Bad News

by Donald E. Westlake

  With a frosty smile, he said, “There’s not much work for a three-year-old anywhere, is there?” Making a joke, because of course he knew she’d meant work for her mother.

  But the damn woman said, “There was some. They had me weeding. Sat me down in the rows of beans, told me to pull up those but leave those alone. I remember I was pretty good at it.”

  Judge Higbee leaned back. That wasn’t stupidity, that was truth. How could this young woman possibly be different from the endless army of morons who marched past his uncaring eye? And yet, the three-year-old child set out to weed among the bean plants was a picture he believed.

  Very well. She’d mixed some of her true history into this folderol. But the underlying fact remained the same: She was an inept scam artist, to be summarily dealt with and sent on her way. He said, “You have no birth certificate.”

  “All I know is,” she said, “I was born on the reservation.”

  “And you are certain, are you, we won’t be stumbling across a birth certificate in the name of Shirley Ann Farraff?”

  “If you find anything like that,” she said, completely unfazed, “you can lock me up and throw away the key.”

  The judge had a copy of the young woman’s letter on his desk. Now he scanned it, then said, “You say your mother—Doeface, is that it?”

  “That’s right, that’s my mama, Doeface Redcorn.”

  “You say,” the judge persisted, “that your mother told you your history, that you are of the Pottaknobbee tribe, and these people you name here are your forebears, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and he noticed the ‘sir,’ and he knew what it meant. So long as he behaved properly toward her, she would behave properly toward him.

  Well, fair enough. He could see now that this actually was a more complicated situation than he was used to. God knows, he didn’t want to have to deal with an interesting case, but this just might be one. He said, “Do you have any documentation at all to confirm your story?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why should you be believed?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  He frowned at the letter some more, then said, “I understand you’ve been living at Whispering Pines, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir, in my motor home.”

  “And how long have you been there?”

  “Four, five days. Five days.”

  “And how long had you been away?”

  She looked blank. “From where?”

  “From here.”

  She smiled, which softened her face, though not enough, and said, “I’ve never been around here before in my life. My mama left here when she was a little girl, with her mama, like it says in my letter. I’m coming home for the first time in my life.”

  He picked up a pencil to point its eraser at her. “Be very careful, Ms. Farraff.”

  “Redcorn.”

  “That has not been established. The only documentation I have on you indicates your name is Farraff. Until you demonstrate to my satisfaction that you should be referred to by some other name, I shall continue to call you by the name on your documents, your Social Security card, your driver’s license, and so on. Is that clear?”

  She shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “But once you give up trying to get rid of me, I want to hear you call me Ms. Redcorn a lot.”

  “If and when the time comes,” he assured her, “I’ll be happy to. Now, where was I?”

  Marjorie said, “You asked how long Ms. Farraff had been away from this area.” And the faint smirk with which she said it showed that Marjorie, too, had been subjected to the name game and was taking advantage of the judge’s victory.

  Fine. “Thank you, Marjorie,” he said, and returned to Ms. Farraff. “If you have never been in this area before,” he said, “and I suppose we can document that by your work history and so on, establishing your whereabouts over the past, say, two years . . .”

  “I’ll give you my tax returns,” she offered.

  “That may not be necessary,” he told her, nettled, thinking, by God, she’s sure of herself. Tapping the letter, he said, “So I must ask you this: Where did you get these names that you claim are the names of Pottaknobbee Native Americans?”

  “From my mama,” the young woman said. “Only she called them Indians.”

  “Did she. If there are no Pottaknobbees left in this world, and the evidence seems to indicate there are none,” the judge told her, “then there are unlikely to be any methods by which you could prove that any of these people ever existed.”

  “Well,” Ms. Farraff said, “there’s my grandfather Bearpaw, who went down with his ship in the U.S. Navy in World War Two. Wouldn’t the government have a record of that?”

  “Possibly,” the judge said. He found that answer had made him grumpy. “But I notice,” he went on, tapping the eraser end of the pencil against the letter, “that not one of these people even has a grave that could be looked at, to see what name is on the stone. Your mother and grandmother both disappeared, your grandfather was lost at sea.”

  “That’s what happens,” Ms. Farraff said.

  Marjorie said, “Your Honor, in fact, in my discussion with Ms. Farraff yesterday, she did mention one more supposed forebear. Your great-grandfather, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” she said, with a very cool nod in Marjorie’s direction. Don’t get along, those two, the judge thought.

  “Ms. Farraff tells me,” Marjorie said, “that her great-grandfather worked in construction in—”

  “Steelworker.”

  “Yes, thank you, steelworker in New York City, and worked on the Empire State Building, and was killed in a fall there.”

  “My mama,” Ms. Farraff interjected, “said the family always believed the Mohawks pushed him, so I believe it, too.”

  The judge pulled his pad closer. “Presumably, then,” he said, “this particular ancestor is buried where one could take a look at his gravestone, or at least at the record of who is to be found in the grave.”

  That didn’t seem to call for an answer; at least, neither woman answered him. Which gave him time for a further thought. He said, “Do we know this person’s name?”

  “Joseph Redcorn,” Ms. Farraff said, as though she’d been waiting years to say that.

  The judge wrote it, and echoed it: “Joseph Redcorn. Very good. Now, it seems to me, someone falling off the Empire State Building, there might be some remembrance of that, record of it among the tribes. Let me just call Frank Oglanda.”

  They let him call, but when he got through to Frank’s secretary, Olga, she said, “I’m sorry, Judge, Frank isn’t in yet this morning.”

  “There’s a name I’m trying to track down, Olga,” the judge told her. “Someone from seventy years ago or so, who may have been a Pottaknobbee.”

  “Oh, Judge,” she said, “I don’t think we have that kind of record here in the casino.”

  “No, this would be a special case,” he told her. “The story is, he was a steelworker in the old days, and was killed while working on the Empire State Building. An event like that, it seemed to—”

  “Oh, I know who you mean!” she said.

  He blinked. “You do?”

  “Yes, I’m trying to remember his name. The plaque is in the other room. I could—”

  “Plaque?”

  “Well, apparently, at the time, it was a real scandal, and a lot of people around here thought the Mohawks had pushed this man off the girder, and the Mohawks tried to make peace and say they didn’t do it and all, and they presented the Three Tribes with a plaque to honor his memory. You know, it was beaten copper, with a representation of the Empire State Building and his name and his dates, and it was dedicated by the Mohawk Nation to his memory. But people still thought the Mohawks pushed him.”

  “And you have this plaque.”

  “Yes, sir, Your Honor, it’s in the next room. I could go look at it. May I put you on hold?”

  “One min
ute, Olga. You say ‘the next room.’ Is this a public space?”

  “Oh, no, sir, it’s the Three Tribes conference room, the public never gets in there.”

  So Ms. Farraff hasn’t seen the plaque, he thought, and wondered if she even knew of its existence.

  “Your Honor? Shall I go take a look at it? I’ll have to put you on hold.”

  “Yes, fine, Olga, thank you.”

  While on hold, he listened to Sonny and Cher sing, “The Beat Goes On.” He closed his eyes. He knew now that this day was just going to get more complicated and more complicated, and then maybe even more complicated.

  “Your Honor?”

  “Yes, Olga, here I am.” Sonny and Cher had gone away.

  “I’m in the conference room,” the pleasant, efficient voice said in his ear. “Here it is. Yes. ‘Joseph Redcorn, July 12, 1907, November 7, 1930. With loving respect to a fallen brave from his comrades, the Mohawk Nation.’ Does that help, Judge?”

  “Oh, immeasurably,” he said. “Thank you, Olga.”

  He hung up the telephone. He looked at the young woman, and she was smiling, but she was also showing her teeth. “I think, Judge,” she said, “it’s time for you to start calling me Ms. Redcorn.”

  17

  * * *

  The question is,” Dortmunder said, “what happens next?”

  They were gathered again in Guilderpost’s bleak motel room at eleven that morning, this time without Little Feather’s sunny presence, and Irwin said, “Next, Little Feather lets them stumble on Joseph Redcorn, they search, there’s some sort of tribal history or something—”

  “Or something,” Tiny said, from his usual perch on the bed.

  Irwin gave an impatient shake of the head. “Joseph Redcorn was the only Pottaknobbee who died in a fall off the Empire State Building. They’ll have a record.”

  “Fine,” Dortmunder said. “They’ve got a record. Then what?”

  Guilderpost said, “They won’t get to the DNA today.”

  Kelp said, “Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

  Irwin explained: “It has to come from them. It’s bad psychology if Little Feather mentions DNA first. So all that’ll happen now is, they see it’s possible, the family did exist, she says she’s part of that family, she can’t prove she is, they can’t prove she isn’t, and sooner or later somebody’s going to say—”

  “Anastasia,” Tiny rumbled.

  “Exactly,” Irwin said. “But it has to come from them.”

  Guilderpost said, “And they won’t think of it today. They have too much to absorb.”

  Dortmunder said, “Okay. So what I want to know is, what happens next?”

  “They let her go,” Guilderpost told him, “she returns to Whispering Pines, and she telephones to us, here.”

  “Uh-oh,” Dortmunder said.

  But Guilderpost, with a little superior smirk, waggled a finger at Dortmunder, shook his head, and said, “She says only one word. ‘Sorry.’ As though it’s a wrong number. And hangs up.”

  Dortmunder nodded. “And makes another call?”

  Guilderpost looked surprised. “What?” He and Irwin frowned at each other.

  Dortmunder said, “So they know it was code, it was a signal, if they’re tapping her phone. And if they want to know, is this woman alone here or is there a gang behind her, they’ll tap her phone.”

  Irwin said, “It’s a pay phone, John, at Whispering Pines. There’re four of them there in a row.”

  “All right,” Dortmunder said. “So there’s a chance. Then what?”

  “The usual routine,” Guilderpost told him. “And she comes here, to let us know how things went.”

  “No,” Dortmunder said.

  Guilderpost didn’t believe it. “No?”

  “In the first place,” Dortmunder told him, “if they let her go, we know how things went. In the second place, taxis have trip sheets, what time the pickup, where’d they go, what time the drop-off. It’ll take the cops half an hour to see Little Feather spends a hell of a lot of time in that supermarket.”

  Irwin said, “John, we do have to talk with Little Feather, plan what we do next.”

  Tiny grunted and pointed at Dortmunder and said, “You listen to Duh—John.”

  “That’s right,” Kelp said. “He’s the planner, he’s the organizer.”

  Guilderpost looked offended. “I beg your pardon, but this is my project. You three have coattailed yourselves to it. All right, there’s enough for everyone, no need to be greedy or cause trouble, but it’s still my project.”

  Dortmunder said, “That’s not what they mean. We do different things, Fitzroy, you and me. You figure out someplace where you can make people believe something’s true that isn’t true. Make them believe you got an old Dutch land grant screws up their title to their property. Make them believe maybe there is just one more Pottaknobbee alive in the world. That’s not what I do.”

  “No, of course not,” Guilderpost said, and Irwin, sounding slightly snotty, said, “I’ve been wondering that, John. What is it you do?”

  “I figure out,” Dortmunder told him, “how to go into a place where I’m not supposed to be, and come back out again, without getting caught or having anything stick to me.”

  “It’s like D day,” Kelp explained, “only like, you know, smaller.”

  “We also go for quieter,” Dortmunder said.

  “So up till now,” Kelp said, “you’ve just been putting the scam together, but now you sprung it, now you got the law and the tribes and everybody taking an interest, now you need John.”

  “To tell you don’t do phone calls in code,” Dortmunder said. “And don’t just make a meeting without thinking about it, because now you got law sniffing around. All of us in this room, our job now is to not exist.”

  Irwin said, “You mean leave Little Feather out there completely on her own?”

  “No,” Dortmunder said. “What we do with Little Feather is, we act like she’s the crown jewels of England, and she’s for the first time on display in America, in New York, somewhere, at somewhere—”

  “Radio City Music Hall,” Kelp suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Dortmunder said. “Maybe the UN. Maybe Carnegie Hall. Somewhere. And there’s guards. And now what we gotta do is, we gotta get in there—”

  “Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Tiny offered.

  “Wherever,” Dortmunder said. “We gotta get in there, wherever the hell it is, and we gotta get back out again, without those guards even knowing we were there.”

  “Only in this case,” Kelp finished, “without the crown jewels.”

  “Well, yeah,” Dortmunder said. “I’m not suggesting we kidnap Little Feather. What I’m saying is, we got to deal with Little Feather without anybody knowing we’re doing it, so let me run this part.”

  “I am prepared,” Guilderpost assured him, “to learn at your feet.”

  “Good,” Dortmunder said. Irony never did make much headway with him.

  18

  * * *

  Little Feather got out of the cab, walked into the supermarket through the automatic in door, made a U-turn, aimed for the automatic out door, and Andy came in the automatic in door. He gave her the smallest head shake the world has ever barely seen, though Little Feather saw it loud and clear, he did not look at her, and he moved on into the store.

  And so did she. He got a cart, and so did she. He started up and down the aisles, taking his time, adding very few items to his cart but studying many, reading cereal boxes and vitamin supplement labels and safe handling instructions on shrink-wrapped hamburger. Little Feather followed him for a few minutes, until she realized he didn’t want her to follow him, and then she went off on her own.

  Which was when she realized somebody was following her. A chunky little guy of about thirty, very much an Indian from the reservation, dressed in old blue jeans, which had been faded by work and use and not by the designer, and a red plaid shirt of the sort worn by som
e men upstate and some women in the city, and he was not a very good follower. He kept being in Little Feather’s way as she roved about, but he would practically rather fling himself over the high display racks than meet her eye. He also was forgetting to put things in his cart, except that, when she stopped to put something in hers, he’d immediately grab something to his right, at waist level, without looking at it, and dump it in. Did he really need Depends? Poor fellow, and so young, too.

  Okay, Little Feather got the picture. The tribes had put somebody on her, to tail her around and see whom she made contact with, and Fitzroy and the others knew about it, or had guessed it would happen, and were warning her not to try to meet the same old way.

  Which made her realize, as she wended her slow and thoughtful way through the supermarket, that the cops might be doing exactly the same thing, with a more competent shadow, someone she might not tip to right away, or ever. So what did this mean?

  Was she on her own now? Couldn’t she meet up with Fitzroy and the others at all? That could create a little tension.

  Except that Andy was still in the store, wandering around; Little Feather saw him from time to time, down at the end of some aisle. So there was more to come, somehow. But what?

  It was fifteen minutes later, when she was in the dairy section once again, this time trying to find the low-fat plain yogurt, as opposed to the no-fat plain yogurt—ya gotta have a little fat—when another cart stopped next to hers, and Andy leaned past the end of her cart to reach for a Honey Walnut Lime Rickey Yogurt With No Sodium!, and when he’d moved on away, there was an additional item in her cart. It was a magazine, and it was called Prevention.

  She didn’t read the note tucked inside the magazine until she got back to the Winnebago. It was hand-printed on two small sheets of Four Winds motel stationery, and it said:

  Don’t telephone. We think they might be tailing you, to see if you’ve got what they call “confederates.” And they could also be tapping the pay phones there.

  At four o’clock, call a cab. There’s a big shopping center called SavMall outside of town. Go there, go to the drugstore there, buy something you want, come back.