“If and when the time comes,” he assured her, “I’ll be happy to. Now, where was I?”
Marjorie said, “You asked how long Ms. Farraff had been away from this area.” And the faint smirk with which she said it showed that Marjorie, too, had been subjected to the name game and was taking advantage of the judge’s victory.
Fine. “Thank you, Marjorie,” he said, and returned to Ms. Farraff. “If you have never been in this area before,” he said, “and I suppose we can document that by your work history and so on, establishing your whereabouts over the past, say, two years . . .”
“I’ll give you my tax returns,” she offered.
“That may not be necessary,” he told her, nettled, thinking, by God, she’s sure of herself. Tapping the letter, he said, “So I must ask you this: Where did you get these names that you claim are the names of Pottaknobbee Native Americans?”
“From my mama,” the young woman said. “Only she called them Indians.”
“Did she. If there are no Pottaknobbees left in this world, and the evidence seems to indicate there are none,” the judge told her, “then there are unlikely to be any methods by which you could prove that any of these people ever existed.”
“Well,” Ms. Farraff said, “there’s my grandfather Bearpaw, who went down with his ship in the U.S. Navy in World War Two. Wouldn’t the government have a record of that?”
“Possibly,” the judge said. He found that answer had made him grumpy. “But I notice,” he went on, tapping the eraser end of the pencil against the letter, “that not one of these people even has a grave that could be looked at, to see what name is on the stone. Your mother and grandmother both disappeared, your grandfather was lost at sea.”
“That’s what happens,” Ms. Farraff said.
Marjorie said, “Your Honor, in fact, in my discussion with Ms. Farraff yesterday, she did mention one more supposed forebear. Your great-grandfather, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right,” she said, with a very cool nod in Marjorie’s direction. Don’t get along, those two, the judge thought.
“Ms. Farraff tells me,” Marjorie said, “that her great-grandfather worked in construction in—”
“Steelworker.”
“Yes, thank you, steelworker in New York City, and worked on the Empire State Building, and was killed in a fall there.”
“My mama,” Ms. Farraff interjected, “said the family always believed the Mohawks pushed him, so I believe it, too.”
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.”