“How you doing,” he said without thinking.
She stopped to chat, leaning over the table so they got the full picture.
“Did you see those lungs?” Gerry said when she was gone.
“She nearly poked my eye out,” Valentine said. “Besides, they’re not real.”
“They were beautiful,” his son said.
“You like fake titties?” his father asked.
Gerry grinned. There was a word you didn’t hear very often: titties. Used exclusively by old geezers of his father’s generation.
“Come on,” his father said, “answer me.”
“Yolanda’s thinking of getting them after she has the baby.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Valentine said. “Talk her out of it.”
“But Pop—”
“You want a woman who’s got her brights on all the time?”
The grin faded from Gerry’s face. “No.”
“Then do as I say. You’ll thank me later on.” Valentine had finished his soda and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I need to talk to you about something that can’t leave this table.”
“What’s that?”
“Rico Blanco.”
Gerry sat up straight in his chair. Two months ago, Rico had scammed him out of fifty thousand dollars, then sent some thugs called the Mollo Brothers to collect. Not having the dough, Gerry had given them his bar in Brooklyn. There had only been one hitch. The bar belonged to his father.
“What about him?” Gerry said.
“He’s running a strip joint on South Beach. I want you to talk to him, see what he’s up to.”
“Rico isn’t going to talk to me.”
“I thought you were friends.”
“He scammed me, pop.”
“You got the bar back, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So, talk to him. Even if it’s just on the phone. Whatever you can get out of him will be helpful.”
Gerry shifted uneasily in his seat. In some ways, the conversation they were having was worse than being yelled at. He was having to be honest with his father, something he wasn’t used to doing. He put his elbows on the table and saw his father do the same.
“Look, Pop, I’m going to tell you something that won’t make you happy, but you’d better know anyway.”
“What’s that?”
“When I first opened the bar, Rico tried to shake me down. I showed him the liquor license. It’s in your name. I told him you were a cop and that you were connected. He left me alone after that.”
His father pulled back in his chair, staring at him like he’d grown horns.
“You told him I was dirty.”
“Yeah.”
“Damn it, Gerry.”
Gerry found himself missing the yelling. “There’s more,” he said.
“How can there be more?”
“Go back in time a few months. I gave the Mollo brothers the bar to pay off Rico. A few days later, the Mollos get blown up in a car. Rico thinks it was you.”
“Did you tell him that, too?”
Gerry buried his head in his hands. “Yeah.”
“So Rico thinks I’m also a murderer.”
“Yeah,” his son repeated.
“If you called Rico, and told him I wanted to meet him, do you think he’d agree?”
Gerry lifted his eyes and met his father’s gaze. He hadn’t even raised his voice. “Probably. You’re not mad at me?”
His father shrugged, then reached across the table and gave Gerry’s arm a squeeze.
“I’ll get over it,” he said.
16
Running Bear had forgotten how much he hated being in jail.
A day had passed since he’d shot Karl Blackhorn. Blackhorn had gone to meet his ancestors on the way to the hospital, and Running Bear, Smooth Stone, and the other three dealers had been arrested by tribal police and thrown into the reservation jail.
He stood at the bars in his cell. They were rubbed smooth where other inmates had instinctively held them at chest height. Smooth Stone and the others were a stone’s throw away, whispering frantically. Like mice knowing they were about to be eaten by a cat, he thought. He sat on his cot, leaned against the concrete wall, and shut his eyes.
The last time he’d been incarcerated—over twenty-five years ago—he’d had a vision. In it, he’d seen his people living in nice homes and having enough food to eat and good health care, and all the other things they didn’t have when he was growing up. He’d seen a future where there was no future. And it had changed him.
When he opened his eyes, a Micanopy woman in a business suit was standing in his cell. In her left hand was a briefcase; in her right, a plastic chair. Running Bear motioned for her to sit. “So, Gladys Soft Wings, how are you?”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me,” she said.
“You went to Stetson and got a law degree,” he said. “And now you’re here to represent me before the elders.”
“Yes, and to the Broward police, if you’d like me to.”
Running Bear considered it. It would be up to the tribe’s elders to decide which story to present to the police when they reported the shooting—his, or Smooth Stone’s. The elders were old men set in their ways, and Running Bear had clashed with them many times over how he marketed the casino.
“One thing at a time,” he said.
She did not seem offended. Opening her briefcase, she removed several sheets of paper, then read aloud Smooth Stone’s and the other dealers’ accounts of what had happened. In their story, Running Bear had vandalized Smooth Stone’s trailer, then attacked them when confronted. Running Bear laughed softly when she was done.
“You find this funny?”
“I find their reasoning funny,” he said. “It was five against one. Blackhorn had a knife and a gun. I was unarmed.”
“Blackhorn is dead. And you’re a martial arts expert.”
“They attacked me.”
“So it was self-defense. But why were you in the trailer?”
“I hired a consultant to do a job. This consultant is an expert in catching cheaters. Someone put an alligator in his car. I suspected Smooth Stone, so I went to his trailer. I found a ledger in Smooth Stone’s desk that implicated the men who attacked me.”
Gladys opened her briefcase again and handed him a sheet of paper. It was a list of the items the tribal police had found in Smooth Stone’s trailer after they’d searched it.
“The tribal police didn’t find a ledger,” she said.
Running Bear removed from his shirt pocket the page he’d torn out of the ledger. Unfolding it, he handed it to her. “I took this as a memento.”
Gladys studied the page. Running Bear could vividly remember her as a child. Shoeless, dirty most of the time, hardly ever spoke. And now here she was, wearing nice clothes and talking for a living. He saw Gladys shake her head.
“I don’t know what any of this means,” she said.
“Neither do I,” Running Bear said. “But I know someone who does.”
“Your consultant?”
“Yes,” he said. “My consultant.”
Saul Hyman’s condo was on the fourth floor of a dumpy high-rise in north Miami. Valentine had called and caught Saul riding his stationary bike. Hearing his voice, Saul had acted like he was a long-lost brother and not someone who’d once busted him.
“Of course you can come on over,” Saul said. “Provided it’s a social call.”
“I’m retired,” Valentine had replied.
“How many years has it been?” Saul asked an hour later, ushering Valentine in. He was small and wiry, maybe one-fifty soaking wet, and sported a debonair little mustache, which he dyed along with his hair. Normally, Valentine didn’t like dye jobs. But Saul’s looked okay.