by Linda Barnes
Give the Indians back their land!
NO MORE BROKEN PROMISSES!
Open Land. No condoes for rich folks!
Hazeltine read each statement out loud. It wasn’t the kind of stuff Mooney had expected, not from the appearance of the two kids. The boy was short and slight, maybe fifteen at most. His hair was wispy and fair.
“What’s the story, here?” Thurlow said. “Donna?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Donna’s a hard case,” Thurlow said. “What am I gonna do with you, Donna?”
“Just take me in and book me.”
“Bill,” Thurlow said to Hazeltine. “You call Mrs. Schneider over to the—”
“Come on!” Donna said.
“Donna wants to do time,” Thurlow said to Mooney. “She doesn’t like it at home, wants to go to reform school.”
“Fuck you,” said Donna.
Thurlow said, “You really want to go to that reform school so bad, Donna, you tell me what happened here tonight and maybe I can help you out.”
“Shut up!” It was the boy’s first offering since he’d begged them not to shoot.
“C’mon, you two,” Thurlow said. “I’m interested in how come you’re suddenly politically involved here. Your momma tell you to write this stuff, Luke?”
“They gave him fifty bucks,” said Donna. “He promised to split.”
“Hell I did! You get ten, that’s what I said.”
“Who’s ’they’?” Thurlow asked.
“The boogeyman,” Luke said.
Donna just about fell over herself laughing. “Yeah,” she said. “The boogeyman, like Luke said.”
“Injuns,” Luke said. “Heap-big ones. War bonnets and face paint.”
“You little creep,” Thurlow said.
“Don’t you call him names,” Donna said.
“Here’s a name for you: Liar. Turn out your pockets, the both of you.”
“I got no pockets,” Donna said defiantly. “You try search me, I’ll scream my head off.”
“Luke?”
The boy’s right pocket made a crinkling sound and a slip of paper fluttered to the ground along with a fifty-dollar bill. Mooney held the paper to the light. Whoever had written the phrases to be copied had spelled promises and condos correctly.
“Hazeltine?” Thurlow said.
“Yeah.”
“Take Miss Eberlee home. If you give him any crap, girl, he’ll handcuff you to the door and you’ll answer to me, understand?”
“I want my money,” she said.
“You come down to the station tomorrow then. And bring your ma with you.”
“You old fart.”
“One more word outa you, girl—”
“And what?”
“Take her home, Hazeltine. We’ll take care of Luke.”
Mooney didn’t envy the young cop, but the girl followed him wordlessly. She seemed to have lost most of her swagger.
“Okay, Luke, who gave you the money and the list? And don’t ‘boogeyman’ me this time. I don’t impress as easy as your girlfriend.”
“Some guy. Um, he was kinda tall, wore those wire-rim glasses, little goatee. Tall skinny guy, long dark hair, probably one of those Indian nuts.”
“How old?”
“Old. Maybe thirty.”
“And he gave you this list? He write it out for you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I appreciate you telling me that.”
“What are you gonna do with my money?”
“I thought maybe you’d help me with that.”
“How?”
“Let’s go give it back,” Thurlow said.
“Huh?” the kid said.
“Mooney, you watch this little pissant while I make a phone call, okay?”
TWENTY-FIVE
Thurlow angled the rearview mirror so he could keep an eye on the kid in the backseat. Mooney, who hadn’t had a chance to ask the police chief what he was up to, wondered whether the mozzarella sticks would be worth eating cold.
The cruiser pulled up in front of a weathered gray bungalow on a winding road. Stunted trees fronted the lot. In the yellow glow of the porch light, in spite of the cold, two old men rocked on a saggy front porch. One wore a banded hat and smoked a slim cigarette; the other, his skin as dark as Thurlow’s, puffed on a stumpy cigar.
Thurlow parked the unit on the brown, beaten grass by the roadside, among a cluster of cars. Mooney noted three elderly Detroit rust heaps, two pickup trucks, a maroon Lexus, and a sky blue Mercedes.
“Where the hell are we?”
Mooney was glad the kid had asked.
“Listen up, Luke. You know what a lineup is?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s lots of people here tonight. I was gonna come on over anyway, pay my respects, but what you said gave me an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“First off, you’re gonna behave like a human being, okay? No yelling, no loud talking. You stay with me and we walk around and when you see the man gave you the note and the money, you just lean over and tell me about it, real quiet. Okay?”
“I don’t have to do it.”
“Right.” That was all Thurlow said, but there was menace behind the word.
The kid heard it. “Will I get to keep the fifty if I do it right?”
“I don’t want you acting up, hear me? This is a solemn thing, like church. Old man lives here lost his granddaughter. Did you know that girl, Luke? Girl named Julie Farmer?”
Mooney lifted his eyes to the mirror, found Thurlow watching him, not the kid. Mooney thought the Nausett cop had thrown out the name the way a fly fisherman might cast a line, trying to see whether Mooney would bite, whether he knew about Julie Farmer, whether something about the Farmer case had brought him to town.
“At least I won’t be breaking the news,” Thurlow said. “That sure used to suck.”
“Want me to wait?” Mooney wasn’t sure why he didn’t want Thurlow to know he was interested in this crime, too, but he had learned to trust his instincts. He no longer knew Thurlow well, wasn’t sure where the man’s allegiance might lie.
“Suit yourself, but you won’t be intruding. Everybody in town knows Mitch Farmer, and most of them will be here. His granddaughter, Julie, she lived with the old man, off and on. Girl had some history; nothing awful, drunk a few times, runaway. Good girl, mostly, big pretty smile. She ran off again, only this time she got hit by a car. Hit and run. Mitch had already come by, filled out a missing persons. I’d have made the ID eventually, but we got a tip from a Boston PI. A woman?”
Thurlow hadn’t worked with Carlyle, Mooney was certain of that. They had both been Boston cops, but it was a big department and the years of service hadn’t overlapped, Thurlow calling it quits before Carlyle had shown up.
“Mitch Farmer, the old man, he’s a high councillor of the Nausett nation.”
“That a big tribe?” Mooney asked.
Thurlow’s brow wrinkled. “Some say the Nausett nation is really a subset of the Mashpee Wampanoag. Since the Mashpee Wampanoag just got themselves recognized by BIA, that might stick a fork in the Nausett tribal claim.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, according to the feds, there’s a set of seven things you gotta prove to be a legit tribe. The Nausett have been going through the process for as many years as I’ve been here.”
“What seven things?”
“Got me, but somebody here will know. Mitch Farmer says there’s—what?—sixteen hundred tribes in the Americas—and he figures the Nausett oughta know who they are.”
“BIA’s Indian Affairs?”
“You probably don’t hear from them much.”
“We get the whole rest of the alphabet: ATF, DEA.”
“PIA. That’s for Pain in the Ass.” Thurlow’s deep voice rolled with easy laughter. When the kid in the backseat snorted, Thurlow said, “You gonna cooperate, Luke?”
“I want my money.”
Thurlow shrugged and opened the car door. The blast of cold air tingled against Mooney’s ears.
“Guess I might as well tag along,” he said.
After the Nausett nation buildup, the house was disappointingly ordinary. Mooney would have preferred some kind of traditional Indian dwelling, a cookstove instead of an electric range in the cheerful yellow kitchen he glimpsed through an archway. The crowd didn’t fit his image of Indians, either. If he’d been forced to guess, he’d have labeled most light-skinned blacks. A few looked more Hispanic than African American. One or two younger men had let their hair grow long enough to braid into a single pigtail at the back.
“You want feather headdresses, you gotta come back during powwow time,” Thurlow, at his elbow, said solemnly.
Mooney stared at the ground, embarrassed that he’d been caught gawking, even more embarrassed by the realization that his stereotypes, like Luke’s, had been culled from late-night movies.
Most of those present in the sparsely furnished front room that ran the length of the house were men, all ages and more than a few economic levels, matching the variety of cars on the street. Jeans and workboots outnumbered suits. Mooney looked for a man to match Luke’s description. Quite a few wore small soul patches that could be called goatees.
Thurlow marched directly through the crush until they were facing a man who met every particular of Luke’s description: tall, thin, dark long hair, wire rims. Luke looked dumbstruck.
“Anything you want to say, boy?” Thurlow murmured.
“I want to go home.”
Thurlow kept a hand clamped on the boy’s bicep, but otherwise ignored him. “That you, Andrew?”
“Robert.” The tall man’s eyes lit. “Glad you could come by. Uncle Mitch will appreciate it.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Thurlow said. “You don’t happen to know this fella, do you?”
Luke squirmed uncomfortably.
“Isn’t that Jody Fellman’s boy?”
“Don’t suppose you hired him to write a few words over on the schoolhouse? Paid him fifty bucks?”
“You kidding me?”
“Luke?”
“I musta made a mistake.” The boy stared at his sneakers.
“Thanks for your time, Andrew. Mooney, I’m gonna take this young man back to his momma now, then I’m gonna come back and stay awhile. You want me to drop you at your car?”
“Will you be long?”
“Ten minutes. Fifteen, max.”
“If nobody minds, I could stick around till you come back.”
Andrew with the wire rims said, “No problem. Have something to eat. Make sure you talk to my uncle when you get back, Robert. Okay? He’s got something he wants to ask you.”
The Nausett cop propelled the boy across the room and out the door, and Mooney knew that Thurlow, intentionally or not, had given him a gift, a chance to find out more about Julie Farmer, Danielle Wilder’s best friend.
The crowd was packed more densely at one end of the big room. That was where the girl’s family would likely be, seated around a low coffee table, accepting condolences. Mooney retreated to a sideboard covered with partially demolished rings of coffee cake and discarded paper cups. He scanned the length of the room. The few women looked ordinary. No fantasy Indian princesses with dark curtains of hair and beaded moccasins. Clusters of men, quietly chatting, drinking from Styrofoam coffee cups. Mooney found himself trying to pick out possible BIA agents.
A man in a cheap gray suit looked familiar, but he was such a standard type—medium height, brown and brown—that Mooney couldn’t decide whether he’d previously seen Gray Suit in a lineup, a cell, or a uniform. Mooney made his eyes continue the sweep without seeming to pause. Had he once sat across from the man in gray at a conference table at the JFK Building? The blue-suited man standing next to Gray Suit was murmuring into a cell phone. A wide-bellied coffee urn sat on a card table. An ice chest held beer, and whiskey bottles dotted the tabletop.
Mooney decided to avoid the men who might be feds. He ducked into the yellow kitchen, overhearing shreds of conversation on the way.
“October, I’d have said you were crazy you said seventy-eight percent turnout. I’da thought half that, half that, for a special election.”
“Twenty-one years old. Damn shame. Mitch relied on that girl.”
The people seated at the long oak table were stuffing envelopes with printed flyers. SUPPORT 6! was the header. VOTE YES ON 6! SPECIAL TOWN ELECTION! MAY 18!
This was where most of the women hung out; here, in the kitchen, stuffing envelopes. Only one male was seated at the table, a scruffy, long-haired teen.
“If you wanna sit down and fold some flyers, that would be fine.”
The young woman had come up behind him. She wore a flower-print dress that rode easily over a plump body. A halo of frizzy dark hair framed a pale dolllike face.
“No, that’s okay,” Mooney said. “I can’t stay long.”
“You against us?” she asked, an edge in her breathy voice.
“Proposition Six? Don’t know much about it. Came to pay my respects.”
“Well, take one. Read it. We’d get so much more done in the big room. We had a meeting scheduled for tonight, but—well, you can’t hold it against her, poor kid.”
“Julie?”
“She was alive, she’d be with us, so we keep going. Her family believes in the tribe’s future just the way she did. Come on. Take a look.”
The handbill she thrust in his face was bright canary yellow.
SUPPORT 6!
Your friends and neighbors of the Nausett Nation wish to make an investment in beautiful Nausett, traditional homeland of our people. These acres adjoin land we already own. For 400 years, Nausett Nation land has been an asset to the community, green and open to all. Why trust an outside developer who could subdivide and resell the land? Do you want apartment complexes and condos—or acres of beautiful trees? Shopping malls or open space? Don’t be misled by our opponents; there are NO PLANS TO BUILD A CASINO in the town of Nausett. Support the Nausett Nation! Support open space! Vote Yes! Special town election. May 18.
“I don’t live in Nausett,” Mooney said.
“Oh, okay.” The girl sounded disgusted. “None of your business. I get it.”
“Sorry. Is there, um, a bathroom?”
“Down the hall, first door on the right.”
Mooney didn’t turn in at the first door on the right. He passed a bedroom that made his nose wrinkle with the musty smell of age, kept moving until he found a narrow staircase with a spindly railing. The girl’s bedroom was probably upstairs.
“Can I help you?” The man blocking the upstairs hallway had a head of fine white hair an aging movie star would envy.
“I’m just going to dump my coat.”
“The family is putting coats downstairs. The small room off the front hall?”
“Must have missed it.” Mooney could recognize an expensive suit when he saw one, mostly because the cops he knew wore stiff cheap suits all the time. He wondered who this white-haired hall monitor might be. “You know the house, Mr.—?”
“Not well. The councillor asked me to bring him down some cough drops.” The man stood smack in the middle of the narrow corridor. “I hope I got the right ones. So many cold remedies these days. Side table looked like a regular drugstore counter.”
Mooney felt he had no choice but retreat. He clattered down the staircase, wondering whether the white-haired man had heard his footsteps. He didn’t normally make much noise when he walked.
“I’m pretty much a stranger here,” he said politely when he reached the bottom of the flight. “Mooney’s the name.” He stuck out his hand so the man couldn’t ignore it.
“Hastings.”
The lawyer, Mooney thought. In his sixties, but well preserved, the man had fair skin, a healthy pink complexion, gray eyes. The elegant suit, tailored to take a few pounds off a slight paunch, would go nicely with the L
exus parked on the grass.
“Hastings and Muir.” Mooney made himself sound enthusiastic. “I remember your sign from when I was just a kid. You’ve been practicing here a long time. Your father before you, right?”
“My grandfather, too.” There was deep satisfaction in the lawyer’s voice. “I thought you said you were a stranger.”
“You a friend of the family?”
“Hastings and Muir has represented the Nausett nation for fifty-eight years. My father represented the tribe and my grandfather before him.”
“Then you’ve seen this.” Mooney displayed the yellow handbill.
“Are you considering which way to vote?”
“I don’t know as much about it as I should,” Mooney said truthfully, “but somebody was warning me to vote no, otherwise we’d have a casino in town faster than you can whistle ‘Dixie.’ Because a Yes vote would make the Nausett a legal tribe. Is that true?”
Hastings’s smile seemed to cover a layer of impatience, as though Mooney had asked a question he’d answered far too often. “A Yes would help the tribe get recognized a little faster than they otherwise might, but they will be recognized eventually. It’s only a bureaucratic slowdown that’s holding up the process now, a backlog of tribes. As for a casino, that would be up to the legislature.”
“This same person told me it didn’t matter about the vote because the Indians wouldn’t have the money to buy the land anyway. Said it would be way too expensive.”
The lawyer shook his head sadly. “I’ll bet you that person is not a homeowner. Every homeowner knows you don’t put down full price when you buy a piece of property.”
“A mortgage?”
“The tribe has a strong relationship with community banks. There’s a wide consortium of interests, both public and private, that feel the land purchase can only help the town.”
“So you’re in favor of it?”
“Mr…. Mooney, is it? Think about it. These are the people who greeted our ancestors when they came to the New World. You know Corn Hill up in Truro? That’s where the first Pilgrims off the Mayflower stole the Nausett’s seed corn so they could survive that first winter. Some people wonder what right we imagine we have to ‘recognize’ the tribe at all, but it’s a legal process, one that has been too long delayed. My father always thought he’d see the day the Nausett were honored with recognition. I’m certain I will see the day, and this vote can help make the difference.”