Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) (29 page)

A tall, elegantly thin man with pocked skin and fish eyes
leaned against the front fender of a Lincoln Town Car. He
watched Marissa come out of the club and turn in his direction. He'd made sure to shoot out the streetlamp under which
he'd parked the stolen Lincoln. When Marissa got close to
the back bumper of the car, the thin man pulled open the rear
passenger side door.

"For you, Miss LaTerre," he said. "Compliments of Harry
Garson."

If she hadn't had so much coke and Dom in her system,
Marissa might have listened to the alarm bells her street-smart
former self, Morris Terry, was ringing as loudly as he could.
But even then, it wouldn't have mattered. It was already half
past too late. She couldn't have known that every stitch of clothing, every piece of jewelry, every wig and false eyelash,
everything she owned was in the trunk of the stolen car and
that she would soon be keeping her possessions company. She
couldn't have known that the desk clerk at the hotel had been
paid off to check her out and box up all of her worldly goods.
It was only when she felt the ring of cold metal press against
the back of her skull as she entered the car that Marissa finally
heard Morris's alarm bells. With a flash, a snap, and a wisp of
smoke, Marissa collapsed in a heap across the backseat.

Harry Carson loved Tucson. He'd shot on location in Arizona
about thirty times, but being here on his own and getting to
step outside his own persona was a revelation. After the first
few days wearing the Nagra recorder taped to his body, he'd
learned to forget about it, and since he never knew where the
film crew was, it was as if they weren't there at all. Somehow
he felt, for the first time in his life, at home. In the past, on
movie shoots, he'd always been a part of the crew and his exploration of the area tended to be of the local bars and brothels. Sure, there were a few times he and some of the other
actors had taken their horses out into the surrounding mountains and desert when the day's shoot didn't involve Indian or
battle sequences, but that too wound up being about someone
having a few bottles and getting shickered. That's what Irv said
the Yiddish word was for getting drunk.

Irv These days, Harry found himself thinking a lot about
his old agent. It was only with Irv that he had ever spoken
about his Indian roots and his puzzlement over how he'd
come to be raised by the sweet but clueless Garson family in
northern Wisconsin. He knew his adoptive parents had been
Lutheran missionaries, but they never spoke too much about
it. They never spoke much about anything. What he remem bered most about his childhood was the silence of it.

"I never felt a part of the life there," he'd confided to Irv.

"Look, we're all members of a tribe."

"Yeah, Irv, but what tribe?"

Irv had just shrugged his shoulders. In Harry's seventyfive-plus years, it had been his one and only conversation on
the subject. Now when Irv crossed his mind, Harry's thoughts
inevitably turned to Marissa LaTerre. He was still pretty pissed
at the fruitcake for abandoning him like she had and without
a word. He tried figuring out why she'd done it and turned her
back on the 10 percent he would have given her, but it was a
waste of time and energy. Who could figure out someone like
that? They couldn't even figure themselves out, Harry reasoned. Besides, the contracts had been signed; Harry having
paid a C-note to a disbarred lawyer from the hotel to give the
documents the once over to make sure they were in order.
He'd done his studying up on Tucson and the Pima. For instance, he knew that Ira Hayes, one of the guys who held up
the American flag at Iwo Jima, was a Pima Indian. That the
name Tucson was taken from a Spanish bastardization of the
O'odham name Cuk Son, meaning at the base of the black
hill. He'd been an apt pupil and the second five-grand installment had been paid in full in cash.

They'd flown him down to Tucson first class and set him
up in a neat little adobe bungalow in the foothills of the Santa
Catalina Mountains. When the cab dropped him off, Harry
found a 1980 Ford F150 pickup in the driveway with the keys
in the ignition. It had been ten years since he'd driven, but
with a little practice it all came right back to him. It was wonderful to be behind the wheel again, to feel in control of something other than his bodily functions. Driving, he thought,
was like humping: it felt great no matter how rusty you were. He'd been supplied with property department ID of the best
quality in the name of Ben Hart.

Once or twice a week, he'd get documents of one sort or
another delivered to the bungalow, and those deliveries were
inevitably followed by phone instructions. They were usually
about driving over to some federal building or municipal office in this county or that. He'd driven along the Salt, Gila,
Yaqui, and Sonora rivers. He'd visited with tribal elders and
councils and filed papers of every kind with every kind of
bureaucrat-black-skinned, red-skinned, white-skinned, and
just about every shade of skin in between. He'd stood in lines
longer than the one at the Department of Motor Vehicles. He
liked to laugh to himself that they were eventually going to
ask for a urine sample, have him read an eye chart, and then
give him some goddamn road test. No wonder they needed
training films. This shit was confusing and stupifyingly boring.
He could only imagine how much more boring it would have
been had he actually had to read all the crap he was signing
and filing.

Still, it was worth it to Harry. Most days were his to spend
as he pleased as long as he stayed in character. That was pretty
easy, as he was a virtual stranger in Tucson. Even when his
role didn't require him to do so, he'd take long drives in all
directions. And that was another amazing thing about coming back to the Tucson area; Harry had somehow recovered
his once impeccable sense of direction. Even when it let him
down and he got lost, Harry looked at it as an opportunity
to explore. Sometimes he'd head out at the dawn of the day
and sometimes at dusk. The scenery and the landscapes were
breathtaking, almost otherworldy. It was as if his eyes were reborn and could now see what he had missed or ignored during
his many acting gigs. Duke Wayne once told him that if you live in the desert long enough, brown becomes just another
shade of green. Only now did Harry see the truth of this. More
than anything, he'd come to love the rich redness of the rock
and soil, a shade not so different from the color of his skin as
a young man. There was something comforting about it. From
the moment he landed, Harry knew he fit here. He just didn't
know how.

There was a knock on the door and Mel Abbott shouted,
"Come in!"

"These must be them," Paul Spiegelman said, rubbing his
palms together.

The office door pushed back. A stocky Latino in blue
spandex bicycle shorts, a wet Los Lobos T-shirt, a backpack,
and a helmet stepped into the office and laid a fat envelope on
Mel's desk. "Sign here." He pointed at the receipt.

The pen shook in Mel's right hand. It took him so long
to put his name down, it was like he was etching rather than
signing.

"Some time today would be nice, jefe," the messenger
said, staring at his watch.

Spiegelman smiled. Not Mel.

"Here." Abbott shoved the receipt at the messenger.
"What's the matter, you afraid you'll be late for your date with
your chica?"

The messenger snatched the receipt, balled a copy of it,
and threw it in Mel's face. "I don't know about my chica, but
your mama don't like me to be late. She dries up quick these
days." He took his time leaving the office, not exactly fearing
for his life.

"Can you believe that motherfucker?" Mel said. But Spiegelman could barely contain his laughter. "Very funny, Paul. Very funny. Just shut up and give me the package."

When he opened the envelope, Spiegelman started whistling "We're in the Money."

"What should I do with all these fucking audio tapes we
got from Harry?"

"Toss 'em. I can't believe he still thinks he's being followed
around by a camera crew. You gotta love actors!" Spiegelman
said, then went back to whistling.

Mel was already dialing Joey Pothole's number.

There was a knock at Harry's door. He dreaded answering it.
Not only because it was barely daylight, but because it had
been five days since he had received a package of documents
or a phone call. An actor, even one as old as dirt who hadn't
worked for a decade and a half, knew when a shoot was winding down, and this shoot was definitely winding down. He
hadn't wanted to think about it, but it couldn't be avoided
any longer. The truth was that as much as he felt he belonged
in Tucson, Harry wouldn't be able to afford to relocate here.
Sure, it was all great now, but in the end it was an illusion, no
more real than any of the other movies he'd been a part of.
The house, the pickup, his groceries, the utilities, his cable
TV bill were all being paid for by the folks who cast him in the
role. And as many cheese fries as fifty grand would buy him,
it wouldn't go very far if he were responsible for the things
the film people were footing at the moment. No, it was back
to burgers, L.A., and cheap hotels for Harry. Who knew, he
thought, maybe when he got back Marissa LaTerre would be
back too and together they could rekindle Harry's career.

But when he reluctantly pulled open the heavy, handcarved front door, it wasn't a UPS or Federal Express man
who greeted him.

"Can I help you?" he said to the impassive young Indian
woman who stared at him across the threshold. She was quite
pretty, with almond eyes, a broad nose, full lips, and a head of
the blackest hair. In tight, faded jeans, a light denim blouse,
and cowboy boots, she was dressed just like many of the young
women in Tuscon.

"My great-grandmother would like to speak with you. She's
in my truck." The woman turned and pointed to a beat-up old
Chevy in the dirt driveway next to Harry's Ford.

"What's your name?"

"Rebecca. Please come. She is very old and it is very hot
in the truck."

Harry followed Rebecca to the truck and there in the front
seat sat a frail, ancient woman with hair as gray as her greatgranddaughter's was black. Her deep brown leathery skin was
wrinkled and heavily lined. She looked familiar to him. He
remembered seeing her, but not where or when. It might have
been on his trip to the Gila River compound or maybe it was
when he was standing on one of those endless lines in some
county or federal office. As he was about to find out, it was
less important that he remembered her than she remembered
him. When Harry stepped up to the door, the woman held an
old black-and-white photo out to him.

"Isaac Hart," she said. "Your father."

Looking at it, Harry nearly fainted. At thirty, Harry had
been the spitting image of the man in the photograph.

Mel Abbott and Paul Spiegelman sat across the table from
the man who had acted as the buffer between them and the
mining company. He was the man who had availed them of
Joey Pothole's services and who had supplied them with the
expense cash they needed to pull off the scam. He said his name was Walter Hogan. Con men themselves, neither Abbott nor Spiegelman-neither of whom were actually named
Abbott or Spiegelman-believed him.

"Do you have the package?" Walter asked.

Mel's lip twitched. "I might ask you the same question."

Walter placed an attache case on the table, flipped the
latches, pulled the lid open, and spun the case around.

"Five hundred large," Walter said. When Mel went to
reach for a pile of bills, Walter slammed the attache closed.
"This isn't the time to get sloppy or foolish. What were you
going to do, fan a stack by your ear like some moron in a
movie, or did you want to show off to the waitress?"

ry
"Sor "

"And the other half?" Paul piped up.

"When the documents check out. You'll get your percentage when the client starts pulling copper out of the ground.
Now, don't make me ask again. The package."

As Paul Spiegelman slid the fat envelope across the table
to Walter, the man relaxed his grip on the attache case and
smiled. "You sure everything's here?"

"Everything," Mel said.

"Everything," Paul chimed in. "Everything: a copy of the
original birth certificate, the dummy contracts he signed,
the original adoption papers, copy of the father's will, the
deed on the house in Tucson in Ben Hart's name, a copy of
the truck registration and insurance in his name, the tribal
papers acknowledging Ben Hart's rightful heritage, the land
deed that his father held on the acres your guys are going
to mine. And, of course, the coup de grace: Ben Hart's will,
which we wrote and he signed without a second look. In
it, as per your instructions, he bequeaths all his assets to
Robert T. Ramsland. A friend of yours, I imagine, who will no doubt turn right around and sell it to Francoeur Mineral
and Mining."

"A fair assumption," Walter agreed. "How did you get the
guy to do all this?"

"Shit, Walter, we even got the idiot to make its cosigners
on his bank accounts, so we can draw out his money and give
it back to you once he's dead. Actors are the easiest marks in
the world! Jesus, they're so fucking narcissistic. Stroke 'em a
little and they lay down like a two-buck whore. He probably
never even read a single one of the documents. Besides, for
him it was just a gig, a role."

"Keep it," Walter said.

"Keep what?"

"The money in bank account, as a tip for a job well done."
He actually shook both men's hands. "Good work, boys. Now
I'm going to leave. Give me a ten-minute head start and then
enjoy the rest of your lives!"

Neither Mel nor Paul could figure out how they'd run out
of gas this far short of Phoenix. They had filled up just before meeting with Walter outside of Palm Springs, but it was a
moot point now. Help was here in the shape of a jeep pulling
up behind their car. The tall, elegantly thin man with pocked
skin shot Paul in the heart as he stepped out of the car. He put
a second shot in the dying man's head as insurance. Mel ran.
Joey didn't waste time chasing him. He was heading straight
for the two holes he had already dug for them in the desert.
First thing he did was put the attache case into the jeep.