by Philip Depoy
I stopped walking.
‘Look,’ I said to the guy. ‘I still have residual suspicions about you, left over from your time as Brady – the racist dickhead. It was a role you played with a lot of oomph. Even De Niro’s not that good an actor. There’s something off about you. For example: you tell me your name is Rothschild and you buddy up to me thinking we have some king of Hebrew Brotherhood, but we don’t. My primary religion is Brooklyn. My current life is based on atonement. Yom Kippur. So, unless you have some FBI juju to slap on me, shove off. I’m going to my apartment to get in my car to take a drive to clear my head.’
I stared into his eyes all the way to the back of his head. He blinked first.
‘Will you at least tell me who it is,’ he said, ‘once you’ve found out?’
‘Found what?’
‘Who actually came up with this whole kidnapping scam.’
‘Oh.’ I started walking again. ‘Probably not. I work for Child Protective Services, not the FBI. Do your own work.’
I kept walking and he didn’t follow. I figured I made him just mad enough – or curious enough – to put a tail on me. At least I hoped he would, because I didn’t relish the idea of driving my T-bird into the swamp all by myself.
TWENTY-SIX
First, it’s a paved road, then a dirt path, and eventually a winding, overgrown trail leads to John Horse’s home in the swamp. It took about an hour and a half if you drove the whole way, or an hour if you parked when the trail started and walked the last couple of miles. The FBI tail stayed way behind me, but there was no hiding the fact that they were there. It was a single-lane road in the middle of nowhere, no other cars and no place to hide.
I parked my car on a little pad of ground where I’d parked before, and where my friend Philip sometimes parked his Jeep. The feds found a shady spot before a bend in the road and tried to look invisible.
I got out, locked the T-bird, even though I didn’t need to, and started the trek.
Right away I regretted wearing the old two-tone wingtips. I liked them, and they were going to suffer.
Guys I knew in Brooklyn paid a hefty monthly fee to belong to a gym where they could sit in a room that was half as steamy and humid as the trail to John Horse’s house. I hadn’t walked a hundred yards before the seersucker was soaked and my lungs wanted to be gills.
I could hear the FBI guys behind me, but I couldn’t see them when I turned around. They were probably pretty good city guys. But my few years in Florida had taught me that nothing you’ve learned in the city prepares you for a swamp.
When I hit the five-way split in the trail, I stepped off the path entirely, up on slick moss and dead palmetto for a few yards, and then back down on to the path. They’d never know which of the splits to take. I wanted them nearby, but not on top of me. Of course, there was always the possibility that they’d get lost and be eaten by alligators.
Another sweltering half-mile, and John Horse’s little slice of heaven came into view. I always thought about the line from Little Big Man when I looked at the place. ‘I see the dump – where’s the village?’
A scattering of naked cinderblock houses in random order sat in various stages of disrepair. John Horse had the nicest one, but that was a little like saying, ‘This is the scab that bothers me least.’
There was smoke coming out of the window, which meant he was cooking something. Otherwise, the whole settlement looked deserted. I knew better, though. There was always a sentry. Somewhere in the shadows were a couple of armed guards. I kept my hands visible and my face smiling. They knew me, but that wouldn’t keep them from shooting me if I looked squirrely.
I made it to John Horse’s door without seeing anyone, but I had the itchy feeling of eyes on me anyway. I didn’t have to knock. The door was open and John Horse was sitting on the floor in front of his little wood burner next to the window.
‘Come on in, Foggy,’ he said without looking up.
‘I assume you knew it was me since I parked my car.’
He nodded. ‘And I assume you know you were followed here.’
‘FBI,’ I told him.
‘I made you some sofkee,’ he said.
Sofkee was a drink made of corn. Not exactly a soup, more a beverage, and it wasn’t bad. John Horse had made it for me before. It went good with turtle.
‘You knew I was coming before I parked my car, then,’ I told him.
‘I knew you would figure it out,’ he said, still not looking at me. ‘I thought it would be today.’
He got a pot holder and poured two mugs of the sofkee. He gave me the mug that said, There’s plenty to see wherever you go in Florida! He took the one with the hand-painted flamingo.
I knew better than to try to talk before I sat down on the dirty floor and took a sip of the stuff. Deep breath, apology to the pants and cross-legged on the floor, I drank. Burned my tongue a little. Experience had taught me to wait for him to speak.
He took a few slow sips, closed his eyes, enjoying the taste, and swallowed. After a minute or two, he set his mug on the floor next to him and finally looked me in the eye.
‘Tell me.’
I put my mug down. ‘Tell you how much I already figured out, or how much more I want to know?’
‘Both.’
‘OK.’ I folded my hands in my lap. ‘You say you’re the grandfather of Echu Matta, and I’ll go along with that. You sent her children into Fry’s Bay to look for me, not her. You knew what happened to her. But you also knew that a Seminole investigation wouldn’t get you what you wanted. It had to be me or somebody like me.’
He laughed at that. ‘There’s nobody like you, Foggy.’
‘I get that a lot,’ I admitted. ‘It’s not usually a compliment.’
‘In this case it’s just an observation,’ he said.
‘So.’ That’s all I said.
‘You want to know if your observations are right.’
I nodded.
‘Echu Matta is my granddaughter; her children are my line. I began to notice women missing from the job at that fancy hotel.’
‘The Benton,’ I interrupted.
‘But they were taken to distract me from what was really happening,’ he went on.
‘Which was?’
‘You know.’
‘I think I do,’ I said. ‘Someone talked Bear Talmascy into this ridiculous scheme; fed his broken brain with the promise of putting his family back together. He had no idea that the real goal was to get to you.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Do you think these things through, or do they just come to you?’
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean by these things,’ I told him. ‘But this thought started in the shower this morning.’
‘I never took a shower. Maybe I should.’
‘The point is who would steal women, use them for a relatively petty sum of money, and then dispose of them in some hideous way, just to get at you?’
‘Think of the way you had to sneak into New York,’ he began. ‘Then triple that, and you have the way I had to sneak into Oklahoma.’
‘You didn’t sneak into Oklahoma,’ I objected.
‘It didn’t occur to you why I went to Eddie Harjo?’
I blinked. ‘That’s right. You’re John Horse. People in Oklahoma know who you are. You could have rallied the troops just as well as he did. Better, maybe. But if he did it – I mean, even if people thought they recognized you, they wouldn’t say it was you. It was too improbable. You stay here, in the swamp. In Florida.’
‘Like you do.’ He nodded. ‘Which is why we got out of New York as fast as you could drive. You didn’t even call your mother, let alone go see her. Which I know you wanted to do.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let me see what I get if I add two plus two. Some rich or powerful person in Oklahoma – not a Seminole, maybe someone in government – has a grudge against you. It’s got to be a mighty grudge to have such a complex machine and such collateral damage. Some person or persons
initiated the scheme to call you out.’
He smiled. ‘But what they didn’t reckon on was you.’
‘Which is why you used your alleged great-grandchildren,’ I said. ‘To get me hooked.’
‘I didn’t use them,’ he objected. ‘Their mother was taken. They were involved.’
‘But you sent them to Fry’s Bay to get to me.’
‘Oh.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I did that. They didn’t want to involve anyone outside the tribe. They thought they could do it on their own.’
I laughed. ‘I think the chances are pretty good that they could have done it on their own, if either one of them could drive.’
He picked up his mug and finished his sofkee. It was time for another moment of silence, so I finished mine too. Sweet, still hot – the kind of concoction you were supposed to be suspicious about, especially with a character like John Horse. On more than one occasion he’d dosed me with some kind of Mr Toad’s Wild Ride.
‘There’s nothing in it,’ he said softly, reading my face – or my mind.
‘Too late anyway,’ I told him. ‘It’s gone. Good.’
‘Yes.’ He set down his mug. ‘Good.’
I waited.
‘A long time ago,’ he said at last, not looking at me, ‘I was supposed to be taken to Oklahoma. We all were. All Seminole boys were shipped to the Seminole Oklahoma reservation. It was a ploy by the American Government to unsettle us, keep us disoriented, take us from home and “properly socialize” us.’
‘But you didn’t go.’
‘I kept a lot of us from going. We hid out in the swamp. We sabotaged the trucks that were supposed to take us away. We started a war on the police and, after a while, the US military was called in. This was a long time ago.’
‘You said.’
‘But a man, an American soldier, a captain not much older than me, was killed. It was an accident, but his family blamed me, because I was the instigator of the confrontation. My legend, in their family, is not a good one.’
I took a deep breath. ‘His family is from Oklahoma.’
He nodded.
‘They – let me guess,’ I went on. ‘They’re oil-rich, snake-mean, shit-kickers, and they’ve been out to get you for a long time.’
He nodded again.
‘They really did invent this stupid money-making scheme of kidnapping Seminole women just to get you?’
‘Well, they like money.’ He shrugged. ‘And this is only their most recent attempt to hurt me. They failed again, because they’re wrong. They always fail.’
‘That’s what makes them so mean,’ I said. ‘A crazy husband and an affable hood like Pody Poe, they can’t hold a candle to a rich guy with a grudge.’
His eyes agreed, but before he could add to his story, dogs were barking and men were shouting.
‘Ah.’ He stood up. ‘They’re here.’
‘Who’s here?’ I asked, scrambling to my feet and pulling out my gun.
‘Put that away, Foggy,’ he said, glancing at the pistol. ‘No need for it, and I don’t want you to get hurt. I’m going to need your help and I don’t want you to get shot.’
I hid the gun just as two Caucasians in plain black suits busted into the room. They had guns.
‘FBI,’ one said.
‘John Horse,’ the other chimed in, ‘you’re under federal arrest and will now be taken into custody.’
John Horse didn’t move a muscle. ‘No, I won’t. This Seminole land is an independent nation. You have no authority here. And technically, we’re still at war with your country. You are enemy combatants, with weapons drawn, on foreign soil. I’ll try to convince the people outside not to kill you. But it won’t be easy if you start pointing your guns at them.’
I could see, past the agents and through the door, a dozen or more Seminole men and women with rifles. All pointed at the men from the FBI.
‘You guys followed me here,’ I said, ‘on orders from Rothschild?’
They were too slow to respond.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Not Rothschild. Well, that makes me think better of him.’
‘These men are directed, whether they know it or not, by the family we were just discussing,’ John Horse told me.
‘You guys are from the Oklahoma City office?’ I said.
Before they could respond, John Horse whispered a name.
‘Bill Hale,’ he said.
‘Bill Hale,’ one of the FBI men echoed. ‘Famous case. What about it?’
‘Hale bribed and killed his way to wealth and a place in Oklahoma politics,’ John Horse went on. ‘Mostly by stealing the oil royalties from members of the Osage Tribe. Started in 1921, with an Osage woman named Anna Brown. She was found in a ravine. The undertaker found a bullet hole in the back of her head. She was just an Indian woman, so not much was made of it. Then her mother Lizzie died two months later, also suspiciously. But it wasn’t until white oil men were also murdered that FBI agents were sent to help.’
John Horse had given his speech in a monotone, and without any facial expression. But it had an impact. On me, at least.
‘One of the rich oil men,’ I said to John Horse, ‘was a member of the family who hates you. They developed a relationship with the FBI that long ago. That’s why these guys are here now. Nothing to do with Rothschild or his investigation.’
John Horse nodded once.
I took one step toward one of the agents.
‘My name is Moscowitz,’ I began. ‘I’m with Florida Child Protective Services. Might not mean that much to you, but I’m winding up an investigation that has federal implications.’
‘We know who you are,’ the man said, irritated. ‘We’re working with Rothschild.’
‘Not now, you’re not,’ I disagreed. ‘You’re here for a completely different reason.’
He countered. ‘We’re here because this man, John Horse, is implicated in the case of kidnapping across state lines.’
‘Implicated in the kidnapping?’ I laughed. ‘How?’
‘Just stand out of the way,’ he snarled. ‘We’re taking this man into custody.’
I shook my head. ‘Here’s the thing: there are around thirty guys behind you, all with guns. And other guys have already dismantled your car, or am I wrong?’
‘You’re not wrong,’ John Horse answered calmly.
‘And when you’re dead, we’ll all drag your bodies into the swamp and every last morsel will be alligator food, or am I wrong?’
‘Alligators eat everything,’ John Horse said.
‘Or you can say, to whatever oil baron who hired you, that you couldn’t find John Horse. And you can go home and try to resume your duties with the FBI, if you truly work for that agency. If you do, I’m going to make that very difficult for you. So. Dead or unemployed. Those are really your only options.’
To emphasize my point, a dozen or so Seminoles made their presence known right behind the FBI agents, rifle barrels grazing various creases in their cheap suits.
I held out my hand. ‘Give me your guns. You’re a whole lot safer if these men know you’re unarmed. Otherwise, a sudden twitch or an unexpected sneeze could be mistaken, and then where are you? Alligator lunchmeat. Think about that.’
One of the FBI guys thought about it. The other fired his gun. John Horse stumbled, then dropped.
Then a couple dozen Seminole rifles exploded, and just like that there were two fewer crooked FBI agents in the world.
I ran to John Horse. There was blood all over his shirt. He wasn’t breathing.
Before I could figure how I’d get him to the hospital, an older Seminole woman was pulling me away from him. I tried to shrug her off, but she was stronger than I thought. I glanced at her. She was Philip’s mother, the one who made the great turtle soup.
‘They shot John Horse,’ I said, dizzy and stupid.
‘I know.’ She stared me down. ‘But you can’t be here. There is going to be trouble. FBI. You go on home now, Foggy. Go back to your car and drive home.’
A couple of the younger men got hold of me then, and I was ushered out of the house and halfway down the trail to the road before they let go of my arms. And then, without a word, they were gone.
I don’t remember walking the rest of the way back to the car, but I guess I did. How else would I have ended up back in my apartment? I remember making coffee and gulping it down. I remember sitting at my kitchen table.
And I remember my front door exploding into my living room, and the FBI agents storming in like I’d busted up their hive.
Then I was conked in the back of the head and I don’t remember anything after that, for a while.
TWENTY-SEVEN
When I woke up it was Tuesday. I only knew that because I asked. I was in a cell in the Fry’s Bay police station. There were only two, and in the one next to mine there were three dead Seminole men. Or they looked dead. The station was very quiet.
‘What the hell?’ was my first question, which I asked lying on my side on a cot.
One of the Seminole men growled and sat up. So, he wasn’t dead.
‘Foggy?’ he mumbled.
It was Philip.
I sat up. Took some doing.
‘What day is it?’ I asked him.
‘What difference does that make?’ he asked right back.
‘I’m just curious.’
‘Tuesday. Does that help?’
‘Not really,’ I said, rubbing my face. ‘I don’t know what day it was when I saw John Horse get killed and I got hit on the head from behind. So, I’m not really sure why I asked.’
Philip nodded sagely. ‘That was yesterday. Monday. FBI came. Rounded up a bunch of us. Don’t know when they brought you in, because they hit us on the head too. Hurts.’
‘It does,’ I agreed. ‘I’m having trouble seeing.’
‘They didn’t get John Horse’s body, though,’ he went on. ‘My mother took him into the swamp, to the other place.’
I knew what place he meant. John Horse had different hiding places all over the swamp, but there was one special hut, made from trees and vines, mostly. He told me, once, that it was his real home. The home for his spirit.
‘Does that mean he’s dead?’ My voice sounded funny, like someone else was asking the question.