The judge pulled his pad closer. “Presumably, then,” he said, “this particular ancestor is buried where one could take a look at his gravestone, or at least at the record of who is to be found in the grave.”
That didn’t seem to call for an answer; at least, neither woman answered him. Which gave him time for a further thought. He said, “Do we know this person’s name?”
“Joseph Redcorn,” Ms. Farraff said, as though she’d been waiting years to say that.
The judge wrote it, and echoed it: “Joseph Redcorn. Very good. Now, it seems to me, someone falling off the Empire State Building, there might be some remembrance of that, record of it among the tribes. Let me just call Frank Oglanda.”
They let him call, but when he got through to Frank’s secretary, Olga, she said, “I’m sorry, Judge, Frank isn’t in yet this morning.”
“There’s a name I’m trying to track down, Olga,” the judge told her. “Someone from seventy years ago or so, who may have been a Pottaknobbee.”
“Oh, Judge,” she said, “I don’t think we have that kind of record here in the casino.”
“No, this would be a special case,” he told her. “The story is, he was a steelworker in the old days, and was killed while working on the Empire State Building. An event like that, it seemed to—”
“Oh, I know who you mean!” she said.
He blinked. “You do?”
“Yes, I’m trying to remember his name. The plaque is in the other room. I could—”
“Plaque?”
“Well, apparently, at the time, it was a real scandal, and a lot of people around here thought the Mohawks had pushed this man off the girder, and the Mohawks tried to make peace and say they didn’t do it and all, and they presented the Three Tribes with a plaque to honor his memory. You know, it was beaten copper, with a representation of the Empire State Building and his name and his dates, and it was dedicated by the Mohawk Nation to his memory. But people still thought the Mohawks pushed him.”
“And you have this plaque.”
“Yes, sir, Your Honor, it’s in the next room. I could go look at it. May I put you on hold?”
“One minute, Olga. You say ‘the next room.’ Is this a public space?”
“Oh, no, sir, it’s the Three Tribes conference room, the public never gets in there.”
So Ms. Farraff hasn’t seen the plaque, he thought, and wondered if she even knew of its existence.
“Your Honor? Shall I go take a look at it? I’ll have to put you on hold.”
“Yes, fine, Olga, thank you.”
While on hold, he listened to Sonny and Cher sing, “The Beat Goes On.” He closed his eyes. He knew now that this day was just going to get more complicated and more complicated, and then maybe even more complicated.
“Your Honor?”
“Yes, Olga, here I am.” Sonny and Cher had gone away.
“I’m in the conference room,” the pleasant, efficient voice said in his ear. “Here it is. Yes. ‘Joseph Redcorn, July 12, 1907, November 7, 1930. With loving respect to a fallen brave from his comrades, the Mohawk Nation.’ Does that help, Judge?”
“Oh, immeasurably,” he said. “Thank you, Olga.”
He hung up the telephone. He looked at the young woman, and she was smiling, but she was also showing her teeth. “I think, Judge,” she said, “it’s time for you to start calling me Ms. Redcorn.”
17
The question is,” Dortmunder said, “what happens next?”
They were gathered again in Guilderpost’s bleak motel room at eleven that morning, this time without Little Feather’s sunny presence, and Irwin said, “Next, Little Feather lets them stumble on Joseph Redcorn, they search, there’s some sort of tribal history or something—”
“Or something,” Tiny said, from his usual perch on the bed.
Irwin gave an impatient shake of the head. “Joseph Redcorn was the only Pottaknobbee who died in a fall off the Empire State Building. They’ll have a record.”
“Fine,” Dortmunder said. “They’ve got a record. Then what?”
Guilderpost said, “They won’t get to the DNA today.”
Kelp said, “Isn’t that what it’s all about?”
Irwin explained: “It has to come from them. It’s bad psychology if Little Feather mentions DNA first. So all that’ll happen now is, they see it’s possible, the family did exist, she says she’s part of that family, she can’t prove she is, they can’t prove she isn’t, and sooner or later somebody’s going to say—”
“Anastasia,” Tiny rumbled.
“Exactly,” Irwin said. “But it has to come from them.”
Guilderpost said, “And they won’t think of it today. They have too much to absorb.”
Dortmunder said, “Okay. So what I want to know is, what happens next?”
“They let her go,” Guilderpost told him, “she returns to Whispering Pines, and she telephones to us, here.”
“Uh-oh,” Dortmunder said.
But Guilderpost, with a little superior smirk, waggled a finger at Dortmunder, shook his head, and said, “She says only one word. ‘Sorry.’ As though it’s a wrong number. And hangs up.”
Dortmunder nodded. “And makes another call?”
Guilderpost looked surprised. “What?” He and Irwin frowned at each other.
Dortmunder said, “So they know it was code, it was a signal, if they’re tapping her phone. And if they want to know, is this woman alone here or is there a gang behind her, they’ll tap her phone.”
Irwin said, “It’s a pay phone, John, at Whispering Pines. There’re four of them there in a row.”
“All right,” Dortmunder said. “So there’s a chance. Then what?”
“The usual routine,” Guilderpost told him. “And she comes here, to let us know how things went.”
“No,” Dortmunder said.
Guilderpost didn’t believe it. “No?”
“In the first place,” Dortmunder told him, “if they let her go, we know how things went. In the second place, taxis have trip sheets, what time the pickup, where’d they go, what time the drop-off. It’ll take the cops half an hour to see Little Feather spends a hell of a lot of time in that supermarket.”
Irwin said, “John, we do have to talk with Little Feather, plan what we do next.”
Tiny grunted and pointed at Dortmunder and said, “You listen to Duh—John.”
“That’s right,” Kelp said. “He’s the planner, he’s the organizer.”
Guilderpost looked offended. “I beg your pardon, but this is my project. You three have coattailed yourselves to it. All right, there’s enough for everyone, no need to be greedy or cause trouble, but it’s still my project.”
Dortmunder said, “That’s not what they mean. We do different things, Fitzroy, you and me. You figure out someplace where you can make people believe something’s true that isn’t true. Make them believe you got an old Dutch land grant screws up their title to their property. Make them believe maybe there is just one more Pottaknobbee alive in the world. That’s not what I do.”
“No, of course not,” Guilderpost said, and Irwin, sounding slightly snotty, said, “I’ve been wondering that, John. What is it you do?”
“I figure out,” Dortmunder told him, “how to go into a place where I’m not supposed to be, and come back out again, without getting caught or having anything stick to me.”
“It’s like D day,” Kelp explained, “only like, you know, smaller.”
“We also go for quieter,” Dortmunder said.
“So up till now,” Kelp said, “you’ve just been putting the scam together, but now you sprung it, now you got the law and the tribes and everybody taking an interest, now you need John.”