Bad News

by Donald E. Westlake

  If you see your tail, mark him, but don’t let him know you’re onto him.

  Everything’s fine with us, no problem.

  Well, who cares about you people? Little Feather thought. Four o’clock. Another cab ride.

  19

  * * *

  Little Feather’s a real boon for the taxi industry around here,” Kelp said as they watched the cab turn in at Whispering Pines main entrance, over there across the road.

  They were all in Guilderpost’s Voyager, which was crowded but marginally more roomy than the Jeep, parked on the blacktop beside the kind of liquor store that grows like magic across the road from every campground in the civilized world. Guilderpost was at the wheel, with Dortmunder beside him, now looking past Guilderpost’s impressive chin at the taxi turning in at the entrance over there. Tiny took up much of the rest of the vehicle, with Kelp and Irwin tucked in among him.

  A minute after the cab drove in, a little chunky guy came trotting out of the entrance, had to stop and bounce on both feet and wait impatiently while two big semis roared by, one north, one south, and then scampered across the road to climb into a small old orange Subaru parked around at the front of the liquor store, facing out. Dortmunder had noticed that vehicle on the way in and had idly wondered if the place was in the process of undergoing a holdup, because why else would you park in front of a liquor store facing out? Well, this was why else.

  “The follower,” Tiny rumbled.

  “From the tribes,” Dortmunder agreed as the taxi came out the main entrance and turned right, toward town. The Subaru sputtered and stalled, then bounced out in the taxi’s wake.

  “Okay, good, let’s go,” said Irwin, who didn’t like sitting under Tiny.

  “Wait,” Dortmunder said, and across the road a dark gray Chevy they hadn’t even noticed, which had been tucked up against the shrubbery that grew along the wooden fence fronting Whispering Pines, suddenly slid forward, like a water moccasin through a shallow stream. “And that’s the cop,” Dortmunder said.

  Tiny laughed (Irwin groaned). “Little Feather’s got herself a parade.”

  “Can we go now?” Irwin begged.

  “Right,” Dortmunder said, and they all climbed out of the Voyager, some more stiffly than others, and walked across the road.

  Having been here before, Guilderpost led the way down the curving blacktop road among pine trees and brush and various kinds of motor homes and the occasional actual tent, until they came to the motor home. “She’ll have locked it,” he said, taking out a key as they approached the vehicle.

  “Why?” Kelp asked.

  “Habit,” Dortmunder suggested.

  The motor home’s right side, opposite its main door, was tucked up against a few scraggly pines. On the left side, there was a bit of wasteland, and a knee-high yellow rope threaded through metal stakes pounded into the ground to define the area of the campsite, and beyond that four oldsters playing cards at a table they’d set up outside their Space Invaders vehicle. They watched the five men, not suspicious, just watching, the way people watch anything that moves, and Kelp waved to them, calling, “How you doing this afternoon?”

  The four cardplayers smiled and nodded and waved, and one of the men said, “Pretty fine.”

  “Nip in the air,” Kelp told them, since Guilderpost was still fumbling with the key.

  One of the women said, “The young lady went out.”

  “To the drugstore,” Kelp agreed, and pointed at Guilderpost, who’d finally gotten the door open. “That’s her father.”

  “Oh,” they all said, as though they’d just been told an entire story, and they all nodded and waved and smiled at Guilderpost and said, “Afternoon.”

  Guilderpost managed a smile and a wave of his own, then led the way inside, the others following. “Stepfather, perhaps,” he said as he shut the door.

  20

  * * *

  Somebody out there says my father’s here,” Little Feather said, stepping into the motor home, carrying the plastic shopping bag with the big green cross on it that showed she’d been to the drugstore.

  “That was one of Andy’s little pleasantries,” Guilderpost told her.

  Little Feather looked around at them all. The motor home’s living room had never seemed so small. “So I guess this is the debriefing,” she said. “Wait while I put this stuff away.”

  She left them and went down the narrow hall to the bathroom, where she unloaded the things she’d bought on her outing, and when she came back to the living room, Irwin had risen and was grinning that fake grin of his in Little Feather’s direction—whenever Irwin tried for anything in the smile category, he looked like somebody with heartburn—as he said, “Have my chair, Little Feather.”

  Andy was already seated on the floor, Tiny on the sofa, Fitzroy on the other chair, and John on the footstool from the kitchen, his knees tucked up under his chin. “Thank you, Irwin,” Little Feather said, bounced her own brief false smile off him, and sat down.

  Irwin found a place on the floor near Andy, where he, too, could lean his back against the wall, and Fitzroy said, “Well, Little Feather, you’ve had adventures.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said.

  “Well, no,” John said. “We’re here so you can tell us about it.”

  “Okay,” she said. “They decided to play hardball from the very beginning, arrested me for extortion, put me in a cell. Nobody talked to me till after six at night, then this court-appointed lawyer came in, already cut a deal with the judge, here’s a paper to sign, says I’m a lying sack of shit and I’m happy to leave town and never come back.”

  “This is your lawyer,” Irwin said.

  “That’s what it said on the label.”

  “He’s just there to get rid of you,” Andy informed her.

  “She. Marjorie Dawson.”

  John said, “What do you think of her?”

  “She takes the man’s money, she does what the man wants.” Little Feather shrugged. “When do I get a real lawyer?”

  Fitzroy knew the answer to that. “Not until they talk DNA,” he said. “The instant they say anything about DNA, you say, ‘Oh, gee, then I better get a lawyer who knows all about that.’”

  Little Feather understood the concept, but it was still irritating. “So I’m gonna have to go on dealing with little Marjorie Dawson.”

  Irwin said, “It won’t be long, Little Feather. Once they’ve given up the idea they can get rid of you just by saying shoo, they’ll right away start thinking Tiny’s word.”

  “Anastasia,” Tiny rumbled on cue.

  “Oh, they’ve already given up that old idea,” Little Feather assured them. “We’re past that part.”

  “How?” Fitzroy demanded, sitting up straighter, but before she could answer, John said, “No, this isn’t the way. Little Feather, tell us what happened from the beginning.”

  So she told them what had happened from the beginning, letting them in on how pissed off she’d been that she had to spend a full night in a cell—“I’ve never been inside a cell before in my life for even a minute”—and then giving them the happy news that great-grandpa Joseph Redcorn was not only remembered out on the reservation but memorialized, in a plaque from the Mohawks, the ones that probably pushed him off the building.

  “That’s wonderful news!” Irwin told her, as though she didn’t know, and Fitzroy said, “In all my researches, I never came across that plaque. God bless the Mohawks.”

  “Homicidal but thoughtful,” Little Feather said.

  John said, “What’s supposed to happen next?”

  “Dawson, the lawyer, is going to talk to the people on the reservation,” Little Feather told him, “and then she’s supposed to call me tomorrow, and I’ll go see her.”

  Irwin said, “And that’s when they’ll talk about DNA.”

  John said, “Okay. And what does Little Feather do then?”

  Little Feather had gone over this part a number of times with Fitzroy.
She said, “I say, ‘Gee, that’s a great idea. Now you’ll know for sure I’m one of you guys, but I think maybe I oughta have a lawyer who knows this stuff.’”

  Andy said, “How do you find this lawyer?”

  “Fitzroy’s already got him.”

  “Will get him,” Fitzroy said, correcting her. “Or her. I don’t have the specific lawyer yet. I’ll make that call this afternoon.”

  John looked at him. “There’s a part here you didn’t set up?”

  “Would have been too early before this,” Fitzroy explained.

  Andy said, “This is some lawyer you already know. Or you don’t know.”

  “I know the firm,” Fitzroy said. “Feinberg.”

  John said, “Fitzroy, fill me in on this.”

  “There’s a New York law firm I use all the time,” Fitzroy told him. “It’s Feinberg, Kleinberg, Rhineberg, Steinberg, Weinberg & Klatsch, but it’s known as Feinberg.”

  Andy said, “I’d know it as Klatsch.”

  “Yes, you would,” Fitzroy agreed. “But the legal profession lacks your delicate sense of humor.”

  John said, “Fitzroy, walk me through this Feinberg business. You dealt with these people before?”

  “Several times.”

  “These are bent lawyers, is that it?”

  “Not at all.” Fitzroy smiled. “Lawyers don’t have to be bent, John.”

  Irwin said, “Their job is bent.”

  “Tell,” John said.

  Fitzroy said, “All right, John, this is the situation. Feinberg is a large corporate law firm in Manhattan. They have hundreds of lawyers on staff.”

  “More than just all these bergs.”

  “The bergs, as you say,” Fitzroy explained, “were the original partners, all, I believe, now dead.”

  “Gone to their reward.” Irwin smirked.

  “So who do you deal with?”

  “That depends.”

  John kept shaking his head, as though gnats were after him. “Depends on what?”

  “The job at hand. For instance, with the land grant business, I spoke to the senior man there, who knows me, described enough of what I was doing, and he turned me over to a real estate specialist in the firm. When I was involved with the offshore salvage enterprise, he put me in touch with a specialist there in maritime law. This time, he’ll give me their DNA specialist.”

  “You know,” Tiny said, “I think that’s the lawyers Josie went to when she set up her country.”

  Fitzroy looked interested. “You know someone who created a country? For development funds, I should think.”

  Little Feather would have liked to hear more about that—a person set up a country? what “development funds”?—but Tiny merely said, “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Fitzroy nodded; he knew what they were talking about. “Feinberg would be just the firm,” he agreed. “They have a number of specialists in international law.”

  Well, at least John still didn’t understand, which made Little Feather feel a little less dumb, because he said, “I don’t get it. You mean you tell these lawyers what scam you’re working, and—”

  “No, no, John, not at all,” Fitzroy said, and, to Little Feather, he looked actually shocked at the idea. “We don’t want,” he said, “our lawyer to think ill of us. I explain what they need to know, but I never, never, never suggest I might intend to do something illegal.”

  “But they gotta know,” John said.

  “What they know is up to them,” Fitzroy told him. “But what matters is what I say.”

  Still shaking his head, John asked, “But why do they go along with it? You’re there with them, and you’re talking and talking, and you’re not quite saying this is a scam going down, and they go along with it? Why?”

  “Because that’s their job,” Fitzroy said. He seemed almost kindly, avuncular, and Little Feather realized that, though both men were lifelong professional criminals, they were of completely different orders, and they would never entirely understand each other. And I am going to need them both, she thought. For a while.

  Fitzroy was explaining further: “You see, John, lawyers have much less respect for the law than the rest of us. It’s familiarity, you see, doing its little breeding job again. A lawyer isn’t there to tell you what the law is, you’ll get that from a policeman or a judge. A lawyer is there to tell you what you can do anyway.”

  Irwin said, “Think of yourself as Dante, and the law as hell.”

  “Okay,” John said.

  “Your lawyer is Virgil. He takes you through it, and he gets you out the other side.”

  John said, “And you’re saying he doesn’t ask questions.”

  “John,” Fitzroy said, “do you think the lawyers who represent Mafia chieftains ask questions? The lawyers who represent inside traders in the stock market? The lawyers who do personal injury suits, class actions, divorces? Do you really think they ask their clients questions? Why on earth would they want to know those answers?”

  Irwin said, “John, I’m not prying, but I would guess you’ve had a dealing or two with the law yourself, and had a lawyer. Did the lawyer ever ask you if you did it?”

  “Well, usually,” John said, looking just a bit sheepish, “there wasn’t that much doubt. But I see what you mean, I get it. So you’ve got a history with these bergs. . . .”

  “I pay their fees promptly,” Fitzroy said, “I bring them interesting legal challenges, and I never embarrass them by suggesting I am anything but a pillar of society.”

  Andy said, “And what’s the pillar’s connection with Little Feather? You gonna be the sugar daddy?”

  “Not at all.” Fitzroy offered Little Feather a bland smile, and she returned it in spades. To the others, Fitzroy said, “Little Feather is a young lady who used to work for an old friend of mine in the hotel business out west. She’s alone and defenseless here in the East, but her prospects are excellent once she proves her identity, and I put my reputation on the line to guarantee she will prove her identity.”

  “Your reputation,” John said.

  Fitzroy preened a little. “We talk that way in lawyers’ offices,” he said.

  Tiny, who’d been turning his head to look from speaker to speaker the whole time, like a man watching a slo-mo volleyball game, said, “So we’re all done. Us three can go back to New York.”

  “No,” John said. “This part is done, but we’re not done.”

  Tiny turned his head to look at John. “Why not?”

  “Because they hit too hard from the beginning,” John said. “The tribes. And they put a tail on Little Feather.”

  Little Feather said, “They did?”

  Tiny turned his head to look at her. “Two tails. The tribes and a cop.”

  She hadn’t known about the cop, and she didn’t like it. “Well, well,” she said.

  John said, “So we’ll stay here awhile, and we’ll go on being careful. Like, when we’re done here, Little Feather—”

  “I bet I call another cab.”

  “You win. You take it into town, catch dinner and a movie, then come back.”

  She looked around at them all. “And when do we six meet again?”

  Fitzroy said, “Well, you should keep us informed of what happens tomorrow.”

  Little Feather nodded. “So I’m going to the drugstore again.”

  “You don’t have to,” John said. “You’re going to see this Dawson tomorrow, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know what time.”

  “Whatever,” John said. “When you come back, you’ll have company.”

  21

  * * *

  Marjorie Dawson didn’t understand. She knew the Three Tribes attorney; he was Abner Hicks, with an office in the Laurel Building around the corner on Laurel Avenue, Marjorie herself being in the Frost Building around the corner this way on Frost Avenue. She’d expected she might even run into Abner this morning, on the short walk over to the courthouse to meet with Judge Higbee in cham
bers.

  So why had the judge called this morning, a little before ten, to say the meeting would have to wait until three this afternoon, “because the tribe’s attorney has to come up from New York”? Wasn’t this a simple, straightforward matter? Either Little Feather Redcorn (had to call her that now) could demonstrate she actually was a Pottaknobbee and would have to be accepted as the third of the Three Tribes or she would fail to prove her case and would be sent packing. So why did the Three Tribes need a lawyer from New York?

  After getting that call from the judge—from his secretary, Hilda, actually—Marjorie phoned Whispering Pines and they got Ms. Redcorn to come to the phone so Marjorie could tell her they’d meet in her office in the Frost Building at 2:30. Then she spent the time until then brooding.

  The fact is, she was a little intimidated by the idea of a lawyer coming all the way up from New York, almost four hundred miles, to represent the Three Tribes in this matter. Marjorie, with two partners, Jimmy Hong and Corinne Wadamaker, had a small general practice in the county, mostly house closings and wills and divorces and small disputes, in addition to her work as defense counsel for the court, and she felt comfortable with the lawyers she faced in the normal course of work. They all knew one another, they all knew what the job was, and they never tried to make life difficult for one another. Treat the client decently, of course, but your fellow professionals naturally came first.

  Would a lawyer from New York feel that way? Or would that person look down his or her nose at the small-town lawyer and try some tricky New York footwork, just to make Marjorie look bad?

  But that was what she simply couldn’t understand. What was there to do tricky footwork about? It should be a very simple matter, this Little Feather Redcorn business, well within Marjorie’s competence, so why were they trying to make her nervous?

  The next thought was, why had the Three Tribes reacted with such hostility in the first place? Though the initial letter from Ms. Redcorn could certainly be read as the opening step of an extortion racket, it could equally well be read as a straightforward letter from somebody who believed that what she said was true. Why hadn’t the Three Tribes at least talked to the woman first? Why had they immediately turned the letter over to the police so they could scare her off?