Then there’s more forest, as though the shopping centers had only been a horrible mirage, until, around another curve, you come upon a development of small neat tract houses on grids to both sides of the road, surrounded by forest; this is Paradise, home of most of the Kiota. (Most of the Oshkawa live in another part of the forest.)
Beyond Paradise, there’s another bit of undisturbed forest and then a vast clearing, which is a parking lot. Signs direct you to enter, to park your car in any available slot, lock it, and wait beside it. Small buses constantly circle the parking area, picking up the new arrivals and driving them the last half mile to the casino itself, a low black-and-silver construction that makes a halfhearted attempt to look like an Art Deco log cabin.
The casino building is enormous, but because it’s low, mostly one story high, with some upstairs offices toward the rear, and because it’s surrounded by trees and tasteful plantings, it’s hard to get a clear idea of just how big it is. But once inside, you begin to realize that the wide, bright, low-ceilinged spaces just go on and on. What seems to be acres of slot machines and poker machines spread off to infinity in one direction, while craps tables and blackjack tables march in long green lines in another. Then there are restaurants, poker rooms, baccarat tables, lounges, bars, and a number of playrooms where the kiddies can be looked after while Mom and Dad are losing the farm.
The casino is not itself a hotel, though there are four motels spaced nearby, and all do well, even in the depths of winter, though they’re expected to do better yet once the casino management completes its plan for a motorized subway system to link up parking area, motels, and the main building.
Casino management these days consists of two men. One, Roger Fox, is Oshkawa, while the other, Frank Oglanda, is Kiota. Both are sleek, smooth men in their fifties, their thick black hair slicked back, cigars in their blazer pockets, heavy rings on most of their thick fingers, a smile of contentment almost always visible on both their round faces.
And why not? The casino mints money, they have no government to look over their shoulders, the tribes are happy so long as they all get their “shares” regular as clockwork, and nobody in the world has any reason or desire to examine just how Fox and Oglanda manage casino affairs.
But that happy situation all began to change on Monday, November 27, when a letter arrived from the United States, addressed simply, “Casino Managers, Silver Chasm Casino, Silver Chasm Indian Reservation.” Fox was first in the office that afternoon—neither man was ever in the office in the morning—and he read the letter with surprise, unease, and distaste. Twenty minutes later, when Oglanda arrived, Fox carried the letter from his own office to his partner’s, and said, “Look at this.”
Oglanda took the letter, but kept his eyes on the unwonted frown on Fox’s face. “Something wrong?”
“You tell me.”
Oglanda removed the letter from its envelope, opened it, and read:
Sirs,
My name is Little Feather Redcorn. I am fifty percent Pottaknobbee, through my mother, Doeface Redcorn, who was born in the village of Chasm in upstate New York, near Dannemora, on September 9, 1942. My mother’s mother, Harriet Littlefoot Redcorn, left Chasm in 1945, when word came from the government that her husband, my grandfather, Bearpaw Redcorn, was reported missing in action when his destroyer was sunk in the South Pacific.
My grandmother lived in the West for many years, mainly around Los Angeles, where she worked as a waitress, and raised her daughter, my mother, Doeface Redcorn. I believe Harriet Redcorn died somewhere in California or Oregon around 1960, but I don’t know the details.
Doeface had a brief marriage with a full-blooded Choctee in 1970, of which I am the result. They lived together on the reservation for a while, but the marriage was not a good one. My mother soon got a divorce and went back to her maiden name, and she never saw Henry Track-Of-Skunk again.
My mother and I didn’t get along well when I was in my teens, I’m sorry to say, and eventually I left her in Pomona and went away to Las Vegas to live on my own. I had some success in show business in Las Vegas, but I had no more contact with my mother. I later heard that she had died, but I don’t know the circumstances or where she is buried.
However, I do know that I am Pottaknobbee of the Redcorn clan, through my mother, Doeface, my grandmother Harriet Littlefoot Redcorn, and my great-grandfather Joseph Redcorn.
Recently, I read an article in Modern Maturity at my dentist’s office about the casino at Silver Chasm and how the Pottaknobbee are part of the owners of the casino, except there aren’t any Pottaknobbees anymore. But I am Pottaknobbee. Shouldn’t I receive something from the casino?
I have come east to learn more about my situation at Silver Chasm. I am staying now at Whispering Pines Campground outside Plattsburgh, where the phone number is 555-2795. I will phone you Tuesday afternoon, by which time you should have received this letter.
I am very excited at the idea of being united at last with my own people, after having lived my entire life far away.
Sincerely,
Little Feather Redcorn
“It’s a phony,” Oglanda said when he’d finished reading. Disdainfully, he dropped the letter onto his desk.
“I certainly hope it’s a phony,” Fox said.
“No, Roger,” Oglanda said, “listen to me.” Tapping the letter with a hard finger, he said, “This claim is a phony, a definite phony. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because,” Oglanda told him, “if this woman is telling the truth, and she’s even fifty percent Pottaknobbee, we’re going to have to show her the books.”
“Oh,” Fox said. He picked up the letter, frowned over it. “You’re right,” he said. “No question. An absolute phony.”
12
Dortmunder said, “What’s in it for me?”
“Money,” Kelp suggested.
“That isn’t what I mean,” Dortmunder said.
Tiny said, “Money isn’t what you mean?”
“That’s right,” Dortmunder said. “Not this time.”
These three were seated in their sitting room as the fire sputtered through green wood in the fireplace and mostly white glistened outside the small windows. They had found this three-bedroom bed-and-breakfast just outside Chazy and had taken the whole thing on a very good weekly rental, because this wasn’t yet quite ski season in what, with rare simple truth, the locals called the North Country. Though it seemed to Dortmunder there was enough snow out there on the lawns and streets and car roofs and pine trees for any skier to ski on. But what did he know? His only outside winter sport was slipping on the ice while trying to get to the car. (Extra points if you’re carrying groceries. Double points if the groceries include beer bottles.)
Their hosts in the bed-and-breakfast were an elderly male couple who lived at the downstairs back and wore many heavy wool sweaters and scarves; with their wrinkled red faces on top, they looked mostly like baked apples on sheep. These were Gregory and Tom, and other than producing fine stick-to-your-ribs breakfasts of pancakes and fried eggs and French toast and lots of bacon and orange juice and a huge coffeemaker full of java, they tended to stay in their own part of the house. They had a French-Canadian maid, a large young woman named Odille, who did the laundry and cleaned the rooms while singing “Frère Jacques” over and over to herself.