“Things won’t ever be like they used to, will they?” Jenny searched his face for the truth.
“No.” He looked at his hands. Big hands. How useless a man’s hands were, he thought, when it came to fixing the important things.
“ ‘Things fall apart,’ ” she said in a small voice. “ ‘The center will not hold.’ ”
He gave her a questioning look.
“Yeats,” she explained. “W.B.”
“ ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,’ ” he replied. “Dumpty, H.”
Although a tear crawled down one cheek like a small snail, she smiled. “By the way,” she said, taking care of the tear with a swipe of her finger, “there’s a message on your answering machine.”
“You listened?”
She gave him an innocent little shrug.
“What did it say?”
“You can have your gun back.”
He dropped Jenny off at home, then stopped by the sheriff’s office to retrieve his revolver. While he was there, he used the pay phone to call the casino.
“I’d like to speak with Russell Blackwater, please. Tell him it’s Corcoran O’Connor.” He waited a full minute before Blackwater came on the line.
“What do you want, O’Connor?” Blackwater’s tone wasn’t civil at all.
“We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Something of concern to us both.”
“And what’s that?”
“The Windigo,” Cork said.
Russell Blackwater’s office was decorated with Native American art. On the walls were hung a series of idealized paintings by William Westsky, a Shinnob out of Canada, showing pristine forests and lakes with the faint faces of The People woven into the clouds, watching the land below like good overseers. On Blackwater’s desk stood a dark wood sculpture depicting a member of the Grand Medicine Society lifting the pipe in the Pipe Dance of Peace. The desk was big, dark red wood. The surface wore a lustrous shine and the Midewiwin was reflected perfectly below himself, as if offering the pipe to the underworld. Running the length of the back wall of the office was a tinted window overlooking the gambling floor. Blackwater was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the action. He wore an expensive gray suit, white shirt, blue tie.
“Busy night,” Cork observed.
“A good night,” Blackwater said.
“For those who win.”
“The People win,” Blackwater said, turning fully to Cork. “What do you want, O’Connor?”
Cork sat down in a big, brown leather chair. He settled back and crossed his legs. “Harlan Lytton was killed last night.”
“I know. Can’t say I’m sorry.”
“Did you also know that Henry Meloux heard the Windigo call Lytton’s name?”
Blackwater shrugged as if it made no difference one way or the other. “Meloux’s an old man. The things old men hear and see can’t always be trusted.”
“Henry was here the night the judge was killed.”
“So?”
“He came to warn you. He heard the Windigo call your name, too.”
Blackwater looked unconcerned. “I’m a modern Shinnob. Tell me the legislature is monkeying with the gambling laws and I’ll be nervous. But I’m not afraid of an old myth.”
Cork stared pointedly at Blackwater, then shook his head in a disappointed way. “I never thought I’d see you looking so much like a businessman, Russell. I remember you wearing deerskin during the Trail of Tears march on Washington.”
“I’m still marching,” Blackwater insisted. “The clothes don’t make any difference.”
“I was at Sandy Parrant’s house the other day. After the judge’s memorial service. Didn’t see you there.”
“What are you getting at?”
“But I understand Sandy Parrant was at the funeral of your father. What do you make of that? You work with these people. You’re making these people rich. You show them respect, but do they reciprocate? As I understand it, Sandy Parrant went out of his way to make sure a lot of people would feel comfortable being at his father’s memorial service. But he didn’t extend the courtesy to you, did he?”
“Like an invitation?” Blackwater said with sarcasm.
“Whatever.”
“What makes you think I’d want to go?”
“I don’t know,” Cork said. He fingered the sculpture of the Midewiwin on Blackwater’s desk, ran his hand casually down the sleek, polished wood. “An invitation at least would be nice. The white man and the red man in enterprise together. You know, hunting the new buffalo like brothers.”
Although Russell Blackwater held very still, Cork saw the tendons in his neck go taut. His eyes changed, too, in the way they regarded Cork, watching him closely. His voice was hard, the words tense and spoken carefully.
“Before this casino was built, unemployment on the reservation was seventy percent. Nearly a quarter of our families were below poverty level. Two years ago one Anishinaabe student graduated from Aurora High School. Ten others dropped out. This year four will graduate and no one’s dropped out. We have a free health clinic on the drawing board that will be staffed by The People. We’ll have a real school soon. We’ve started looking at a drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation program to be run by us, not by the Public Health Service.” He sat up rigidly with his fingers digging into the padded arms of his chair. “That’s what I wanted from this enterprise, not an invitation to white men’s homes.”
Cork nodded and held up his hands in surrender. “Okay by me. Just making a comment. By the way, why don’t you unbutton your coat? Looks a little uncomfortable to me.”
“My coat’s fine.”
“You always carry a piece these days?”
Blackwater tugged at his suit coat, straightening the way it fell over his chest and the shoulder holster he was wearing. “When I’m working. It’s licensed.”
“Not thinking of shooting an old myth, are you?” Cork got up and headed for the door. “By the way, the sheriff’s probably going to want to know where you were when Lytton was shot.”
“Why?”
“Because I intend to tell him to ask. ’Night, Russell.”
26
The Judge’s estate occupied the whole tip of North Point. The property was shaped roughly like a fingernail, and along the shoreline grew a wall of tall pines. Cork guided the Bronco off the ice through a gap between the boathouse and the trees and parked where the vehicle couldn’t be seen. He got out and waded up the steep slope of the grounds toward the house. In the stillness he could hear the steady whine of a snowmobile cutting across the ice, heading back toward Aurora from one of the many ice huts on the lake. He looked back, but the darkness and the gentle snowfall kept him from seeing anything.
The patio doors were locked, but Cork was surprised to discover that a small pane in the mullioned window of the kitchen door had been broken and the door was unlocked. Carefully he pushed it open. From inside came a startling clatter. He stepped hurriedly into the kitchen and found that he’d knocked over a brown paper bag full of empty aluminum cans that appeared to have been saved for recycling.
The kitchen smelled of garbage souring somewhere out of sight. In the living room, the curtains were open, letting in a pale white light from the snow outside. The house was absolutely still and very cool.
He had only a vague idea of what he was looking for. The judge hadn’t been a tremendously charismatic or beloved man, but he had nonetheless been a powerful political figure in the Iron Range. Power had many sources besides charisma. Money was one. Although Robert Parrant had been a wealthy man, Cork figured it would have taken a hell of a lot more than even the judge had to maintain his hold on a population as independent as that of the Iron Range. Power also came from leverage. The bloody folder with the judge’s doodling all over the cover, the folder that held such graphic evidence of Jo’s infidelity, that was one kind of leverage, and was certainly in keeping with the character of the judge. It was entirely possible that the judge’s death had something to do with that kind of leverage.