Felix moved the mug around the table in a small circle and shook his head. “The boy wanted to know about Hollywood,” he said. “Sat where you’re sitting and talked about how Charlie Wallowingbull and my father went off to be in the cowboy-and-Indian movies when they was young. I guess the agent on the rez give my dad a first name—James or something—but he never liked it much. Went by his Indian name, Painted Brush. Died in 1945. I was thirteen. Well, that was a long time ago.”
The old man was still shaking his head. He cupped his hands around the coffee mug and looked at Father John. “Kiki wanted stories about that time. I didn’t mind his asking, ’cause I knew he was wanting to find who he was and what he come from. Same for you. I don’t mind your asking ’cause you’re trying to find the truth, no matter what story the fed might come up with. Truth is, Kiki wanted to know how come Charlie never come back to the rez. Story was, he took off, just run away from everything. Run away from who he was. Kiki needed to know that wasn’t true. Said he needed the truth for his grandfather, but you ask me, he needed it for himself.”
The old man scooted his chair back, flattened his hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “How about a refill?” Before Father John could say anything, he had grabbed the coffeepot and was sloshing coffee into the mugs.
“I give him the stories I remember.” Felix sat back down and nudged the coffeepot into a vacant spot in the forest of cereal boxes. “Wasn’t a lot of ’em. Fact is, Dad didn’t talk much about that time. Too busy raising a few head of cattle and keeping food on the table. Then he got TB and was real sick the last couple years of his life. That’s when he told most of the stories. There was always a gleam in his eye when he talked about being in the movies. First movie was The Covered Wagon. Tim McCoy, you heard of him?”
Father John nodded. He could see the somber-faced man in the white cowboy hat staring out of the posters, and Kiki’s girlfriend pulling the strips off the wall.
“Looked out for the Indians. Seen they got treated like everybody else.”
“Did your father ever talk about Charlie?”
Felix took a drink of coffee, then held the mug under his nose a long moment. “I didn’t like telling Kiki, but he wanted the truth. They was all worried Charlie was gonna get ’em sent back to the rez with no money. There wasn’t a lot of cowboying jobs for Indians around these parts, and they needed the money. Charlie was one of them stubborn Indians, gonna do what he wanted. Didn’t like playing a drunken Indian, the way the director wanted. Walked off the set one time. Said they didn’t need the movie people telling ’em how to be Indians. Dad said that him and William Thunder took hold of Charlie and threatened to knock some sense into him.”
“Did he say what happened to Charlie?”
“Just took off one night. I didn’t like saying so to Kiki, ’cause it wasn’t the story he needed. They was in Hollywood doing an Indian vaudeville act. Dad says there was signs all over Hollywood advertising The Covered Wagon and the Indian show.”
Felix set the mug down and, leaning forward, laid his arms on the table in a circle and clasped his hands. “Kiki told me he went to Hollywood and found out his great-grandfather got murdered. He was gonna see that justice got done, make somebody pay.”
The old man nodded, the brown eyes laced with sadness and regret. “Hold on, I told him. Nobody around here killed Charlie Wallowingbull. You can’t hold somebody responsible that wasn’t even born. He got real agitated at that. Everybody oughtta know the truth, he said. Then he asked me for another gift.”
“Kiki asked if there were any letters, right?” Father John said.
The old man gave a smile of acknowledgment. “I laughed out loud, couldn’t help it. Yeah, Dad learned to read and write at the mission school, but he never had time to do it. Out in the pasture most the time before he got so sick. Afterward, all he could do was sit on the porch and watch the fences falling down and the herd get smaller. I tried to help out, but I wasn’t strong enough to make much difference. So he just watched everything he’d worked for go to hell. But there was something that kept him going for a while. Somebody had given him one of them box cameras. I kept it for a long time after he died, ’til one day I sold it at a pawn shop in Lander for money to buy feed. He loved that camera. Used to say that pictures was like their own world. They had their own truth. I think he liked making pictures of the world he wanted. So he took lots of pictures of the two old cows we had left and it looked like we had a real big herd. He took pictures of the fence where it was good. Looked like we had a real prosperous ranch. Same with the barn. With the light just right, you couldn’t see the boards falling off.”
“Did he have the camera in Hollywood?”
Felix nodded. “Started taking pictures everywhere. Maybe he thought he could turn into one of them movie people, except for he was Indian.” The old man rocked the chair backward, stood up, and went into another room. Father John could hear drawers opening and shutting. After a moment he was back, plopping a small album that bulged with photographs on the table. “Here’s the first pictures he made.” He flipped back the cover and shoved the album toward Father John.
The pages were thick, black sheets, with little white triangular corners that held the photos in place. He leaned close to look at the black-and-white photos yellowing with age. Scenes of covered wagons, crowds of Indians and whites milling about, long tables covered with plates of food. A photo of a man who looked like the photo of Jesse Lasky he had found on the internet. He was getting out of a light-colored Packard. And street scenes, with old-fashioned square-shaped cars, pony carts, and horses moving past flat-faced buildings. Pedestrians dodged vehicles and strolled down the sidewalks, stopped in mid-step. In one of the photos, he could make out the faint sign on a hillside in the distance: Hollywoodland.
“See what I mean?” Felix said. “Pictures make their own world. It exists forever. When I got older, I used to look at these pictures and wonder if that’s the way it was in Hollywood, or if that’s the way Dad wanted it to be. Look.” He flipped two or three pages until he came to a group of five photos of Indians wearing tanned shirts and trousers and moccasins. Their hair hung in braids, feathers lifted out of their headbands. “Everybody’s happy, smiling, but Dad said the whole time in Hollywood, they worried about the families back on the rez. Did they get the money they sent? Was there enough to eat? In this world here . . .” He tapped at the page. “There wasn’t nothing to worry about.”
He turned another page and set his finger on the top photo. “Goes-in-Lodge,” he said. The elder staring out of the faded black-and-white image looked strong and proud, like the leader of some undiscovered country, shoulders straight and head held high, an eagle-feathered headdress flowing down his back. “There’s Charlie on the right. He moved his finger to the next photo where two Indians were seated on what looked like a wooden bench in front of a light-colored barnlike building. The black letters on the side read: Lasky Studios.
“William Thunder’s on the left,” he said. “William was about the only one could put up with Charlie. Always tried to calm him down, keep that temper of his from getting them all sent home.”
“Looks like Missy Mae Markham here.” Father John laid his hand alongside the photo at the bottom. A candid shot of Charlie and William on either side of a small woman who barely reached their shoulders. Her curly blond hair hung over the front of a dark dress. She held on to the edges of the ragged-looking shawl draped over her shoulders. Poking past the hem of her skirt were the pointed toes of tiny-looking black shoes. They stood near the corner of what looked like a barn. LASK appeared at the edge.
Father John studied the photo for a moment. Something familiar about it. The shawl and black dress were the same costume the girl wore in one of the photos in Silver Screen magazine. He had printed out the page and placed it in the file with the other articles he had found. He was accumulating quite a little stack.
“She’s still about the prettiest girl I ever seen,�
�� Felix said, “even if she is all dressed up in costume for some movie.”
“She was a movie star.” Father John was still studying the photo. The girl had linked her arm into Charlie’s and tilted her head back, staring up at him with wide, adoring eyes. But what had caught his attention was the way William Thunder, standing a little apart, turned halfway toward the couple, had fastened his eyes on her. What James had caught with his box camera was the look of abject and hopeless love in William’s gaze.
“I never cared who she was,” Felix said. “Whenever I looked at that photo, she was whoever I wanted her to be.”
“Did Kiki see the photos?” Father John asked.
He nodded. “Next time Kiki come here, I showed him the album. Must’ve spent an hour or more sitting right where you’re sitting, staring at these old photos.” Felix started to lift the photo of William and Charlie and Missy Mae Markham out of the white corners. “After a while, he said, ‘Thank you, Grandfather,’ real polite-like and drove outta here like he was heading around the last lap of a racetrack. A couple days later I heard on the moccasin telegraph he was dead.” He handed the photo to Father John. “Might want to check the back,” he said. “Dad wrote some things down.”
Father John turned the photo over and read the clear, precise handwriting of a man who had been a student at the mission school: Charlie and William with big movie star Missy Mae Markham at Hollywood studio, April 10, 1923.
“May I borrow this?” Father John said.
The old man tipped his head and gave a wave of assent, and Father John asked if Kiki had said anything about Thunder’s descendants.
Felix shook his head. “None of them around these parts, far as I know.”
23
A DOOR SLAMMED upstairs as Vicky let herself into the office building. The pale afternoon light washed down the walls and crept over the stairway as Roger came hurtling toward her, taking two steps at a time, balancing a briefcase under one arm and zipping up his jacket. “New charges against Troy.” He spit out the explanation as he passed.
“What kind of charges?” Vicky said. She was talking to the man’s back. Roger was already in the entry, yanking open the door.
“Conspiracy in a homicide,” he shouted over one shoulder.
“Wait a minute, I’m coming with you.” The door had already slammed shut and Roger was hurrying past the front window. By the time Vicky reached the parking lot, the black sedan had started to back out. She ran across the snow and tapped on the passenger window. The sedan rocked to a stop, and she slid inside.
“When did this happen?” she said, conscious of the breathless sound of her own voice.
“Troy called about five minutes ago. Begged us to take him back. He sounded suicidal. Said he talked to Gianelli yesterday . . .” Roger glanced over at her. “Waived his right to have an attorney present and proceeded to tell Gianelli how he had been at a house in Ethete where Kiki was killed, and how Jason Bellows killed him.”
He slammed a fist into the steering wheel. “Troy figured Gianelli wanted Bellows so bad that he’d shake his hand and thank him for being a good citizen.”
“What house in Ethete?” Vicky said.
“What?” Roger glanced over. A blue vein pulsed in the center of his forehead.
“The house where Kiki was killed.”
“Vacant place on Yellow Calf Road. Near as I could figure from what Troy said, Bellows and his gang used the house in the past to move drugs.”
Vicky stared out the windshield. The sedan ahead had turned off, leaving an empty snow-covered road running toward the county jail. The sky was the color of dulled steel, and it was starting to get dark. She could feel her muscles tightening. Despite the warm air swirling around her legs, she felt chilled. Nothing made sense. She had gone to the house in the middle of the night to meet an anonymous caller who had wept on the other end of the phone and insisted Kiki’s death had been accidental, an act of self-defense. God help her, she had believed him. But Jason Bellows was not the anonymous caller.
TROY TALLFEATHERS WAS in the small interview room halfway down the corridor from the metal door that blocked the entry from the jail itself. He sat slumped forward over the metal table, hands in his lap. His black hair was shaved close to his scalp. He looked up as she and Roger stepped inside, then went back to studying his hands.
Vicky took the seat on the other side of the table next to the concrete wall. Roger dropped down beside her. “You’re looking at serious charges,” Roger said. It surprised her, the calmness in his voice. “Assault on a federal officer, and now conspiracy in a homicide and probably other charges.”
Troy lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying. “How’d I know the fed was going to turn on me? I did him a favor. You want Bellows? I told him. I’ll give him to you. Now I’m going down with him.”
“What did you tell Gianelli? Start at the beginning,” Roger said.
“Wait a minute.” Vicky leaned over the table toward Troy. “You have to understand this is only a consultation. I’ve been in communication with someone who may be involved, and we are no longer free to represent you.” She could sense Roger’s gaze boring into her. “We can recommend another firm . . .”
“Some other lawyer?” Troy stared at her a moment, then looked away. His hands were shaking.
“Anything you tell us could be used against you at some point,” Vicky said.
“All I’m saying is the truth,” he said. “The night Kiki got killed, I called Bellows, said we needed to talk. He said meet him at the house at midnight.”
Roger took a moment before he said, “That would be the house in Ethete.”
“What’d’ya wanna call it? Corporate headquarters? Business offices? Warehouse? Jason used to stash shipments there, okay? That’s where we used to buy stuff from him to sell around the rez, ’til the fed got on to the place. He had to move the stuff to a house over in Arapaho where his girlfriend used to live, before she got smart and moved to Cheyenne. You might say Bellows took over the place, said he deserved it, all the grief she’d given him.”
“Why did you want to meet him?” Vicky said. She was thinking that the man who called her might have gone to the same house.
“We needed to cool it for a while, with the fed nosing around. He come over to my place, tried to get me to talk, but I didn’t say nothing. So I was gonna try to make Bellows face facts, you know. Move the business someplace else.”
“How did he take it?” Vicky said.
Troy gave a raspy laugh. “I never told him nothing. Same time I got to the house, Lennie showed up. Said Bellows told him to be at the meeting.”
“Lennie?” Roger sat back, arms folded over his chest.
“Lennie Musser. White dude hung with us, Indian wannabe. Anyway, the front door’s wide open and it’s freezing cold outside. I seen a light inside, like a flashlight. Right then, I said to Lennie, something’s wrong. Man, I should’ve gotten the hell outta there. I wouldn’t be sitting here now.” He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “What I did was walk real quiet to the door and look inside. That’s when I seen Bellows hitting some dude in the kitchen. There’s a flashlight on the counter. I seen the dude go down. I didn’t know who it was at first, but I knew Bellows killed him, the way he was stretched out. Lennie seen it, too.”
Vicky sat back and studied the man on the other side of the table a moment. “What did you do?”
“Bellows seen us. He says, ‘Get in here and shut the door.’ It was the way he said it, like he might kill Lennie and me and it wouldn’t make no difference. So we did like he said, and Bellows says we got a problem with the sonofabitch trying to cut into the business. That’s when I seen that it was Kiki on the floor. Bellows was going mental, stomping around the body like he wanted to kill him again, saying nobody was gonna take over his business, who’d the bastard think he was, he deserved to die. They all deserved . . .”
“All?” Roger interrupted. “Who was he talking about?�
��
“How do I know?” Troy shrugged. “Kiki must’ve been working with somebody. Bellows was going on about how Kiki went off to LA to make a buy, how he was trying to cut him out, how nobody was gonna cross him.”
Troy puffed out both cheeks and blew a cloud of foul-smelling air across the table. “He said we gotta get rid of the body in case anybody comes snooping around. Like he was thinking somebody working with Kiki might show up. Every once in a while he’d kick the body. We gotta make an example outta him, he says. Anybody messes with Jason Bellows, this is how he’s gonna end up. So he tells me to take him over to the river and dump him. Every meth head on the rez’ll get the message, he says.”
Vicky felt as if the floor were moving beneath her. If Bellows hadn’t killed Kiki, why would he insist upon dumping the body at the river to send a message? Why would someone else call her and claim that he had killed Kiki? She had the sense that she had been taken in by one of her own people. She could see the amusement in Adam’s face when he heard the news. She made herself concentrate on a scratch in the metal table—the solid fact of it—to steady herself. “Anything else?” she said.
“Bellows said I had to do it, like it was my job.” He shrugged. “Like Lennie and him had more important stuff. Make sure you dump him over the bank, he told me. So I loaded Kiki into the back of my truck and put a tarpaulin over him and drove out to the river. It was freezing cold, snow everywhere. My truck got stuck, and I had to haul Kiki on my back. He was heavy as a horse. I had a helluva time getting him over close enough to roll him down the bank.”
The Silent Spirit (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 22