It hit Nick again that Walter was dead. A good friend and colleague was dead. He turned away from Asler to hide the emotions pooling at the back of his eyes.
They turned onto Highway 37 and drove in silence for a while. The Mohawk signs along New York State Highway 37 gave warning to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. INS, and Immigration Canada against travelling any further. Mohawk guerrillas had been known to shoot at vehicles passing through aboriginal land. Nick was happy to deal with the Crees, Blackfoot or Micmacs any time, but in his opinion the Mohawks were a trigger-happy bunch. Still, he’d done his best to establish a working relationship with the Grand Chief and the reserve police chief. If their own police could control the smuggling of illegal migrants through Mohawk land, so much the better. Unfortunately, the traffic was too lucrative a business to be anything but a source of temptation to certain members of the community.
Large wooden “No Trespassing” signs marked the entrance to the Akwesasne Indian reserve, warning FBI and New York state police to stay off Indian land — a smuggler’s paradise of twenty hectares of islands and hidden inlets spanning across Ontario, Quebec and the U.S. borders. Like the U.S. Border Patrol, they ignored the trespassing warning.
Asler swung the SUV onto St. Regis Road and they headed due north to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Reservation. Knowing what they knew, neither man spoke to the other. Periodically Nick would finger his bullet-proof vest, reminding himself that most of his vital organs were safe. Unless, this very minute, someone was lining up the crosshairs of a telescopic sight on the back of his head. He sat tensely, observing the houses and farms they passed, keeping an eye out for armed Mohawk warriors.
As they pulled up beside another four-by-four in the dirt parking lot by the boat landing, Jimmy Longbull, Grand Chief of the Mohawks, turned to see who else was appearing uninvited on Mohawk land. A stocky man with long black hair in a braid that fell down his back, he was leaning against the side of his pick-up truck and watching the cops and officials down by the water. He raised a hand in greeting — to Nick only. Longbull didn’t care for Asler, who had never acknowledged his authority as Grand Chief by sharing information with him.
“Longbull, how goes it?”
The two men slapped each other on the back in a gesture of genuine warmth.
As if on cue, Asler walked away to join his INS colleagues.
When he and Longbull were left alone, Nick apologized for the presence of the police. The Grand Chief nodded his acceptance of Nick’s apology, still keeping a wary eye on the activity on the riverbank.
“Did your people see or hear anything of the shootout early this morning?” Nick asked.
“Sure, my people heard the weapons fire. But that ain’t nothing new.” Longbull shrugged. “Every day we hear automatic fire. People know better than to go out on the St. Lawrence at night. If it ain’t the automatic guns that will cut you down then it’s the smugglers’ speedboats that will cut you in half.”
“So you don’t know what happened out there?” asked Nick, pointing towards the St. Lawrence River.
“I’m telling you, Nick. Sure, there’s been cigarette and people smuggling here before, but this time there’s no Mohawks involved. I spoke to some of my people right after those INS officials told me about it. They say they don’t know anything about this smuggling job.”
As usual, nobody knows anything, thought Nick. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least to learn that the Mohawks had sold docking rights to agent smugglers bringing in their human cargo. Outwardly, Nick accepted the Grand Chief’s explanation, and followed the crook of Longbull’s finger as he pointed towards a group of old men and women standing underneath a weeping willow.
“They don’t like to see this. People aren’t proud that this stuff is going on. They feel shame about this, eh? But you know the economy the way it is, some folks get desperate and make money whichever way they can, just to put food on the table, eh?”
“Longbull, I understand. No need for you to defend the actions of others. You’re only the chief and not your brother’s keeper,” Nick said in a conciliatory tone. He knew putting people on the defensive was no way to get answers on the identities of those who killed Walter Martin.
Longbull smiled at him, then motioned another man to join them. “Nick, you remember Ronald Thunder?”
Nick cocked his head to the man in the mirrored aviator-style sunglasses walking towards them.
“The police chief. I remember.”
His relationship with the police chief was more complicated. Thunder had always been formal and uneasy with him, as he was now. “Nick,” said Thunder in greeting. “I got nine patrol officers, which is not enough to cover twenty hectares. First we deal with cigarette smugglers. Then the booze. Now they’re moving people. What am I supposed to do, eh?”
Pushing his luck, Nick asked, “How many illegals has your reserve taken in?”
“Nick, you know where we are? An illegal could come ashore in somebody’s backyard right here on Canadian soil. By the time he reaches the road in front of one of those houses,” Thunder pointed, “he’s already on American soil.”
Sounding defensive already, said Nick to himself. Instead, he replied, “Thunder, I understand. You can’t police everybody in your community twenty-four hours a day.”
Thunder appeared to be satisfied. “People in the community have to earn a living. As police chief I ask myself, which is better? Cigarette or booze smuggling, or people smuggling? The thing is, eh, the smuggling of people ain’t a headache for us, ’cause they’re just passing through. It’s funny how they come from faraway places but it seems like they always know somebody in our community. One guy last month came from Nigeria. He sends a fax asking for Eagle Willie to pick him up at the church in Buffalo. You know that one? Casa Marie something, I think. Now, if you ask me, how come people from places like Timbuktu know the names of some of our people here, eh? Mohawks don’t have that kind of resources to handle this level of traffic from organized crime.”
Nick stared hard at Thunder. Was the police chief trying to tell him something about Eagle Willie or organized crime? “What makes you think organized crime is involved in running illegal border traffic?” he asked.
“I hear rumours.”
“What kind of rumours?”
Thunder shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette. “I’ve arrested a few of our people and they say they got into moving people from their big city connections with mob types in New York. You make what you want of that, eh.”
Nick wanted to tell Thunder that he was full of shit. Instead he focused on his surroundings. He had been here hundreds of times before on immigration and smuggling operations. He could walk the narrow path hugging the water’s edge with his eyes closed. This was cottage country. A fine place for a picnic or fishing trip. But not today. He took a couple of steps back, moving away from Thunder. Talking to the man always produced more questions than answers. It was an exercise in frustration. Nick turned away, saying, “Good talking to you. Let’s follow up later.”
With each step, he moved closer to the spot where Walter had died. If it wasn’t for the yellow tape, he would never have known that the place was a crime scene. Nothing said violence and death had happened here mere hours before. There was just the sunshine, the fresh morning breeze and the sound of water lapping gently against the river shoreline. Closer to the spot where Walter Martin fell, Nick could see flecks of blood on the blades of grass, and patches of soil stained red. That was all but it was enough. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. He remembered when Walter first joined the unit. The summer of ’92, when they’d worked a surveillance mission together, some of the deportations they’d carried out, the big immigration visa scam that had taken them to Holland. After that, there was Algeria, gathering information on those suspected