Skin of the Wolf

by Sam Cabot

  “Son of a bitch,” Charlotte said, reading the ping on her computer. “Would you look at that? Forget ‘near,’ Matt. I know just where he is.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure,” she said. “He’s at Donna’s.”

  33

  The cab left Spencer and Michael in front of a small brick house in the Bronx and sped away. Michael watched with a grin. “I guess we’re going back by subway.”

  “Every minute with you is an adventure.”

  Michael mounted the steps and rang the bell. Spencer, he noted, was looking with interest up the shabby street, considering its cracked sidewalks, sagging overhead wires, and vacant lots. A man might be five hundred years old, yet apparently the world still held new things to see.

  In front of Michael the door opened. A chubby, long-haired woman smiled and said, “Doc.”

  “Donna.”

  She stepped aside for them to enter. “You okay? How’d you get scratched up like that?”

  “Fell on the ice.” Michael reached into his pocket and handed Donna a pouch of Prince Albert tobacco. She led them into a front room on the left. A military-neat metal-framed bed, two upholstered chairs, and a TV made up the furniture population. Michael took one of the chairs and gestured Spencer to the other. Donna sat against bolsters on the bed as though it were a sofa. She tamped tobacco into a pipe, lit it, puffed, and finally nodded; Michael waited until then to speak.

  “Full house?”

  “Bah. In winter? No construction, no work. No work, no Indians.” She waited, smoking, then said, “Your brother’s staying.”

  “I heard. I’m looking for him.”

  “Not here now, though.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “Didn’t come in last night.”

  “Could he have gone back?”

  She shook her head. “He owes me rent. Wouldn’t stiff me. He does this sometimes, Eddie. Takes a room, then comes and goes. Maybe he got lucky.” She gazed steadily at Spencer as she said that.

  Michael smiled. “Spencer, this is Donna McKay. Donna, Spencer George, a friend of mine.”

  Donna nodded and puffed smoke. “Good to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is mine,” Spencer said, and though Donna raised her eyebrows at Michael when she heard Spencer’s accent, she didn’t say anything else.

  “Donna,” Michael said, “I need to find Edward. He may be in trouble.”

  “What kind?”

  “I’m not sure. Ivy Nell had a dream.”

  A long pause. “That why you’re looking? Because of the dream?”

  “No. That’s why Ivy told me the dream. Because I was looking.”

  Donna’s pipe had gone out. She set it down. “Don’t know about the dream, but you may be right. He’s keeping bad company.”

  “A white man, calls himself Abornazine?”

  “That one. You know him?”

  “No. Ivy, Pete Travis, a couple of other guys, they know him. Couldn’t tell me where to find him, though.”

  “He’s been here with Eddie, a couple of times. Silver, turquoise, deerskin boots. Long hair. Has maybe three words of Mohawk, says them wrong. Waiting for him to show up in one of those Comanche war bonnets. I’ll throw him into the snow.”

  “Have you seen him lately? Did Edward bring him this time?”

  “No.” With a silver reamer she cleaned the bowl of her pipe. “Don’t know what the hell Eddie’s doing with him. You can tell he’s wrong, he’s off.” Tamping in a new pinch of tobacco, she said, “Lives up the Hudson. Near Esopus.”

  “Where is that?” Spencer asked.

  Michael said, “About an hour north of here.”

  “Yeah,” Donna said, “he’s got some big estate on the bluff. Where the rich people are.”

  “He’s rich?”

  “Yeah.” She flicked a lighter and pulled on the pipe until it caught. “Eddie never told me his white name. Like they’re both pretending he doesn’t have one.”

  “You think Edward might have gone up there? Maybe that’s why he didn’t come back here last night?”

  “No idea. But you go up there, ask around, somebody’s gotta know him. Even in a crowd of rich crazy white people, guy like that stands out.”

  They said thanks and goodbye and stepped out again into the gray day. Michael started down the steps but stopped and looked up the street. “Spencer,” he said low, “I brought you here to meet Donna. She’s an old friend. We talked, we smoked. That’s all. If you can manage not to mention Edward, I’d appreciate it.”

  “I don’t think I’m following. Mention him to whom?”

  Michael nodded to a blue Impala, where a man was getting out from the passenger’s side and a woman from the driver’s. “Them.”

  34

  Michael Bonnard?” Charlotte asked, although she’d seen enough photos of Bonnard to know that if the guy coming down Donna’s stoop wasn’t him he had a twin. The difference was, the guy in the photos wasn’t as battered as this one. This one was scratched, tired-looking, and holding his left arm gingerly. Like, say, he’d been in a fight. “NYPD. We need to ask you some questions.” She and Framingham showed their badges.

  “I’m Michael Bonnard.” After a brief, searching look at her he added, “Abenaki.”

  Abenaki? Lot of that going around. Tahkwehso, he was Abenaki, too. Thinking about him gave her spine a tingle. She wondered if he knew Bonnard. Not likely. There were maybe ten thousand Abenaki all told, in five or six states and a couple of Canadian provinces. Tahkwehso lived at Akwesasne; Bonnard, she could see already, was as city as she was. But she wouldn’t be much of an investigator, would she, unless she followed up? Tahkwehso had no cell phone, but she could find him. To help with the case. And maybe he’d tell her when he was coming back.

  Charlotte put Tahkwehso out of her mind and said to Bonnard, “Detective Charlotte Hamilton. Lenape.” She turned to the man with Bonnard and waited.

  “Spencer George,” he said. “Tribeless.”

  “Sorry to hear it. Dr. Bonnard, shall we talk out here, or would you like to come downtown?”

  “I don’t understand. Have I done something wrong?”

  “You tell us.”

  “As far as I know, no. What’s this about?”

  “What happened to your face?”

  “We were mugged. Spencer and I.”

  “When?”

  “Last night.”

  “Where?”

  “Central Park.”

  “Did you report it?”

  “No. They didn’t get anything and neither of us got a good look at them, so what’s the point?”

  “The mugging,” and Charlotte let a little skepticism leak into her voice, “was that before or after you were at Sotheby’s yesterday?”

  “After.”

  “Why did you go?”

  “To Sotheby’s? To see an item they’re listing for auction.”

  “Which item?”

  “A wolf mask.”

  Framingham’s cell phone beeped and he stepped away to read something on his screen.

  “You’re not a collector or a historian,” Charlotte said. “Why did you want to see the mask?”

  “My grandfather was a medicine man. He used to tell me about masks like this but he’d never seen one. They’re extremely rare.”

  “So you just thought you’d check it out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know a young woman named Brittany Williams?”

  “No.”

  My ass, thought Charlotte. People who really didn’t know someone almost always asked to hear the name again.

  “Hey!” said Framingham, beside her again. “Smile!” He snapped a cell phone photo of Spencer George.

  George scowled. “I object! Is he permitted to do t
hat without my consent?”

  “No expectation of privacy on a public street,” said Charlotte.

  “Really? How disagreeable.”

  The front door to the small brick house opened. Charlotte looked up and nodded. “Donna.”

  “Charlotte. Everything okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Doc?”

  “Thanks, Donna, no problem.”

  “Whatever you’re doing, want to do it in here? Cold out there.”

  “Whatever we’re doing”—Bonnard turned to Charlotte—“I’d like to know what it is.”

  “It’s okay, thanks, Donna,” Charlotte said. “This won’t take long.”

  “I, for one, am relieved to hear that,” said Spencer George.

  Donna nodded and closed her door. A moment later her round face appeared at the window.

  Charlotte turned back to Bonnard. “When you went to Sotheby’s, who did you see?”

  “Detective, what’s going on?”

  “Answer the question, please.”

  “I saw Estelle Warner, the Specialist in the Native Art section, but really, it’s cold out here and I’m getting annoyed.”

  “I’m annoyed, too. Brittany Williams was killed at Sotheby’s a few hours after you left. Homicide irritates the hell out of me.”

  “My God.” That wasn’t much of a reaction, but hell, he was an Indian. Spencer George said nothing.

  “What happened to her?” Bonnard asked. He didn’t, Charlotte noticed, ask again who Williams was.

  “Someone tore her throat out.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Was it you?”

  “Was it me? Why would I— Are you crazy? No, of course not.”

  “But you knew her.”

  “No, I— Was she the assistant? Blond young woman who brought the mask? Then I met her, yes. But I didn’t know her.”

  Charlotte turned to Spencer George. “What about you?”

  “About me? What would you like to know?”

  “Who are you in all this?”

  “In all this criminal activity? I don’t believe I’m anybody. In the larger world, I’m a friend of Michael’s.”

  “Did you know Brittany Williams?”

  “No, I did not. Nor have I ever been to Sotheby’s.”

  “But you are a collector,” Framingham interjected. Charlotte raised her eyebrows but let him run with it.

  “Of art, yes, I am, and how clever of you to know that. But the artifacts of Michael’s—and, I assume, Detective Hamilton’s—people are not within my area of expertise.”

  “No, yours is more European art. Items from the Vatican, say.”

  Spencer George eyed Framingham. “My collection includes some pieces the Vatican has deaccessioned, yes,” he said evenly.

  “And how do you two know each other?”

  “Michael and I? We met at a gallery opening, as a matter of fact. The works of Jeffrey Gibson. Do you know him? Quite a talented young man. One of your people,” he said to Charlotte. “Though not of your—what is it you say? Your nation.”

  Framingham smiled but seemed to have no more to say, so Charlotte turned back to Bonnard. “Why didn’t you go to work today?”

  “I was pretty wiped out. I decided to sleep in and take the day off.”

  “To come to the Bronx.”

  “I’ve been wanting Spencer to meet Donna.”

  “Tell me this,” Charlotte said. “What was your reaction to the mask when you saw it?”

  “The mask? I thought it was beautiful.”

  “But you were disappointed.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Is it true?”

  “Is that what Dr. Warner said? She’s very perceptive.”

  “Disappointed, why?”

  “As I said, the elders used to talk about masks like these when I was a kid. Maybe you heard the stories, too?” When Charlotte didn’t answer he went on, “I guess I just expected something more spectacular.”

  “Where were you last night around nine?”

  “Walking in Central Park. Waiting to get mugged.”

  Charlotte looked at Spencer George, who smiled and nodded.

  “After that? Did you go to a hospital, get medical attention?”

  “We went back to Spencer’s. He wasn’t hurt and I took care of myself.”

  “Michael is a doctor,” Spencer George added helpfully.

  “So no one can confirm your story?”

  “No,” said Bonnard. “Do I need that? Are you seriously thinking I killed this woman?”

  “Should I be?”

  “Not unless you want to waste your time. Detectives, I wish we could help you, but it’s really cold out here and I have things to do. If we’re at the point where you’re accusing me of murder, I think—”

  “If someone, some Indian, killed Brittany Williams to stop the auction, who would that have been?”

  “Are you— No one would do that.”

  “You’re sure? I’ve seen Indians kill for a bottle of beer.”

  “And you see that as a political statement?”

  “I see it as desperation. The same as this would be. You know anyone that desperate?”

  Bonnard just shook his head.

  “All right,” Charlotte said. “Stay available. I want to be able to find you if we need you.”

  “How did you find me this time?”

  Charlotte grinned. “Lenape tracking secret. Matt, you have contact info for Mr. George?”

  “Doctor,” said Spencer George. He handed Framingham a business card. “Though I’m sure you could find me just as you took my photo: whether I want you to or not.”

  Charlotte said, “Okay, you can go. Come on, Matt, as long as we’re here, maybe you should meet Donna, too.”

  She trotted up Donna’s front steps, Framingham following behind. As Donna opened the door Charlotte saw Bonnard and his friend turn and stride away.

  35

  You lied to the authorities,” Spencer said, walking beside Michael on the way to the subway.

  “Technically, no. She asked if anyone could confirm my story. It’s not true, so how could anyone confirm it?”

  “That,” said Spencer, “is the sort of sophistry I’d expect from a Jesuit.”

  “I just couldn’t see an easy way to explain that the people with us last night were the people she met at Sotheby’s later. If I were a cop I’d see that as one coincidence too far.”

  “And yet, that’s the innocent part of the story.”

  “I know. I just don’t want to spend the day in a police station convincing them. In my defense, she wasn’t straightforward with me, either. She asked why I went to Sotheby’s but she knew I’d gone to see the mask. She already knew I was disappointed in it.”

  “She asked that to see if you’d lie. I believe that’s her job.”

  “And on that I told the truth. That must have bought me some credibility.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, you didn’t appear to have a great deal of credibility in her eyes.”

  “Her partner doesn’t seem to think much of you, either. What was he talking about, ‘items from the Vatican’?”

  “That’s a long story, best told beside a warm stove. About our lonely night last night, I assume you’d like Livia and Father Kelly to tell a similar tale?” Spencer took out his cell phone.

  “Yes, though we won’t be able to keep it going. They’ll put it together eventually. But I’d like to find Edward before that.”

  Those words hung in the air between them, begging the question of what would happen then; but Spencer had asked that once, and would not again. Before he entered Livia’s number, he said, “I must warn you, I’m not sure I can convince Father Kelly to tell a lie. In that he’s r
ather different to most other men of the cloth.”

  “Takes his vows seriously, does he?”

  “According to Livia, all of them. Michael, am I to be surprised that this Lenape detective knows your friend Donna? Or is she known to every Native person in New York?”

  “Not everyone. But her place is on the Indian grapevine. You’re new in town, looking for work or whatever it is, you need a place to stay, ask around and someone will tell you about Donna. Mind you, she runs a tight ship. No drugs, no alcohol. Still, if I were an Indian cop, I’d make it my business to stay on Donna’s good side because she always knows who’s coming and going.”

  “And you’re not worried that Donna will reveal to these detectives our true reason for coming to see her?”

  “No. Edward . . . It’s hard to explain, but people care about him in a special way.”

  “Including yourself.”

  “Well, he’s my brother. But Donna, Ivy, Pete—people look out for him, protect him. You heard Ivy, her dream, how worried she was. Donna won’t volunteer anything. Though I guarantee, if anyone besides Edward had shown up in her place with a wannabe like this Abornazine she’d have kicked them both out.”

  “May I ask you about Ivy, and her dream? I had a sense that you and the others put special credence in it.”

  “Ivy’s a seer. I don’t know if your people have anyone like that?” Spencer shook his head, and Michael went on, “Ivy’s dreams have always meant something. Since we were children. She’s from Akwesasne, too. We grew up together. No one discounts Ivy’s dreams, even guys like Pete and Lou, from the West. But Ivy can’t always explain them.”

  “I see. Thank you.” They were nearing the subway entrance, so Spencer thumbed Livia’s number.

  “When you’re done,” Michael said, “do me a favor and turn the phone off.” Michael had his own phone out and was powering it down.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “That’s how they found us. ‘Lenape tracking secret.’ They must’ve traced my cell phone.”

  Livia answered on the second ring. “Spencer. How are you feeling? And how’s Michael?”

  “I’m quite well, thank you. Michael’s much improved. Were you able to locate the owner of the mask?”