Indian Country Noir

Janejohndoe.com by David Cole

Tucson, Arizona

I’m watching Ronald Jumps the Train speed-shop through Safeway. He crams his cart with frozen pizzas and Hungry-Man dinners, corn chips, Cheetos, potato chips, a case of Negra Modelo, two sixes of Classic Coke, and another two sixes of Mountain Dew — all the quick-to-cook, quickly eaten, and sweetish crap that crystal meth tweakers often devour.

“Ma’am? Can I help you, ma’am?”

“No.” An eager Safeway employee. Do I look that much like a geezer?

I’ve been tracking Ronald for five days, ever since dark rumors swirled up from Sonora about a drug cartel takedown war against La Bruja de los Cielos, the rarely seen head of the methamphetamine cartel in northern Sonora. The war brought assassinations by the dozens. La Bruja, herself a vicious stone killer, was believed to have planned last week’s assassination of Sonora’s state chief of police at a Nogales hotel, AK-47s and grenades pouring down from an upstairs window just as the chief entered the place. Federal pressure got intense. La Bruja’s world collapsed, her smuggling routes hijacked, her truckloads of drugs no longer safe because bribed U.S. Customs guards were arrested, and nothing made easier by increased U.S. Border Patrol arrests running parallel to the fence along the P-28 Tucson section. The border was sealed, the border was chaos, the border was dangerous. All of these things shredded the previous maps and players in organizational drug trafficking from the border north through Tucson and Phoenix. Nobody knew anyone they could trust. Including me.

I do intel surveillance of meth dealers on Indian reservations; I’m a private investigator working for the Navajo Tribal Police. Despite the chaos in Mexico, nothing much had happened for me until I tagged Ronald in the Safeway around 10 in the morning.

I knew the drug cartel world was in turmoil, but I’m just a small player. I track Navajo meth dealers off the rez, but nobody else. An hour ago, I’m thinking it’s mainly another beautiful, quiet Tucson morning. Kids in school, parents working, geezers shopping. Now, watching Ronald cram his cart full, I’m realizing that he’s stocking up to lay low, to take a forced vacation from dealing crystal meth up on the Gila River rez and east toward Casa Grande.

But why?

Ronald’s a shrimpy guy, half Apache, half Mexican, an old-time tweaker born on the Ute reservation in Colorado. He runs across the front of the store, kinda dancing behind the cart, he so wants to get outta there quick. So, why? He can’t possibly know I’m tracking him.

I watch from the back aisle of the large Safeway, my hands on a shopping cart loaded with I-don’t-care-off-the-shelf-whatever, as I pretend to browse while following him. I whip past the meat cases to see him in the produce section, piling on boxes of all kinds of berries and even a huge sack of raw carrots — lots of sugar in carrots, tweakers love sugar — when a man moves quickly behind Ronald, bellies up to Ronald’s back like a lover, one hand in his Arizona Wildcats lightweight nylon rain jacket. Ronald’s shoulders slump, he sags against the cart but nods resignedly. The two men walk slowly, almost a sex dance, the man urging Ronald out the entrance. I’m dashing with my cart up the produce aisle to follow them, except two other guys surround me.

“Don’t be a chili pepper.”

Behind me to the left, a rough whisper, like a rasp across soft white pine. One hand squeezes the back of my neck, the other extends to pry my fingers off the Safeway cart. Hands in leather golf or driving gloves, wearing a tee, his arms rife with intricate tattoos, not prison ballpoint-pen black but professional, multicolored inks swirling around the name Dial. I can see that the tat artist who did the full sleeves on both arms used thicker ink; the word Dial covers an ancient tat reading Diablo.

I half duck, trying to turn away, but a smaller man on my right wedges his body against me, so I pull the cart toward us, taking tension momentarily off Dial’s fingers, and then shove the cart toward the organic apples, peaches, and pears, an elderly couple recoiling as it punches into a free-standing display, the man’s face puckering with indignation then quickly dropping a plastic bag of tomatoes, shrinking away from Dial’s tats and his cold stare. The tomatoes roll across the floor but nobody pays them any attention.

“She might have a gun,” the smaller man says, his voice strangely familiar, “tucked down in her back.”

“Forget the gun,” Dial responds. “Is this her?”

“Yes.”

I’m trying to see their faces, but Dial puts a martial arts grip on my upper left shoulder, pinches a nerve. I recoil, gasp, my left arm flops around, I’m staggering from the pain but they hold me upright and, like a two-person team carrying a bashed-up athlete off the playing field, they frog-march me out the wide Safeway entrance. Dial’s hand shifts from my neck to under my arm and across my left breast, almost lifting and carrying me along. Sweat pops everywhere from underneath my headband, running down my face. My body flowers with sweat that fountains between my breasts and underneath the sports bra. I’m sweating from panic but also the rapid transition from Safeway’s aircon into the muggy April ninety-degree Tucson midmorning air.

The parking lot is jammed, but nobody really notices us. I decide to shout for help but Dial squeezes my throat. I can barely breath. I can’t see an out, so I relax my muscles, trying to flex my fingers, get strength back. The other man’s hand slides under my tee and against my bare back, moving down inside my waistband.

“You still tuck that pistola back there,” the second man says.

I recognize the voice.

“Rey?” I say. “Rey?” Disbelief.

“When you went running, you carried it back there.”

He palms my Beretta from the small of my back where I carry it in an unbelted nylon rig. Dial fumbles in my handbag, grabs my keys.

“Rey Villaneuva?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

“Is that really you?”

Rey Villaneuva. Once my PI partner. Once my lover. I haven’t seen him in, in, I have to think, it’s been... what... five years? Seven? I cut a glance at his worried still-handsome face half hidden by that familiar shock of unruly black hair, which glistens with water as though he’d stuck his head under a faucet and run his fingers through it instead of a comb. He’s wearing brown khakis, the kind he once creased daily with his own iron, but now looking like he’s worn them for weeks without washing. The direct sunlight catches flecks of gray in his hair and his week-old whiskers.

“What do you want from me?”

“To create a legend,” he says.

They hustle me to a silver Escalade with tinted windows, parked next to my Subaru Baja. Ronald Jumps the Train sits behind my steering wheel, the other man in the passenger seat. Dial swings me hard against the Escalade; Rey’s shoulders slump, he won’t meet my eyes.

“Rey,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

“Working, working,” he answers finally. “Just working.” He still can’t look up at me, he cuts his eyes left and right repeatedly. Dial tosses my car keys to the guy in my Subaru’s passenger seat. Dial pulls out a Glock fitted with a laser sight. He pops a switch, the red laser dances across his palm, across my face.

“You know what this is?” I nod. “Right now, there’s another on your daughter.”

“Excuse me?”

“She’s vacationing up in Sedona. With your granddaughter.” I nod again, mute. He gently strokes a thumb down my nose.

“You’re a PI?”

“Yes. Yeah, yes. Why?”

“You work for the Navajo Tribal Police? The drug unit?”

“Why are you, why, why are you doing this?”

Dial nods at Rey, like, Your turn here.

“Laura,” Rey says. “Do you still find people? Create legends? New ID, everything?”

“My daughter? How is she involved in this? My grand- daughter?”

“What he’s really asking,” Dial says, “do you still make up really good ID?”

“Yes, but—”

“ID can pass any test? Even if it’s fake?”

“Yes, yeah, but listen, listen, just... listen to me. If you’ve kidnapped my daughter—”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Dial says, but quiet, he’s really confident of himself. “Don’t you fucking think you can fuck with me.”

“Rey, Rey, Jesus, Rey, what are you guys telling me?”

“You help us, nobody gets hurt.”

“Help you do what?”

“We need you to create a legend,” he says.

“I won’t.”

“I told you. I said, don’t you fuck with me.” Dial pulls my Beretta out of Rey’s hand. “You want to see what happens, you fuck with me?” Turning toward the two men in my Subaru, the passenger’s face in shadows. Ronald Jumps the Train looks at me, he’s so terrified I can smell fresh urine. “Tell me again. You’re a private investigator?”

“Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

“Lady?” Ronald whimpers. “Lady, can you get me out of this?” But I have little sympathy for him. Ronald Jumps the Train got his name at the age of eleven when he rode boxcars pulling into Flagstaff, throwing marijuana bales out the open door. Now he deals crystal meth, the major supplier for Gila River and Casa Grande, so I try not to feel any sympathy at all. But Jesus, a sudden pop-pop, a double tap as Dial shoots Ronald dead, then pop, one more guarantee shot through his forehead before he turns the Glock at the passenger who is already starting to open his door.

“Me jodí!” the passenger shouts before Dial pops him too.

I’m screwed.

Dial tosses my Beretta onto Ronald’s lap. What’s really really scary about Dial is that he’s totally cool about just having murdered two men, and in that moment I believe him about my daughter. He shoves me into the passenger seat of the Escalade, sits behind me.

“Seat belt,” he says. “We’re going where it’s quiet, you either say what we want or you don’t. You don’t got what we want, we kill you.” He checks his watch. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” I say.

Rey drives. Nobody talks. We take Ina to I-10 and head south until Rey exits onto I-19. Soon I see my past rising in front of me. Mission San Xavier del Bac, a gorgeous white mission, the white dove of the desert. Mission San Xavier del Bac, where Rey and I were once responsible for killing and burning a teenager.

Five years ago.

Or seven, I don’t want to think about it.

Rey slows at the edge of the mission parking lot, a barren, uneven and unpaved stretch of ground, just a few hundred yards from the Tohono O’odham Tribal Police center. We swing past the W: ak shopping center, the People of the River, the gates open but nobody in sight. The Escalade bumps past some of the concrete block houses, moves briefly along a dirt road with, amazingly, a sign. Gok Kawulk Wog. Tohono O’odham words. No sense to me.

Dial’s cell rings. He motions Rey to stop next to an ancient saguaro cactus with seven arms and two huge holes up where somebody’d shotgunned it in the main stem. Dial listens, murmurs a word, flips the cell closed, and holds up a hand at Rey.

Engine running, aircon set at meat locker, we sit there for two hours or so, gas gauge near empty. Dial occasionally leans forward between the seats, studying my face. The full tats on his arms are layered three deep, the most faded seem to be 81st Airborne tats from Nam. On the left arm, Killing Is Our Business, on the right arm, Business Is Good.

A family of Gambel’s quail bustles across the road, Dad in front, Mom behind, both sandwiching a dozen new chicks the size of fluffy walnuts, urging them from a creosote bush to shelter under a clump of teddy bear cholla. Dial lasers the chicks one at a time, smacking his lips in a silent pow, and then he centers the red dot on my left eye. His cell rings again. He listens, nods at my computer bag.

“Is that enough equipment?” he says to me as Rey checks out the bag.

“The laptop and the satellite phone,” I say. “Yes, maybe. I can try. But not until you guarantee my daughter’s safety. And my granddaughter. Why are you doing this, Rey?”

“I work for Verónica Luna de los Angeles Talancón,” Rey answers quickly; he wants to get her name out there and over with.

“Verónica Talancón? The drug cartel woman?”

Dial slaps the back of my head. “Show some respect. Respect for La Bruja de los Cielos.”

“Rey? You work for Sonora’s biggest drug cartel?” My jaw slack, mouth open.

“Listen.”

“The drug lord? You work for her cartel?”

“Yeah,” sighing, shrugging, “yeah, okay? Jesus, will you just listen to me?”

“La Bruja de los Cielos? The Witch of the Skies?” Dial slaps my head again; Rey turns away, nodding, his chin so low it bumps his chest. “You’re threatening my family because of a vicious woman who runs a drug cartel?”

“Listen,” he says. “I mean, just listen to this, okay? I mean, I’m just a go-between. Just a connection, a fixer. Just trying to stay alive here.”

“You’re wasting time,” Dial says. “You’re useless. Let’s go. Drive.”

“Wait, wait a minute. What do you want?” I ask again. “And where are you taking me?”

“What Talancón wants, what she needs, Laura,” Rey says quietly, but looking me right in the eyes, “what Talancón needs is a brand-new, best-quality, never-fail, platinum-grade U.S. identity. What you call, in your business, you call it creating a legend.”

“I don’t do that anymore. I’m legitimate. I do computer forensics on corporation databases. I’m completely, totally legal. Rey. Listen to me. This is a bad idea.”

“This is way past a bad idea,” Rey says.

“You’re not listening to me.” Dial flips open his cell, a finger on the keypad. “I’ve got five minutes left to call Sedona. I don’t call, a sicario pops your daughter.”

“Jesus Christ, Rey. You’re just making this up.” I talk directly to Rey, I won’t acknowledge that Dial is in charge. He doesn’t care what I acknowledge or think or whatever, he just dials, listens, puts the cell on speaker-phone. “Five minutes my ass. This is a bluff.”

“Eating dinner at L’Auberge de Sedona,” a voice says. “Down by the creek. Kid’s in a high chair, wearing a pink jumpsuit, Mommy’s in a yellow tank top. Nice tits.”

“Okay, okay,” I say into the cell. It’s not a bluff. Panic, trying to sound calm, hoping I project willingness to go along instead of terror at the situation, and in the back of my mind, nothing forming, but back there, trying to figure a plan to get out of this alive. “Okay, I’ll do it. Don’t—”

Dial flips the cell closed, motions to Rey who just nods and shifts into drive.

“Where are we going?”

“Talancón is hiding in Sahuarita. She got across the border, but no time for plastic surgery, so she’s got to fly out of Tucson quick, like, tomorrow. She can’t do that without a whole new identity. And you’re the expert.”

“Just to find the right connections will take days. A week, maybe more.”

“Talancón figures she’s got eight, maybe ten hours to arrange a safe out.”

“Impossible. Ugh.” Dial slaps the back of my head. He knows the sweet spots back there, three times he’s whacked the same place and it’s starting to vibrate with pain.

“I’m nothing here, Laura,” Rey says. “Don’t you see that? If you do this, Talancón will pay whatever you ask.”

“Don’t shit me, Rey. You’ve already threatened my daughter, my granddaughter. If I give this woman, this Talancón, if I give her a new identity, she’ll kill me. She’ll kill you, she’ll kill anybody in her way just like those two back there.”

“Yeah. Well. I don’t bring you to Talancón right now, Mr. Dial here will pop me and you, no hesitation. That’s your choice. Come with us or die.” The sunset lights up his face, his color bleaching to white, corners of his mouth sagging. “Yes or no?”

Dial slaps my head again.

“Yes,” I say finally. “Yes. I’ll do it.”

Sahuarita, Arizona. Just south of Indian reservation lands. Bustling with new houses going up, their framed skeletons crowded with carpenters, plumbers, electricians, everybody trying to get rich.

Rey winds along a narrow street, twisting through smaller roads until we stop at the dead end of Calle Zapata at the edge of a pecan orchard. A Ford crew-cab pickup faces out to the street and a woman sits at a battered redwood picnic table behind the gated front wall, a vivid view of the Santa Rita mountains behind her. Dial grips my upper arms, marches me in front of him toward the table.

Verónica Talancón bites carefully into a Sonoran hot dog, sipping occasionally from a bottle of Diet Sprite. A slim, tiny woman, barely taller than five feet. Gorgeous, beautiful, stunning, the Witch of the Skies.

“Miss Winslow,” a quiet voice, calm, measured, steady. She wipes bits of chili from her chin. “Thank you for coming.”

“You threatened my family. Did you really expect I’d not come?”

“Look at this,” she says, gesturing at what’s left of her food. “The all-American hot dog, made in Mexico, wrapped in bacon, stuffed inside a fresh bun and loaded up with tomato and onion chunks, grilled onions, mustard and mayo and a jalapeño sauce with a guerito pepper. Two nights ago, I had lobster flown in from Maine on my private jet. Tonight,” gesturing at the cracked adobe house and yard full of weeds, “this is my whole kingdom.”

“You threatened my family,” I say again.

“Look. You’re alive. Usually, when somebody’s threatening me, beating on me with a hammer, I’m not going to duck. I’ll grab a machete, whack off his arms and some other parts. So. You know what I want. Fix it for me, your family will live.”

“I’m not threatening you in any way. Don’t bullshit me about why I’m here.”

“Reymundo,” she says, “am I not a woman of honor?”

“You’d have a sicario tell me about honor?” I say.

“Reymundo’s a lover, not a shooter.”

Rey nods without hesitation.

“He has no honor working for you,” I say.

“Then let’s get to business. You know what I want.”

“No, no,” I say. “You know what I want.”

“You want to live,” she laughs. “That’s entirely what this is about. We all want to live. I control you and your family; you control my future. I will trade one for the other. And money. Do you have enough of the proper equipment to find me a, how do you say it, a legend?”

I just shake my head, work at controlling my panic, searching for an edge. She sips the Diet Sprite, muscles flexing in her temples, a tectonic shift in her calculations as she nods. “You want a drink? Beer? Water? Tequila?”

“No. Just stop threatening my family.”

“How about some Ritalin?” she says and I freeze. She reaches under her chair, grabs a plastic folder, sets it on the table without opening it. “I know all about you, Miss Winslow.”

“I haven’t used Ritalin in years,” I say angrily.

“Fascinating.” She opens the folder and flips through a few pages. “You didn’t use, you abused. I wholesale thousands of pounds of methamphetamines. You once took methamphetamines. So in a way, we’re not all that different.”

I’m really furious now, the fury conquering my panic. “And your crystal meth has ruined a thousand lives. Ten thousand lives. You can’t threaten me. And if you threaten my family, I won’t help you in any way.”

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s try something else. Your Hopi name is Kauwanyauma. Butterfly Revealing Wings of Beauty. See? We’ve both got grand names. I’m La Bruja. The Witch. You’re a butterfly, with an arrest record and a drug-user record. Rey’s told me everything about you.” She finishes the Diet Sprite, opens another bottle, studies me carefully. “Okay.” Nods. “You don’t really get threatened, do you?” When I say nothing she turns to Dial. “Diablo, call Jesús.” Dial flicks open his cell, speed-dials a number, holds the phone aside after hearing a voice. “Tell Jesús to return.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I say. “Why would I believe you?”

“I offer proof of life,” she replies, holding up a small GPS unit. “Tell that man to leave his cell on, and give me his number.” Talancón nods at Dial, who flips open the cell to display the last number dialed. She punches it into the GPS, waits until the map screen shows Sedona. “His cell has GPS on it. He’s headed toward I-10 and Phoenix.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Don’t listen to this puta,” Dial says, but Talancón flicks her palm, shakes her head.

Twenty-five minutes later, the GPS shows the cell location — out of red rock country and headed south toward Phoenix.

“Now. I’ve guaranteed your daughter’s life,” Talancón says. She shrugs off her wristwatch, presses a button on the side, and lays it on the picnic table in front of me. “A Rolex Cosmograph Daytona. Diamonds, rubies, gold, twelve thousand dollars, I could care less. Right now, it’s just a stopwatch. Look at the numbers. Nine hours, fifty-eight minutes. That’s how much time you’ve got. I’ve arranged an out in Chicago, but I’ve got to get there first. So in nine hours, we’ll be headed for the Tucson airport for the early flight. You’ve got that long to set up a whole new identity.”

“Impossible.”

“Driver’s license. Social Security card. Let’s say four credit cards, whatever else you can provide.”

“Impossible,” I insist. “Not for a totally clean package.” She points at the chronometer dial, the seconds shrinking back toward zero. “We’re talking about special paper, special inks. Official seals, photographs, and bottom line, a Social Security number that’s absolutely guaranteed to be genuine.”

“You’ve got somebody who stores up these numbers, somebody who verifies they’re clean.”

“I don’t think you really understand,” I say. “I haven’t arranged an entire identity kit in over a year.”

“My personal motto of life,” she counters. “If you don’t ask for something, nobody says yes. I visit New York, the hottest Broadway show, I can get tickets anywhere in the house. Restaurants booked three months in advance. I can get a table. When they told me my son couldn’t get into a prestigious high school, I threatened a lawsuit on the basis of discrimination against Latinos. He got in. Nothing is impossible. So I’m asking you again, can you do this for me?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Come with me,” she says, turning sideways, a slight bow and nod into the house. “Let me show you something, Miss Winslow. Please. No harm, just come inside for a moment.”

I walk ahead of her into an entranceway. She gestures down a hall to the door of the main bedroom.

“On the bed. Look.”

Two bodies sprawl on pink and purple flowered sheets. A man and woman, bloodied, dead. One hand across my mouth, I freeze. Talancón spins me around, pushes me back outside.

“Okay,” she says. “Without hesitation, if you won’t do this, just as I killed them, I’ll kill your entire family. In front of your eyes.”

“You promised, you guaranteed their safety.”

“I lie. Usually it works.”

And there it is.

I have few bargaining chips. Nine hours, during which I can fake a process, hoping to convince Rey to get me out of this mess, or I can work what few contacts I still have, gambling that if I create a new identity Talancón will let me live.

“Okay,” I say. I mean, what else am I going to say?

Except I suddenly realize I have an edge.

“I think I’ve got you figured,” I say. She just waits, face set in stone, no flickers, no tells. “You’re on the run. You’ve been forced out of controlling your cartel. That means you’ll probably just go somewhere else, change your identity, use some connections, spend a lot of money, and start up again dealing drugs somewhere else. Thailand. Manila. Wherever.”

“Agreed. Okay. Your point?”

“I figure you’ll fly to Chicago, then jump around the country, or head outside the country to get plastic surgery. I’ll get you a perfect new ID on one condition.”

She cocks her head, her expression unchanged.

“Let me tell you a short story.”

“Don’t beg,” she says. “We’re well past that.”

“Up on the Navajo rez,” I say, “my husband’s mother is from the Start of the Red Streak People. The Deeshchii’nii clan. His sister married a man from the Jaa’yaalóolii. The Sticking-Up-Ears People. They had two sons.”

“Please,” Talancón says. “I know where this is going.”

“Both sons got totally bored with high school and turned to drugs. Both worked their way up the drug ladder to making crystal meth. They blew themselves up in their lab one day.”

“What’s the point, okay?”

“If I fly with you to Chicago, I figure there’s a good chance you’ll just disappear and let me live. I’ll take that chance if... what I want, what you’ll have to do... if you’ll give me a complete list of all the meth dealers on all Arizona Indian reservations.”

She studies me for a long time. A long, long time. And then nods abruptly.

“Okay. You’ve got everything you need?”

“Just so you understand,” I explain. “First, I’ve got to find an identity, find a legend. That’s a name I can use without challenge by law enforcement databases. A name that’s got a birth date near enough to yours, a somewhat facial resemblance.”

“That’s going to be altered here,” she says. “Depending on what you tell me I’ve got to do. I’ll dye my hair, cut it, stuff cotton wads into my cheeks and nose, whatever it takes so I look like whatever picture you provide. So find me a golden legend.”

“Even after I find the legend, I’ll have to locate somebody who’ll work up the identity materials. That will take some hours. I might not be able to guarantee delivery.”

“Then now is the best time to start.” She stabs a finger at the watch. Not needing to say anything, the chronometer dial winding down.

“Even if I can create the legend, I can’t get the documents to you down here.”

“Not here,” she says. “Tucson airport. And the credit cards have to be good enough to get me a ticket on any airline connecting to Chicago. And you’ll have to use all your skills to make it look like the tickets were purchased weeks ago. That’s it, okay?”

She dismisses me, moves inside the house. Dial sits on a rusted wrought-iron chair, pistol in his lap. Rey slumps in another chair, refusing to look at me. I have to test my chances, have to know if I have an edge. I go to him, kneel and put my hands on his face, turning his eyes to mine.

“Rey,” I say. “How did you get into this dirty business?”

“Don’t play me, Laura. No way can I help you.”

Dial finishes a Sonoran hot dog, smacks his lips. When I look at him, he blows me a kiss. In that moment, I get busy. Open my carryall, take out my gear, boot up my laptop, turn on my ComSat phone, and get online.

“Lovitta,” I say. I’ve dialed her private number. “Lovitta. Wake up.”

Lovitta Kovich groans. “Laura?” Lovitta is a sergeant with the Tucson narcotics department, my inside source, my treasured coordinator of drug dealer information.

“Yes.”

“Where are, what are you doing?” Groggy. “I’ve been working twenty hours. What?”

“Hello,” I say carefully. “How are you? Have you arrived safely.”

“Arrived... ah, oh yeah. Laura. Still sending pretty little pics?”

“To everyone I know in my postcard perfect world.” The most basic of voice codes, an agreed-on exchange to indicate urgency.

“Where are you?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“How can I help?”

“I need a legend.”

“How quick?”

“Six hours.”

“Impossible.”

“Six hours,” I repeat.

“What kind of documents?”

“Everything. SSN card. Driver’s license. At least three working credit cards, each with a purchase and payment legend. Medical records, if you can do that. Miscellaneous stuff. Safeway card, whatever.”

“Passport?”

“No.”

“Well, that saves time. Not impossible. But improbable.”

“Who’ve you got?”

“Larry Marshall. Mary Emich. Alex Emerine. Mary can Photoshop the documents, Larry can coordinate sources for printing, he knows a nonprofit that will let him use a flat-bed press and special inks. Alex can set up computer legends for bank accounts, credit, hospitals. She knows just where to hack into records, add a new identity. But. You’ve got to get a name. A legend is no good without the right name.”

“I’ll have that in an hour,” I say. “You get them set up, wait for my call.”

Disconnecting the cell, I sit in front of my laptop. Small, sudden nods of my head as I think through each step. I start typing.

“What are you doing?” Rey asks.

Opening a web browser, I call up a website, begin typing in physical and age characteristics. Rey watches over my shoulder as a series of photo images scrolls down the screen.

“Jane... JaneJohnDoe dot com?” he says. “What kind of website is that?”

“People who disappeared.”

“What help is that?”

“I don’t have time to buy a name. Usually that would take days. Weeks for something really specific. This is a national database of people who’ve disappeared — men, women, and children who’ve vanished from their jobs, their homes, their loved ones.”

“I don’t get it.”

“We’re looking for women who disappeared five to ten years ago. Once I get those compiled, I’ll search the photos for a face that resembles Talancón. When I find that, I’ll crosscheck the name of the missing person with other databases to get a Social Security number. And then anything is possible.”

“How many people are in here?”

“Lots. Probably three to five thousand. And that’s just people who’ve disappeared. There are hundreds more who are dead but unidentified. Rey, stop asking me questions. Leave me alone.”

“I just want to help.”

“You have nothing to offer me. Not anymore. You,” I say to Dial, “get your boss out here. I need to ask her something.”

Talancón appears in the doorway, stripped to bra and panties, a bath towel over her shoulder, her hair already cut very short. Dial stands, pulls out his Glock as though there’s been a prearranged signal.

“Kill me now,” I say, “you get nothing.”

“Are you afraid of Diablo?” Her smiling face caught in a sudden, cold light from the sun. I see she wears no makeup, small beads of sweat form on her upper lip, her pupils dilate, and then a flatness comes into her eyes. “Okay, there’s nothing left. Diablo, give me your gun.”

Dial hands over the Glock. Talancón thumbs back the slide, checking that a live round is chambered. She has an odd way of holding the Glock; her middle finger is on the trigger, and without hesitation she targets Dial.

“Pela las nalgas, puta,” he says bitterly as she cranks a double-tap to his chest, striding quickly to stand over his twitching body to put another round directly into his forehead.

“Jesus Christ!” Rey gasps, hands out in front, thinking he’s next.

“Not you, loverboy. You’re intocable. Untouchable, so far. Anything else?” she says to me. I shake my head, ears ringing from the gunshots. Talancón tosses the weapon to Rey. “Drag him inside.” She turns to me with a look and shrugs. “Vámanos, señora! Ahorita!”

Get busy. Now!

And I’m wondering what seed she sprang from, what made this bitter fruit.

Fifty minutes later I have a name, ten minutes after that I get the information I really want when I call Lovitta to get data from NCIC, the national crime database.

“Judith Dunnigan Fletcher,” I shout at the house. Talancón comes to the doorway, pressing her hands up against the inside of the door sill and taking three long, deep breaths.

“Okay,” she says. “You have a picture?”

I swivel my laptop so she can see the screen. She studies the photograph of a woman with short-cropped graying hair, an open-necked button-down shirt, and tortoise-shell glasses.

“Tell me about her.”

“Judith Dunnigan Fletcher. Missing since July 3, 1997. Thirty-six years old then, makes her mid-forties now. Missing from Omaha, Nebraska. At time of disappearance, five-one, 105 pounds. White woman, but she looks a bit Latina. Graying hair, some brown left, brown eyes. No tattoos, no scars, no birthmarks. No nickname, not married at time of disappearance, no children, both parents deceased, no siblings. If seen, notify the Omaha Police Department. She’s perfect.”

“Let me see,” Talancón says, flicking her fingers on the keyboard, scrolling up and down, reading and rereading the information, finally clicking on the picture to enlarge the image. “There’s gray hair dye inside.” She suddenly frowns. “Why does it say to contact Omaha PD?”

“She’s been missing for years. It’s routine with missing people.” She nods. “I’ll get my people on it. Except...”

“Yes?”

“If I deliver this, how do I know I’m safe?”

“Safe?” she says. “You mean, that you’ll stay alive?”

“Yes.”

“There are suitcases inside the house.” Not answering my question. “We’ll stuff them with clothes; when we get to Tucson, we’ll go to an all-night drugstore, buy bathroom things, whatever else is handy. We’ll buy carry-on bags, at the airport we’ll get newspapers, everything normal. Then all three of us will buy coach tickets and check the luggage. “

“First things first,” I say.

“Now what?”

“I want to call the Sedona sheriff’s department. I want officers to protect my family. You won’t do this for me, I do nothing for you.”

“Call them,” she orders Rey, then stands six inches from my face. “Okay. I give you the guarantee. Don’t push on me anymore, señora. Now get busy.”

Her Rolex chronometer reads just under four hours. I call Lovitta, direct her to the website JaneJohnDoe.com, and give her the name I’ve chosen.

“You’ve got three hours plus,” I say. “Then all the documents have to be at the Tucson airport. You know me, Lovitta. Serious I seldom get. So now I say to you...”

Another of our message codes. My heart pounding while she works it through until she suddenly gasps.

“Ah,” she says. “Don’t worry. Tag, you’re it.”

Less than three hours later, Rey slings four suitcases into the backseat of the Ford pickup and starts the engine. I’m sandwiched between him and the remodeled Talancón. Hair shorter and grayer, Talancón wears a yellow sundress, a light cotton shawl across her bare neck and shoulders, an iPod hanging around her neck.

We drive north, few cars on the road, but the Mexican produce trucks already headed up from Nogales. Predawn light on the desert, the sun rising past mountains to the east. Behind my right shoulder, loose gray clouds, the promise of an early monsoon coming up from Mexico. We drive in silence to Valencia Road, turn east, and ten minutes later leave the pickup in the short-term parking lot.

Inside the terminal, Talancón quickly scans the departure boards and heads us to the American Airlines ticket counter. No problems picking up a waiting envelope containing her documents and three round-trip tickets to Chicago, no problems collecting our boarding passes. A quick trip inside the airport store for carry-on bags, mixed nuts, two newspapers, the latest People and Newsweek magazines, and some beef jerky. At security, we all take off our shoes, drop everything in the X-ray buckets.

“Boarding pass, please,” the TSA man says to Talancón.

“Sure,” she replies with a smile.

Through the checkpoint, moving toward the departure gate, twenty-seven minutes to boarding time. We buy water, then Talancón points at three seats in the waiting area amidst other passengers, mostly seniors, all sitting as far away as they can from a mother and baby.

“Oh, come on,” I complain. “I’ve got a fierce headache. This tension, this, all of this, it’s just, I feel sick. Let’s sit over there, away from that squalling baby.”

“Sure,” Talancón says. “Why not?”

I move slowly, hands massaging my temples as I drop into a seat facing away from the security checkpoint. Talancón hesitates, then sits beside me and motions Rey to sit across from us. I crack the seal on my water bottle, drink from the nipple, then unscrew it and drink half the bottle.

“The list,” I say.

“I’ll give it to you in Chicago.”

“Now,” I say as lightly as I can against my tension. “I just need to see it.”

She snaps open her handbag, passes four pages to me, handwritten on legal paper. I make a rough count. Well over a hundred major meth dealers, all across the state, twenty-seven on the Navajo rez alone.

Rey’s eyes suddenly open wide at something behind me and I drop my water bottle, liquid spilling across my lap and onto Talancón’s shoes. Snorting angrily, she bends over to brush off the water and I leap out of the seat and run sideways. Talancón’s quick to react, half rising to chase me before a green-uniformed Border Patrol guard raps a handgun against her head. Talancón staggers before two other BP guards batter her to the floor and handcuff her.

“You’ve made a bad mistake,” Talancón says to me in a hiss.

“I’m your biggest mistake,” I shoot back.

She doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“You don’t know computers,” I say. “You knew what to ask for, but you didn’t know why I chose that legend.” She shakes her head rapidly, trying to clear the fog, her eyes alert, half-narrowed, menacing. “Judith Dunnigan Fletcher. You didn’t ask me why she disappeared.”

Talancón is very, very puzzled, suddenly very, very afraid.

“She murdered her entire family. Embezzled several hundred thousand dollars from her corporation. And just disappeared.”

“Where is she now?” Talancón croaks.

“Right here,” I say, inches from her face. I rip out her wallet, open it to her brand-new, platinum-grade driver’s license with her photo and new name. “And here’s your new U.S. passport. Judith Dunnigan Fletcher. Plano, Texas.”

“I’m not her,” she protests. A strong surge of passengers floods by, exiting an American gate. She bolts to her feet, shrugging off deputies, tries to run and blend with the passengers.

Two suited men block her way, grasp at her arms, fighting to contain her manic energy while holding her subdued.

“Meet Jackson Caller, U.S. Marshal,” I say. “Here to take you to Texas where you’ll quickly be tried for murder.”

“I’m a Mexican national,” she announces boldly. Still a tigress. “I can prove that in any court. The documents are fake.”

“Meet Jack Bob Deeter, U.S. State Department,” I say. “He’ll verify that your U.S. passport is absolutely, entirely authentic. These aren’t counterfeit IDs. I arranged for real paper.”

“You arrogant whore,” she hisses. “You’ve killed me.”

“You threatened my daughter,” I say. “My daughter. She’s my life — you threatened my life. No longer. No more. We’re done.”

“When I’m free,” she shouts back over her shoulder, “when I prove who I really am, I’ll come for you!”

I figure I’ve got at least a year before she beats our legal system. By then, I’ll be lost myself, adrift on the Navajo rez with a new name and a new life.

Lame Elk by Leonard Schonberg

Ashland, Montana

Lame Elk awoke suddenly. He knew he had been dreaming. Now he tried to catch the dream before it disappeared down the dark hole dreams escape to when you’re not fast enough to catch them. For a few moments he almost had it. Then it was gone.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and the bilious taste told him he was going to be sick. He rolled off the cot onto the cement floor. Propped on his hands and knees in the darkness, he retched, the dry heaves tightening his abdomen like a fist. Gasping for breath, he fell onto his side, then pushed himself into a sitting position. Assaulted by the stink of his vomit-encrusted clothes, he forced himself to breathe through his mouth even though it made the dryness worse.

A metal gate screeched and the corridor outside his cell was flooded with light. Lame Elk blinked at the knife thrust of light that penetrated his skull. At least now he could see where he was. Staggering to his feet, he filled the plastic cup on the dirty sink with cold water and drank. He was on his third cupful when he heard footsteps approaching The deputy, Tyler Erickson, was staring at him through the bars of the cell door.

“You are one sorry son of a bitch, Lame Brain,” said Erickson, inserting a key in the lock and swinging the door open.

The Indian tried to force a smile but his lips were too bruised and swollen. The deputy, a tall, wiry man, stood with his thumb hooked in his belt, the hand resting next to the butt of his revolver.

“How the hell can you stand your own stink? I told the sheriff we should have left you lying out there in the snow, but you know how good-hearted he is.”

“I don’t remember anything,” Lame Elk said. He had difficulty recognizing his own voice. “What happened to my face?”

Erickson snorted and shook his head in disgust. “Russ says if you try to come into his bar again he’ll send you to the happy hunting ground. You owe him for a busted stool and a smashed mirror. Here’s the bill. He says you should put the money in this envelope and mail it to him by the first of the month or he’s going to press charges.”

“Did he do this to my face?”

“You got into a fight with three guys. Not from around here. Russ called us but by the time we got there they were gone. You were lying in the street. Twenty below zero and you were just lying there.”

“You should have left me there.”

“If it was up to me, I would’ve. Let’s go. I have your jacket and stuff in the office. You can go back to the rez and sleep it off. This jail ain’t a motel.”

Lame Elk, unsteady on his feet, shambled after the deputy down the brightly lit corridor. His large bulk filled the doorway as he followed Erickson into the office. The deputy picked up a form from the desk and pointed to the items lying next to it. “One wallet containing six dollars. A pocketknife. One sheepskin coat. Sign here.”

The Indian leaned over the desk and rested his wrist on the paper to control the trembling of his hand. At that moment the front door of the office opened and a ruddy-faced man entered, his Stetson pushed low on his head. The burst of frigid air that accompanied him into the room blew the paper from the desk as Lame Elk turned to face him.

Ignoring the two men in the room, the man took off his coat and hat and hung them on a rack in the corner. He smoothed back his thinning gray hair and rubbed his hands briskly together.

“Mighty cold,” he said, acknowledging the deputy for the first time.

“He’s ready to go.” Erickson gestured toward the Indian.

“Hello, sheriff,” Lame Elk mumbled, unwilling to meet the man’s gaze. Instead, he stared at the star pinned on the guy’s shirt.

The sheriff squeezed behind his desk and sat down heavily in a swivel chair. The deputy had picked up the signed form off the floor and placed it in front of the sheriff, who ignored it.

Lame Elk took his belongings from the desk and awkwardly put on his jacket. The sheriff regarded him thoughtfully. Whenever he saw Lame Elk, he thought of the Indian’s father, Bear Hunter. The same broad shoulders and barrel chest. Long black hair and piercing eyes. The difference was that Bear Hunter had been a chief of the Northern Cheyenne, a man who commanded respect, not a drunken saloon Indian. It was the memory of Bear Hunter, a man he considered a friend until his death, that tempered his disgust when he looked at Lame Elk.

“Wait,” he called out as Lame Elk reached the door. The Indian hesitated, turning to face the sheriff. The deputy, busying himself at the file cabinet, also paused and swung his head around.

The sheriff pointed to the chair in front of his desk. Tyler Erickson, disgusted by the stink of puke and alcohol fumes in the office, grimaced and turned back to his files. Lecturing these Indians was, he knew, a waste of time, but he wasn’t about to tell the sheriff that. If Moran hadn’t learned that in his twenty-two years as sheriff, he hadn’t learned anything.

Lame Elk sat down but refused to meet the man’s eyes. The sheriff rummaged through his desk drawer before pulling out a small object from the very back.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked.

The Indian stared at the deer hide pouch. “A medicine bundle?”

“A medicine bundle,” Sheriff Moran agreed. “I thought you’d like to have it. It belonged to your father.”

Lame Elk looked directly at the sheriff. “How come you have it?”

“Bear Hunter gave it to me before he died. He told me to keep it for you until the time came when you needed it most. I think that time has come.”

Erickson, his back to the two men, scowled. What the hell had gotten into Moran?

The sheriff held the pouch out to Lame Elk. For several moments the Indian sat immobile, then reached for it. He was unable to control the trembling of his hand. Staring at the beaded borders of the medicine bundle, he thought not of Bear Hunter, but of his mother, Star Woman. He remembered the winter she had sewn those beads on the pouch. It had been a time of brutal cold and heavy snows. Game was scarce and supplies were not getting through to the reservation. Many people died that winter, including his brother and sister. His mother, too, was sick with consumption. The dark spots on the deer hide of the bundle were, he knew, flecks of blood that had escaped from between her fingers when she covered her mouth while coughing. He scraped at them with his thumbnail, but they were now part of the hide, just as his mother’s gaunt face was part of his memory.

“Your father will need this,” she had told him. Perhaps she was right. Bear Hunter had survived and become a chief. He, Lame Elk, had survived too, although he often wished he hadn’t. Star Woman, the mother he loved, had died before she could see another winter.

“There’s a man you should see today before you go back to the reservation,” Sheriff Moran said.

Lame Elk blinked. He had forgotten he was still in the sheriff’s office.

“His name is Johnson. Hugh Johnson. He’s got an office above the hardware store. He wants to meet you.”

“Why?”

The sheriff shrugged. “I’ll let him tell you. I told him you’d stop by this morning.”

Leaving the warmth of the office, Lame Elk shivered as the first blast of icy wind hit him. He thrust his hands into his sheepskin jacket pockets and, leaning into the wind, walked down Ashland’s main street. Unconsciously, he fingered the medicine bundle, still held in his right hand.

On this frigid Saturday morning in January, the town seemed deserted. A pickup truck stacked with bales of hay drove slowly down the street, exhaust vapors billowing behind it. The snow crunched beneath Lame Elk’s boots as he headed for the café, the lettering of its sign blurred by the wind-induced tears that obscured his vision.

At first, the waitress ignored him. Two white men seated at the counter gave Lame Elk a dirty look when he sat down near them. They picked up their plates and coffees and headed to a booth.

“Can I get some coffee, please?” Lame Elk said to the frizzy-haired woman busying herself to his left, arranging pie slices on a turntable at the counter.

She glanced at him with disgust. “You got money?”

Lame Elk pulled out his wallet and extracted the six dollars it contained. He held the bills up in the air so she could see them. The waitress set a cup in front of him, hard enough so that coffee overflowed the rim and ran onto the counter. Lame Elk sopped it up with a napkin. He stretched his arm out for the sugar container and picked out a handful of packets. Meticulously, he emptied six of them into his cup and stirred the now thick brew. He closed his eyes and sipped the coffee. He nodded contentedly to himself when the bad taste in his mouth finally disappeared.

Lame Elk’s nausea had subsided and he was hungry. The waitress ignored him again when he raised his hand to get her attention and he decided not to ask her for anything else. Standing up, he slapped a dollar down on the counter and walked to the door. The two white men in the booth glared at him when he left.

Midmorning and still bitterly cold. Lame Elk looked up and down the street, his breath rising in a cloud above his head. He couldn’t bear the thought of returning to his hovel on the rez. The sheriff had mentioned someone named Johnson, a man who wanted to meet him. Lame Elk couldn’t imagine why. He didn’t know any Hugh Johnson. Yet the hardware store was only a block away. Might as well, Lame Elk thought. Got nothing else to do.

Standing in front of the store, he peered up at the dark second-floor windows. There was no sign indicating what kind of office it was. Lame Elk pushed open the door at the side of the store’s display window and trudged up a flight of wooden steps. Black letters were printed on the frosted glass of a closed door. Office of Economic Opportunity. The words meant nothing to Lame Elk. He turned the knob and found himself in a room with a metal desk and three straight-backed chairs. A door at the opposite end of the room was closed. Lame Elk stopped in front of the desk, as if whoever usually sat there might reappear. He stared at a painting hanging on the wall behind it. Mounted Indians on a high bluff pointed at white men approaching in the distance.

Lame Elk scratched his head, wondering why the sheriff had sent him here, if no one was around. He was on the verge of leaving when a slender man with a neatly trimmed beard entered the room from the inner door. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, no different from Lame Elk’s attire, but the man’s clothes were clean. “I thought I heard someone come in,” he said. “Secretary’s not here on Saturdays. I’m Hugh Johnson.”

“The sheriff said you wanted to see me.” Lame Elk became aware once again of the dismal sight he presented with his filthy, foul-smelling clothes.

“You Lame Elk?”

He nodded. He wasn’t proud of it.

“What happened to your face?”

“I don’t remember.”

Johnson frowned. “Come inside to my office. We can talk there.”

Lame Elk followed him through the door and into a small office. A bookcase, a desk, a padded chair, and a straight-back chair for visitors comprised its furnishings.

“Have a seat,” Johnson said, easing himself into the chair behind the desk.

“Sheriff Moran told me you wanted to talk to me.”

“The sheriff tells me you’ve been having a rough time.”

Lame Elk shrugged, not knowing if he was supposed to answer.

“Maybe I should tell you exactly what the sheriff told me. If you disagree with any of it, you can say so. He said he was a friend of your father, who was a great chief. After your mother died, you began having a problem with the bottle. Sheriff Moran said he thought many times of trying to help you, but decided you weren’t ready for help. Now, for some reason, he thinks you are. Are you?”

“What kind of help?”

“Help that will bring back your self-respect. Job, clean clothes, a decent place to live.”

“That takes money.”

“It takes more than money. It takes willpower and sobriety. You know what that is?”

Lame Elk lowered his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

“I can help you if you think you’re ready.”

“What do I have to do?”

“The department I work for will find you a place to live right here in Ashland. Just a room, nothing fancy, but clean. And you’ll be responsible for keeping it that way. We’ll see that you get a job and clothes for work. You can pay the store back for the clothes from the money you make working. And after you’ve worked for a month you can decide if you want to stay put in the room or move to a different place. If you decide to stay in the room we found for you, you’ll take over the rent, which isn’t much.”

“Why would you do this for me?”

“Like I said, the sheriff thinks you’re ready for a change. But—” He raised the index finger of his right hand. “There’s a catch. You have to stay sober, you have to report to work every day, you have to stay out of trouble, and you have to go to meetings. Staying out of trouble should be easy if you’re sober. If you break those rules, it’s the end of our agreement. You’re out of the room and out of a job.”

Lame Elk tucked his hands in his jacket pockets. He grasped the medicine bundle, rolling it around in his palm. “What kind of work?”

“You know the feed store on Main Street? Munson’s?”

Lame Elk nodded.

“They need someone to receive orders, stack merchandise, wait on customers, clean up at the end of the day. Interested?”

“Yeah.”

Johnson glanced at his watch. “I’ll go over to the store with you and you can pick out some clothes. After you meet everyone, I’ll take you to the room where you’ll be living. It’s a few blocks from the store.”

“When do I start work?”

“Monday. That okay?”

“Good,” Lame Elk said. He knew if he was busy it would keep his mind off drink. It was the time after his work day ended that worried him. Would he be able to resist temptation?

“You said something about going to meetings. What kind of meetings?”

“AA, Alcoholics Anonymous. You heard of it?”

Lame Elk nodded.

“They meet every evening at a church here in town. You’ll be going to your first meeting Monday when you get out of work.”

Lame Elk’s first week was tough. Booze was never far from his thoughts, but he was busy enough to push it from his mind. Trucks rolled in several days a week, their pallets loaded with feed, fencing supplies, stock tanks, all needing to be unloaded. Stacking materials and ordering were daily chores. Lame Elk found himself enjoying the work, and taking pleasure in using his muscles again. What was most difficult for him was standing up in front of the AA group in the evening after work and admitting he was an alcoholic. By the time he got home after buying his dinner at Burger King, he was almost too tired to eat it.

The second week was easier. Days went by without his wanting a drink. He was able to walk past a bar and ignore the smell of beer and cigarette smoke whenever someone opened the door. The aching in his arms and legs from the heavy lifting at work had subsided. His appetite was better and he was sleeping ten hours a night in a clean room with a clean bed. He’d already paid the feed store half of what he owed for the clothes he’d picked out that first day with Hugh Johnson. And he’d forced himself to write a letter to Russ at the Antlers bar with a twenty-dollar bill inside and a promise to pay the balance for the damage he’d caused. You’ll have it all in another three weeks, Lame Elk wrote.

Hugh Johnson stopped by the feed store during his third week to ask how things were going.

“Good,” Lame Elk said. “Very good.”

“Great. Munson says nice things about you. Come visit whenever you feel a need to talk. I’m in the office most days and two evenings till 9, Tuesday and Thursday.”

Lame Elk nodded. “Thanks.”

He was working outside in the feed store yard stacking fence panels later that week, his gloves doing little to warm his hands in the intense cold of late January. The collar of his Carhartt jacket was turned up around his neck. A stone-gray sky promised more snow by evening. A Chevy pickup truck drove through the yard’s open gate and a man climbed out. He examined some panels and gates before walking up behind Lame Elk.

“I’m looking for a sixteen-foot gate,” he called out.

Lame Elk turned around to encounter a familiar face. The man grinned. “Well, well, look who’s here. You seem a little different than the last time I saw you. You stunk to high heaven then. Almost made me lose my breakfast.”

“I have a sixteen-foot gate,” Lame Elk said. “I’ll get it for you. Want me to load it on your truck?”

“Hey, that’s mighty white of you. That what you’re doing now? Trying to be a white man with good manners?”

“I don’t want no trouble.”

“Trouble? Who’s making trouble, chief? I’m just making small talk. You know, my friend and I didn’t appreciate it that day in the café when you ruined our breakfast. Sitting down next to us, stinking of vomit and piss. My friend, he wanted to go out after you when you left to teach you a lesson. I told him a drunken Indian couldn’t learn shit.”

“I don’t drink anymore.”

“That so? Well, good for you, chief.”

“You want the gate loaded?”

“I’ll think about it. I have some things to get inside. I’m leaving my truck here, okay?”

“Sure. It’ll be here when you come out.”

The man’s steely blue eyes met Lame Elk’s and held his gaze.

Five minutes later, the guy reappeared followed by someone else Lame Elk knew, Jesse Harpole, the feed store supervisor. Harpole was a man Lame Elk usually tried to avoid. The manager had taken a dislike to him for some reason.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Harpole asked, his cheeks flushed in anger.

Confusion covered Lame Elk’s face. “What?”

“Customer says you were rude to him, wouldn’t help him find what he was looking for. And when he did find what he wanted, he said you wouldn’t help him load it.”

Lame Elk shook his head. “That’s not true. I told him I’d be happy to load the gate for him, but he said he wanted to do some more shopping.”

“Go inside and wait for me at the back register. I’ll give you your severance pay when I come in. You’re fired.”

Lame Elk, unable to comprehend what had just happened, kept turning his head to look at the two men as he walked toward the store’s rear entrance.

“Every time I hire a goddamn Indian, I get burned,” he heard Harpole telling the man.

Lame Elk waited at the register, as Harpole had instructed him. He reached into his pocket and fingered his father’s medicine pouch. He pulled it out, sniffed it, and laid it next to the register. He unzipped the Carhartt jacket he’d picked out with Hugh Johnson and dropped it on the floor. Then he unbuttoned his flannel shirt, pulled it off, and let it fall on top of the coat. He bent down and yanked off the boots he’d bought, and unzipped his new Wranglers and stepped out of them. He stood in the emptiness of the back room, his braid a straight black line thick against his spine.

Lame Elk opened the cash register and counted out his wages for the week and scattered the money like dried leaves on the pile of clothing.

He walked out the door, oblivious to the cold and to the first large snowflakes coming down. He walked past the hardware store and looked up at the second-floor windows of Hugh Johnson’s office. Lame Elk clutched Bear Hunter’s medicine bundle in his bare hand and headed home.

Another role by Reed Farrel Coleman

Los Angeles, California

It wasn’t Harry Garson’s fault he didn’t speak a word of Navajo or Apache or Ute or Hopi or whatever the fuck kind of Indian he was. He didn’t know and he didn’t give a shit. Never had and he wasn’t about to start caring now. Not that he was barking about his genetics, mind you. His classic Indian looks — the rich bronze skin, dark and distant eyes, high cheekbones, proudly bent nose, granite jaw, downturned mouth — had landed him over a hundred and fifty roles, large and small, in A, B, and C oaters dating back to 1938’s Forked River, Forked Tongue. As he advanced in years, his classic features, once those of the stereotypical proud brave — “Makeup and Costume, c’mon, get over here and get some fucking war paint and feathers on Harry. He’s got a wagon train to ambush. We’re losing the light, goddammit!” — had morphed into those of the sage chief. The distant eyes were now achingly sad, the brow above them knitted and furrowed. His cheeks had gone hollow and his angular jaw was now crooked thanks to a bar fight with Lock Martin — Klaatu barada nickto. Yes, that Lock Martin, all 7’1” of the guy who played Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still — at Musso and Frank’s in ’53. Word was that Harry was getting the better of it until the normally gentle giant introduced the leg of a bar stool to Harry’s chops.

“Harry, you’re turning my kishkas inside out,” said movie agent Irv Rothenberg when he visited his client in the hospital. “Who picks a fight with a guy bigger than Mount Shasta, for chrissakes? Lock is a sweetheart. What did you say to him to set him off like that?”

“I said Patricia Neal told me he had a small shwantz,” Harry replied, waving his right pinky at his agent. “Big man, little pecker.” Harry even managed a laugh, though his mouth was wired shut.

“Oy gevalt, you’re killing me, Harry!”

Harry was blessed — Irv would say cursed — with the genuine gift of gab, which he could use for good — like talking his way into a part or into a starlet’s bed — or for bad, à la Lock Martin. He also had a facility for doing impersonations. When he was on the set with John Ford, Duke Wayne used to pay Harry to call up the second unit director and give him all manner of insane orders in Ford’s voice. It got so bad that Ford had to start giving special code words to his staff so that they could recognize him and not the schmuck pretending to be him. The irony for Harry was that he didn’t get his first speaking part until 1956’s Red Scout, and then his only line was, “Blue horse soldier with yellow hair like waves, across running river.” Not exactly the stuff of Shakespeare, but the speaking parts came more frequently after that and by the mid-’60s, Harry Garson had landed a regular role as Smells Like Bearstein, Chief of the Sosoomee Tribe, on the short-lived series Crazy Cavalry. By the late ’60s, as Westerns fell out of favor and parts for aging chief types with a flare for the spoken word grew scarce, Harry settled into an angry semiretirement. The few big roles Harry auditioned for in the late ’60s and ’70s, he lost to Chief Dan George. That really got him going, especially when reruns of Little Big Man and The Outlaw Josey Wales played on the movie channels.

“That fucking Canadian prick!” Harry would bark at the screen and imitate Chief Dan George’s quiet, monotone delivery. “Every eighteen-year-old in this country ran to goddamn Canada to avoid the draft and this is who we got in exchange? I bet they had to write out his lines in pictographs, the senile old bastard.”

He was a charmer, Harry, but he had the bitterness in him too, and it began to overtake him as the years passed and the parts — those in the movies and those on his body — shriveled up. These weren’t the only things shriveling up either. He had never been good with money, especially when it was plentiful. Although he denied it until the day he died, Randy “The Crooning Cowpoke” Butterworth of B-movie and early TV fame, was known to have once told Harry he was “the only redskin who acts like a kike, speaks like Olivier, and spends like a nigger.” By the summer of ’83, Harry Garson was about tapped out. Fourteen years since his last meaningful paying gig, he was living on fast food and five-buck-a-blowjob drug whores in a SRO hotel in downtown L.A. Then the phone rang in the hall outside his room and that all changed.

“Chief, the phone’s for y’all!” It was Marissa LaTerre, the black drag queen from two doors down. “Come on, y’ole redskin, you. Man on the phone got me all wet with that sexy voice a his.”

“Wet!” Harry said. “What, he make you piss your pants?”

Harry, long used to being called “chief,” pulled the door open to behold the slender, 6'4” man with dark coffee skin and features as delicate as a first kiss. Without her makeup, lamé outfits, and wig, Marissa was just plain old Morris Terry, formerly of Camden, New Jersey and myriad points in between.

“He says it’s about a part, chief,” Morris cooed like a teenage girl, but it simply didn’t work without the feminine accoutrements. Frankly, delicate features notwithstanding, his golf ball — ball Adam’s apple and towering stature made it a tough sell to begin with. “Y’all think if I do him, there’ll be a part in it for Marissa?”

Harry didn’t answer, pushing his way past Morris-Marissa and to the pay phone, its receiver dangling in midair.

“Yeah,” he barked. “Who is this?”

“Harry Garson, is that you?”

“Last time I checked. Who is this?”

“Dylan Rothenberg, Irv’s kid.”

“Irv’s kid?” Harry was drawing a blank.

“Your old agent, I’m his youngest boy. Remember me? You used to come to my birthday parties when I was little. I’ve got home movies. You gave me my first cigarette and first sip of scotch.”

“Sure. Sure. I remember you. You were the blond-haired kid with the blue eyes. You looked like your shiksa-goddess mother. What was her name... Kitt, right? Kitt was her name. Christ, she was hot.”

“And you’re still the picture of tact and diplomacy, I see.”

“Sorry, kid.”

“No worries, Harry. She still speaks fondly of you as well.”

Harry wisely shifted gears, remembering he’d once nailed Kitt Rothenberg after a movie premier Irv was too sick to attend. “So what’s this about a part? You following in your old man’s footsteps?”

“God no, I teach physics at Hofstra University on Long Island. Someone tracked me down because of my dad having been your agent. I still have some friends and contacts back home who found you for me.”

“So you found me, kid. Now what?”

“You got a pen and a piece of paper?”

He knew he didn’t, but Harry unconsciously patted his pockets.

“Here, honey, you looking for these?” It was Morris, who’d been watching the whole time, handing Harry a little yellow note pad and a pencil. “You can thank me later.” Morris blew Harry a kiss.

They made quite the couple, strolling down Sunset: Harry, stoop-shouldered in his pink Salvation Army leisure suit and the now 6’7” Marissa in her heels, khaki miniskirt, fishnets, and green chiffon blouse. Harry didn’t like acknowledging it, but age and too many Maker’s Marks had rendered his once steel-trap memory rusty and full of holes. Lines, no problem. He could remember reams of dialogue like when he played Geronimo in Mission Apache or the rebel brave Eyes Like Knife in the cult favorite Hunting Ground. He tested himself, running lines with his ersatz escort before they left for the audition.

Harry’s trouble was with figures and his sense of direction. His navigation system was shot and he couldn’t recall phone numbers for shit, not that he’d been in need of that facility any time recently. What Harry needed was someone’s help getting him to the address on Sunset, and it wasn’t like he had thousands of eager candidates from which to choose. He supposed he might’ve gone stag and taken a taxi, but that meant he’d have to pay cab fare in both directions. In turn, that meant he would have to sacrifice a few meals this week. He’d had to do that a lot lately. When he’d weighed the unlikely prospect of getting the part and a paycheck versus lost Big Macs, Whoppers, and Potato World cheese fries — his favorites — Harry decided Marissa’s company and help was worth the four bus fares.

“Will you slow up, goddamnit!” he growled at Marrisa. “You take longer strides than a fucking giraffe!”

“I didn’t know giraffes took long strides when they were fucking, chief.”

“Funny lady.”

“Streisand already got that part.”

“You’re so tall, they could have made a disaster movie about you in the ’70s: Towering Transvestite.”

“Steve McQueen and Paul Neuman can climb all over me whenever they want. Here we are,” Marissa said, looking up at the nondescript building wedged between a dry cleaner and an abandoned music store.

The interior of the building was even less impressive than its exterior. Harry had seen furrier putting greens than the threadbare carpet that lined the lobby floor. Come to think of it, he’d seen cleaner putting greens, and putting greens were half dirt. It wasn’t encouraging and all he could think about as he and Marissa rode the creaking elevator up to the fourth floor were the burgers and cheese fries he’d sacrificed to cover the public transportation. Still, when the elevator jerked to a stop at four, Harry took his traditional deep breaths and mentally flicked up his on switch. Irv Rothenberg had always said that no one auditioned like Harry.

“I got stars in my stable, sure,” Irv once told a junior associate, “but Harry Garson is the guy who bought my house and paid for my first son’s bar mitzvah. He’s automatic, like a given in geometry. He gets the audition, he gets the part.” Problem was that after Crazy Cavalry, Harry couldn’t get many auditions. Charm is less charming on a typecast actor with a bad off-screen rep and too many years on his bones.

“This is the place,” Marissa said, reading Harry’s chicken scratch off the sheet of yellow paper. “The Rights Agency.”

Now this was better, Harry thought. The carpeting in the fourth-floor hallway was clean, and while the pile didn’t exactly tickle your shins, it was at least soft under your shoes. And he liked that the company name was painted in gold and black on the door the way people with class did it in the old days. No cheap plastic piece-of-shit sign or gold-plated tin placard. Class. Harry appreciated class.

“You going to wait for me here or downstairs?” he asked.

“No way, chief, nuh uh. I didn’t take y’all to the church just to get jilted at the altar.”

Harry thought about arguing the point, but he knew better than to use up his limited energy on futile arguments. He knocked, turned the knob, and strode in, his escort looming behind him. The eyes on the two well-dressed men inside the office got big as dinner plates at the sight of Marissa LaTerre. Harry had expected nothing less. Helen Keller, he thought, would’ve gotten big eyes in the presence of the power-forward drag queen, especially dressed up in that outfit.

“I’m Harry Garson,” he said, walking up to the older of the two men. He slid his ancient black-and-white head shot and CV across the top of the fancy etched glass desktop.

“Paul Spiegelman,” the man replied, shaking Harry’s hand. His eyes were still on Marissa. “This is my partner, Mel Abbott.” Spiegelman nodded his head at the man at the adjoining desk. Abbott, who looked about thirty — twenty or so years younger than his partner — stood and shook Harry’s hand.

“And this is...” Abbott said, gesturing at Marissa.

“My agent, Marissa LaTerre,” Harry said, immediately regretting it. He was more nervous than he suspected he would be and the words just came out.

The partners managed not to roll their eyes at that. There was a second round of handshakes.

“Let’s get down to business, shall we?” Spiegelman said, gesturing at the two red leather chairs facing the desks.

Spiegelman was a fit fifty. Compact and thin with probing hazel eyes that looked through Elvis Costello glasses, an angular jawline, a sharp nose, and a crooked but ingratiating smile. He was dressed in a gray, light wool pinstripe suit and his accessories were all silk and gold. To Harry, Paul Spiegel-man smelled of Yale Law School and twenty years at a New York firm, a big New York firm. He was definitely a lawyer or a money man. In the business, they were sometimes one and the same. Mel Abbott, on the other hand, was a Hollywood hyena, all lean and hungry looks. Harry would have to keep an eye out for him.

“The part,” Harry said, unable to contain himself any longer. “What about the part? Where are my lines?”

“Lines?” Abbott asked, seemingly confused.

Spiegelman waved a calming hand at his partner. “I’m afraid you misunderstand, Harry. This isn’t that kind of part.”

“Christ, I knew it!” He jumped out of his chair. “What is this? Listen I—”

“Harry, Harry, please... sit down. Relax. Let me explain.” Spiegelman kept his voice even and reassuring. But what Harry found most reassuring were the two bundles of crisp, rubber-banded bills the older partner was pushing across the top of his desk. “That’s ten thousand dollars there, Harry.”

Now it was Marissa LaTerre’s eyes that got big. Harry’s weren’t exactly squinty either. It was all Harry Garson could do not to reach out and snatch the money. Instead, he sat back down and tried not drooling over the notions of what he could do with that much cash. Visions of cheese fries and hookers, a lot of hookers, danced in his head...

Marissa decided to take her role as agent to heart. “So what are you gentlemen speaking about here for my client?”

“It’s more theater than film work, though it’s a little bit of both, frankly,” Abbott said.

“We want Harry to play the part of an Indian,” Spiegelman added. “We need him and only him for the part, and this ten grand is only a down payment.”

Suddenly, the buzz all came back into Harry’s bones and he was rushing harder than a junkie who’d just gotten fixed with the purest skag on Earth. He was barely thinking of the money anymore. It was about the role. He was so juiced by the thought of being in front of the cameras again, he nearly broke into one of those stupid war dances he’d done in fifteen movies and on almost every episode of Crazy Cavalry.

“But I’m still not hearing what the role is exactly for Harry,” Marissa persisted.

“Harry, do you think you can stay in character for a long period of time?”

“No problem, Mr. Abbott. I worked for some directors who demanded we stay in character for the whole shoot. It was a pain in the balls, but I did it. I’m a professional.”

“See, Mel, I told you Harry was our man,” Spiegelman spoke up. He then launched into a long stroking session, naming several movie roles and commenting on just how well Harry Garson had done this or that. “And even in your comedic roles, you always stood out. My favorite was in the ‘Bismark Goes West’ episode on CC. Your timing was great when you did the line about the Goodyear blimp.”

Harry chuckled. “Yeah, the trooper asks Bearstein how his future will be and I say, ‘It will be a good year...’ Then I look up and yell, ‘Blimp!’ And there’s Bismark and his Siamese kitten Cleo flying overhead in a zeppelin.”

Now they were all laughing. All except Marissa. “I’ll ask this one more time. What’s the role?”

“Fair enough,” Spiegelman said. “Look, we’ve been hired to make training films for Native American tribes looking to set up gaming establishments on reservation lands. It’s about time the indigenous peoples of this country make some profits off the lands the government ceded to them. It’s a difficult and arcane process, as you might imagine, and it just makes sense to the lawyers who do this kind of work to have a tool they can use to train the tribes.”

“Okay,” Marissa said, “that’s better, but—”

Spiegelman held up his palms like traffic cop. “I understand your concerns. Here’s the deal. Harry will have to relocate to the Tucson, Arizona area and live as...” he looked down at a sheet of paper, “Ben Hart, the long-lost son of an elder of the Tohono O’odham tribe, they’re a Pima people. Actually, you’d be part of a subgroup of theirs, but we can discuss all that later. We will have film crews following you and have you miked whenever you leave your house. We will supply you with paperwork, references, etc., and we will walk you through the process of dealing with government agencies and the tribes themselves. But you absolutely must remain in character during this whole period. When you go out to a store or to a diner or go to the bathroom, you go as Ben Hart. Do you understand that, Harry?”

“Who’s Harry? I’m Ben Hart, the long-lost son of a tribal elder of the Tohono O’odham,” he said, perfectly mimicking Spiegelman’s pronunciation. “When do we get going?”

“Well...” Mel Abbott hesitated, “first you’re gonna have to go through some schooling while you’re in L.A. We need you to get very familiar with the role and then we’ll send you down to Tucson. It won’t be a cakewalk, this will be—”

“Stop being such a worrier, Mel. Harry — I mean, Ben Hart is up to it. Right, chief?”

“No problem.”

“Very well then,” Paul Spiegelman said, pushing one of the money piles toward Harry and pulling the other one back. “Here’s half as an advance. When you complete your education for the role up here, you’ll get the second half. I trust you, but our clients need some guarantees, you understand.”

“Well, I don’t!” Marissa stood up and walked over to Mel Abbott’s desk. She sensed he was the more easily intimidated of the two and, at 6’7”, she was pretty intimidating. “What about a little thing called a contract?”

Abbott’s mouth moved silently as he fumbled for an answer. The hyena was looking mighty scared. Harry was enjoying it all and thought Marissa LaTerre born to the role of agent. An image of Irv Rothenberg in fishnets, a miniskirt, and high heels flashed through his mind and Harry shuddered. One of Kitt followed quickly thereafter and Harry almost got hard. Almost.

“Contract. You want a contract?” Spiegelman asked. “You got one. We’ll have it drawn up, but first we had to see if Harry would take the part. It’s only reasonable, no?”

Harry said sure, sure. Marissa was still skeptical. Harry took the money and shoved it in his jacket pocket.

“Now, Harry,” Mel said, “don’t disappear on us with that five grand.”

Harry was really starting to dislike Mel. Most people, he guessed, would dislike Mel. “Listen, mister, I’m a professional. I was never late on set in 150-plus movies. I never called in sick or injured, ever. As hard up as I am, I’m not going anywhere.”

Spiegelman chided his partner. “Mel, I keep telling you, Harry Garson is a pro. Besides, he knows the five large is bubkes compared to what he’ll make for the whole shoot.”

“And speaking of that,” Marissa chimed in, “what are we talking about for the whole gig?”

“Minimum of fifty grand, less the ten up front. Depends how long the shoot goes. Anything over a month, Harry will receive five grand a week. The clock on the shoot starts ticking once he lands at the airport in Tucson. One month from that day, the five grand per kicks in. Once the shoot spills over into the next week, five grand will be prorated. How does that sound to everyone?”

“Wonderful,” Harry said. “When can we sign the papers and get started?”

Mel answered: “It’ll take a day or two to draw up the contract, then we’ll have them messengered over to your hotel and you can have the signed copies sent back here.”

Marissa kept at it. “And you have no issue with a lawyer looking the contracts over?”

“None at all,” said Spiegelman. “Contracts are meant to protect both parties. For now, Harry, go home and enjoy yourself a little. It’s going to be tough work once we get rolling.” He stood and offered his hand to Harry and Marissa. “Mel and I have to get things started on our end, so please excuse us. I think this is going to work out very nicely. Very nicely indeed.”

In the elevator on the way back down, Harry Garson peeled off five crisp hundred-dollar bills and handed them to his new agent. “You should give up the drag queen routine, kid. You’re a natural as an agent.”

“Harry, I can’t take this.”

“Take it. Take it!” he insisted, shoving the money through the low-buttoned chiffon blouse and into Marissa’s thickly foamed bra. “You earned it. Besides, you heard Spiegelman. I’m looking at home-run city here.”

“About that, I—”

“Forget it. When the contracts come, we’ll worry about it.”

“But—”

“No buts. Come on, I’m treating for a cab.”

Paul Spiegelman and Mel Abbott stood silently, watching out their office window as Harry Garson and his drag queen agent stood on Sunset trying to flag down a cab. It was almost as if they wouldn’t speak until the oddest of odd couples was completely out of sight. Of course they understood that no one, not even people in the hallway outside their door, could hear their conversation. Still, they waited. When a cab finally pulled to the curb out front, gobbled up the two riders, and sped off, Spiegelman and Abbott sighed with relief. The older of the two began whistling “We’re in the Money,” but all Mel could do was pace.

“Why the fuck did he have to bring that fucking African queen with him? He— She’s gonna fuck everything up.”

“Mel, will you calm down, for goodness sakes? You’re going to give yourself a stroke.”

“‘Calm down,’ he says. How can I calm down? You know what’s at stake here?”

“I know, Mel. I know.”

“I told you we should have sent a car to pick him up. I told you.”

“If we sent a car for him, he would have gotten suspicious. Harry’s dumb and hungry, but he’s not stupid. He knows the business. He knows that someone who hasn’t worked in nearly fifteen years doesn’t get picked up in a limo for an audition. That would have queered the deal right there.”

“Stooping to puns now, Paul?”

Spiegelman thought about that for a second, snickered quietly, and said, “I didn’t realize.”

“Never mind. So what are we gonna do about Sheena, Queen of the Jungle?”

“Go round up Joey Potholes for me. Tell him I need to see him here. In the meantime, I’ve got Harry Garson’s contract to write up.”

At 4:27 a.m. the next morning, Marissa LaTerre stumbled out of Midnight Cruiser, an after-hours club frequented by freaks, geeks, and beautiful people alike. She’d had a hell of a night, giving head in a back room to a pretty-boy British film star and having the favor returned by the guy’s fifteen-year-old date. She’d also managed to spend every dime of her agent’s fee and then some.

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 Garson 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 remembered 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 seventy-five-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, hand-carved 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 great-granddaughter’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 attaché 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 attaché 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?”

“Sorry.”

“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 attaché 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 grâce: 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 us 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 attaché case into the Jeep.

Now Harry Garson finally understood why he fit. He’d been born here and was of the Pima people, but he wouldn’t be of them for very much longer if he didn’t get a handle on what was going on. It occurred to him that Marissa LaTerre had probably not taken off of her own free will and that she had more than likely come to the end of the road prematurely and violently. Harry spent the rest of the morning and afternoon visiting many of the offices he had visited in the last few weeks, trying to collect copies of the documents he’d signed and blindly filed without taking a second look. And once he had gathered as much of the paperwork as he could, he made two last stops.

While he drove back to the bungalow, a bungalow he was shocked to discover he owned free and clear, in a pickup truck he also owned free and clear, Harry ignored the thick envelope on the seat next to him and kept staring at the photograph of his biological father. Even after more than seventy-five years of life, it was an amazing feeling to fit in and to belong, to know your place in the world. Maybe all those years made it that much sweeter. Rebecca and the ancient woman, Issac Hart’s youngest sister and Harry’s aunt, explained that his father had fallen deeply in love with a teacher at the Indian school and had gotten her pregnant. He had wanted to marry her, but she refused. She’d had the baby, but disappeared a few weeks later. He had never stopped trying to find her and the child he had named Ben.

“He worked hard to purchase many acres of land off tribal territory, so he could prove his worth to the teacher when she returned or he found her,” Rebecca explained. “He never found her and she never returned, but in your father’s will he left the land to you and your children. Until you returned, it was to be kept by the family. We were not allowed to sell it or use it. I have been told this story since I was a child. The fact that your father bought white land when he did has been a source of great pride for us, but I always thought it was only a story.” It was no story and the proof was there on the seat next to Harry.

It was dusk when he got back up to the little abobe house in the foothills, a place he had come to love. He also loved how the light of the vanishing sun lit up the sky with streaks of orange and purple, gold and blue. And although his eye-sight wasn’t great in the falling darkness without his glasses, he caught sight of the Jeep parked across the road from his house. If he hadn’t been looking for a strange vehicle, he probably wouldn’t have spotted it, but after what he’d learned today, he expected it to be there. He rolled to the side of the road, reached into the envelope, and pulled out one particular document. He took his deep breaths, flicked up his famous on switch, put the truck back in gear, and pulled onto the dirt driveway. When he got out of the Ford, Harry held the document out in front of him like a shield. He had it all planned, the words he was going to say to save himself. Yet, now out of the truck, he decided not to speak. Harry Garson was an old man, too old to be fully transformed into Ben Hart at this late date. Belonging, being Ben Hart, son of Isaac Hart, even for only a few hours, had answered all the important questions that he’d kept locked up inside all these years. What he really hoped for was that the end wouldn’t hurt too much when it came.

The elegantly thin man with the pockmarked skin and cold fish eyes stood in the trashed living room and dialed the untraceable number Walter had given him. He had been thorough, making sure it looked like his target had walked in on a robbery, surprised the thief, and was shot to death in the process. Joey had even used a .45 on the old man, not the kind of weapon a professional killer would generally use.

“You’re fucked,” Joey said when Walter finally picked up.

“How’s that?”

Joey explained about the document the old Indian held when he got out of the truck.

“He was holding a piece of paper in his hand, so what?”

“It’s a last will and testament,” the assassin said, “a brand-new one, dated today.”

“Shit!”

“Shit is right. He left the land to the tribe and some woman named Rebecca to do with as they please. I don’t know how he managed it, but the will was witnessed by the mayor of Tucson and a tribal elder. He’s got a Polaroid of the signing stapled to the will. You’re fucked.”

“You said that already.”

“My money?”

“You did your job. It’ll be in your account in the morning.”

There was a click on the other end of the line.

As Joey left, he took one last look at his victim to make sure everything was just so. And as he did, he thought he recognized the old Indian from a TV show he had watched as a kid.

“Bearstein!” he whispered to himself. “Sorry, chief.”