Thirty-four


The six of us made our way back to my car. With Charlie's help I backed the Jeep down to a spot where I could safely turn it around.

The Ukrainians' car had to be moved out of the way so the Jeep could pass. They'd left the windows open and the doors weren't locked, but they hadn't been so accommodating as to leave the key in the ignition.

With five hundred or so pounds among them, not including leathers, Charlie and the other guys tried moving the car with brute force but it wouldn't budge. They tried again and when the veins started popping out on necks and foreheads we made them stop. They looked at one another and I heard Danny say, under his breath, "Dude, I know she's hot, but I'm not scratching up my bike to move that hunk of junk."

The assembled brain trust gave it some thought, but pushing the car with either the Jeep or the bikes was not a good plan. Besides, we might overdo it and send the car sailing off the side of the mountain. In any event, it wasn't necessary. Babe Chinnery climbed off Charlie's bike and brushed the three men aside. She slid into the Toyota and her head disappeared under the steering wheel.

"Six years of hanging out with drunken roadies and musicians who frequently lost their wallets, their airline tickets, their wives . . . and their car keys," she explained, calmly hot-wiring the car. Another of her not-so-hidden talents. Once the engine came to life, Charlie put the car in neutral and single-handedly pushed it into the brush and out of the way into one of the wider switchbacks. Macho man stuff, undoubtedly for Babe's benefit.

The Toyota was a junker—its owner was clearly not the kind of guy who took his car in for a tune-up when the little red light flashed and told him to. Red masking tape held one of the brake light covers on. Inside, the car stank of cigarette smoke; fast-food wrappers littered the floor of the backseat; and there were plenty of beer cans, as well as three empty bottles of Popov vodka.

"Nothing but the best," Babe said. "You know these losers?"

"Not in the biblical sense," I said.

One of my hand weeders was embedded in the Toyota's left front tire and I poked around in the dirt road as much as I could by the headlights of the Harleys looking for the other one—I didn't want any of us to suffer the same fate the Michelin Man and his friend had.

"Find it?" Babe asked.

"No. Just didn't want to take any chances." A ridiculous thing to say under the circumstances.

"I think this Toyota was the car I saw on the way to Oksana's. The same one that followed me to the gas station on the highway," I said.

"What the hell for?" Babe asked.

Lucy was hovering, wolfing down Danny's soggy but still edible turkey sandwich. Danny stood by, wondering how she'd thank him.

"Why are you looking at me?" she said, mouth full.

"They were following me because they thought I was you."

Lucy was used to being followed, at parties, at conferences; she'd even been followed into the ladies' room once at a bar on the Upper East Side, but that time it hadn't been entirely unexpected or unwelcome.

"Why would anyone want to follow me?"

"It has to be your story."

"The Quepochas' fight for recognition has been going on for twenty years," Lucy said. "And people have been arguing about casinos for just as long."

Maybe. But Titans's financial difficulties had only recently come to light. I was betting that they were connected and that connection was the catalyst for Nick's murder.

The bikers helped me load my gear and tools on top so that Babe and Lucy could ride with me. Once again the blue tarp and the bungee cords came in handy. In the car I brought the girls up to speed, as Charlie slowly led us down the mountain. They left us at the entrance to Titans with a standing invitation for a meal on the house at the Paradise; Lucy promised Danny a personal, gourmet thank-you in New York in exchange for his turkey sandwich.

I suggested we crash in my room and drive home in the morning. "There are two double beds and a love seat. Does that work for you two?" Babe and Lucy agreed and we walked to Lucy's rental car to get her overnight bag. Even from a distance we could tell something was wrong. The trunk of the car wasn't closed properly. Inside it, Lucy's expensive red leather suitcase was zipped closed but with a small scrap of fabric stuck in the teeth.

"Hey, that's my Burberry." She unzipped the bag and saw that her usually carefully packed clothing had been rummaged and thoughtlessly restuffed in the bag, her expensive scarf stuck in the zipper.

"You know, I'm used to this when I fly," she said, pissed off and checking to see if anything was missing. "Generally there's a slip of paper explaining why it's critical to national security for some lonely TSA guy to sniff my undies, but here, for crying out loud?"

"It was probably the cops," I said. "I reported you as missing." I'd call Winters in the morning to tell her everything was all right.

"You did? That was so sweet," she said, refolding her things.

"Don't get too mushy," I said. "No one paid any attention until I reported your car as stolen."

"Nevertheless," she said, "you're a real friend."

So was Babe. If it hadn't been for her, Lucy and I would still be on the mountain with two angry Ukrainians trudging up to meet us. Maybe I wasn't quite as alone in the world as I sometimes felt. And maybe I shouldn't keep quite so tight a grip on that F word.

A handful of stragglers were hanging out in the Titans lobby when we entered. Hector chatted with a young Hispanic couple near the corpse flower and gave me a nod as I came in, then a longer look when he saw Babe and Lucy trailing behind me. On our way to the elevator, Helayne, the bartender, waved. I knew she wanted me to go over, but I pretended it was just a hello wave; I'd had as much excitement and new information as I could handle for one night.

"What, is this your new hangout?" Lucy asked. "Does everyone here know you?"

"It's your fault. I've spent so much time in this lobby waiting for you, I was beginning to feel like an employee . . . or a hooker."

In the room we dumped our things and I put on the television for white noise. Lucy took the love seat, Babe and I the double beds. Before long we'd spread out and had Hoovered the contents of the minibar; we sat in our underwear drinking little nips as if it was a pajama party.

"How did you ever get mixed up with these guys?" Babe asked.

"The Titans casino is never going to happen," Lucy said, popping peanut M&M's into the air and catching them in her mouth. "At least that's my story. The Crawford brothers don't want the casino," she said, searching for the last nut in the bag. They'd seen what had happened on other reservations when the casino operators came in. A handful of tribal leaders got fabulously wealthy, and the majority of the members—if they really were members—got stipends, which turned the young people into drug addicts and wastrels—chronically unemployed, undereducated, and more interested in flashy cars and electronics than in preserving their culture.

"That may be honorable, but is it really up to them if that's what most of the tribe wants?" I asked.

"According to them, they are most of the tribe, one of the seven original families of record in the 1910 census, at least legitimate ones—although Daniel Smallwood has been quietly recruiting members for the last few years with the promise of a big casino payoff," Lucy said. "The newest legitimate member of the tribe is their nephew, the famous baby Sean."

When Lucy agreed to meet with the Crawfords, they had suggested she also get in touch with their old friend Nick Vigoriti. They knew the tribal side of the story and Nick knew the hotel side.

"What did he have against the casino?" Babe asked.

Lucy shook her head. "I never found out," she said, crumpling the M&M bag.

Just then, in the same way that your eyes eventually get used to the dark and you can make out things you couldn't moments earlier, the white noise of the television turned into real words, "Breaking News."

Detective Stacy Winters spoke. Claude Crawford had been apprehended near the old Yankee Shoe factory. William James Crawford is a fugitive but we have good information and feel that he will be in custody soon. The two brothers are believed to have been responsible for the recent murder of Nicholas Anthony Vigoriti. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of William Crawford is urged to dial the number on your screen.

The reporter went on to chronicle the brothers' past offenses, including the covered wagon fire. File footage showed the blaze and two staggeringly handsome men being led away. "Now I know why you stayed," Babe said.

"And now you know why he didn't come back," I said.

"How can they say this stuff without being sure?" Babe said. She knew how; we all did. And being even a small part of the system, Lucy felt rotten about it.

"You met him," Babe said. "Did he seem like a killer to you?"

Lucy didn't think so, but she had been so taken with Claude that she hadn't paid much attention to Billy.

"He was younger than Claude. He had a Michael's shopping bag with him."

"Does that make him a nice guy?"

"No! But it made him look . . . I don't know, craft-y . . . safe, normal," she said.

Unless there was a gun in the bag, I thought. I could tell Babe was thinking the same thing.

Four loud knocks on the door jolted us. Lucy yelped; Babe jumped up and ran for her handbag.

"Do criminals knock?" Lucy whispered.

Sometimes. If they don't want you to think they're criminals. "Who is it?" I asked, trying to sound tough.

"It's Hector, ma'am. And the police."

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