“If only we were murderers,” Roger said, and sipped a little more Wild Turkey. It was very warm going down, very comforting.
Frank shook his head. “Come on, Roger,” he said, “you know better than that. I thought of that myself, and of course we could do it. We could find some bum right here on the reservation to do the job for us for five hundred dollars, and guess who the only suspects would be.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Roger said.
“And once we’re suspects, Roger,” Frank said, “their next question is, what were you boys trying to hide?”
“Oh God,” Roger said, and drained his glass. Pushing it toward Frank, he said, “Could we make a deal with her?”
“Never,” Frank said, refilling Roger’s glass and topping up his own. “She’s the coldest, nastiest piece of work I’ve ever seen. Give her an inch and she’ll take a foot, and I do mean off your leg.”
“Then we have to—” Roger said, and the intercom buzzed, and he turned to give his desk a reproachful look. “And what fresh hell is this?” he asked.
“You might as well answer,” Frank said. “I think I’m becoming fatalistic, Roger,” he added as Roger crossed to the desk. “Do you suppose the Indians have their own gangs in prison?”
“In the Northeast? I think you’d really get to know what a minority is,” Roger told him. “Don’t give up yet, Frank.”
“Be sure to tell me when to give up,” Frank said, and drank some more.
Roger reached over his desk for the phone. “Yes, Audrey.”
“Benny’s here,” came the voice of his secretary.
“Good,” Roger said.
Surprised, Audrey said, “Good?”
“Just send him in, Audrey.”
Frank, fumbling with the top of the Wild Turkey bottle, said, “Send who in?”
“Benny.”
“Oh, him,” Frank said, and the door opened, and Benny Whitefish entered.
About thirty, Benny Whitefish was a chunky little guy in faded blue jeans and a red plaid shirt, and his usual expression was hangdog, as though he’d just broken some keepsake of yours and was hoping you wouldn’t notice before he left. “Hi, Uncle Roger,” he said, because, in fact, he was Roger Fox’s nephew, via his otherwise-estimable sister, but there was, in any event, just something essentially nephewish about Benny, as though he would be a nephew at ninety, even with no older relatives to be nephew to. The family gofer, forever.
“Come in, Benny,” Roger said, with more warmth than Benny was used to.
Benny came in, shutting the door behind himself, grinning eagerly, and stood hunched in the middle of the room, basking in the rare pleasure of his uncle’s approval, while Roger said to Frank, “I was about to say that what we need to do is discredit the woman somehow. Stall as long as we can, while we get something on her.”
“Something like what?” Frank asked from out of sight behind the bar, where he was looking for the other bottle of Wild Turkey.
“Something reprehensible. Something that would make people want to shun her even if she was Pottaknobbee. Something to make the tribes get together and throw her out, and be damned to DNA.”
Frank reappeared, holding the fresh bottle. “I don’t know, Roger,” he said.
Roger said, “Benny, help your uncle Frank open that bottle.”
“Okay!”
Frank readily gave up the job, to lean on the bar instead and say, “What reprehensathing? There are no Commies anymore. Nobody would believe an Indian lesbo. We already know she’s got no police record. Thank you, Benny. Pour some in there, and see if your uncle Roger needs any more.”
“I do.” Benny hurried on his rounds, and Roger said, “If there’s nothing else, Frank, how about bad associates?”
Frank peered at him across the room from bar to desk, where Roger stood holding his glass like anyone at a cocktail party, Benny standing beside him, smiling, holding the bottle by the neck, not knowing if he was expected to put it down or keep it at the ready for further pouring, and deciding to hold on to it to be on the safe side. “Bad associates?” Frank demanded. “What bad associates?”
“There’ve got to be some, Frank,” Roger told him. “Where did this Little Feather Redcorn come from? Out of the blue, she’s suddenly here with histories and claims. There’s got to be somebody behind her, some whadayacallit, puppeteer, pulling the strings. She can’t be doing all this on her own, so the people who put her up to it, why are they hiding? Because they’re no good, Frank.”
“You lost me somewhere in there,” Frank admitted.
Roger offered Benny another encouraging smile. Two, in one day! “That’s why,” he told Frank, “I’ve had Benny follow the woman ever since she got out of jail, so he can tell us who she associates with. Benny?”
Benny looked alert. “Yes, Uncle Roger?”
“Little Feather Redcorn,” Roger said, extremely patient. “Who does she associate with?”
“Nobody,” Benny said.
Roger blinked at him. Frank said, “Where’s that bottle I just opened?”
“Just a minute, Frank,” Roger said. “We have to keep our wits about us now.”
Frank looked thoughtful.
Roger said to Benny, “She doesn’t talk to anybody?”
“Mostly, she stays in that motor home thing, down at Whispering Pines,” Benny said. “Sometimes she takes taxis, but only to the supermarket or the drugstore and like that. Last night, she went into Plattsburgh and went to a diner by herself and had dinner and then went to a movie by herself and then took another taxi home again to the motor home. This afternoon, she associated with Judge Higbee and a lawyer woman named Marjorie Dawson and Uncle Frank.”
“She didn’t associate with me,” Frank said.
Roger said, “I don’t believe it.”
Benny looked stricken. “Honest to God, Uncle Roger! I swear I been on her every—”
“No, no, not you, Benny,” Roger said. “I’m sure you did the job right.”
Benny looked astounded. “You are?”
“Frank,” Roger said, “leave that bottle and—”
“I don’t have the bottle.”
“I have it, Uncle Frank!”
“Put it down, Benny. And Frank, leave your glass then, and come over to the conversation area, and let’s have a conversation, the three of us.”
“Me, too?”
“Yes, Benny, come along.”
The three went to the burgundy sofas L-ing around the glass and chrome coffee table as Frank said, “What are we going to do?”
“We don’t know yet,” Roger told him. “That’s what the conversation’s about. The one thing I know for sure, though, it’s got to be something drastic.”
23
I don’t like this,” Dortmunder said.
“What, the pizza?” Kelp asked. “The pizza’s fine.” “It’s very good pizza,” Irwin declared.
“Not the pizza,” Dortmunder told them, “the story Little Feather just gave us.”
“Well, it’s the truth,” Little Feather said.
“I know it’s the truth,” Dortmunder agreed, “that’s what I don’t like about it.”
Since Little Feather hadn’t gotten back to the Winnebago until after five, there’d been general agreement that she should order pizza and beer delivered in, even though, as she’d pointed out, that was a hell of an order for a woman living alone. “You’ll reheat the leftovers,” Kelp had told her.
“I’m ordering with pepperoni, without pepperoni, with and without extra cheese.”