Fat instantly thawed, and the Tom and Jerry was set in front of me in less than two seconds. I looked down at it.
‘Sure you won’t join me?’ I said to Mister Redhawk.
Mister Redhawk just smiled.
I inclined my head in a more or less accepting way, grabbed the drink, and tossed it back. It was a little too hot, and it burned my tongue and my throat, so I closed my eyes, but I figured that was a good thing. It distracted me for a second.
When I opened my eyes, Fat was gone.
‘Now,’ I said, a little hoarsely, ‘tell me about this other authority to which I must acquiesce.’
‘I am not the director of the Seminole Tribal Council,’ he began. ‘I am, as it were, the power behind the throne. I am not here with you now in any official capacity. But I am here. You see me. I see you.’
I nodded.
‘Say it out loud, please,’ he told me softly.
‘Say what, exactly?’
‘Tell me that you see me.’
I set down my empty glass. I understood what he wanted me to do, because it was not unlike what a lot of mob guys in Brooklyn wanted you to do; look them in the eye and really listen, so you’d know how serious they were. I turned a little more squarely toward Mister Redhawk. I leveled a look directly into his very strange eyes.
‘I see you,’ I told him, sober as a judge. ‘I hear the words that you’re saying.’
‘Good,’ he said, and I could see that he relaxed a little.
I could also feel that the goon to my left also released a bit of tension. I took this as an excellent sign.
‘Then here is what I am telling you,’ Mister Redhawk continued. ‘I am telling you that the baby you have rescued belongs to our tribe. She is the keeper of certain … spiritual properties which we value and which we need. You have done us a valuable service, however inadvertently, in rescuing the baby from the troubled mother, and I am here to thank you.’
My turn to relax. ‘Well,’ I said with a big sigh, ‘I have to tell you, that isn’t how I thought this meeting was going to go when you walked in the door.’
‘I’m not finished,’ he said. ‘We haven’t talked about everyone.’
‘You haven’t yet told me anything about Lynette,’ I answered back, ‘or Lou Yahola. And you have them both, I understand.’
‘We’re taking care of the mother. She’s infected with these drugs from your world, and we’re cleansing her. She’ll be fine. Lou is another matter. He’s lost his way. He has a gift, or, really, many gifts. But they frighten him, and he doesn’t know what to do. His is a more difficult case. We’re helping him too, but that may take a bit more time. He’s very confused.’
‘So, you’re not mad at me for shooting him in the knee?’
‘He told us that you had to do it, because he was trying to shoot you.’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But sometimes a plea of self-defense does not get you off the hook.’
‘No one’s angry with you,’ Mister Redhawk assured me.
‘Well, I hate to disagree with you, Mister Redhawk,’ I said very deferentially, ‘but someone is very angry with me. Someone very recently tried to kill me with a red car.’
‘Ah,’ Mister Redhawk said, ‘yes. I meant to say that no one on the Council is mad at you. McReedy is another matter.’
I sipped a little air and said, ‘News does indeed travel fast in a small town.’
‘You misunderstand,’ he said. ‘Very few people in this town know about McReedy’s attempt on your life. Cass called us after he tried to kill you. She’s worried about you.’
I stiffened up at that news, and tried to sit very straight on my stool. ‘Cass called you?’
He nodded sympathetically. ‘I can see how you might be skeptical about that, but Cass knows Lou, and I am Lou’s emergency contact. She’s called me before, but it was always about Lou.’
I remembered the Contack Sheet and the emergensee number, but I couldn’t see how that made any sense.
‘Cass doesn’t know me or like me good enough to call in the Marines because some guy’s car jumps a curb,’ I said before I thought better of it. ‘And unless you were around the corner when she called, you would never have gotten to me so fast. I mean, this McReedy character, he like, just tried to bop me – five minutes ago at the most.’
Mister Redhawk did not seem offended. ‘You are an exceptionally smart and observant man, Mr Moscowitz, but your observations are limited by a certain perception of reality. To understand me and my ways you would need a perceptual shift, a re-evaluation of your dasein. And that sort of education? It takes a lifetime. Or two.’
‘OK, I only understood about half the words you just said, but I get that you and I come from two different worlds. I get that part. I also get that you know more about me than I do about you. I can only guess why this is true, but it has something to do with the fact that you’re related to Maggie Redhawk, or is that just a common name in the Seminole way of things. Like Smith. Or Greenbaum.’
‘It’s good to have a sense of humor,’ Mister Redhawk allowed, although he wasn’t laughing. ‘But I can tell you that Maggie is my sister. We’re very proud of her. She can ride two horses at once.’
‘She lives in both worlds,’ I translated. ‘Yours and mine.’
‘To answer your question,’ Mister Redhawk continued, ‘let’s have Philip put his hand on the bar. Philip?’
Mister Redhawk’s moose-like companion laid his paw, palm down, on the bar in front of me. It was the size of a rich man’s dinner plate, and the fingers were as big as fat cigars.
‘Have a look at that hand for a moment, would you,’ Mister Redhawk said. ‘If all you could see were the fingers, you wouldn’t think there was any relationship between them. But if you looked deeper, or, in this case, a few inches lower, you could see that they’re all attached to a fairly large palm. They’re all related. That’s the illusion of people in this world, Mr Moscowitz. They all appear to be unconnected fingers, but upon a more accurate observation, they all work in concert: the fingers, the palm, the hand – and the fist they can make.’
The moose clumped his hand into one gigantic fist, and it was bigger than my head.
I looked at Philip for the first time. He had a sweet face, not at all the kind of menacing gob a lot of muscle guys had, at least not where I came from.
‘You know that Philip means lover of horses,’ I told him.
He nodded, a little sorrowfully. ‘That’s how I got my white name,’ he admitted, and his voice was as deep and beautiful as a bassoon. ‘I was big even when I was little, and the other kids, they told me I was part horse. I said I didn’t mind because I loved horses.’
‘But you did mind,’ I commiserated, ‘because they were making fun of you. Listen, when you’re known by the name Foggy, you understand a thing or two about sticks and stones.’
‘What?’ Philip says.
‘They say sticks and stones can break your bones but names can never hurt you,’ I answered him. ‘I disagree. I’d rather have the stones.’
He nodded, and put his hand back in his lap. ‘Yeah,’ he said real soft, not looking at me. ‘Me too.’
‘Good,’ Mister Redhawk said, ‘you’re bonding. That’s nice. But not the point of my visit.’
I turned back to the man. ‘Sorry.’
‘First,’ he began, now completely business, ‘forget trying to find Lou or Lynette. And when we take the baby out of the hospital, which we will do today, forget about that too.’
‘I hear the words that you’re saying,’ I told him, very deliberately.
‘Next,’ he went on, ‘don’t worry about McReedy. Philip will take care of that.’
‘OK,’ I said hesitantly, ‘but could I ask, who is McReedy?’
Mister Redhawk sat back a bit. ‘Yes. It’s a little amazing to me that you’ve been around this place for three years and haven’t run afoul of McReedy. Especially a man as – what’s the word? – inquisitive as you
are. I believe McReedy would be referred to in your parlance as a hit man.’
‘He’s a lunatic,’ Philip whispered.
‘He likes to kill people,’ Mister Redhawk agreed. ‘He would do it for pleasure. But he gets paid for it, so I would imagine the pleasure is double.’
I shook my head. ‘I’d never figure Fry’s Bay to be a place that needed a full-time hit man.’
‘You don’t know the history of this part of Florida, Mr Moscowitz.’
‘In fact,’ I said politely, ‘I read a good bit about the goings-on hereabout. I know, for instance, that you guys got screwed in the worst way I ever heard of. The Seminoles, I mean. I compared it to the treatment my family got in Russia in the old days at the hands of the Cossacks. They would come swooping in and take away everything you had.’
‘Only the Cossacks, in this case, are your own government.’
‘Hey,’ I objected, ‘not my government. Was I alive when you guys got screwed? Did I arrest Osceola under a flag of truce? Did a person like me elect Nixon, for God’s sake? And P.S.: the Cossacks were a part of our own government in the old days in Russia.’
‘Well,’ he said briskly, ‘we agree that this is a sore spot for both our cultures.’
‘We do.’
‘But I’m trying to tell you that you are unaware of the more socio-economic developments of this area in the decades since WWII.’
‘Oh.’ I calmed down. ‘That’s probably true.’
‘Land is money,’ he said, somewhat enigmatically, at least to my mind.
‘OK.’ I was hoping he’d go on so I could follow the gist of his thinking.
‘Land,’ was all he said then.
‘Land.’ I repeated the word a third time, hoping that the magical qualities of the number three might reveal what the hell he was talking about.
‘This is the way of the world, most of these powerful white men will stop at nothing to keep the power they have and to get the power they want. They are not guided by any moral compass. They are not human beings. They are, I believe, demons. Demons keep dogs to do their bidding, and this McReedy is one such underling. He is a sub-animal entity whose sole purpose in life is to eliminate any obstacle, however miniscule, that lies in the path of these non-human, power-drinking white men. Do you understand this?’
‘I hear the words that you’re saying,’ I told him once again.
He gave me the droll eye. ‘I’m well aware that you’re using phrases that you know I want to hear. And I also know that the way you’re using them is, to you, only a half-truth.’
‘Yes,’ I told him, not the least bit shy about it, ‘that is entirely correct. On both counts. I want to show you respect, partly because you spook Fat, which doesn’t seem that easy to do, partly because I really like Maggie, but mostly because I can sense that you’re a person who doesn’t take any guff, and not just because Philip is with you. Though that doesn’t hurt. But even if you were here alone, I would know you had juice. It’s all around you, like an aura.’
He seemed amused by my speech. ‘An unexpected bit of mysticism from you, Mr Moscowitz.’
‘You also confuse me with that non-human, power-drinking crap. I never heard it put that way before, but I know these guys, guys just like that. And I would agree, upon the slightest reflection, that they are, in fact, demons. Not men at all. I know this from experience.’
‘So.’ He stood up very suddenly. ‘We have communicated.’
I stood too, because it seemed like the right thing to do. But I said, ‘Maybe we have, and maybe we haven’t. What is it that you hope I’m going to do now?’
‘You’re going to step back,’ he said. ‘You’re going to let things happen. Stay out of sight for a while so that Philip can take care of your Mr McReedy, and then just go about your business. Go to work, eat at Yudda’s, drink here; live your life. One day, you may return to New York. One day, your troubles there may have gone. One day, you may come to forgive yourself for your crimes and stop punishing your spirit with this odd and humid exile here in Florida. You say to Philip that you’d rather have the stones, and I see the truth of that. You prefer physical discomfort to the things that are torturing your soul. But what is pain? Often we learn that separation from home, from loved ones, from our people in general, that’s the worst pain of all. I know. I know that pain all too well. So I hope that you will let Philip take care of McReedy, and I hope that you will let fate take care of everything else. I can see why my sister likes you. You are a very likeable man.’
‘I’ll give you a list sometime of all the people who would disagree with that sentence, Mister Redhawk,’ I told him, ‘but I am very glad to hear you say it.’
Without another word, Mister Redhawk turned and headed for the door. Philip looked at me like he wanted to say something else, but instead he just gave me the nod, a sort of brotherly exchange. I nodded right back and, just like that, they were gone.
FOURTEEN
I got absolutely nowhere with Fat when he reappeared behind his bar. He was agitated beyond imagination. I tried to ask him about Mister Redhawk and Philip, but all he could do was tell me to get out of his place and not come back until there was news that McReedy was dead. Dead.
I could see that the guy was about to have a heart attack, so I acquiesced to his demand. To wit, I split.
I headed back to the office, but I was a bit spooked and kept checking up and down the streets for the sight of a red Corvette or a mad killer. Neither appeared. I made it back to my place of so-called business, but I was barely in the front door to our suite when I heard Sharon bellow like a bull.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ She was standing up and careening around her desk, headed right for me. ‘Get out get out get out!’
I froze. This was the most animated I had ever seen her, and I found it alarming.
She motored up to me – two inches taller because, despite her height, she always wore heels – and looked down, right into my eyes.
‘Do I want to get shot to death by a stray bullet from McReedy’s forty-four?’ she demanded to know.
I did not blink. ‘I’m going to say that the answer is “no”.’
‘You’re going to say more than that!’ she barked. ‘You’re going to say that you’re getting the hell out of here and hiding out somewhere until something happens to McReedy, or until he kills you and I come to your funeral sobbing and eyeing the buffet!’
‘They’ll have a buffet?’
‘Get! Out!’
At that moment I was glad that no one else was in the office. There were only two other employees. One was part-time and I had yet to meet her – she was a kindergarten teacher most of the time. The other was a kid who was related to the mayor in some way or other, but I didn’t talk to him because he was hardly ever there. I was the man of the house.
‘I will get out,’ I responded calmly. ‘But I am past my daily quotient of “How the hell does Sharon know these things” and I would like to know what you’ve heard.’
She fumed. She breathed loudly. She started to speak several times. Then she closed her eyes. ‘OK, that’s fair.’
‘So? Give.’
She opened her eyes. ‘I would not ordinarily tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. But seeing as you’re in the biggest trouble of your life, and you might not make it out alive and it might be partly my fault, I’m going to give you some information that you’ll take to your grave or I won’t say another word.’
I managed a smile. ‘Take to my grave? I mean, how long is that really going to be, at this point? I’m sure I can keep your little secret for an hour or two, right?’
‘I’m serious as a crutch, Foggy.’
‘OK, OK. I’ll never tell a soul. So let me in on the big secret.’
She stood swaying for a second, a little like a willow in a windstorm. I could see that she was thinking how to begin. Finally she settled on, ‘How did I get to be the boss of this shindig, our little government work scam? It’s
the plumb gig of the county and you know it. How did I get appointed head of Child Protective Services not two months after the federal mandate and ahead of a hundred more qualified people?’
I shrugged.
‘I’m the daughter of Pascal Henderson.’
A ton of bricks – a ton of concrete bricks – could not have hit me harder.
Pascal Henderson owned … well … everything. Not just everything in Fry’s Bay – he owned controlling interest in IBM, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Walt Disney, some new oil company, and even J.C. Penney. The guy was a monster. When the market crashed last year, because of Vietnam and Watergate, and every stock in America lost nearly half its value, this guy swooped in and bought, to review, everything.
All I could say to Sharon was, ‘Pascal Henderson is a bachelor. The unmarried kind of bachelor.’
‘Correct. So, that makes me a bastard,’ she says right back, very defensively, ‘or a bastardette or whatever you would call a girl child out of wedlock. My mother was a waitress. She’s out of the picture. Henderson does not publicly acknowledge that I’m his bundle of joy but, every once in a while, he throws me a fish. Maybe he’s guilty about what he did, maybe he’s nervous about what I’ll do. I don’t care. I got educated at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. I took a year abroad, in London. I spent the summer in Tuscany one time. And when a new federal job was created with a very nice salary for ten people, he somehow made it a fantastic salary for one boss and two other saps. I divide the leftovers amongst the three of you. Yours is the largest bundle.’
‘Because I’m the most qualified?’ I suggested.
‘Because I like you,’ she corrected sternly, ‘or at least, I did until you came in just now obviously trying to get me killed. So when I say get out, I mean it.’
‘But you were telling me how you know the things you know,’ I insisted.
‘Well, because of this tenuous association with one of the richest men in the world, I am sometimes privy to a smattering of his resource network.’
‘Which means?’
‘He knows all sorts of people, and they tell him anything he wants to know. I know some of them too, and they keep me informed concerning my little corner of paradise.’
Cold Florida Page 8