead on Cal’s murder, too. And then he set me up on that guy I shot in self-defense.” She threw down her pen. “That’s what happened. Quinn shot them, and Terney shot Quinn at his own request.”
“Might be tough to prove, though.”
“Especially if the Russians gave Quinn enough money to make the forensics reports go away.” She shook her head and looked up at him again, lips trembling as she fought tears. “Quinn had them kill his own godson just ’cause Cal asked the wrong questions!”
His heart ached for her. “We should talk with our friends.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head again, determined. “No. I gotta get evidence that will stand up in court.”
“Well, they’ll be more help to you in that than I will. I don’t know this city.”
She looked at him again. “I know, but the way they get information won’t pass muster with the DA, not to mention the fact that there’s people out there tryin’ to kill them, too. I gotta—”
She was interrupted by the door opening to admit Reese, who had his own key and was carrying several white bags that appeared to be full of food. He closed the door behind him but paused in the doorway and looked from Cheyenne to Miss Carter and back several times before asking, “Carter?”
“We were just talkin’ about this case she’s tryin’ to build against HR,” Cheyenne said before Miss Carter could answer. “We think we’ve worked out who the boss is.”
Reese strode quickly into the dining room. “Who?”
“Alonzo Quinn,” Miss Carter reported.
“The mayor’s guy?” Reese dropped his bags on the near end of the table and came around to look over Cheyenne’s shoulder.
She sighed. “John….”
“I can call Zoe,” Reese offered. “Find out what dirt she’s got on him.”
“She’s not gonna know the kind of dirt that’ll get us close. Quinn’s too careful for that.”
“But she may know something that could get the ball rolling.” When she huffed, Reese pressed, “We have to start somewhere.”
She shook her head again. “There is no we here, John. I know you wanna help, and I appreciate it, I do. It’s just….”
“You don’t trust us?”
“No, I do. But I have to get the kind of evidence the DA will accept, and… I don’t want to risk anyone else’s life on this.”
“I’d say it’s a little late for that, ma’am,” Cheyenne noted quietly. HR seemed to have lost interest in him for the moment, but it was safe to say he’d be back on their kill list the moment they worked out that he was working with Reese, and he didn’t think Miss Carter was ignorant of that fact.
“And it’s not worth losing your life to protect ours,” Reese agreed. “What would that do to your son?”
Miss Carter wilted and lost her battle against the tears.
Reese put a hand on her shoulder. “Joss. Let us help you. Please.”
She drew a ragged breath and nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”
Reese smiled tightly and squeezed her shoulder.
“We need a Plan B in case Zoe doesn’t come through,” she continued. “I don’t know about Elias….”
“No. He told Harold back in April he didn’t know who the head of HR was.” Reese looked at her narrowly. “You know how to contact him, don’t you?”
Instead of answering, she said, “Anyway, there’s Laskey. I don’t think he knows much, but I do think I can flip him into an asset. The question is what the best way to use him would be.”
“Don’t do it yet.” Reese sat down on the other side of Miss Carter. “We may need him to feed false intel to HR on a future case. When you do flip him, though, he might be the person to have shadow Simmons or Terney.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“How can I help?” Cheyenne asked.
Reese looked across at him. “Well, for one thing… I think it’s time you met Zoe.”
Meeting Zoe Morgan, which happened the following Wednesday evening after Miss Carter finished her patrol shift, was an occasion for the suit. Mr. Finch was tied up with other business, and Miss Shaw was unreachable by choice, but Cheyenne and Reese met Miss Carter and Fusco at another fancy apartment with much more sophisticated locks and (so Reese said) bulletproof glass in the windows. Reese called it a safe house, one of several Mr. Finch owned around the city. Cheyenne privately thought such precautions were better suited for a cabin in the Badlands, which would have the added protection of stout log walls and a remote location, but no one had asked him.
Reese had just started coffee when the door opened again, and Cheyenne stood respectfully as soon as he saw that the person coming in was a lady, a petite brunette in spike heels, with intelligent dark eyes and a bearing that bespoke power. He couldn’t say he cared much for the tight-fitting dress she was wearing—she would have looked far lovelier in a high-collared taffeta gown, even one of the new Natural Form gowns that had been coming into fashion when he’d left home—but there was no question that she was someone to be reckoned with.
“So, this is the elusive Mr. Merritt,” she said as she came down the stairs into the main living area.
Cheyenne nodded once, feeling a bit awkward. “Ma’am.”
“Zoe Morgan.” Miss Morgan strode over to Cheyenne and shook his hand. Then her eyes narrowed as she studied his face before pronouncing, “There is no way in hell you’re a professional actor.”
“Zoe, be nice,” Reese chided from the kitchen.
Startled, Miss Morgan looked toward the kitchen, then back up at Cheyenne. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that! It’s just—a guy with your looks? You would have been cast as Superman a long time ago.”
Cheyenne smiled wryly. “No offense taken, Miss Morgan. Actin’s about the only profession I’ve tried an’ couldn’t stand.”
“Hey, can we get on with this?” Fusco interrupted. “I’m supposed to pick up my son from his friend’s house in an hour.”
“Quinn being HR makes sense of a lot of what I’ve heard about him,” Miss Morgan began as Cheyenne ushered her over to the sofa. “He’s in a position that naturally puts him in contact with a lot of power players, so it’s tough to tell which are legit and which are HR. But at least one of my informants has seen him meeting with Simmons.”
Most of what followed meant absolutely nothing to Cheyenne, though it clearly meant a great deal to Fusco, who’d been undercover with HR, and to Reese and Miss Carter. Cheyenne tried to keep up in case he needed the information at some point, but it wasn’t too long before he began feeling completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of unfamiliar names and retreated to the kitchen both to get more coffee and to get out of the way.
Reese came after him a few minutes later. “You all right?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Cheyenne confessed. “I don’t know who any o’ these people are or what they’ve done. All I’m hearin’ is that the corruption could be harder to root out than we thought.”
Reese nodded. “That’s the short version, yeah.”
“So how much of the detail do I really need to know? You an’ Miss Carter are the ones goin’ in with the shovels an’ torches.”
Before Reese could answer, they heard a series of piercing tones from Miss Carter’s radio, which she’d brought in with her. A second after it finished, the same series sounded again.
“What’s that?” Cheyenne asked.
“Fire station tones for Midtown,” Reese answered, rushing out of the kitchen.
Cheyenne followed just in time to hear the dispatcher saying, “All available units, please respond to”—followed by the address for Cheyenne’s apartment complex. “Explosion and fire in one of the apartments.”
Cheyenne looked at Reese in horror. “A bomb?”
“Probably,” Reese agreed.
Cheyenne sat down hard on the sofa. He’d lost everything before—he’d been burned out by claim jumpers before—but to have his new home bombed this way, knowing what a narrow miss it had been for him to have gone out on an evening when he’d normally be home, never mind the danger to his neighbors—
“Ooh, hold on,” Miss Carter said, putting her suddenly buzzing pocket telephone on the coffee table. The screen read Cloned Phone: Raymond Terney, Call Connected: Simmons.
Reese tapped his ear device and took his own telephone out of his pocket. “You there, Finch?” he asked before activating the speaker.
“Always,” Mr. Finch replied. “Working on the security camera footage now.”
“Yeah?” said a male voice from Miss Carter’s telephone.
Terney, Miss Carter mouthed, probably for Cheyenne’s benefit.
“We got a problem,” said a second, hoarse male voice, which must belong to Simmons. “Where are you?”
Terney replied with an address Cheyenne thought was in Hell’s Kitchen. Simmons demanded that Terney meet him at another address that was only a few blocks away. Terney agreed and hung up.
“Oh, this is strange,” said Mr. Finch. “I’ll have to double-check with other cameras….”
“What?” Fusco asked.
“It looks like the fire is in a ground-floor apartment, on the opposite side of the courtyard from Mr. Bodie’s.”
Hope flared in Cheyenne’s chest—his apartment was on the fifth floor. “You mean… my place is safe?”
“I believe so,” Mr. Finch said. “That could be why Officer Simmons thinks HR has a problem. Keep listening while I try to access more cameras.”
The next few minutes were filled with footsteps and radio traffic—the ambulances were reporting only smoke inhalation injuries, which was a further relief—until Simmons spoke again from Miss Carter’s telephone: “Over here.”
“Hey,” Terney answered. “What’s the problem?”
“This idiot,” Simmons snarled, accompanied by a dull metallic thunk and a groan. It sounded to Cheyenne as if Simmons had shoved someone against something metal, like a car, but he couldn’t be sure. “You wearin’ a radio?”
“Nah,” Terney admitted casually, which made it sound as if Simmons were pushing someone else around. “What happened? What’d he do?”
“Threw a firebomb at Jim Merritt’s apartment building.”
“Merritt?! I thought you canceled that hit!”
“Eh, put a hold on it until we could find out for sure whether he is the Man in the Suit, workin’ for him, or just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. The boss still ain’t sure. But this punk”—Simmons apparently shoved the third man again—“don’t know how to follow orders.”
“Your orders only matter when the Bratva says they do,” the third man finally said breathlessly. He sounded American, but there was still a trace of something foreign in his accent. “HR put Russians on the force to cement our alliance, but you forget that our allegiance is to the Bratva first.” He might have gone on, but that statement was followed by the distinct sound of one man punching another in the gut.
“Hey, hey, Simmons, take it easy,” Terney interrupted. Apparently addressing the third man, he added, “Are you tryin’ to tell us that Yogorov ordered a hit on Merritt?”
The third man coughed. “Like Old West,” he wheezed, sounding more Russian than before. “Is ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive.’ Merritt has been seen with Carter. I took the chance.”
“And loused it up worse than the hit on Elias,” Simmons growled. “Not only did you get caught on camera, our man at the RTCC says Merritt ain’t even home.”
“What?!” Terney exclaimed. “Wait, what—when—”
“Called me when he saw Peterson here prowlin’ around the building. He says Merritt left an hour ago, dressed for a night on the town—probably headed to a casino in Jersey. Peterson didn’t even get the right apartment! What he hit was the model, and none of the apartments surrounding it are occupied!”
“No,” Peterson gasped. “No, I hacked the building records—I was sure!”
“So we don’t get the Suit,” Simmons went on. “We don’t get Merritt. We don’t get Carter. We don’t get anybody. All we get is you, on video, bombin’ an empty apartment, thanks to Peter” (here he swore) “Yogorov thinkin’ he knows better than me, and if Merritt’s even half as smart as he looks, he’ll know we’re after him, which means he’ll move, which means we’ll lose him.”
“He’s still a witness in the Delancey case,” Terney noted.
“Commissioner ordered that case closed yesterday,” Simmons countered. “Merritt’s got no reason to report his new address to anyone. This whole thing is FUBARed”—there was a choking noise, probably from Peterson—“and it’s all your fault.”
“Nyet,” Peterson pleaded as best he could. “Nyet, pozhalyista….”
“So long, Petrovitch,” Simmons sneered, and then there was a shot, followed by a silence.
Terney sounded oddly unconcerned a moment later when he asked, “Whaddaya want me to do with ’im?”
“I’ll handle it,” said Simmons. “Give ’im to Yogorov as a reminder. Then we need to make sure the others are reliable.”
“Laskey is. Reports about Carter like clockwork.”
“Good. If he asks, Peterson ate somethin’ that didn’t agree with him.”
Terney chuckled. “What about Merritt?”
“We back off. Make sure everyone understands that. If he’s not the Suit, we don’t need to give ’im any reason to change that.”
“All right, I’ll spread the word. But for now, I gotta get back to this gang shooting before someone asks questions.”
“Okay. Just wanted you to be aware.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you later.” Then there were footsteps as Terney evidently walked away, and Miss Carter turned off the sound from her telephone and her radio.
“Wow,” Miss Morgan said, which seemed to be all anyone could say for a moment.
Fusco finally broke the silence. “So HR’s fast-tracked a buncha Russians through the Academy?”
“I knew Laskey was HR,” Miss Carter admitted quietly. “I didn’t know the rest of it.”
Miss Morgan sat back in her chair. “What’s weird is how Petrovitch got his information so wrong. I mean, he said he hacked the apartment complex records. Surely they’d have the right tenant’s name in the files.”
“The records are correct now,” Mr. Finch reported. “But it looks like someone altered the file just before Petrovitch accessed it and then changed it back immediately afterward.”
“That just makes it weirder!”
“Somebody was spyin’ on Petrovitch?” Fusco asked. “Why? Who?”
“It could have been Root,” Reese suggested gravely.
That made a chill settle over the room. Cheyenne had heard about Root, alias Samantha Groves, the madwoman who’d kidnapped Mr. Finch twice and had escaped from an asylum shortly after Cheyenne’s arrival in this year. He hadn’t understood the part about her being a hacker , but evidently she was extremely good with computers and extremely dangerous toward people.
“If Miss Groves has taken an interest in Mr. Bodie,” said Mr. Finch, “that’s all the more reason for us to move him into a different apartment, possibly under a different name.”
“Jim Wade,” Cheyenne suggested.
“Thank you, Mr. Bodie.”
Reese put a hand on Cheyenne’s shoulder. “We’ll stay here tonight, Finch.”
“Good idea, Mr. Reese,” Mr. Finch agreed. “This might even be a good time to spend a few days upstate until I can get everything arranged.”
“Upstate?” Cheyenne echoed, confused.
There were a few clicks and clatters, and then Mr. Finch said, “I’ve made you both reservations at a historic hotel in the Catskills.”
Catskills—mountains—space, quiet, and fresh air. Cheyenne’s eyes slid shut in relief for a moment at the mere thought of it. “Thanks, Mr. Finch.”
Fusco looked at his watch. “Hey, I gotta get goin’. You gonna be okay, Cowboy?”
Cheyenne nodded. “If I had a dollar for every time someone’s tried to kill me, I wouldn’t have to work for a year. I’m just glad no one else got seriously hurt.”
There were murmurs of agreement at that, and Mr. Finch hung up the telephone while Fusco, Miss Carter, and Miss Morgan took their leave.
After they’d gone, Cheyenne turned to Reese. “Guess we learned somethin’ valuable tonight after all.”
“Yeah,” Reese agreed quietly. “Just wish I knew what it meant.”
Next
* “People seem to like to hear me sing” is actually something Clint Walker said, rather sheepishly, in his 2012 interview for the Archive of American Television, but it fits Cheyenne’s own experience in “The Conspirators.” (IMO, he had a gorgeous voice—look up “Clint Walker sings” on YouTube to see some clips of songs he performed on Cheyenne.)
** Literal translation of one of the Cheyenne words for computer (taose-kó'konȯxe'ėstónestȯtse).
*** No… no, please….
Fresh Eyes
Cheyenne’s life fell into an easier routine after that first day, especially once he was out of danger from the concussion and Miss Shaw no longer needed to stay close by. There was still a considerable amount of settling in to do, of course, and fittings for suits and a ballistic vest and a shoulder holster, and he’d just about learned his way around Reese’s gigantic apartment when Mr. Finch declared him well enough to live alone and gave him his own apartment in Midtown, which was smaller but no less fancy. Reese and Miss Shaw also supplied him with his own arsenal of handguns and repeating rifles, all very different from what he was used to, and Reese took him to a firing range most Saturdays to help him get comfortable with the weapons. But once Jim Merritt’s life was sufficiently well constructed, Cheyenne’s main duty was studying both the layout of New York and enough of how modern life ran to be adequate backup if and when Mr. Finch called him into service.
That gave him an excuse not to go out on his own much, for which he was grateful. He still hated New York, the more so the more he learned about its criminal element, and he was a long way from comfortable with most of the technology that seemed to be everywhere. He also hated the fact that he couldn’t carry a gun openly, even with a permit—in fact, the sheer number of rules and regulations meant to stop people from living as they pleased boggled his mind. And he wasn’t particularly looking forward to skulking around town wearing a suit that looked like something to get buried in, with his gun tucked under his arm (he was still working on drawing from there with anything like his usual speed) and no hat. He could wear his usual hat under other circumstances, of course, but it was distinctive, and Reese didn’t wear a hat at all, so Cheyenne couldn’t wear one with the suit. Reese also kept his gun holstered at the small of his back, but Cheyenne didn’t feel safe having to reach that far, despite Reese’s repeated assertion that speed of draw hardly ever mattered anymore.
Even so, there were things Cheyenne appreciated about the present day, and a vest that stopped bullets was at the top of his list, followed closely by air conditioning and indoor plumbing. He also discovered that he liked hamburgers, hot dogs, and Italian and Chinese food, although he couldn’t stomach falafel or shawarma, despite Fusco’s best efforts. And while he didn’t enjoy television all that much, he did accept a radio so that he could listen to the baseball games… when Reese didn’t take him to one in person, that is. Modern professional games had changed a lot from the way Cheyenne had learned to play in small towns and forts across the frontier, and actually being at the stadium wasn’t as pleasant because of the crowds, but it was still a fun sport to watch and listen to.
There was an upside to being Jim Merritt, too, the same one there had been the first time: people seemed to like to hear him sing.* Once Cheyenne’s ribs had healed enough that he could take deep breaths without being in agony, Mr. Finch had supplied him with a guitar (he had learned to play but had never owned one before) and a home studio and asked him to record some songs, and while Reese had had to handle the technical side, Cheyenne had gladly recorded practically every song he knew. Mr. Finch had then arranged the sale of several “albums” with a good twenty songs on each—Cheyenne didn’t know why he’d expected single-song wax cylinders when everything else had moved on so far, but there it was—and Reese had taken some photos of Cheyenne with his guitar to advertise them, and apparently they sold reasonably well. The official story was that Thalia Rep was using the proceeds to recoup the losses from Wagons West, but actually, Mr. Finch used them to endow a scholarship fund for young scholars among the People to study first at Chief Dull Knife College and then at the university of their choice. Cheyenne had been moved to tears not only to learn that there was a college named after Morning Star—in Montana, no less—but also to be able to help young people study there, and Reese had helped him arrange to send what he could spare of his own wages into that fund as well.
“Do you think Mr. Finch’ll mind?” Cheyenne had asked at one point.
Reese had chuckled. “Finch knows I only keep 10% of what he pays me and give the rest to charity. Not only does he not mind, I think he’s glad.”
Still, Cheyenne had the nagging sense that God, or Maheo or whatever power had sent him here, had meant him to do more than just sit around studying maps and singing songs and learning how to work one of these newfangled… saving-typewriters.** Whatever that purpose was, he hadn’t hit on it yet. Even the idea of being the second Man in the Suit didn’t seem quite like the full story.
Cheyenne had been in New York about six weeks, long enough for children to start back to school and for the team to need him as an extra gun on a couple of cases, when a knock at the door one Saturday morning turned out to be Miss Carter, who had a courier’s bag slung over her shoulder. Wide-eyed and wearing a silly smile, she held up one of his albums on what they called a compact disc.
“May I have your autograph, Mr. Merritt?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at him.
“Why, of course, dear lady!” he replied, and they both laughed as he ushered her in and offered her coffee. He did sign the disc, and then they sat and chatted amiably about light subjects like her son Taylor’s entering the eleventh grade and Cheyenne’s opinion of who might be going to the World Series.
The conversation lapsed when he went to the kitchen to refill both their mugs, however, and when he came back, Miss Carter’s smile seemed strained. So as he handed back her mug and sat down again, he said, “Much as I enjoy your company, ma’am, I suspect this isn’t just a social call.”
She took a fortifying sip, swallowed, and answered, “No. I, uh… I need your help with something.”
He sat back and waited.
“I guess our mutual friends have told you about HR.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’ve been after them for some time, but every time we think we have them stopped, they rebuild.” She sighed. “Right now, I’m looking into the murders of two of my friends on the force. Bill Szymanski was a detective with the Organized Crime task force. HR tried to frame him, and when that didn’t work, they killed him. And then they killed the narcotics detective they’d used to orchestrate the frame, Cal Beecher. He was….” She paused, looking away both to think and to blink back tears. “I guess you’d say he was my gentleman caller. We’d had our disagreements, but… I was just beginning to hope we could work things out, and then….” She broke off again, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what else there was to be said.
She took a deep breath. “The point is, HR keeps rebuilding because we never manage to cut off the head. Looking into these two murders is getting me closer, but… I just… I need some fresh eyes on the case, and I wondered….”
“I’m not the best detective in the world,” he cautioned. “But if I can help you, I’d be happy to.”
She smiled, relieved. “Thanks.” She reached down to the bag she’d dropped beside her chair. “Mind if we do this at the table? Might be easier to spread out there.”
He agreed with a nod, and they adjourned to the dining room, where she laid out what she knew, which was fairly complicated in terms of who she knew was complicit and whom she suspected. Laskey, it seemed, reported either to a Det. Raymond Terney or to an Officer Patrick Simmons; both were in HR’s inner circle, and Simmons appeared to be the ramrod of the whole operation. But try as she might, Miss Carter hadn’t been able to pin down who Simmons reported to.
Cheyenne drank his coffee, listened, and considered. When she’d finished, he suggested, “Let’s start with the first murder—what did you say his name was?”
“Szymanski.” She sighed heavily. “Szymanski took the lead in arresting Peter and Laszo Yogorov, sons of Ivan Yogorov, who was the head of the Russian mafia until Elias had him killed. HR struck a deal with Peter: they’d get him and his brother out of jail if the Russians would partner with them. But in order to do that, they had to get rid of Szymanski. First they tried planting some dirty money on Szymanski, but I managed to prove that it wasn’t his. The same day he got out of jail, he and Melinda Wright, the assistant DA assigned to the Yogorovs’ case, were invited to dinner with Alonzo Quinn, who’s the mayor’s chief of staff.”
He nodded slowly, not liking where this was going.
“The official story was that someone wearing a mask broke in during the meal and shot all three of them. Szymanski and Wright were killed with two shots to the chest each; Mr. Quinn got shot once in the right shoulder. Then the shooter ran out the back of the room.”
He frowned. “That’s kinda strange, wouldn’t you say?”
She froze. “What?”
“Well, even with a mask on, why would the killer leave a live witness?”
Her eyes widened in horror. “Quinn,” she breathed, looking down at the chart she’d brought. “He… he was Cal’s godfather….” She grabbed a clean sheet of paper and a pen and began sketching a rectangle with a circle near one corner.
“Ma’am?” he asked in concern.
“Hold on.” She wrote Bookcases along one edge of the rectangle near the circle, Window on the next side, and then Q, W, and S around the circle with Q next to Window, W a quarter away next to Bookcases, and S directly across from Q. As an afterthought, she labeled the locations of the doors, one directly behind S and one opposite Bookcases. “I don’t have access to the file anymore,” she said then, “but I remember the pictures of the crime scene.”
He studied the diagram, then picked up a pencil to point with so as not to smudge the ink. “You say these two were shot in the chest,” he said, pointing to S and W, “and Quinn was shot in the shoulder.”
She nodded.
“Well, now, if the shooter was standin’ here”—he pointed to a spot behind the empty seat at the table—“or fired from the back doorway with a rifle, there’s no reason why he couldn’t have killed Quinn before he ran. If he’d shot from the main doorway, he’d have hit Szymanski in the back. If he’d shot from the window, he’d have hit Quinn in the back.”
“But if… if Quinn was the one shootin’ from over here….” She pointed to a spot between Quinn’s seat and the bookcases and traced lines of fire without touching the pen to the paper.
“Who was the first on the scene?”
“Terney. He was the lead on Cal’s murder, too. And then he set me up on that guy I shot in self-defense.” She threw down her pen. “That’s what happened. Quinn shot them, and Terney shot Quinn at his own request.”
“Might be tough to prove, though.”
“Especially if the Russians gave Quinn enough money to make the forensics reports go away.” She shook her head and looked up at him again, lips trembling as she fought tears. “Quinn had them kill his own godson just ’cause Cal asked the wrong questions!”
His heart ached for her. “We should talk with our friends.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head again, determined. “No. I gotta get evidence that will stand up in court.”
“Well, they’ll be more help to you in that than I will. I don’t know this city.”
She looked at him again. “I know, but the way they get information won’t pass muster with the DA, not to mention the fact that there’s people out there tryin’ to kill them, too. I gotta—”
She was interrupted by the door opening to admit Reese, who had his own key and was carrying several white bags that appeared to be full of food. He closed the door behind him but paused in the doorway and looked from Cheyenne to Miss Carter and back several times before asking, “Carter?”
“We were just talkin’ about this case she’s tryin’ to build against HR,” Cheyenne said before Miss Carter could answer. “We think we’ve worked out who the boss is.”
Reese strode quickly into the dining room. “Who?”
“Alonzo Quinn,” Miss Carter reported.
“The mayor’s guy?” Reese dropped his bags on the near end of the table and came around to look over Cheyenne’s shoulder.
She sighed. “John….”
“I can call Zoe,” Reese offered. “Find out what dirt she’s got on him.”
“She’s not gonna know the kind of dirt that’ll get us close. Quinn’s too careful for that.”
“But she may know something that could get the ball rolling.” When she huffed, Reese pressed, “We have to start somewhere.”
She shook her head again. “There is no we here, John. I know you wanna help, and I appreciate it, I do. It’s just….”
“You don’t trust us?”
“No, I do. But I have to get the kind of evidence the DA will accept, and… I don’t want to risk anyone else’s life on this.”
“I’d say it’s a little late for that, ma’am,” Cheyenne noted quietly. HR seemed to have lost interest in him for the moment, but it was safe to say he’d be back on their kill list the moment they worked out that he was working with Reese, and he didn’t think Miss Carter was ignorant of that fact.
“And it’s not worth losing your life to protect ours,” Reese agreed. “What would that do to your son?”
Miss Carter wilted and lost her battle against the tears.
Reese put a hand on her shoulder. “Joss. Let us help you. Please.”
She drew a ragged breath and nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”
Reese smiled tightly and squeezed her shoulder.
“We need a Plan B in case Zoe doesn’t come through,” she continued. “I don’t know about Elias….”
“No. He told Harold back in April he didn’t know who the head of HR was.” Reese looked at her narrowly. “You know how to contact him, don’t you?”
Instead of answering, she said, “Anyway, there’s Laskey. I don’t think he knows much, but I do think I can flip him into an asset. The question is what the best way to use him would be.”
“Don’t do it yet.” Reese sat down on the other side of Miss Carter. “We may need him to feed false intel to HR on a future case. When you do flip him, though, he might be the person to have shadow Simmons or Terney.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“How can I help?” Cheyenne asked.
Reese looked across at him. “Well, for one thing… I think it’s time you met Zoe.”
Meeting Zoe Morgan, which happened the following Wednesday evening after Miss Carter finished her patrol shift, was an occasion for the suit. Mr. Finch was tied up with other business, and Miss Shaw was unreachable by choice, but Cheyenne and Reese met Miss Carter and Fusco at another fancy apartment with much more sophisticated locks and (so Reese said) bulletproof glass in the windows. Reese called it a safe house, one of several Mr. Finch owned around the city. Cheyenne privately thought such precautions were better suited for a cabin in the Badlands, which would have the added protection of stout log walls and a remote location, but no one had asked him.
Reese had just started coffee when the door opened again, and Cheyenne stood respectfully as soon as he saw that the person coming in was a lady, a petite brunette in spike heels, with intelligent dark eyes and a bearing that bespoke power. He couldn’t say he cared much for the tight-fitting dress she was wearing—she would have looked far lovelier in a high-collared taffeta gown, even one of the new Natural Form gowns that had been coming into fashion when he’d left home—but there was no question that she was someone to be reckoned with.
“So, this is the elusive Mr. Merritt,” she said as she came down the stairs into the main living area.
Cheyenne nodded once, feeling a bit awkward. “Ma’am.”
“Zoe Morgan.” Miss Morgan strode over to Cheyenne and shook his hand. Then her eyes narrowed as she studied his face before pronouncing, “There is no way in hell you’re a professional actor.”
“Zoe, be nice,” Reese chided from the kitchen.
Startled, Miss Morgan looked toward the kitchen, then back up at Cheyenne. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that! It’s just—a guy with your looks? You would have been cast as Superman a long time ago.”
Cheyenne smiled wryly. “No offense taken, Miss Morgan. Actin’s about the only profession I’ve tried an’ couldn’t stand.”
“Hey, can we get on with this?” Fusco interrupted. “I’m supposed to pick up my son from his friend’s house in an hour.”
“Quinn being HR makes sense of a lot of what I’ve heard about him,” Miss Morgan began as Cheyenne ushered her over to the sofa. “He’s in a position that naturally puts him in contact with a lot of power players, so it’s tough to tell which are legit and which are HR. But at least one of my informants has seen him meeting with Simmons.”
Most of what followed meant absolutely nothing to Cheyenne, though it clearly meant a great deal to Fusco, who’d been undercover with HR, and to Reese and Miss Carter. Cheyenne tried to keep up in case he needed the information at some point, but it wasn’t too long before he began feeling completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of unfamiliar names and retreated to the kitchen both to get more coffee and to get out of the way.
Reese came after him a few minutes later. “You all right?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Cheyenne confessed. “I don’t know who any o’ these people are or what they’ve done. All I’m hearin’ is that the corruption could be harder to root out than we thought.”
Reese nodded. “That’s the short version, yeah.”
“So how much of the detail do I really need to know? You an’ Miss Carter are the ones goin’ in with the shovels an’ torches.”
Before Reese could answer, they heard a series of piercing tones from Miss Carter’s radio, which she’d brought in with her. A second after it finished, the same series sounded again.
“What’s that?” Cheyenne asked.
“Fire station tones for Midtown,” Reese answered, rushing out of the kitchen.
Cheyenne followed just in time to hear the dispatcher saying, “All available units, please respond to”—followed by the address for Cheyenne’s apartment complex. “Explosion and fire in one of the apartments.”
Cheyenne looked at Reese in horror. “A bomb?”
“Probably,” Reese agreed.
Cheyenne sat down hard on the sofa. He’d lost everything before—he’d been burned out by claim jumpers before—but to have his new home bombed this way, knowing what a narrow miss it had been for him to have gone out on an evening when he’d normally be home, never mind the danger to his neighbors—
“Ooh, hold on,” Miss Carter said, putting her suddenly buzzing pocket telephone on the coffee table. The screen read Cloned Phone: Raymond Terney, Call Connected: Simmons.
Reese tapped his ear device and took his own telephone out of his pocket. “You there, Finch?” he asked before activating the speaker.
“Always,” Mr. Finch replied. “Working on the security camera footage now.”
“Yeah?” said a male voice from Miss Carter’s telephone.
Terney, Miss Carter mouthed, probably for Cheyenne’s benefit.
“We got a problem,” said a second, hoarse male voice, which must belong to Simmons. “Where are you?”
Terney replied with an address Cheyenne thought was in Hell’s Kitchen. Simmons demanded that Terney meet him at another address that was only a few blocks away. Terney agreed and hung up.
“Oh, this is strange,” said Mr. Finch. “I’ll have to double-check with other cameras….”
“What?” Fusco asked.
“It looks like the fire is in a ground-floor apartment, on the opposite side of the courtyard from Mr. Bodie’s.”
Hope flared in Cheyenne’s chest—his apartment was on the fifth floor. “You mean… my place is safe?”
“I believe so,” Mr. Finch said. “That could be why Officer Simmons thinks HR has a problem. Keep listening while I try to access more cameras.”
The next few minutes were filled with footsteps and radio traffic—the ambulances were reporting only smoke inhalation injuries, which was a further relief—until Simmons spoke again from Miss Carter’s telephone: “Over here.”
“Hey,” Terney answered. “What’s the problem?”
“This idiot,” Simmons snarled, accompanied by a dull metallic thunk and a groan. It sounded to Cheyenne as if Simmons had shoved someone against something metal, like a car, but he couldn’t be sure. “You wearin’ a radio?”
“Nah,” Terney admitted casually, which made it sound as if Simmons were pushing someone else around. “What happened? What’d he do?”
“Threw a firebomb at Jim Merritt’s apartment building.”
“Merritt?! I thought you canceled that hit!”
“Eh, put a hold on it until we could find out for sure whether he is the Man in the Suit, workin’ for him, or just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. The boss still ain’t sure. But this punk”—Simmons apparently shoved the third man again—“don’t know how to follow orders.”
“Your orders only matter when the Bratva says they do,” the third man finally said breathlessly. He sounded American, but there was still a trace of something foreign in his accent. “HR put Russians on the force to cement our alliance, but you forget that our allegiance is to the Bratva first.” He might have gone on, but that statement was followed by the distinct sound of one man punching another in the gut.
“Hey, hey, Simmons, take it easy,” Terney interrupted. Apparently addressing the third man, he added, “Are you tryin’ to tell us that Yogorov ordered a hit on Merritt?”
The third man coughed. “Like Old West,” he wheezed, sounding more Russian than before. “Is ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive.’ Merritt has been seen with Carter. I took the chance.”
“And loused it up worse than the hit on Elias,” Simmons growled. “Not only did you get caught on camera, our man at the RTCC says Merritt ain’t even home.”
“What?!” Terney exclaimed. “Wait, what—when—”
“Called me when he saw Peterson here prowlin’ around the building. He says Merritt left an hour ago, dressed for a night on the town—probably headed to a casino in Jersey. Peterson didn’t even get the right apartment! What he hit was the model, and none of the apartments surrounding it are occupied!”
“No,” Peterson gasped. “No, I hacked the building records—I was sure!”
“So we don’t get the Suit,” Simmons went on. “We don’t get Merritt. We don’t get Carter. We don’t get anybody. All we get is you, on video, bombin’ an empty apartment, thanks to Peter” (here he swore) “Yogorov thinkin’ he knows better than me, and if Merritt’s even half as smart as he looks, he’ll know we’re after him, which means he’ll move, which means we’ll lose him.”
“He’s still a witness in the Delancey case,” Terney noted.
“Commissioner ordered that case closed yesterday,” Simmons countered. “Merritt’s got no reason to report his new address to anyone. This whole thing is FUBARed”—there was a choking noise, probably from Peterson—“and it’s all your fault.”
“Nyet,” Peterson pleaded as best he could. “Nyet, pozhalyista….”
“So long, Petrovitch,” Simmons sneered, and then there was a shot, followed by a silence.
Terney sounded oddly unconcerned a moment later when he asked, “Whaddaya want me to do with ’im?”
“I’ll handle it,” said Simmons. “Give ’im to Yogorov as a reminder. Then we need to make sure the others are reliable.”
“Laskey is. Reports about Carter like clockwork.”
“Good. If he asks, Peterson ate somethin’ that didn’t agree with him.”
Terney chuckled. “What about Merritt?”
“We back off. Make sure everyone understands that. If he’s not the Suit, we don’t need to give ’im any reason to change that.”
“All right, I’ll spread the word. But for now, I gotta get back to this gang shooting before someone asks questions.”
“Okay. Just wanted you to be aware.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you later.” Then there were footsteps as Terney evidently walked away, and Miss Carter turned off the sound from her telephone and her radio.
“Wow,” Miss Morgan said, which seemed to be all anyone could say for a moment.
Fusco finally broke the silence. “So HR’s fast-tracked a buncha Russians through the Academy?”
“I knew Laskey was HR,” Miss Carter admitted quietly. “I didn’t know the rest of it.”
Miss Morgan sat back in her chair. “What’s weird is how Petrovitch got his information so wrong. I mean, he said he hacked the apartment complex records. Surely they’d have the right tenant’s name in the files.”
“The records are correct now,” Mr. Finch reported. “But it looks like someone altered the file just before Petrovitch accessed it and then changed it back immediately afterward.”
“That just makes it weirder!”
“Somebody was spyin’ on Petrovitch?” Fusco asked. “Why? Who?”
“It could have been Root,” Reese suggested gravely.
That made a chill settle over the room. Cheyenne had heard about Root, alias Samantha Groves, the madwoman who’d kidnapped Mr. Finch twice and had escaped from an asylum shortly after Cheyenne’s arrival in this year. He hadn’t understood the part about her being a hacker , but evidently she was extremely good with computers and extremely dangerous toward people.
“If Miss Groves has taken an interest in Mr. Bodie,” said Mr. Finch, “that’s all the more reason for us to move him into a different apartment, possibly under a different name.”
“Jim Wade,” Cheyenne suggested.
“Thank you, Mr. Bodie.”
Reese put a hand on Cheyenne’s shoulder. “We’ll stay here tonight, Finch.”
“Good idea, Mr. Reese,” Mr. Finch agreed. “This might even be a good time to spend a few days upstate until I can get everything arranged.”
“Upstate?” Cheyenne echoed, confused.
There were a few clicks and clatters, and then Mr. Finch said, “I’ve made you both reservations at a historic hotel in the Catskills.”
Catskills—mountains—space, quiet, and fresh air. Cheyenne’s eyes slid shut in relief for a moment at the mere thought of it. “Thanks, Mr. Finch.”
Fusco looked at his watch. “Hey, I gotta get goin’. You gonna be okay, Cowboy?”
Cheyenne nodded. “If I had a dollar for every time someone’s tried to kill me, I wouldn’t have to work for a year. I’m just glad no one else got seriously hurt.”
There were murmurs of agreement at that, and Mr. Finch hung up the telephone while Fusco, Miss Carter, and Miss Morgan took their leave.
After they’d gone, Cheyenne turned to Reese. “Guess we learned somethin’ valuable tonight after all.”
“Yeah,” Reese agreed quietly. “Just wish I knew what it meant.”
* “People seem to like to hear me sing” is actually something Clint Walker said, rather sheepishly, in his 2012 interview for the Archive of American Television, but it fits Cheyenne’s own experience in “The Conspirators.” (IMO, he had a gorgeous voice—look up “Clint Walker sings” on YouTube to see some clips of songs he performed on Cheyenne.)
** Literal translation of one of the Cheyenne words for computer (taose-kó'konȯxe'ėstónestȯtse).
*** No… no, please….
