“There’s always something in it for me,” Tiny grumbled.
“That’s right, Tiny, thank you,” Kelp said, and to Dortmunder, he said, “Then we got Tiny, and when Tiny’s aboard, you know, we always gotta come up with something.”
“Though sometimes,” Tiny said, “the something’s been kinda thinner than I’m used to. But I forgive you, Dortmunder. I always forgive you—”
“Thank you, Tiny.”
“—because you make me laugh,” Tiny said, and laughed, and the Tea Cosy rocked a little. “So here’s what it is,” he said. “We got these people gonna pull a scam. It looks like it could maybe work, and that’s a lotta money. And wherever there’s a lotta money, Dortmunder, there’s always sooner or later some use for the guy who does the thinking, which is you, and the guy who does the heavy lifting, which is me.”
“And don’t forget transportation,” Kelp pointed out.
“I was gonna mention transportation,” Tiny said, “on account it’s time to go over to the Four Winds and see how the windbags are coming along.”
“Fine,” Dortmunder said, rising. “Let’s see do we have a use for my talents.”
Tiny heaved himself to his feet, and the sofa sighed in gratitude. “And mine,” he said.
It hadn’t snowed during the night, but the wind had dusted the Jeep with fine cold sparkles of blown snowflake, which was very attractive on its new color. It was now a gleaming black, and sported Massachusetts license plates, with no medical degree but with enough plausibility to survive a trooper’s computer check. Now, as they wiped snow off the windows with their gloves, Tiny said, “You know, Dortmunder, time hangs heavy on your hands, why not steal the whole county?”
“And do what with it?”
“Move it farther south,” Tiny suggested.
13
Little Feather didn’t want to be associated with any of those people, not in anyone else’s mind, just in case sometime in the future she might want to be able to deny them, so she’d made Fitzroy sign over the motor home’s title to her, making herself more or less legal. She also wouldn’t travel from Whispering Pines Campground to the Four Winds motel and back by cab, nor would she permit Irwin and Fitzroy—it was always the two of them, that’s how much they trusted each other—to pick her up at the motor home. First, they would agree on a time, and then she would call a cab to take her for the inexpensive run into Plattsburgh, to a big supermarket there, where Irwin and Fitzroy would be waiting for her. They’d meet, discuss, do what they had to do, and then they’d return her to the supermarket, where she’d buy some grapefruit and Swedish flat bread and other necessities, and then call another cab to return her to the campground.
And that’s the way it happened today. Cab number one dropped her off at the supermarket. She went in the automatic in door, U-turned, went out the automatic out door, and there were Irwin and Fitzroy in the Voyager, which had never really worked well since the night Irwin had started it without benefit of key. (Which she hadn’t learned about, of course, until much later.)
Irwin always drove, Fitzroy beside him, and she traveled in back. Getting aboard, sliding the door shut, she said, “You mailed it?”
As Irwin drove them away across Plattsburgh toward Route 9 southward to the Four Winds, Fitzroy said, “They’ll be reading it today.”
“And then changing their pants,” Irwin commented.
“Good,” Little Feather said, meaning the letter having been delivered, not the casino managers changing their pants. But in fact, now that it had begun, she herself was feeling just the least bit nervous.
She wasn’t used to anxiety attacks, they didn’t suit her lifestyle. Little Feather had made her own way since she was fifteen and still known as Shirley Ann Farraff, when she’d left home and Cher first had become her ideal. She’d been a pony in Vegas shows, she’d gone through dealer’s school to become an accredited blackjack dealer, she’d waitressed or worked in department stores when times were bad, and she’d always come out okay. She’d never hooked, she’d never made the mistake of counting on a man instead of herself, and she’d never been proved wrong. When you count on yourself, you know whether or not you’re counting on somebody you can trust, and Little Feather was somebody that Little Feather could trust absolutely, so what was there ever to get nervous about?
Well. It wasn’t that she was counting on Fitzroy and Irwin, but she sure was tied in with them, and she no longer shared their high opinion of themselves, not after this new trio had showed up.
At first, Fitzroy had seemed like the genuine article. He’d met up with her in Reno, where she was dealing at one of the smaller casinos—family trade, crappy tips—and after a few verbal dance steps, during which she hadn’t been able to figure out what he was up to, he finally introduced her to Irwin, and together they told her the scheme.
Well, who ever knew being an American Indian could be worth that much money? It was almost worth putting up with Native American (one of the more redundant of redundancies) from the same clowns who talk about flight attendants and daytime dramas and the height-impaired.
Little Feather had understood from the beginning that although they needed a full-blooded American Indian to work their scheme, one with the right background, they didn’t necessarily need her. The plains were full of Navajo and Hopi and Apache with dead grandpas. So she’d concentrated her attention on being just the right little squaw for their needs, until now, when the game had actually started.
It had started. The letter had gone out, over her signature, giving her whereabouts, telling her story. Would it fly? Or was there something Fitzroy and Irwin had forgotten that would come sneaking up behind her to bite her on the ass?
It was Andy and John and Tiny that had shaken her faith in Fitzroy and Irwin. Until then, she’d thought she was safe in their hands, she’d thought they were brilliant and brutal, and she’d thought nothing could stand in their way. For instance, they’d known the scheme couldn’t work if even one extraneous person knew about it, and so they’d made sure the extraneous people along the way, meaning the grave diggers in Nevada, didn’t survive their knowledge. Little Feather had never killed anybody, and she hadn’t killed those two, or been around when it was happening, but she didn’t mind it as a fact. A couple of loser winos; they were better off. So long as she didn’t have to watch, no big deal.
But now, these new three. They came on kind of goofy, but underneath they were pros in some way Little Feather didn’t know about. She’d never quite met their like before, and it seemed to her the most significant thing about them was how they refused to get worried. Well, John, he always looked worried—that was obvious—but worry didn’t interfere with them, that was the point.
And the picture of Tiny, casually holding the live grenade, was pretty well guaranteed to stick in the memory.
Riding along, thinking it over, watching Lake Champlain’s cold, pebbly gray surface off to the left of the road, she said, “Be interesting to know what they think of the letter. Andy and so on.”
Irwin kept his concentration on his driving, but Fitzroy half-turned to look back at her. Pretending surprise, he said, “Little Feather? Don’t you trust your own judgment?”
“My judgment, fine,” she told him. “It’s your judgment and Irwin’s where I’d like a second opinion.”
After that, there wasn’t much conversation in the car. And then, when they got to the Four Winds, there stood the recently black Jeep, parked in front of Irwin’s room, empty. Pulling in beside it, Irwin said, “That is the same Jeep, isn’t it?”