Vicky stepped over and poured herself some tea. The ice cubes clinked against the glass, spattering cold liquid over her hand.
“We got some real hot weather now,” Will said as Vicky settled into the chair. Even the aluminum armrests were cool in the shade. She took a long sip of tea and felt herself begin to relax. There would be a good ten minutes of pleasantries.
“We don’t mind the weather.” Josephine leaned over the table and picked out several tiny beads from an opened cigar box, then slipped the beads onto the needle and down along the thread. She picked at the moccasin again. “We spend the hot days right here where it’s nice and cool, like the old ones taught us. They knew what they was doing, the old ones.” She slipped another line of beads onto the needle and launched into a story about the way the grandmothers had gathered willows from the rivers and made real nice shades, so the children would stay cool, no matter how hot it was on the plains.
Vicky took another sip of tea and allowed the story to flow over her, the way the old people’s stories had flowed over her when she was a child—flowed over her and became her. She thanked the old woman for the story gift, then joined in the pleasantries for another few moments. Yes, everything was fine. Lander was fine, her office was fine. She managed to stay busy, she said, wondering how much of the gossip had reached the old people.
She was aware that Will had been staring at her for several moments. “What’s troubling you, granddaughter?” he said finally, leaning toward her.
Now the time was ready. Vicky shifted in the chair. Holding the old man’s gaze, she said, “I wanted to talk to you about the casino. I’ve been asked to handle some of the legal work.”
“Heard the Lakota was doing the lawyering.”
“I’d be working with Adam Lone Eagle.”
“Does that trouble you?”
“Working with Adam?” Vicky gave a little laugh.
“Working for the casino,” he said, a solemn note sounding in his voice.
“A white man, Captain Jack Monroe, has people demonstrating at the casino, stopping people from going there.”
“Monroe!” Will let out a loud guffaw. “Man don’t know his backside from a plow. Comes from somewhere in West Virginia. Appoints hisself the savior of Indian people and goes around the country talking about the evils of gambling. Spent all them months here trying to stop the casino from getting built. Well, he lost that war. Now he’s trying to get folks riled up so they’ll demand the business council close the place down.”
“The demonstrators are Arapahos, grandfather. Arapahos trying to shut down their own casino.”
“Hold on, granddaughter.” Will thrust his head and shoulders toward her. “Some of the people don’t know their own traditions. Three years ago the tribal council come to the elders and says, what d’ya think about building a casino on the rez, like a casino and gambling was some new kind of animal they’d never seen before and wasn’t sure if they oughta trap it and bring it home or leave it out there for other people to hunt. We told ’em, you think gambling’s something the people never done before? We been gambling longer’n anybody can remember. The old ones, they liked to race ponies and make big bets. Sioux, Cheyenne, all them tribes come around wanting to bet their ponies was faster than ours.” The old man shook his head and gave a sharp laugh. “That’s how our people got a lot more ponies and blankets and other things, cause we raised the fastest ponies.”
Josephine started laughing, as if her husband had conjured out of nothing an old story that she’d forgotten. She had pulled a length of thread off the spool and, still chuck-ling, was trying to hold the needle steady while she jabbed the thread into the eye.
“You know what we told the council?” Will continued, the story spilling out now, like the thread rolling off the spool. “The people been gambling longer than anybody can remember. Oh, there’s some folks that won’t know when to stop, but most folks, that ain’t the way it’ll be. Lots of outsiders are gonna come to the casino, and there’s gonna be more money to help the people. We can build us a new hospital and some fancy schools with them computer labs. Some Indians say casinos are the new buffalo. Ain’t far from the truth, I’d say. So the Business Council gave the go-ahead. Took three years to get the casino built. Council had to get a pact with the state, and that wasn’t easy. Had to go to federal court and get the judge to tell the state they had to make the pact.”
Vicky glanced away again. And all that legal maneuvering, she was thinking, had been handled by a firm in Cheyenne. Outsiders. White.
“Trouble was, the casino cost a lotta money to build.” Will shook his head and stared at the roof. “That was the toughest part, until Lodestar Enterprises come around. Offered to loan the tribe a hellava lot of money, eighteen million dollars, to get the casino and hotel up and going, and signed on to manage the place, ’cause they know about managing casinos. They done it all over the country, and the Business Council—what do they know about running a casino? They hired Lodestar and appointed three commissioners to make sure everything’s running right. They made Matt Kingdom the chairman.”
Will sat back, allowing the story to settle into the quiet a moment. “Matt’s a good man,” he said finally, a strained note in his voice. “One of them guys good with numbers.”
Vicky nodded. She knew Matt Kingdom. She’d grown up with his sister.
“Got hisself a new truck he’s driving around,” the elder continued, “and last month he went off to Hawaii. Moccasin telegraph got real busy. When I see Kingdom over at the casino, I says, what’s going on? You the commission chairman, ain’t you? Ain’t you supposed to keep a watch on how things are going? How come you got yourself a lotta money?”
“Now, Will.” Josephine looked up, worry flowing through the lines in her face. “You know it ain’t good for your blood pressure to get all upset.”
Will waved away the old woman’s words, his gaze still on Vicky. “Kingdom says he’s got a right to compensation— that’s what he called it—for his work. Maybe so. Maybe so.” The old man nodded and looked away. “But compensation ain’t all that folks are talking about. You hear about Kingdom’s boy? Thirty years old and never had a job, and now he’s some kind of supervisor at the casino.”
Will let out another guffaw, readjusted his thin frame in the chair, and fastened his gaze on some point across the shade. “Lotta folks are glad to get jobs unloading cartons of hotel stuff off trucks, and Matt’s boy gets to be supervisor.”
Vicky pushed herself to her feet and, clasping her arms across her chest, stepped to the opening. All around, the land stretched to the sky, like a brown ocean heaving and undulating in the sunlight. She could feel the old couple’s eyes on her.
Finally she turned back. “You’re asking me to take the job at the casino and keep an eye on what’s going on.”
Will didn’t flinch. He kept his gaze steady on her, his knobby, work-raw hands locked together on the table. “What I’m saying is, you can help your people.”
“I’m a lawyer, grandfather.” She wondered if she could make him understand. There were different sets of loyalties in the white world, different obligations that took precedence over those in the Arapaho world. “If I took the job, my loyalty would be to my client, Lodestar Enterprises.”
Will lifted one hand, as if she hadn’t told him anything he didn’t know. “Them folks are doing the job they’re supposed to do, they’ll deserve your loyalty. If not . . .”
Now she understood what the elder was telling her. If she should learn that, in any way, Lodestar Enterprises was not operating the casino within the law, her loyalty to her client would end, and in its place, like an undertow pulling her back, would be her loyalty to her own people.
She swallowed hard at the lump lodged in her throat. Maybe Matt Kingdom had the right to be paid for his time, but who was paying him? The casino? That would be a major conflict of interest. She couldn’t imagine that was the case. Lodestar Enterprises operated Indian casinos around
the country. The business council had looked into the company’s background. And Adam—Adam Lone Eagle working for a company that wasn’t honest? She couldn’t imagine it.
If she didn’t take the job, there were a half dozen other lawyers in the area who wouldn’t hesitate. And if it turned out that Will’s suspicions were correct—this was what it came down to, she realized—she wanted to be the one to know about it.
“I understand, grandfather,” she said. In the old man’s eyes, she saw that he had already guessed her decision. She picked up the paper bag and set it on the table. She removed the tobacco and cigarette papers and slid them toward the old man, then she stacked the cans of chili near the cigar box. She smiled at the two old people and promised to come back for a visit soon, then she backed out of the brushshade into the late afternoon sun, which was still beaming overhead like a floodlight.
She drove out of the yard, one hand on the steering wheel, the other pulling the cell phone from her bag. She pressed in the number that Adam had given her.
“Adam Lone Eagle’s office.” A woman’s voice.
Vicky asked to speak to Adam Lone Eagle, and in a moment he was on the line. “Tell me you’ve decided to join us,” he said.
“I’ve decided to give it a try.”
“Great!” A mixture of joy and relief washed through the line. “When can you come over?”
Vicky glanced at her watch. Almost five-thirty, and she should check her messages at the office, make certain nothing important had come up.
“How about first thing tomorrow?” she said.
That would be just fine, he told her, and then he went on about how he was looking forward to working with her, how they’d make a good team when the cell phone went dead in her hand, like a piece of driftwood, leaving only a vacancy and sense of emptiness and the sound of the wind rushing around her.
She drove with the wind a few miles, then turned on the radio, pushing buttons until she had a news station. One could always get news on the moccasin telegraph, but for some time now, she realized, she’d depended on the newspaper and radio for news.
“The body of a Riverton man was recovered from a shallow grave at Double Dives this morning.” The announcer’s voice blasted through the wind like drumbeats. “The Fremont County Coroner said the man was Rodney Pearson, thirty-four years old, from Two-Valley Road. The cause of death is homicide. Pearson was employed in the oil field at Mexican Flat. Next up in the news . . .”
Vicky pushed the off button. She felt chilled, as if the air had turned cold. Another homicide on the reservation, this one in a dangerous place like Double Dives. Probably a drug deal turned bad. And Father John O’Malley—she always made herself think of him as “Father” now—would have gone to pray over the body. She knew the truth of it as certainly as if she’d been there and seen him. The police had called him, and he’d gone. He would always go.
She guided the Cherokee through the curves on Plunkett Road, aware of her own heart beating. She hadn’t seen Father John all summer. There had been times when she’d wanted to call him. She’d even found legitimate reasons—a couple of DUIs, a client arrested on a domestic disturbance—but she hadn’t called. They were excuses, that was all. She’d only wanted to hear his voice, and that need in her to be close to him and part of his life, she’d recognized months ago, would never be fulfilled, and so it had to be ignored.
Vicky turned south onto 287 and drove toward Lander, a sense of well-being settling over her, as if she’d given in to the temptation and called him after all and they’d met and talked and caught up with each other, and the meeting had left her resolve shaky and somehow unimportant.
6
VICKY GOT AN early start in the morning, retracing her route on 287, past Plunkett Road, past Fort Washakie, the sun still high in the east, the traffic still light, and the day’s heat not yet settled in. From a mile away, she could see the casino and hotel rising out of the plains, giant, dust-colored blocks against the blue sky.
About a half mile from the casino, she slowed behind a couple of RVs. On the billboard looming over the highway, the figure of an Indian warrior in an eagle-feathered headdress blinked in red and blue neon that washed out in the sun. The warrior lifted one hand, as if he were throwing the dice that dropped down the side of the billboard. At the top, in red letters, were the words, Great Plains Casino.
She turned into the driveway that curved toward the entrance, which was shaped like a tipi three stories high, trimmed in blue geometric designs. Looming over the tipi structure was the eight-story hotel, with horizontal lines of balconies that jutted from the sliding glass doors off the rooms. On either side of the hotel were parking lots the size of football fields, half full of vehicles, the sun winking off of the windshields.
She followed the driveway past the half-circle of glass doors at the tipi entrance. A group of Indians stood outside—in their mid-twenties, probably—dressed in army camouflage pants and shirts with the sleeves cut out, hoisting signs with black letters: Gambling = Satan. Probably some of the same demonstrators who were arrested two days ago. She could imagine what happened. The tribal judge had fined them for disturbing the peace and set them free. And now they were back. Until Adam got a restraining order, it would no doubt be a familiar pattern.
Vicky drove slowly through the parking lot on the right until she found a vacant spot. The hot asphalt grabbed at her heels as she walked back to the entrance. Ignoring the demonstrators, she darted through the nearest door. A whoosh of refrigerated air hit her and with it, the jumbled sound of mechanical notes racing up and down the scale and coins clinking into metal trays. Underneath the noise was the flat drone of voices. Beyond the entry, the casino floor was a cascade of motion and color, lights flashing, people milling about under the high, conical ceiling. The faintest odor of smoke hung in the air.
Vicky made her way through the crowds and started past the slot machines toward the overhead sign with blue lights that spelled Hotel. Most of the people seated at the slots looked like tourists, but some were Indians, feeding in coins, pushing buttons or pulling metal handles, eyes locked on the red, blue, orange, and yellow figures rolling and jumping on the screens. A siren sounded, and the light on top of a pole started flashing. “All right!” a woman yelled.
Vicky turned into a spacious lobby with a registration desk on one side and a bank of elevators on the other. The casino noise faded into the background. She stopped at the desk and waited until the young woman with dark skin and black hair cut short about her face glanced up from a computer monitor.
“May I help you?”
Vicky said she was here to see Adam Lone Eagle.
“Second floor.”
As Vicky started for the bronze doors of the elevators, the woman said, “Wait for security, please.”
A gray-uniformed security guard hurried into the lobby, crossed to the elevators, and pushed the button. He glanced around, as if to make certain she was the only one waiting. “Gotta escort visitors to second,” he said. “Regulations.”
The door opened, and he waved her into the cage. Framed photographs of the reservation hung above the brass railing, and overhead, a chandelier swayed as the elevator started upward. Out of the corner of her eye, she studied the man beside her: bulky shoulders and neck, thin, dark hair, receding from the puffy face, a rim of perspiration at his armpit. He stared straight ahead. The elevator made a ding and rocked to a stop. The doors behind them swung open.
“This way.” He pulled his bulky frame around and ushered her into a wide corridor with blue and red carpeting on the floor and framed oil paintings of the plains and the Wind River range on the cream-colored walls. He headed toward the middle door on the right, pushed it open, then stood back. Vicky stepped into an office as large as her bungalow, all buttery colored walls with matching leather of warriors and horses on the polished wood tables. Arranged around the walls were large oil paintings of Indian villages and ponies racing across the plains.
Adam was bent over the glass-topped desk on the right, tapping a stack of documents, explaining something in a patient voice to a woman with a hypnotized look in her eyes who was seated behind the desk.
“Vicky!” He sprang upright and came toward her. She had the same feeling she’d had the previous day, that he was about to put his arms around her. She shoved out her hand, which he took, leading her back to the desk.
“Emily,” he said to the secretary, who sat back in her chair, “meet Vicky Holden, the attorney I told you about. She’ll be joining the team. That’s right, isn’t it?” He turned to Vicky.
“We’ll see.” Vicky slipped her hand out of his.
“Emily White Robe keeps me on schedule.” Adam nodded at the secretary who was now swiveling toward the computer monitor.
“Glad to meet you,” she said over the shoulder of her red silky blouse.
Not true, Vicky thought. The woman wasn’t glad to meet any other woman who would be working with Adam. She tried to place the name. White Robe. The White Robe family lived near Ethete. Emily must be one of the daughters, now grown-up, in her twenties and very pretty, and obviously attracted to Adam.
“I alerted Stan Lexson you were on the way,” Adam was saying. She felt the slight pressure of his hand on her arm. “He’s eager to meet you. Come on, I’ll take you over and introduce you. Can’t tell you how good it’ll be to work with you again,” he said, guiding her across the office and into the corridor.
“Last spring, you were working for me,” she said.
“Then we’re even. You’ll be working for me now. I promise not to be as hard on you as you were on me.” He gave a quiet laugh and opened one of the massive double doors at the end of the corridor. Vicky stepped into an office that was almost a duplicate of the one they’d just left, but larger, with creamier walls and plusher carpeting and more of everything—more leather chairs and oil paintings and bronze sculptures, with the detail and patina of true Remington’s. The secretary—a white woman about thirty, with sharply cut, shoulder-length blond hair and perfect makeup—smiled at them from behind the desk.
Killing Raven (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 4