“I don’t know,” I answered quickly, cursing my own incompetence. Alison had left the Twin Cities with nothing, yet six months later she has enough money for a major investment and I hadn’t even asked where she got it. Dammit! The answer could help determine who’d shot her.…
Chief Stonetree must have seen the frustration on my face because he said, “You don’t know, do you?”
I shook my head. “Do you have any theories?” I asked.
“King Koehn,” Stonetree answered as if saying the name caused him pain.
“You think King and Michael are partners?”
Stonetree nodded.
“Could be,” I agreed. “But if they are, they’re doing a helluva job hiding it. Why does it matter?”
Stonetree sipped his drink.
“You don’t want them profiting off your casino,” I ventured.
“It’s not that,” he told me. “Obviously the more local residents that profit off our business, the better; the more tightly we are tied financially to the community, the stronger our situation becomes.”
“So what’s the problem?” I asked.
The chief studied me over the rim of his glass. I had nothing else to look at, so I watched him. After we got tired of each other’s faces, Stonetree said, “We don’t believe the tribe can afford to gamble its future on gaming, if you’ll excuse the pun. The competition from the larger casinos—Hinckley, Mille Lacs, Turtle Lake—will cut deeper and deeper into our market share and our profits. So instead of expanding our gaming operation, we’ve been investing our proceeds in other businesses, diversifying our interests.
“We have a salmon farm now,” the chief continued. “We raise them, can them, the whole show. We recently purchased a construction-equipment manufacturing plant in North Dakota. Just the other day we initiated exploratory talks with a company that builds snowmobiles. And we’re also pursuing several other opportunities.”
I asked, “What has this to do with King and Michael?”
Stonetree smiled cryptically. “I just told you.”
I frowned at his answer. It seemed Chief Stonetree didn’t mind obfuscating, either.
“In five years time, we hope gaming will represent less than forty percent of our income,” the chief finally added, his voice growing in volume as if I had just challenged his logic. Perhaps others had.
“The tribe must be prepared for the day the gaming boom goes bust. My God, man, we have enrolled members; every month they cash their checks at the bank and walk out with the money in their pockets. They don’t even have checking accounts! They’re not saving, they’re not investing. Instead, they’re spending. They’re buying new homes and expensive furniture and stereo equipment and cars and Gold Wing Honda motorcycles. I can’t really blame them. After generations of poverty, it’s hard to get used to possessing large sums of money. Only what’s going to happen to them when the bubble bursts? Who says all this is going to last?”
“No one,” I answered just to be polite.
“Some tribal members don’t agree. They want what they want when they want it—like children.” Stonetree shook his head violently. “They’re wrong. That’s why we’re taking twenty percent out of each member’s check and putting it in retirement accounts for them. That’s why we’re investing in infrastructure—building a school, a water and sewer system, roads, a day-care center, a recreation center, new houses. We have chemical dependency programs and an alcohol treatment center. We’re encouraging the kids to go to college or at least a trade school, paying them to attend—”
Stonetree stopped abruptly.
“But I digress,” he said, embarrassed at his own oratory.
I don’t know why. It all sounded quite sensible to me, and I told him so.
“Sensible,” Stonetree repeated with disdain. “For a hundred years we’ve been a defeated people living off what the white government deigned to give us. Congress passes the 1988 Indian Gaming Act, and overnight we’ve become wealthy and arrogant. What’s sensible about that?”
I shrugged. “It’s like the saying goes: I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.”
Stonetree smiled. “It is preferable to a poke in the eye from a sharp stick, I must agree.”
“Which brings us back to King and Michael,” I said.
“I will pay you quite well if you can determine for me with all accuracy that King Koehn is a silent partner in The Harbor,” Stonetree said.
“I already have a client,” I reminded him.
“I am not asking you to compromise your client,” he assured me. “I just want to acquire that one little piece of information. Before next Thursday.”
“What happens Thursday?” I asked.
“On Thursday we go before the Kreel County Board of Commissioners and make a formal offer to purchase the civic center.”
“I understand,” I told him.
“No, Mr. Taylor, you don’t.”
And by the way he rose to his feet and lifted his glass, it was obvious he wasn’t about to enlighten me. “Thank you for your time,” Stonetree said. “Please keep in touch.”
“Thank you for the drink and the interesting conversation,” I told him.
“I hope your woman recovers soon,” he said.
My woman? He thought Michael—I mean Alison—was my woman?
“Thank you,” I said again. I mimed a toast to the photograph of the USS Johnston.
Stonetree raised his glass to me. “H’gun.”
twenty-three
The wind up alarm clock that The Wheel Inn provided read 5:45. I didn’t like the clock. I didn’t like the way it rang until I lurched out of bed and beat it into submission. I didn’t like the sun, either. It was shining. And the birds were singing. Didn’t they know it was 5:45 in the fucking morning?!
The lights in the bathroom were too bright, the towels were too rough, the soap bar was too small, the floor was too cold, and so was the water that flowed from the faucet labeled H. I forgot about my bruises and stretched, then remembered every one. They were now turning an ugly yellow-rust color. I looked diseased.
I cut myself shaving three times. After years of using an electric razor I had lost the knack—at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it. My new sports coat and shirt were stained from the champagne, so I wore my other jacket and dirty shirt, instead. I packed the rest of my belongings in a paper bag with King’s One-Stop printed on both sides and escaped to my car.
There was a lot of traffic on the county roads, and it infuriated me. Where were all these people going so early in the morning? Turned out many of them were going to the same place I was: Annie’s Parlor, the café in Saginau where I had promised to meet Deputy Gary Loushine. The café was located on the town’s main drag between two bars. Across the street was an everything-for-everyone hardware store flanked by a bank and a gift shop. I parked farther down the street in the parking lot of the Kreel County Court Building, where the sheriff’s department was located, and walked back.
Annie’s Parlor was doing good business. A small crowd had gathered at the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign, including two older women who smiled benignly at me and said in unison, “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” The women were actually wearing skirts. Everyone else was dressed like they were going to cut the lawn right after breakfast—the dressing-down of America. When was the last time you were confronted with a dress code that exceeded “No shoes, no shirt, no service”?
At 7:05 Annie—who also wore a skirt—welcomed me to her parlor and led me to a window booth with a good view of the hardware store. She offered coffee while I waited for my companion, and I accepted. It was good coffee. I sipped it and wondered vaguely if Deputy Loushine had as much trouble with early mornings as I did. I passed the time by watching the traffic move up and down Saginau’s main drag and listed all the reasons why I could never reside in such a small town. The list was short and featured mostly social items: no jazz clubs, no movie theaters, no professional baseball.