Little Feather looked at them. Trouble, she thought. “Yes?”
The man showed a badge. “Police, Miss Redcorn. Would you come with us?”
Bad trouble, she thought. “Why?”
“Well,” he said, “you’re under arrest.”
14
Once again, they got to the Four Winds first. Kelp opened the door to Guilderpost’s room and they seated themselves the same as last time, Dortmunder settling himself in to operate the remote, except now what they watched was the local six o’clock news.
Guilderpost and Irwin and Little Feather were really very late, so they still hadn’t returned, and Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny were still watching the local news, at 6:16, when Little Feather walked across the screen, in handcuffs, with hard-eyed guys flanking her, each holding an elbow. Little Feather didn’t look at all happy with her situation, and Dortmunder sympathized, a lot.
“Holy shit!” Kelp cried, and Tiny said, “Sharrap.”
“Arrested at Whispering Pines Campground on Route Fourteen this afternoon,” the voice of the newsperson said, while the perp walk continued, the camera panning to show an official-looking old building, a pile of stone and brick that had probably been moldering there since the twenties, “was a woman claiming to be Little Feather Redcorn, last member of the Pottaknobbee tribe, one of the three tribal owners of Silver Chasm Casino.”
Little Feather and her escort, moving amid many newscasters and newspersons, were engulfed by the pile of stone and brick. The news gatherers remained clustered outside.
“Charged with extortion, the woman, one of whose names is Shirley Ann Farrell, is being held in the Clinton County House of Detention.”
Another shot of the pile of stone and brick, apparently taken later in the afternoon, had a newsperson in the foreground, with a microphone, speaking directly to the camera: “News Eight has learned that Ms. Farrell has been a gambler and showgirl in Las Vegas until very recently. Why she is making this claim at this time, police hope to determine.”
Now there was a shot of some kind of office, with dark-paneled walls, glass shelves with trophies, head-shot photos of smiling people in frames on the walls, green glass table lamps, and two sleek, smooth guys in their fifties, one seated at an elaborate dark wood desk with a black stone top, the other in a comfortable dark red leather chair just beside him. One of the men was talking, because his lips were moving, but his words couldn’t be heard. Off-camera, the newsperson could be heard saying, “Roger Fox and Frank Oglanda, who received the letter of extortion from Ms. Farrell in their position as co-managers of Silver Chasm Casino, and turned it over to the police, say they’ve never been faced with a matter like this before but are not surprised.”
Now the talking man’s words became audible: “We’ve always known it was a possibility that someone would try some fraud like this, and we’ve guarded against it and we’re ready for it, and I want to assure our tribespeople, Mr. Oglanda’s Kiota and my own Oshkawa, that their investments in our tribal property are safe from all the flimflam artists in the world.”
The other man, Oglanda, said, “Years ago, both our tribes made an exhaustive search for any surviving Pottaknobbees, and we have the results of that search, every bloodline followed right down to the end, and although it’s sad, I’m afraid it’s also true, and it must be said, there are no surviving Pottaknobbees. None.”
“I feel sorry for this misguided young woman,” Fox said, and smiled in an unpleasant way.
Then they were back in the studio with the primary newsperson: “The search for the black box—”
“Off,” Tiny said, and Dortmunder offed the set.
In the silence, they looked at one another, until Dortmunder said, “The only question is, do we have time to go back to the Tea Cosy for our stuff, or do we just drive south straight from here?”
Kelp said, “John, don’t be such a pessimist.”
“Why not?”
Tiny said, “Because Little Feather won’t flip.”
Kelp said, “If she was going to, the cops would come here, not the Tea Cosy. And anyway, Tiny’s right. Little Feather’s stand-up, we can count on her.”
“More than the other two,” Tiny said.
“You’re probably right,” Dortmunder agreed, and sighed, only partially in relief.
Kelp said, “Well, at least now we know why they’re so late. How much longer do you suppose they’ll hang out at the supermarket and wait for her?”
“Well, however long, we gotta wait for them,” Dortmunder said, and the door opened, and in came Guilderpost and Irwin, both looking very worried, Irwin saying, “She didn’t show up.”
“We know,” Dortmunder told him, but before he could add any more, Guilderpost said, “I don’t understand it. We all agreed on the time, but we got there and we looked and we waited, and we never saw her.”
“We did,” Dortmunder told him, and pointed at the television set. “On the six o’clock news.”
Guilderpost stared at the blank television set as though expecting to see Little Feather show up on its screen, while Irwin stared more usefully at Dortmunder, saying, “On television? Why?”
“She was arrested,” Kelp said.
Tiny said, “Extortion.” From him, it sounded like a suggestion.
Dortmunder said, “Not the way we expected to see her on TV.”
Guilderpost was having trouble catching up. “But—What went wrong?”
“The casino guys did a preemptive strike,” Dortmunder explained. “Turned the letter over to the local cops, let them deal with it. They’ll all be buddies here, the casino a big employer, brings in lots of money, it doesn’t all stay on the reservation.”
“Bum’s rush,” Tiny commented.
“Oh, I see it,” Guilderpost said, calming down. With a sage nod, he said, “In fact, truth to tell, I’ve seen it in the past. Find a grifter in your territory, pull him in, shake him up a little, convince him to move on elsewhere, to greener pastures.”
“The casino guys,” Dortmunder said, “don’t want to have to deal with Little Feather, so the local cops lean on her.”
“They even gave her the perp walk,” Kelp said. “That’s how come we got to see her on TV.”
“Intimidation,” Irwin said.
Guilderpost cocked an eyebrow at his partner. “Intimidate Little Feather?” His smile was almost as unpleasant as the casino guy’s. “Anyone who tries to intimidate Little Feather,” he said, “is in for an unpleasant surprise.”
15
The room was somehow both cluttered and bare. A lot of folding chairs in messy rows on the left faced a raised platform behind a wooden rail on the right, with a long table and more folding chairs on the platform. Straight ahead, opposite the door from the hall, windows showed a nearby stone wall, probably some other official building. The walls of the room were covered with posters to do with fire fighting, drugs, AIDS, the Heimlich maneuver, and the implications of school being open. One man and one woman sat behind the long table, and a few more people were scattered among the scattered folding chairs.
“Sit there,” said one of the detectives to Little Feather, pointing at the nearest folding chair, and before she could tell him where he could sit, he went off to confer with people at the long table. So she sat.
What Little Feather mostly was was furious. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, just hustled off like some penny-ante crook. There was supposed to be a conversation, a dialogue, an unfolding of events. It was as though the world had suddenly jumped to the last chapter.
They’d taken her bag with her ID in it, and now the detectives and the people at the table studied all that for a while, then studied some other papers, and then the detective turned to crook a finger at Little Feather, who mostly by this point wanted to kick him in the shin. But she would contain herself, because sooner or later somebody would have to stop this folderol and pay attention.