‘Ah, that’s how it happens sometimes,’ he said, nodding. ‘You take a second to reflect, sometimes over a meal, and the light dawns.’
‘It does,’ I admitted. ‘So now let me see if I can piece together the loose fabric of the past couple of days and come up with some kind of cloth we can use. I’m supposed to be pretty good at this.’
‘You have so many talents, really,’ he said, almost like a grandpa. ‘Why did you ever take to stealing cars, of all things?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it was a trick I learned from Red Levine. Perhaps you heard me tell Joseph about Red Levine.’
‘I did, but I have no idea who or what that is.’
‘Jeez, you guys never read a newspaper? Red Levine was only the foremost member of the Combination who never got caught by the New York constabulary.’
‘I,’ he began, then shook his head. ‘No. That didn’t help. Explain it better.’
‘To tell you the story of my life would take more time than we have,’ I said, ‘so I’ll give you the high points. My father, apparently, was a minor figure in the Combination.’
‘Stop,’ he said. ‘What is that, “the Combination”?’
‘Ah. The Combination. Sometimes it was called Murder Incorporated by the ignorant gentile press, but it was essentially an organization of hitmen who were Jews and very good at their trade.’
‘Like McReedy.’
‘So I’m told,’ I went on, ‘although Philip certainly seemed to be pretty good at thwarting that particular guy, in my experience, so I’m not sure how good he actually is.’
‘But to return to your father,’ he said.
‘My father was a driver for Red Levine in the younger days,’ I said. ‘This was all I ever knew, except that something went wrong one night on a hit, and my father got shot. They left him behind and called an ambulance for him, thinking the cops would take him to the hospital. The ambulance and the cops arrive. The cops assume that my poppa was the shooter in the hit. They wouldn’t let the ambulance take him until he confessed or gave up the name of the actual shooter, which he did not do. So as a result he died on the spot, and the ambulance became a hearse.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I shrugged. ‘I never knew the guy. This happened when I was, I think, two. My mother and my aunt raised me as good as they could, considering that they both worked twelve hours a day and then came home to do more work there.’
‘So this man, Red Levine, he felt responsible for your loss, and he wanted to help.’
‘Something like it, I suppose, or maybe he just watched out for me to see was I irked enough with him to rat him out to the cops or try and zotz him myself.’
‘What is that word, zotz? I heard you say that to Joseph, too.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘this is a word which means to ice someone.’
‘Ice?’
‘To bump off, to burn, to pop.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘What McReedy tried to do to me!’
‘Oh,’ he said, rearing back his head, ‘you’re talking about killing.’
‘Please,’ I said, uncomfortably, ‘we don’t like to use this word. It’s too … obvious. And, if I may say so, a little disrespectful.’
‘So,’ he said, folding his hands in front of his face, ‘this is the male figure in your life: a man who was responsible for the death of your father, a man who might have killed you, or whom you might have killed. And he taught you to steal cars? Why?’
‘That’s where it gets a little parental,’ I admitted. ‘As it turned out, Red liked me, and I liked him. He got me into boosting wheels because it was the only safe racket he knew. I mean, he was a career criminal. So he introduced me to Pan-Pan Washington, who became, in some fashion, my best friend, and who is a genius with a blowtorch, by the way. That was important, of course, because Pan-Pan could make Philip’s Jeep look like a Chevy station wagon if you wanted him to. He converted the merchandise I brought him into something so unrecognizable that we actually, twice, sold back said stolen merchandise to its original owner, and they never knew.’
‘And you were how old when you began this enterprise?’
‘I must have been about twelve, I think. The years run together. I also did my fair share of coke at that time in my life. My fair share and the fair share of several others, truth be told. So, in addition to running together, the years themselves are fuzzy.’
‘I see. You did drugs as a teenage boy.’
‘Doesn’t everybody?’ I asked him. ‘But coke can be a good support system when you’re boosting cars. It makes a person alert. Now, for recreation I prefer mescaline, if you can get it pure. But I’ll tell you that I have never gotten as wacked as I was after I drank that damned tea you made me. It was the serious delirious.’
‘But it’s not a recreation. It’s … it’s something like a holy encounter.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’ I settled back and closed my eyes.
The day’s activities, the stress of being lost in a swamp, and my suddenly satisfied stomach were all combining to make me sleepy.
‘You were going to tell me,’ I heard John Horse say, ‘before you had your dinner, what conclusions you had come to about the events of the past several days.’
My eyes snapped open. ‘How do you do this?’ I hollered. ‘You made me forget the subject altogether, by saying the magic word turtle! How do you do it?’
‘I tried to tell you,’ he said, ‘that it isn’t something I’m doing. I think I’m just talking with you, and answering your questions, and leading you to answer mine. I’m not doing anything. We just have very different ways of talking, you and I.’
‘Oh, really,’ I said, but it wasn’t a question.
‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘you were about to fall asleep just now, I think. If I had actually been trying to throw you off the track, would I have reminded you that you were about to piece together a puzzle?’
This took me aback. ‘You do have a point there.’
‘OK.’ He folded his arms. ‘I’m listening.’
‘OK,’ I said, right back to him. ‘Let me see. I was about to get off work a couple of nights ago when my boss called and said I had to find a baby.’
‘Is that unusual?’
‘A little,’ I said. ‘Most things wait until the morning. Government hours. But it seemed urgent because the little tyke was going to die if I didn’t find it right away, because its mother was an addict. So, off to the hospital I went, where I encountered my acquaintance Maggie Redhawk, only one of several Seminoles I was soon to run into on that particular night. With some effort, I found the baby, shot Lou Yahola – who I need to ask you about in a second – and took the tyke back to the hospital. So all was supposed to be well that ended well, until suddenly there was a hit out on me, and the hitman, this McReedy character, was hired, for some unknown reason, by Pascal Henderson, one of the richest men in the world and the father of my boss. Wait.’
I stopped in mid-thought, because something very strange was occurring to me. Again, I was nearly overwhelmed by the gigantic noise of the tree frogs. The oil lamp sputtered. John Horse was nodding, eyes closed.
‘Go on,’ said John Horse, as if he was talking to himself. ‘You’re just about to figure this out.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but it can’t be what I’ve got in my mind at this moment.’
‘What have you got in your mind?’
‘I’ve got in my mind that Pascal Henderson put a hit out on me, and is chasing Lynette, and got my boss to make me find the baby because … but, seriously, it can’t be what I’m thinking.’
‘What are you thinking?’
‘I am thinking,’ I began, with a voice that didn’t remotely sound like my own, ‘that Pascal Henderson, who owns a quarter of the world, is the father of Lynette’s little baby.’
‘Your insight is remarkable,’ said John Horse, opening his eyes. ‘Really amazing.’
‘He’s the father?�
� I repeated, leaning forward.
‘And that’s only the beginning. How far do you think you can take that line of thought?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said, trying to focus. ‘This is huge. I guess, first, I have to ask myself why a gazillionaire like Henderson is anywhere near Fry’s Bay. And my conclusion is that there is money to be made here, because what else does a guy like that live for – besides, apparently, schtupping young girls out of wedlock.’
‘Go on.’
‘And the Seminoles are involved, so it has to do with whatever it is that is important to you guys, which, my guess would be land. Stolen land.’
‘You really do have a gift for this sort of thing,’ he told me. ‘What a waste that the first third of your life was spent in something so mundane as stealing cars.’
‘So the Henderson guy,’ I said, at least in part only to myself, ‘is the father of Lynette’s baby, and also the father of my boss, which means he is something of an old guy at this point, and it also means that Lynette’s baby and my boss are sisters.’
‘Interesting,’ he said, ‘but not a part of the story, not for us, at least.’
‘And by us you mean the Seminoles, so it must be true to some extent that Lynette is at least part Seminole.’
‘She is.’
‘And, let me guess, like the Jews, heritage is passed through the mother, not the father.’
‘This is the way for the Jews too?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If your mother was a Jew, you’re a Jew all the way. If your father was a Jew, but not your mother? You can cop a walk. No hope for me, though. Both parents: Russian Hebrews, on the lam from Stalin and his Cossacks.’
‘Well, that is an interesting fact. And you are correct, most tribes are, at least to some extent, matriarchal – or were before Christian missionaries taught us that it was wrong.’
‘So, the point is that, somehow, this little baby you’re hiding here in the swamp, it’s got something to do with land. Seminole land that Henderson wants, or has and might lose, or something along those lines. That’s not the whole story, of course, but how am I doing?’
‘Almost perfect.’
‘I’m not finished. The fact that Henderson has a place, a condo, in Fry’s Bay, that says something about the importance of the land or the holdings or whatever. Maybe he just wants to be close to the scene for some reason, or maybe he has to establish some sort of residency requirement.’
‘Right again.’
I folded my arms. ‘Gee. I really did almost screw this whole thing up, didn’t I?’
‘You were misled.’
‘Yes. I have to figure this out too: why are people misleading me? Is my boss, for whom I have had, until now, the utmost respect, in fact a demon in disguise; a devil in a blue dress?’
‘Meaning, is she on her father’s side in this matter.’
‘Or at least this: is she trying to get me killed?’
‘Well.’
‘There are,’ I told him, ‘plenty of missing steps in this little story, but I believe I have hit enough of the high points for you to tell me … for you to fill me in on the rest, right?’
‘That seems fair.’
‘OK, so go.’ I pinched my lips together.
‘The Seminole tribes are the only so-called Indians that never signed a peace treaty with the United States. This is due, in part, to an intense distrust of the American government and military. In October of 1837, Osceola was captured by General Jessup under a flag of truce, a complete violation of the white man’s rules. Osceola died in captivity the following January, of malaria, they say. He lived in these swamps all his life and never caught malaria, but three months in the Ft. Moultrie prison killed him off.’
‘Tragic,’ I said, ‘but this I already knew about, and I was looking for a little more recent history.’
‘You’re wondering about the land,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’m telling you. The government tried to confiscate our land, scatter our people, take us to Oklahoma, rub us out. Some of us stayed here, in the swamp, and, as it turns out, we still have a legal claim to all this land.’
‘Which land are we talking about, exactly? This swamp?’
He shook his head. ‘All this land.’
‘All what land?’
‘I told you once before. Florida.’
‘What?’ I jumped a little. ‘You were serious? You think you guys own all of Florida?’
‘It would be difficult to prove,’ he said, ‘but yes. We own all of Florida. You can keep Miami and the Keys, if you want to. We’ll take the rest.’
I had to laugh. ‘OK, you realize that this is never going to fly.’
‘Probably not, but if we start there, we can bargain down to what we really want.’
‘Which is?’ I asked.
‘The part that Pascal Henderson wants.’
‘And which part is that?’
‘The part,’ he told me, ‘where all the oil is.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
John Horse told me that something called Exxon had recently replaced the Esso, Enco, and Humble oil company brand names, but it only consolidated what had been going on for some time. Back in 1901, people started with the oil drilling on Seminole land, but they didn’t hit anything until Humble produced oil in the early 1940s amongst the cypress trees. The cypress trees themselves were also valuable, and there was a sizeable timber industry on the land, but the oil would have been more profitable.
Pascal Henderson bought up a lot of this new Exxon corporation when the market dropped last year, in ’73, and was very concerned that some Seminoles were saying that the land was not his, the profits were not his, the oil was not his, and, in general, he’s out. All of which were things that might make a rich man mad enough to hire a hitman like McReedy.
My guess was that Henderson figured I stole the baby, or allowed the baby to be stolen, because I was in cahoots with the Seminoles, which, by that point, I guess I was.
John Horse spent most of the night explaining these things to me, and I would have to say that I got more and more upset as he talked.
Morning came a little too early for me on this particular occasion, and I was stiff from not sleeping and sitting all night on a cold, hard, dirt floor. John Horse got up eventually, sat next to his hot plate, and began to make breakfast.
The sun was up, but barely. It did make for a nice slant of sunlight through the eastern window of the crappy concrete cabin.
‘Eggs,’ he said.
‘OK,’ I answered.
‘Here.’ He held up a plate.
I managed to get up and take the plate. There was no fork or spoon or anything. I saw that John Horse was eating with his fingers. The eggs were hard scrambled, easy to eat with your hands. I hesitated, but not for long, and then I followed his example. And the eggs were pretty good.
‘I have coffee,’ he said between bites.
‘I would kill for a cup of coffee,’ I responded, somewhat dramatically.
‘No need for that,’ he said, laughing. ‘I’ll give you a cup for nothing.’
He set down his plate, still sitting cross-legged on the floor, and reached over for a big clay pitcher.
‘I don’t have a modern percolator,’ he said. ‘I grind the beans by hand and then steep them in water, like tea. It’s kind of strong. Sorry.’
He put a sieve on top of a coffee mug – the same one he gave me for the poison tea – and poured. The biggest coffee grounds got trapped in the sieve, and the coffee smelled pretty terrific.
He handed me the mug. The coffee was warm, really strong, and really good. I downed the entire mug.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. Now. What shall we do today?’
‘Well,’ I told him, resuming my work on the eggs with my fingers, ‘I think I have some business to take care of in Fry’s Bay. But I’m going to finish breakfast first, then pee, and then, if I may, I’d like to visit Lou Yahola for a second. I assume you have him around here somewhere.’
‘We do.’
‘So I’d like to see he is OK, and apologize for shooting him in the knee.’
‘I think he’d like that,’ said John Horse, ‘but we should wait until the time is right, in a few days, maybe. He’s having a little trouble healing. And he probably wants to apologize to you, too. He gave you some sort of sleeping drug and also shot at you.’
‘Well, when you look at it the right way,’ I said, finishing my eggs, ‘we were both doing what we thought was right.’
‘Good way to look at it.’ He took my empty plate. ‘You seem to be a little tense.’
‘I didn’t sleep,’ I said, ‘and I’m trying to control a major problem with Pascal Henderson.’
‘What sort of problem?’
‘He’s behind my current dilemma, i.e. being shot, beat up, dosed, chased, and, in general, screwing things up for the past forty-eight hours or so.’
‘So, we’ll visit Lou another day,’ John Horse suggested. ‘Now, after you pee, then what?’
‘Then what?’ I repeated. ‘Then I’d like to go back to Fry’s Bay and see what I can do to mess up this Pascal Henderson bastard.’
‘Not really your job,’ he told me.
‘Actually,’ I said to him, ‘it is. My job is to protect the child, and this guy is about as big a threat to the child as you can get. And incidentally, I just remembered a conversation I had with Maggie Redhawk. It was about how every baby lives in water before it’s born, so I guess you could argue, if you wanted to, that we’re all water spirits. I don’t know why I thought of that just now, but there it is.’
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’re turning into a Seminole, just a little.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think I could cook things as slowly as you do.’
‘Meaning?’ he asked me, cagey.
‘Meaning I want to get back to Fry’s Bay right away and really screw with this Henderson guy the way he’s screwed with us.’
‘Us?’
‘Us,’ I confirmed. ‘You know, me, you, Lynette, the baby, the Seminole nation, and probably the entire American economy, when you come right down to it.’
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