"Okay," said Lucas. "I can buy it. Ray Cuervo was an asshole. Excuse the language."
"I heard the word before," Dooley said. "I wouldn't say you was wrong. And not about this Benton fella, either. He was bad as Cuervo."
"So I'm told," Lucas said.
Dooley finished the trim above Lucas' ear, pushed his head forward until his chin rested on his chest, and did the back of his neck.
"There's been another killing, in New York," Lucas said. "Same way as Cuervo and Benton. Throat cut with a stone knife."
"Saw it on TV," Dooley acknowledged. He pointed at the black-and-white television mounted in the corner of the shop. "Today show. Thought it sounded pretty much the same."
"Too much," Lucas said. "I've been wondering…"
"If I might of heard anything? Just talk. You know Bluebird was a sun-dancer?"
"No, I didn't know," Lucas said.
"Check his body, if you still got it. You'll find scars all over his chest where he pulled the pegs through." Lucas winced. As part of the Sioux ceremony, dancers pushed pegs through the skin of their chests. Cords were attached to the pegs, and the dancers dangled from poles until the pegs ripped out. "There's another thing. Bluebird was a sun-dancer for sure, but there's folks around saying that a couple years ago, he got involved in this ghost-dance business."
"Ghost dance? I didn't think that was being done," Lucas said.
"Some guys came down from Canada, tried to start it up. They had a drum, went around to all the reservations, collecting money, dancing. Scared the heck out of a lot of people, but I haven't heard anything about them lately. Most Indian people think it was a con game."
"But Bluebird was dancing?"
"That's what I heard…" Dooley's voice trailed off and Lucas turned and found the old man staring out the window again. There was a park across the street, with grass worn brown by kids' feet and the fall frosts. An Indian kid was working on an upturned bike in the middle of the park and an old lady tottered down the sidewalk toward a concrete drinking fountain. "I don't think it means much," Dooley said. He turned back to Lucas. "Except that Bluebird was a man looking for religion."
"Religion?"
"He was looking to be saved. Maybe he found it," Dooley said. He sighed and moved close behind Lucas and finished the trim with a few final snips. He put the scissors down, brushed cut hair off Lucas' neck, unpinned the bib and shook it out. "Sit tight for a minute," he said.
Lucas sat and Dooley found his electric trimmers and shaved the back of Lucas' neck, then slapped on a stinging palmful of aromatic yellow oil.
"All done," he said.
Lucas slid out of the chair, asked, "How much?" Dooley said, "The regular." Lucas handed him three dollars.
"I haven't heard anything," Dooley said soberly. He looked Lucas in the eyes. "If I had, I'd tell you-but I don't know if I'd tell you what it was. Bluebird was the Indian people, getting back some of their own."
Lucas shook his head, sensing the defiance in the old man. "It's hard to believe you said that, Mr. Dooley. It makes me sad," he said.
Indian Country was full of Dooleys.
Lucas quartered through it, touching the few Indians he knew: a seamstress at an awnings shop, a seafood broker, a heating contractor, clerks at two gas stations and a convenience store, an out-of-business antique dealer, a key-maker, a cleaning lady, a car salesman. An hour before Bluebird's funeral was scheduled to begin, he left his car in an alley and walked across the street to Dakota Hardware.
A bell over the door jingled, and Lucas stopped for a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Earl May came out of the back room wearing a leather apron and flashed a smile. Lucas walked back and watched the smile fade.
"I was about to say, 'Good to see you,' but I guess you're here to ask questions about Bluebird and that killing in New York," May said. He turned his head and yelled into the back, "Hey, Betty, it's Lucas Davenport."
Betty May stuck her head through the curtain between the back room and the store. "Lucas, it's been a while," she said. She had a round face, touched by old acne scars, and a husky voice that might have sung the blues.
"There's not much around about Bluebird," said Earl. He looked at his wife. "He's asking about the killings."
"That's what everybody tells me," Lucas said. Earl was standing with his arms crossed. It was a defensive position, a push-off stance, one that Lucas had not seen before with the Mays. Behind her husband, Betty unconsciously took the same position.
"You'll have trouble dealing with the community on this one," she said. "Benton was bad, Cuervo was worse. Cuervo was so bad that when his wife got down to his office, after the police called her, she was smiling."
"But what about this guy in New York, Andretti?" Lucas asked. "What the hell did he do?"
"Andretti. The liberal with good accountants," Earl snorted. "He called himself a realist. He said there were people that you have to write off. He said that it made no difference whether you threw money at the underclass or just let it get along. He said the underclass was a perpetual drag on the people who work."
"Yeah?" said Lucas.
"A lot of people want to hear that," Earl continued. "And he might even be right about some people-winos and junkies. But there's one big question he doesn't answer. What about the kids? That's the question. You're seeing a genocide. The victims aren't the welfare queens. The victims are the kids."
"You can't think this is right, these people being killed," Lucas argued.
Earl shook his head. "People die all the time. Now some folks are dying who were hurting the Indian people. That's too bad for them and it's a crime, but I can't get too upset about it."
"How about you, Betty?" Lucas asked. He turned to the woman, disturbed. "Do you feel the same way?"
"Yeah, I do, Lucas," she said.
Lucas peered at them for a moment, studying Earl's face, then Betty's. They were the best people he knew. What they thought, a lot of people would think. Lucas shook his head, rapped the counter with his knuckles and said, "Shit."
Bluebird's funeral was… Lucas had to search for the right word. He finally settled on peculiar. Too many of the gathered Indians were shaking hands, with quick grins that just as quickly turned somber.
And there were too many Indians for one guy who wasn't that well known. After the coffin had been lowered into the ground, and the last prayers said, they gathered in groups and clusters, twos and threes, talking. An air of suppressed celebration, Lucas thought. Somebody had lashed out. Bluebird had paid, but there were others still at it, taking down the assholes. Lucas watched the crowd, searching for faces he knew, people he might tap later.
Riverwood Cemetery was a working-class graveyard in a working-class neighborhood. Bluebird was buried on a south-facing slope under an ash tree. His grave would look up at the sun, even in winter. Lucas stood on a small rise, next to one of the city's increasingly rare elms, thirty yards from the gravesite. Directly opposite him, across the street from the cemetery and a hundred feet from the grave, were more watchers. The catsup-colored Chevy van fit into the neighborhood like a perfect puzzle piece. In the back, two cops made movies through the dark windows.
Identifying everyone would be impossible, Lucas thought. The funeral had been too big and too many people were simply spectators. He noticed a white woman drifting along the edges of the crowd. She was taller than most women and a little heavy, he thought. She glanced his way, and from a distance, she was a sulky, dark-haired madonna, with an oval face and long heavy eyebrows.
He was still following her progress through the fringe of the crowd when Sloan ambled up and said, "Hello, there." Lucas turned to say hello. When he turned back to the funeral crowd a moment later, the dark-haired woman was gone.