Bad News

18

Little Feather got out of the cab, walked into the supermarket through the automatic in door, made a U-turn, aimed for the automatic out door, and Andy came in the automatic in door. He gave her the smallest head shake the world has ever barely seen, though Little Feather saw it loud and clear, he did not look at her, and he moved on into the store.

And so did she. He got a cart, and so did she. He started up and down the aisles, taking his time, adding very few items to his cart but studying many, reading cereal boxes and vitamin supplement labels and safe handling instructions on shrink-wrapped hamburger. Little Feather followed him for a few minutes, until she realized he didn’t want her to follow him, and then she went off on her own.

Which was when she realized somebody was following her. A chunky little guy of about thirty, very much an Indian from the reservation, dressed in old blue jeans, which had been faded by work and use and not by the designer, and a red plaid shirt of the sort worn by some men upstate and some women in the city, and he was not a very good follower. He kept being in Little Feather’s way as she roved about, but he would practically rather fling himself over the high display racks than meet her eye. He also was forgetting to put things in his cart, except that, when she stopped to put something in hers, he’d immediately grab something to his right, at waist level, without looking at it, and dump it in. Did he really need Depends? Poor fellow, and so young, too.

Okay, Little Feather got the picture. The tribes had put somebody on her, to tail her around and see whom she made contact with, and Fitzroy and the others knew about it, or had guessed it would happen, and were warning her not to try to meet the same old way.

Which made her realize, as she wended her slow and thoughtful way through the supermarket, that the cops might be doing exactly the same thing, with a more competent shadow, someone she might not tip to right away, or ever. So what did this mean?

Was she on her own now? Couldn’t she meet up with Fitzroy and the others at all? That could create a little tension.

Except that Andy was still in the store, wandering around; Little Feather saw him from time to time, down at the end of some aisle. So there was more to come, somehow. But what?

It was fifteen minutes later, when she was in the dairy section once again, this time trying to find the low-fat plain yogurt, as opposed to the no-fat plain yogurt—ya gotta have a little fat—when another cart stopped next to hers, and Andy leaned past the end of her cart to reach for a Honey Walnut Lime Rickey Yogurt With No Sodium!, and when he’d moved on away, there was an additional item in her cart. It was a magazine, and it was called Prevention.

She didn’t read the note tucked inside the magazine until she got back to the Winnebago. It was hand-printed on two small sheets of Four Winds motel stationery, and it said:

Don’t telephone. We think they might be tailing you, to see if you’ve got what they call “confederates.” And they could also be tapping the pay phones there.

At four o’clock, call a cab. There’s a big shopping center called SavMall outside of town. Go there, go to the drugstore there, buy something you want, come back.

If you see your tail, mark him, but don’t let him know you’re onto him.

Everything’s fine with us, no problem.

Well, who cares about you people? Little Feather thought. Four o’clock. Another cab ride.