Bad News

by Donald E. Westlake

  Little Feather nodded. “I’m pretty good at après-ski myself,” she said. “And with Andy talking DNA in front of you, I take it that means you’re in the loop on this thing.”

  “Well, sure,” Andy said. “Pillow talk, you know.”

  Anne Marie said, “Pillow talk. I don’t know why they call it pillow talk. When we’re talking, there’s no pillow around, and when there’s a pillow around, we aren’t talking.”

  “It’s a whadayacallit,” Andy explained.

  Little Feather said, “What I really want to know is, how are things with Fitzroy and Irwin?”

  “Well, they had to leave,” Andy told her.

  Little Feather had suspected that. “Permanently?”

  “Oh, yeah, they won’t—” Then Andy shook his head, and said, “Not like that. You know, there’s permanent and there’s permanent.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” Andy said, “they are permanently retired from this particular little operation here, because they’ve got a lot of stuff to take care of out west all of a sudden, so that’s where they went.”

  “They’re out west,” Little Feather echoed.

  “On their way,” Andy said. “So how you doing here?”

  “I’ve got cabin fever,” Little Feather said, “and I’m going nuts, and nothing is happening, and it won’t be until next week sometime that the DNA comes back, and I’m stuck here. I’ve been leaving messages over at the Four Winds, because I didn’t know what was going on, and I hope you don’t think I was in on anything with those guys.”

  “Little Feather,” Andy said, “we all understand that you were a helpless pawn in the hands of those guys, and we know you’re gonna be glad about the new situation.”

  “Helpless pawn” hadn’t exactly been the self-image Little Feather had been hoping to project, but what the hell; leave it alone. She said, “Thank you, Andy, I’m already glad.”

  Andy said, “We thought we’d find a nice restaurant tonight, one of those on the slopes, where you can sit there and dine at your leisure and watch the skiers fall down the mountain. You wanna come along?”

  “I’d love to,” Little Feather said.

  “Great.” Getting to his feet, Andy said, “We’ll pick you up at seven.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  At the door, Anne Marie smiled at Little Feather and said, “I just know we’re going to be chums.”

  Meaning, Little Feather knew, don’t you dare look crosseyed at my man. “Chums it is,” she reassured Anne Marie.

  47

  * * *

  Ah, but what of Fitzroy Guilderpost and Irwin Gabel?

  Well, in the first place, by the time they arrived in San Francisco and Portland, respectively, they were both extremely hungry. And messy as well, unfortunately. Both had tried to attract attention by shouting a lot every time their transportation had paused on the journeys across the continent, but raincoats and Nerf balls had muffled their cries, so it wasn’t until their respective semis were unloaded that they were discovered and, er, rescued.

  In Fitzroy’s case, rescue initially took the form of arrest, since he gave every indication of being an escaped convict. Fearing the effects of Irwin’s tapes, damn his sniveling eyes, Fitzroy had been reluctant to divulge his true identity, but when the officials of Central Hudson Correctional Institution in Swell Haven, New York, faxed a response to the police of San Francisco that they were missing none of their inmates at the moment, Fitzroy had no choice but to submit to fingerprinting and to reveal his true identity to all questioners.

  Whereupon it turned out the tapes had not surfaced, but a few California state warrants did surface, referring to scams and other outrages he’d performed in the Golden State some years ago (which had caused him to relocate eastward in the first place), warrants that had not at all stale-dated. Bail was not granted, conviction was slow but certain, and off Fitzroy went to a small but sometimes sunny room to write his memoirs.

  As for Irwin, he had not, in fact, given those tapes for safekeeping to a trusted friend, for the simple reason that Irwin had no trusted friends. In his original concept, he would have hidden the tapes until it was time to threaten Fitzroy with them. Once Fitzroy had become aware prematurely of the tapes’ existence, that fact had seemed sufficient to Irwin to assure his own future in the partnership. Now, the partnership was finished, and so very nearly was Irwin. Fitzroy and the tapes had forever lost their urgency in his mind.

  Having been plucked from the raincoats, hosed down, and temporarily hospitalized, Irwin at last got to tell the story he’d concocted during all those idle hours in Missouri and Nebraska and so on, that he had been kidnapped from a Greyhound bus at that rest area on the New York State Thurway by the friends of a jealous husband. No, he didn’t want to press charges, nor even mention the husband’s name, to spare the lady embarrassment. All he wanted was to eat a lot, and then be released from the hospital.

  When all of that had transpired, Irwin arranged to have his luggage and other scant possessions forwarded from the residential hotel in which he’d been living in New York to the residential hotel into which he’d moved in Portland, having absolutely no desire to confront Tiny and Andy and John ever again; who knew what they’d think up to do next?

  Instead, using dubious but passable credentials from his recently arrived luggage, he got himself a job as a chemistry teacher in a suburban high school, and if he hadn’t subsequently been discovered in the backseat of that car in the school parking lot with that fifteen-year-old girl student, he would no doubt be there still.

  48

  * * *

  Judge T. Wallace Higbee would have described himself, if asked, as guardedly optimistic. It seemed to him that at long last this excessively interesting Pottaknobbee case was nearing its conclusion. The DNA results had been in his chambers when he’d arrived this Monday morning, the eighteenth of December, just a week after the samples had been collected from the quick and the dead, and Judge Higbee had immediately alerted all the principals in the case to be in his courtroom at 3:30 that afternoon, which was the earliest he could be certain to have finished with the mounds of stupidity that would have piled up over the weekend.

  And now, here was the time and here were the people. At the table on the left sat the Three Tribes, in the persons of Roger Fox and Frank Oglanda and Otis Welles, this morning armed with only one assistant. Roger and Frank looked very worried indeed, and Welles looked like a lawyer. In the first spectator row behind them sat four actual members of the Three Tribes, of whom Judge Higbee recognized only Tommy Dog, not because Dog had ever called upon the judge to certify his stupidity but because Dog was an electrician, when he could bother to work, and a good one, who’d done some of the rewiring when the judge had installed the indoor swimming pool.

  Come to think of it—He made a note: Swim more. Everyone in the courtroom attentively watched him make the note.

  At the other table, to the right, sat Little Feather Redcorn, looking as prim as such a person could, and exceedingly sure of herself. With her were Marjorie Dawson, as tense as though it were her own DNA at issue here, and Max Schreck, as pleased behind his great black-frame eyeglasses as though he’d just finished dining on a corpse. They had their own rooting section in the row behind them, a motley crew the judge had never seen before, consisting of a fairly ordinary-looking couple, some sort of man monster in a black suit that made him look like an entire funeral party, and a shabbily dressed, slump-shouldered fellow with the kind of hangdog look with which Judge Higbee was very familiar. He knew immediately that that fellow had never before in his life been inside a courtroom when he wasn’t the defendant.

  Well, well, he thought. Now that it’s all over, Miss Redcorn’s shadow cabinet puts in its appearance. Disappointing; he’d hoped for once in his life to meet a mastermind.

  Well, time to get on with it. “I have asked you to come here,” he said, not entirely accurately, “to inform you that the test results
are in, and that there is no longer any question but that Miss Little Feather Redcorn is a descendant of Joseph Redcorn, a full-blooded Pottaknobbee, and is therefore a member of the Pottaknobbee tribe herself.”

  Miss Redcorn beamed, having had no doubt. Marjorie Dawson nearly fainted, having had every doubt. Max Schreck looked hungry.

  Across the aisle, “Consternation” was the only possible title for the tableau being presented, at least by Roger and Frank. Welles, getting to his feet, said, “Your Honor, naturally we will request a second series of tests to be done at a laboratory of our own selection.”

  “And naturally,” the judge told him, “I will turn down that request.” Hefting the sheaf of papers that consisted of the test report, he said, “This is not a private lab, Mr. Welles, this is a federal facility, and I have no intention of questioning their report.”

  “Your Honor,” Welles said, “federal facilities have in certain cases in the past—”

  “They have not,” the judge told him. “There have been accusations, there have been no cases. If you wish to appeal my decision, by all means do so, but it will not impede the effect of my decision. Miss Redcorn.”

  She snapped to seated attention, but couldn’t help the grin. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Have you an accountant, Miss Redcorn?”

  Schreck stood to answer: “We will have accountants here, Your Honor, by tomorrow.”

  “By one P.M. tomorrow?”

  “Certainly, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Welles, at one P.M. tomorrow, your clients will be prepared to show every courtesy and the casino’s books to Miss Redcorn and her accountants.”

  “Your Honor, the casino is on sovereign land of the Three—”

  “Mr. Welles, if your clients attempt to delay this process one second past one P.M. tomorrow, I shall jail them, in the United States, for contempt of court. Miss Redcorn, a Pottaknobbee, a member of the Three Tribes, has come to this court for redress, and the court has accepted jurisdiction.”

  Tommy Dog popped to his feet behind Welles, exhibiting both stage fright and determination. “Your Honor?”

  Now what? Judge Higbee lowered several great white eyebrows in Tommy Dog’s direction. No more complications, damn it. “Yes, Mr. Dog?”

  “Your Honor,” Tommy Dog said, “I’m head of the Tribal Council this quarter, and I just want to say the tribes are perfectly happy to accept that test result you got there, and we accept Miss Redcorn, and we’re happy to know there’s still a Pottaknobbee around, and every one of us is gonna welcome her.”

  I can think of two who won’t, the judge thought, looking at the horrified faces of Roger and Frank. “Thank you, Mr. Dog,” he said. “I’m encouraged by your statement.” He looked down at his pad and saw the note: Swim more. Exactly. “Court adjourned,” he said, and went home and swam.

  49

  * * *

  So where was Roger? Frank had no idea, that’s where Roger was. No idea. And the hell with him.

  Just when you need, Frank thought, and stooped for another bottle of Wild Turkey, and lost the thought. But found the bottle. Straightening with it, slowly, not wanting to get dizzy again, he placed the bottle carefully on the mahogany bar, then concentrated himself to the task of opening the damn thing.

  He was here in Roger’s office, later than two in the morning of a sleepless night after that damn session in court, here in Roger’s office instead of over there in his own office, for three reasons. First, he wanted to talk with Roger, who somehow wasn’t here. Where was he?

  Anyway, the second reason was, this was the office with the bar with the bottles of Wild Turkey on the shelf underneath. And the third reason was, this was where they kept the books.

  Books as in books, the old-fashioned way. The casino had started without computers, just before computers had become ubiquitous, and because of the way Roger and Frank operated their business, it had always seemed to them a good idea to let computer ubiquity end at the reservation border. Computers lose half what you tell them anyway, except that, when the feds show up, everything is still in there all along, particularly the stuff you tried to erase. What with one thing and another, stick with books.

  All the books. All three sets of books.

  They had to have three sets of books because they had different needs at different times. They had to have an accurate set of books because they themselves at least had to know what the package was they were skimming from, and they had to know enough about the operation to be able to run it efficiently. But those books couldn’t be shown to anybody else, because those books were streaked with the hands of Roger and Frank, reaching in and taking out.

  While it was true that the casino was free of federal taxes, it was also true that there were certain taxing and regulatory agencies who did keep track of things here, sales of alcohol and tobacco, gambling income, things like that. These official snoops were mostly from New York State, but also from Ottawa, since the reservation spread over into Canada. For those outfits, there was the second set of books, in which income and outgo were more or less similar to events in the real world, but the skimming hands of Roger and Frank were replaced by other, perhaps plausible expenses.

  And then there was the Three Tribes. From time to time, Roger and Frank had to present an accounting of their stewardship to the tribes—it was never a big deal, just pro forma, nobody wanting to rock a very successful boat—and for that purpose, neither the first nor the second set of books would do, because both showed far too high a cash flow, and it wouldn’t take the tribes long to realize they were getting just about 50 percent of the money that was actually due them. So for the tribes, and only for the tribes, there were the books, variant number three.

  So there they were, the three sets of books. The straight books, the cooked books, and the fried-to-a-crisp books. And they were all kept in Roger’s office, because that’s where the safe was.

  And where the hell was Roger anyway? It seemed to Frank there was only one thing they could do now, but before he got started on it, he wanted to run the idea past Roger, bounce the notion off old Roger, run it around the block with Roger. So where was Roger? Where was old Roger anyway?

  Not at home, or at least he hadn’t been home two hours ago, when Frank had last phoned there and had last spoken to Roger’s increasingly irritated wife, Anne, who had said, “Frank, stop calling here. He isn’t here, I don’t know where the hell he is, and when he does come home, I intend to take a baseball bat to him. Tell him that when you see him.”

  “Oh, okay,” he’d said, so he knew he shouldn’t phone Roger at home anymore. But where was he?

  Here. In came Roger all at once, moving fast, still in his topcoat. “Roger!” Frank cried.

  Roger gave him a sour look. “Frank,” he said, “this is no time to drink.”

  Frank stared at him in astonishment. “Roger? If this isn’t a time to drink, when the hell is a time to drink?”

  “When we’re safe,” Roger said.

  “Safe? How can we be safe? Don’t you remember, Roger? That damn woman is coming here tomorrow to look at the books!”

  “Today,” Roger said, looking at his watch.

  “Today,” Frank agreed. “There!” he cried, having finally gotten the damn bottle open. “Roger, have a drink.”

  “No,” Roger said.

  Frank paused before refilling his glass. “Roger,” he said, “they want to look at the books. They’re going to look at the books. Do you know what that means?”

  “I know precisely what it means,” Roger said.

  “That judge—”

  “The judge doesn’t worry me,” Roger said. “None of that legal shit worries me. Frank, what we have to worry about is the tribes.”

  “Oh, I know that, Roger.”

  “Once the tribes find out what we’ve done,” Roger said, “they’ll kill us. They’ll flat out kill us.”

  “That’s a very strong possibility,” Frank agreed, filling his glass. “Very st
rong possibility.”

  “I have just fini—” Roger started.

  But Frank wasn’t done. “What we have to do, Roger,” he said, “and I’ve just been waiting to discuss it with you, but what we have to do is burn those books. All of them, all three sets. Just burn them all.”

  “No,” Roger said.

  “We have to, Roger. We can’t let anybody see those books.”

  “And what are you going to say?” Roger demanded. “You were careless with cigarettes?”

  “We’ll say,” Frank told him, “they disappeared, we have no idea where they are, and everybody can search all they want.”

  “You’ll never get away with it,” Roger told him. “The only possible thing for us to do, Frank, is flee.”

  Frank gaped. “Flee? Whadaya mean, leave?”

  “That’s what flee means, yes.”

  “But Roger,” Frank said. He knew that Roger and Anne had been on the outs for some time, that Roger wouldn’t at all mind flight if flight from Anne were included in the package, but that wasn’t Frank’s situation at all. His marriage was a good one, with good kids, and nothing he wanted to leave. “No, Roger,” he said. “This is where I live, I live here.”

  “And you’ll die here,” Roger told him, “probably hanging from a lamppost. Frank, don’t you realize what two or three thousand angry Kiota and Oshkawa could do?”

  “With some hotheads,” Frank agreed, nodding. Then he drank some Wild Turkey.

  “I have just finished,” Roger said, getting back to the sentence that had been interrupted, “cleaning out every account we control, transferring all those funds. I am about to leave this reservation forever, out the back way, into Canada, and be on a plane out of Canada in the morning. Frank, we’ve been partners for a long time. I’m telling you, this is the thing to do. Put that damn glass down and come with me. We’ll be rich, we’ll be happy, we’ll be on an island somewhere.”

  Frank felt very sad. “Roger,” he said, “I don’t want to leave Silver Chasm. This is my home, Roger.”