Chapter 49
Andrew Two-Hawks had a jelly gut and a fish mouth, a goatee hiding the weak chin. He met Mike at a rear door behind his casino, his smile as broad as his handshake was firm. A leather vest overlaid a patterned button-up, the open collar looking lonely without a bolo tie to string the whole getup together. At Two-Hawks’s side stood a guy nearly as wide as the doorway, a no-foolin’-around Indian with weathered skin and a crisply pressed black suit, his shaved head shaped like a blob of shaving cream swirled onto a palm. He began patting Mike down, and Mike shoved him away before his groping hands reached the.357 tucked into the back of his jeans.
Two-Hawks tugged at his face, the wrinkles pulling smooth, then nodded a dismissal at his bodyguard. ‘Mike here’s on our team.’
The bodyguard scowled and withdrew, keeping a junkyarddog glare trained on Mike.
‘Forgive Blackie there,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘The boy’s so dumb he could fall into a tub of tits and come out sucking his thumb.’ He gestured. ‘Walk with me.’
The good-ol’-boy demeanor and his appearance, that of a Texas oilman who had enough money to dress better than he bothered to, caught Mike by surprise. What had he been expecting? A chieftain bearing tom-toms? They moved down a carpeted hall, the whirl and clang of the casino visible but muted by a wall of tinted soundproof windows. The place, a bit rundown, was considerably smaller than Deer Creek Casino.
Mike found himself sneaking glances over at the man.
‘What?’ Two-Hawks said.
Mike said, ‘Nothing. You look…’
Two-Hawks grinned. ‘As white as you?’
Over the phone Mike had conveyed the basics of his plight – the splintering of his family, the stakes for his wife and daughter – and Two-Hawks had listened patiently, issuing empathetic rumbles from somewhere deep in his throat.
‘First thing you need to know,’ Two-Hawks said now, ushering Mike around a turn, ‘is that Deer Creek Tribal Enterprises, Inc., has staked a fraudulent claim to our historical tribal land.’ He pointed down at the carpet. ‘This land.’
‘They can do that?’
‘No. But they are. And through the techniques perfected by Brian McAvoy’ – a curl of upper lip at the name – ‘they are in the process of turning that claim into law.’
‘How?’
‘Every tribe, you see, has gotta be formally recognized by the federal government to enjoy certain basic rights and protections. A couple of well-positioned politicians – backed, of course, by McAvoy – are claiming that our status was illegitimately shoved through under Jimmy Carter’s appointees when the procedures were more ad hoc. They’ve put our tribal recognition under review, official arguments to begin early next year. If we lose, guess who’s in primo position to take over our land?’
‘And if McAvoy gets your land, he gets your casino.’
‘Bingo.’
‘That’s why you’ve been looking for me. If another heir to Deer Creek was alive, you could use him to outflank McAvoy.’
‘With you we have a chance to cut the man off at the knees.’ A flicker of disgust crossed the shiny dark eyes. ‘He and I are mortal enemies. I have quite a few these days. Does that make you nervous?’
Mike said, ‘I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have enemies.’
A smile rippled that close-shaved goatee. ‘Then you’ll love me.’
They stepped into a well-appointed office, Two-Hawks gesturing to a broad leather sofa behind a glass coffee table. ‘Sit down. Put your feet up. You can’t break the shit, and if you do, they make more of it.’
But Mike remained standing, crossing his arms as if bracing against the cold. A few sad relics adorned the walls – a frayed granary basket, a feather dance skirt, and a pair of tiny moccasins. Mike couldn’t help but wonder if he was taking in the entire preserved history of the Shasta Springs Band of Miwok with a sweep of the eyes. Quite a contrast to the theme-park tribal shrine that Deer Creek had polished to a high gloss.
Two-Hawks set a cell phone on his desk blotter and stared down at it as if it were a half-crushed insect he wanted to put out of its misery. ‘Brand-new phone, brand-new number. I got it after I found out that their lapdog, Rick Graham, was monitoring my old cell. I’ve given this number out to no one. And yet this is the number you called me on. Where did you get it?’
‘It was in Graham’s possession. McAvoy had written it down for him.’
Two-Hawks lifted a heavy brass lamp and, without anger, smashed the cell phone. He set the lamp back down and used the edge of his hand to brush the bits into a wastebasket. ‘Let’s have a look-see at this damning footage you told me about.’
Mike had taken a laptop and some CDs from Graham’s house. Parked on a dark street, he and Shep had copied onto a disc the most legally damning section of the recorded conversation with Graham. They’d stashed the flash drive containing the entire episode with their remaining cash in the motel room’s heating vent, leaving Snowball II to guard over it.
Now Mike withdrew the disc from his back pocket and handed it to Two-Hawks, who slotted it into his desktop computer. The black-and-white footage came to life on the monitor, Two-Hawks giving a growl of an exhale when he saw Mike sitting in the chair across from Graham’s bed, gun resting on his knee. Together they watched Graham spill the bloody history of his association with Deer Creek. The footage ended well before Graham’s lunge and the gunshot that ended his life.
When it cut to black, Two-Hawks leaned back in his chair and eyed the blank monitor. ‘A credible start,’ he said.
‘Start?’ Mike said.
‘This is just talk. Not hard evidence.’
‘You’re telling me this isn’t enough to threaten McAvoy?’ Mike said. ‘A confession to multiple murders committed on behalf of a corporation?’
‘Delivered by a man with a gun to his head during a home invasion,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘A man under duress, who would’ve said anything to save his life. Plus, if you want McAvoy, this is all just hearsay. He’s got plausible deniability-’
‘So I use this as a springboard.’ Mike’s tone was clipped, frustrated. ‘I can get to someone in law enforcement who’s clean. They could subpoena records, transactions that show payments to his goons-’
‘Deer Creek Tribal Enterprises, Inc.’ – again with the full corporate title – ‘is a sovereign nation, just like ours. You can’t subpoena shit from them. There is no agency in this nation or any other that can get them to release records. They run their business however they want because there is no oversight. And they’ve got judges and cops and DAs from your nation who are favorably inclined to their cause.’
Disgust welled in Mike’s chest. ‘They just plug into the government and use it like it’s theirs.’
‘That’s what you don’t understand,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘It is theirs. There was a pair of brothers who wouldn’t sell land near a Deer Creek development site. They disappeared, couldn’t pay the note on their property. There was some evidence at the site, but whoops, it up and vanished from the police locker. Everyone knows that McAvoy had them whacked, but how can you prove something when you can’t dig into any records and when there are no bodies? I’ll tell you how.’ Two-Hawks leaned forward in his chair. ‘With irrefutable evidence against them’ – one meaty finger thumped his palm – ‘in hand.’
‘I don’t have it,’ Mike said.
‘Yes,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘But we do.’
Mike had the sensation of being left out of an inside joke, smiling dumbly while everyone else laughed. His lips parted with disbelief. ‘Then what do you need me for?’