The four cardplayers smiled and nodded and waved, and one of the men said, “Pretty fine.”
“Nip in the air,” Kelp told them, since Guilderpost was still fumbling with the key.
One of the women said, “The young lady went out.”
“To the drugstore,” Kelp agreed, and pointed at Guilderpost, who’d finally gotten the door open. “That’s her father.”
“Oh,” they all said, as though they’d just been told an entire story, and they all nodded and waved and smiled at Guilderpost and said, “Afternoon.”
Guilderpost managed a smile and a wave of his own, then led the way inside, the others following. “Stepfather, perhaps,” he said as he shut the door.
20
Somebody out there says my father’s here,” Little Feather said, stepping into the motor home, carrying the plastic shopping bag with the big green cross on it that showed she’d been to the drugstore.
“That was one of Andy’s little pleasantries,” Guilderpost told her.
Little Feather looked around at them all. The motor home’s living room had never seemed so small. “So I guess this is the debriefing,” she said. “Wait while I put this stuff away.”
She left them and went down the narrow hall to the bathroom, where she unloaded the things she’d bought on her outing, and when she came back to the living room, Irwin had risen and was grinning that fake grin of his in Little Feather’s direction—whenever Irwin tried for anything in the smile category, he looked like somebody with heartburn—as he said, “Have my chair, Little Feather.”
Andy was already seated on the floor, Tiny on the sofa, Fitzroy on the other chair, and John on the footstool from the kitchen, his knees tucked up under his chin. “Thank you, Irwin,” Little Feather said, bounced her own brief false smile off him, and sat down.
Irwin found a place on the floor near Andy, where he, too, could lean his back against the wall, and Fitzroy said, “Well, Little Feather, you’ve had adventures.”
“Tell me about it,” she said.
“Well, no,” John said. “We’re here so you can tell us about it.”
“Okay,” she said. “They decided to play hardball from the very beginning, arrested me for extortion, put me in a cell. Nobody talked to me till after six at night, then this court-appointed lawyer came in, already cut a deal with the judge, here’s a paper to sign, says I’m a lying sack of shit and I’m happy to leave town and never come back.”
“This is your lawyer,” Irwin said.
“That’s what it said on the label.”
“He’s just there to get rid of you,” Andy informed her.
“She. Marjorie Dawson.”
John said, “What do you think of her?”
“She takes the man’s money, she does what the man wants.” Little Feather shrugged. “When do I get a real lawyer?”
Fitzroy knew the answer to that. “Not until they talk DNA,” he said. “The instant they say anything about DNA, you say, ‘Oh, gee, then I better get a lawyer who knows all about that.’”
Little Feather understood the concept, but it was still irritating. “So I’m gonna have to go on dealing with little Marjorie Dawson.”
Irwin said, “It won’t be long, Little Feather. Once they’ve given up the idea they can get rid of you just by saying shoo, they’ll right away start thinking Tiny’s word.”
“Anastasia,” Tiny rumbled on cue.
“Oh, they’ve already given up that old idea,” Little Feather assured them. “We’re past that part.”
“How?” Fitzroy demanded, sitting up straighter, but before she could answer, John said, “No, this isn’t the way. Little Feather, tell us what happened from the beginning.”
So she told them what had happened from the beginning, letting them in on how pissed off she’d been that she had to spend a full night in a cell—“I’ve never been inside a cell before in my life for even a minute”—and then giving them the happy news that great-grandpa Joseph Redcorn was not only remembered out on the reservation but memorialized, in a plaque from the Mohawks, the ones that probably pushed him off the building.
“That’s wonderful news!” Irwin told her, as though she didn’t know, and Fitzroy said, “In all my researches, I never came across that plaque. God bless the Mohawks.”
“Homicidal but thoughtful,” Little Feather said.
John said, “What’s supposed to happen next?”
“Dawson, the lawyer, is going to talk to the people on the reservation,” Little Feather told him, “and then she’s supposed to call me tomorrow, and I’ll go see her.”
Irwin said, “And that’s when they’ll talk about DNA.”
John said, “Okay. And what does Little Feather do then?”
Little Feather had gone over this part a number of times with Fitzroy. She said, “I say, ‘Gee, that’s a great idea. Now you’ll know for sure I’m one of you guys, but I think maybe I oughta have a lawyer who knows this stuff.’”
Andy said, “How do you find this lawyer?”
“Fitzroy’s already got him.”
“Will get him,” Fitzroy said, correcting her. “Or her. I don’t have the specific lawyer yet. I’ll make that call this afternoon.”
John looked at him. “There’s a part here you didn’t set up?”
“Would have been too early before this,” Fitzroy explained.
Andy said, “This is some lawyer you already know. Or you don’t know.”
“I know the firm,” Fitzroy said. “Feinberg.”
John said, “Fitzroy, fill me in on this.”
“There’s a New York law firm I use all the time,” Fitzroy told him. “It’s Feinberg, Kleinberg, Rhineberg, Steinberg, Weinberg & Klatsch, but it’s known as Feinberg.”
Andy said, “I’d know it as Klatsch.”
“Yes, you would,” Fitzroy agreed. “But the legal profession lacks your delicate sense of humor.”
John said, “Fitzroy, walk me through this Feinberg business. You dealt with these people before?”
“Several times.”
“These are bent lawyers, is that it?”
“Not at all.” Fitzroy smiled. “Lawyers don’t have to be bent, John.”
Irwin said, “Their job is bent.”
“Tell,” John said.
Fitzroy said, “All right, John, this is the situation. Feinberg is a large corporate law firm in Manhattan. They have hundreds of lawyers on staff.”
“More than just all these bergs.”
“The bergs, as you say,” Fitzroy explained, “were the original partners, all, I believe, now dead.”
“Gone to their reward.” Irwin smirked.
“So who do you deal with?”
“That depends.”
John kept shaking his head, as though gnats were after him. “Depends on what?”
“The job at hand. For instance, with the land grant business, I spoke to the senior man there, who knows me, described enough of what I was doing, and he turned me over to a real estate specialist in the firm. When I was involved with the offshore salvage enterprise, he put me in touch with a specialist there in maritime law. This time, he’ll give me their DNA specialist.”
“You know,” Tiny said, “I think that’s the lawyers Josie went to when she set up her country.”
Fitzroy looked interested. “You know someone who created a country? For development funds, I should think.”
Little Feather would have liked to hear more about that—a person set up a country? what “development funds”?—but Tiny merely said, “Yeah, that’s it.”