Bad News

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Oh, sure,” Tommy said. “We got our sovereignty. But I don’t see there’s anything the Council should do about all this. Let the court decide if she’s Pottaknobbee or not.”

  “Mr. Dog,” Benny said, blinking like mad, “would you talk to her?”

  Tommy couldn’t believe it. So that was what the woman had in mind; divide and conquer. “Benny,” he said severely, “did she tell you to ask me that?”

  “Oh no, sir!” Benny cried, lying very fervently and very badly. “It’s all my own idea, Mr. Dog, honest! I been watching her, and following her, and I just thought, we aren’t treating her right, and maybe if the Council—”

  “No, Benny,” Tommy said. “The Tribal Council is not going to get involved. That isn’t our jurisdiction.” He could just see himself crossing swords with Roger Fox and Frank Oglanda. They’d run him off the reservation. A three-month chairmanship of the Tribal Council had not turned Tommy Dog into a complete idiot. “You go back and tell that Miss Redcorn,” he said, “her best hope is the court, and if she wants to talk to Roger and Frank, she should pick up the telephone and make an appointment. And now I got an appointment to take Millicent to the mall.” Rising, he said, “My advice to you, Benny, is to ask your uncle Roger to put somebody else to following your friend Little Feather around, and you keep away from her.”

  Going out, Tommy paused in the doorway to look back, and Benny was still sitting there, in profile to Tommy, slumped, dejected, head down, gazing hopelessly at the floor. In that position, he looked exactly like that famous statue of the mournful, defeated Indian, except he wasn’t on a horse and he wasn’t tall and thin. And he didn’t hold a lance with its tip down in the dirt. And he didn’t have the headdress. But other than that, it was exactly the same: the defeated Indian.

  28

  * * *

  By Monday morning, May had decided it was like living with a retiree. John had only been back from the North Country since Friday, but he had never been so present before. Everywhere in the apartment she looked, there he was, slumped and leaden, looking surly and bored out of his mind.

  She hadn’t known it was possible for someone who didn’t have a regular job, who’d never had a regular job in his life, to sit around exactly as though he’d just been laid off. But here he was, a sodden lump and no fun at all.

  Over breakfast Monday morning, before leaving for her cashier’s job at Safeway, May decided to bring it out where they could look at it, discuss the problem, so she said, “John, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He was slumped over his cereal bowl, looking down into it, at the sugar and the milk and the cornflakes all massing together in there, all in a soggy clump, turning gray somehow. His breakfast had never turned gray before. He held the spoon angled into the gob, as though he might use the stuff to patch a hole somewhere, but not as though he had any intention of eating it.

  She said, “John, something’s wrong, you’re not eating your breakfast.”

  “Sure I am,” he said, but he still didn’t lift either his spoon or his eyes. Then he frowned into the bowl more deeply and said, “I just remembered. In the orphanage, you know, the bowls they gave us had cartoon people in the bottom, like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and all, and everybody always ate real fast to see what was in the bottom, even when we had pea soup. I usually got Elmer Fudd.”

  This was more than John had said in the last three days combined, but he seemed to be talking more to the bowl than to May. Also, he rarely spoke about his upbringing in the orphanage run by the Bleeding Heart Sisters of Eternal Misery, which was fine by her. She said, “John? Would you like some bowls like that?”

  “No,” he said, and slowly shook his head. Then he let go of the spoon—it didn’t drop; it remained angled into the gunk—and at last he looked up at May across the kitchen table and said, “What I want, I think, is, you know what I mean, some purpose in life.”

  “You don’t have a purpose in life?”

  “I usually got a purpose,” he said. “Usually, I kind of know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, but look at me now.”

  “I know,” she agreed. “I’ve been looking at you, John. It’s this Anastasia thing, isn’t it?”

  “I mean, what am I doing here?” he demanded. Slowly, the spoon eased downward. Silently, it touched the edge of the bowl. “There’s nothing for me to do,” he complained, “except sit around and wait for other people to scheme things out, and then all of a sudden Little Feather’s supposed to give me a hundred thousand large, and guess how much I believe that one.”

  “You think she’ll stiff you?”

  “I think she’d stiff her mother, if her mother happened by,” John said. “But I also think Tiny doesn’t like to be insulted, so I figure we’ll get something out of it. Sooner or later. But in the meantime, I’m here, and what’s going on is going on up in Plattsburgh, where it’s cold as hell, and there’s no point in me going up there, because there’s nothing for me to do there any more than there’s nothing for me to do here, which is nothing.”

  “Maybe,” May said, “you should look for something else to do, like you normally would. Some armored car or jewelry store or whatever.”

  “I don’t feel like I can, May,” he said. “I feel like I’m stuck in this thing, and I can’t think about anything else, and maybe all of a sudden I will be needed after all, and I shouldn’t be off doing something else.” He shook his head, frowning once more at the bowl. The gray mass in there looked dry now. “I never thought you’d hear me say this, May,” he said, “but the problem is, and I know this is it, the problem is, everything’s going too easy.”

  29

  * * *

  Benny Whitefish and his cousin Geerome Sycamore and his other cousin Herbie Antelope loaded the coffin into the rented van and shut the doors. Then Geerome went behind the tombstone and threw up.

  Benny was pleased that Geerome had thrown up, because it meant there was at least one person around here who was a bigger goofus than himself, but of course, since Uncle Roger had put him in charge of this mission, he had to say, in a manly kind of fashion, “That’s okay, Geerome, it could of happened to anybody. Don’t think a thing about it.”

  “Where’s the water?” Geerome asked. He was making the most awful face.

  “It’s in the van,” Herbie said, “but pour it into something else, okay?”

  Geerome turned his awful face on Herbie. “Whadaya mean, put it into something else?”

  “A cup or something,” Herbie said.

  Geerome said, “I don’t have a cup. Benny? You got a cup?”

  Herbie said, “Then pour it in the bottle top, drink from that.”

  “The hell,” Geerome said. “You get like a quarter ounce at a time like that. What am I supposed to do all that for?”

  Herbie made his own awful face and said, “I don’t want your mouth on that bottle, all right? Not if the rest of us are gonna drink from it.”

  “Well, tough noogies on you,” Geerome told him, and stomped off to the front of the van.

  Benny said, “Come on, Herbie, don’t worry about it. We’ll buy another bottle at the Trading Post,” which was the name of the shopping mall he preferred.

  “You’ll buy,” Herbie said.

  Benny sighed; the lonely responsibility of command. “All right, all right,” he said. “So let’s get going.”

  The fact is, this was a pretty awful task they had in front of them, and that’s why it was making them all kind of nervous and testy. Geerome’s mouth wasn’t any worse than it usually was, but their nerves were kind of off.

  Here they were, in the old Three Tribes cemetery, way toward the back, late on Monday afternoon, almost dark, the shadows of the tombstones reaching out black and spooky, like ghostly fingers, and Benny and his crew had just finished digging up a grave. The person they’d dug down to and now transferred to the van was named Ichabod Derek, and he was one of the few people in the Three Tribes cemetery who wasn’t from one of
the three tribes, he having been a Lakota from out west who had married a Kiota woman and moved east to her reservation with her so she could support him. He’d died a long long time ago, around 1940 or something, but the main point about him was, there wasn’t one chance in a million that he had any Pottaknobbee blood in him. Or DNA.

  This was the drastic measure the uncles had come up with, and that Benny was charged to act upon. Dig up Ichabod Derek, transport him (inside his coffin, thank goodness, at least they didn’t have to open any coffins on this expedition) to New York City, and find the graveyard where Joseph Redcorn was buried. Then dig up Redcorn—this would be way after dark, and in New York City, which was full of who knew what kind of menaces and terrors—and plant Derek where Redcorn had been, then drive Redcorn all the way back up to Silver Chasm and put him in Derek’s grave, where nobody would ever find him. And then probably have nightmares for weeks.

  There was one thing Uncle Roger had insisted Benny do that he just wasn’t going to do, because neither Geerome nor Herbie was going to do it, and he couldn’t do it alone, and that was fill in the grave after taking Derek out, which would mean having to dig it all up and fill it all in again twice, and the heck with it. Uncle Roger was afraid somebody might stumble across—or into, more likely—the grave if they left it open, but who would be coming out here to the oldest part of the cemetery, even in the daytime? Nobody at night, certainly. So let the damn grave yawn; they’d fill it in when they got back.

  The drive to New York City was very long and boring, but at least it was all on good roads. They took the Northway for the first 150 miles, as far as Albany, where they stopped for a lot of hamburgers and french fries and beer, which made them fill the interior of the van with less than sweet airs during the second stage of the trip, the 150 miles down the thruway to New York City. Despite the cold, they spent a lot of that travel segment with the van windows open.

  Benny did most of the driving, because he meant to make Geerome and Herbie do most of the driving back north, when Benny would want to sleep. If he could get to sleep. Since he’d met Little Feather, he wasn’t having much success with sleep. Nor with Little Feather. Nor with his own tumbled emotions.

  The whole trip down, while Geerome and Herbie squabbled and sniped beside him, blaming each other for the aromas in the van, Benny thought about Little Feather. And what he thought was that he didn’t know what to think.

  He knew he liked to be in her presence. He liked to sit in the living room of the motor home and watch her walk or sit, watch her smile, listen to her voice, smell the wonderful musks that flowed out from her; a zillion times better than these little polecats beside him.

  Would she one day let him kiss her? She seemed so open and inviting, and yet there was something about her that told him not to rush things, not to take chances, not to spoil what he already had. So maybe someday she would let him know he could come closer, but until then, he’d just sit there and watch her and listen to her and smell her and think how much better she was in every way than those posters on his walls.

  Or maybe someday she’d find out what he was doing tonight, and how he was responsible for her losing her only chance to prove she was really Pottaknobbee, and then she’d never speak to him again, or let him see her or come anywhere near her. But what could he do? What else could he do?

  He couldn’t refuse Uncle Roger. And he couldn’t just pretend to switch these coffins, even if he could get Geerome and Herbie to go along with the idea, because then the DNA would prove Little Feather was Pottaknobbee and Uncle Roger would know that Benny hadn’t done the job.

  At the same time, he couldn’t warn Little Feather what he was doing, because she’d naturally try to find some way to stop it, maybe even tell that judge she’d been describing to Benny, how nice he was, and how fair, and how secure she felt in his hands, so that Benny was beginning to gnash his teeth with jealousy over some judge, who was anyway a hundred years old and he wasn’t around Little Feather in that kind of way at all.

  He was sorry her idea of asking the Tribal Council for help hadn’t worked out. He’d never thought much about the Tribal Council before, just knew it was there and people sometimes went to it to ask questions and get permits and things, but he’d always assumed it was something important, like the United States government or something. But when he saw Mr. Dog there, in the Town Hall, and saw what the meeting was like, he knew even before he talked to Mr. Dog that there wasn’t much chance Little Feather would find any help there. So that was another avenue closed.

  Driving south, his fantasy was that, when this was all over, Uncle Roger would really give Benny that very good high-paying job at the casino he’d been hinting about, and Benny would go to Little Feather and tell her how bad he felt about her not getting to be Pottaknobbee on the reservation, and he would offer to build her a house on the reservation that would be all hers—he wouldn’t even live there—and she could ask him to visit sometimes or not; it would be strictly up to her.

  And after all, she was a licensed blackjack dealer in Nevada; she could surely get a job at Silver Chasm casino, and Benny happened to know those dealers made very good money. So in his fantasy, Little Feather was robbed of her birthright without knowing it or knowing who’d done it to her, and Benny would make it up to her with a house on the reservation and a job at the casino and the presence of his company whenever she wanted it.

  Phew. No wonder he couldn’t sleep.

  Uncle Frank Oglanda had flown in a chartered plane from Plattsburgh yesterday to La Guardia Airport in New York City, and had taken a taxi to the graveyard where Joseph Redcorn was buried, where he had found the grave and marked it on a little map he made. He had also learned that the graveyard was locked at night, but he’d wandered around and come across a broken part of the fence where people could get through, and he’d marked that on his map as well. Then he’d taxied back to La Guardia and flown back to Plattsburgh and BMW’d back to Silver Chasm, and this morning he’d described it all to Benny, saying, “You’ll have to carry the coffin in through the break in the fence, sort of carry it sideways to get it through there, but it isn’t far from there to the grave. It’ll be easy, strong young fellas like you.”

  It wasn’t easy. They found the right graveyard, no trouble, and down a long, dark, deserted, silent street surrounded by cemeteries, they found the small opening in the fence and parked the yellow van right next to it. When they got out of the van, there was a cold, nasty little wind that nipped at them and picked at them like ghosts, ice-cold invisible spirits coming at them out of the graveyard. Even though, naturally, they didn’t believe in all that stuff.

  Now they had to wrestle this big heavy box out of the van and across the grass and through the narrow opening. The box was kind of slimy and dirty and kept wanting to slip out of everybody’s hands and crash onto the ground, which would be very bad if it happened. Also, it was hard for more than two people to carry the box, even when they weren’t trying to ootch it sideways through the opening in the fence, but the box was certainly too heavy to be carried by any fewer than three people, so the whole trip was difficult and exhausting and more than a little scary.

  Also, though all three had brought along flashlights, it proved to be impossible to hold a flashlight and carry a coffin at the same time, so they did most of the carrying in the dark. Above them stretched a partly cloudy winter sky, with a very high half-moon sometimes laying its platinum wash over everything and sometimes hiding behind a cloud as though a light had been switched off. That was when the icy fingers of the wind plucked at them the worst.

  When they finally reached the Redcorn grave and could put the coffin down, they were all completely worn-out, and the real work hadn’t even started yet. Panting, gasping, plodding through the last of the fallen leaves, shining their flashlights around at last, they trudged back to the van and got the shovels and the plastic tarp they would use to pile the dirt on, and brought it all to the grave. And then, with a communal sigh, th
ey got to it.

  The way it worked, two of them dug while the third kept a flashlight on them. Benny was in charge, saying when it was time for the flashlight guy to switch to a shovel, and he didn’t even cheat, but ran it as fair as he knew how, because he knew Geerome and Herbie were watching him and would put up a terrible bitch if they thought he was trying to pull a fast one.

  The work was hard but mindless. They dug and dug and dug, and then at last Geerome’s shovel hit something that went thunk and he said, “Here it is.”

  “Finally,” Herbie said.

  Yes, finally. It was almost eleven at night by now, and they still had a lot to do. Benny was the one with the flashlight at this point, and he leaned down closer to shine its beam on Geerome’s shovel. There was wood down there all right, dark brown and solid under the crumbly lighter brown of the soil. “Okay, great,” he said. “I think we just clear one end, and then maybe we can pry it up.”

  “Wait a minute, Benny,” Geerome said. “It’s my turn with the flashlight. Come on down here.”

  The other two were now waist-deep in the hole. Benny said, “I’m not sure I can jump down there. What if I busted the wood or something?”

  “We’ll help you,” Geerome said, and leaned his shovel against the side of the hole to show he was serious. Then he and Herbie held their hands up, and Benny leaned forward even more, and half-jumped, half-fell into the grave, all three of them tottering a bit. They might have fallen over if it weren’t for the sides of the hole pressing in on them.

  “Give me the flashlight,” Geerome said, and a huge white light suddenly glared all over them. Benny, wide-eyed, astounded, terrified, could still make out every crumb of dirt on the cheeks of Geerome and Herbie, the light was that bright, that intense.

  And so was the voice. It came from a bullhorn, and it sounded like the voice of God, and it said, “Freeze. Stop right where you are.”