A Far Gone Night (13 page)

“What’s the reputation of the casino?”

“It’s spotless. No charges ever brought, no complaints ever brought except from a few sore losers. Maybe on the up and up,” Lunatic said, “or very smooth.” We pulled onto the blacktop and took a right, speed increasing to an easy sixty-five as darkness fell.

We drove in silence for the next forty-five minutes, the big car’s headlights throwing beams of light before us. We took another right down a state-maintained road into the reservation and, ultimately, the village of Crow’s Wing. There was a gas station/convenience store, a hardware store, a small grocery, a non-denominational church, a Mexican restaurant called El Lobo, and a burger joint—The
Pow
Wow. We drove slowly through the town, passing just a few side streets, dilapidated houses with new cars parked outside and the omnipresent satellite dishes on the roofs, and then out of the village.

About two hundred yards on the other side of town, we pulled over in the gravel parking lot of The Tomahawk, according to the big, red neon sign blinking on and off. Another sign, purple and not blinking, proclaimed “Ladies Welcome.” The cinderblock building had no visible windows. A big glass door beckoned us inside.

We got out of the Packard and headed for that big glass door.

 
“You know this Henry Thurmond guy?”

“Yes.”

“Tough guy?
Truly?”

“Yes”

The gravel shifted underfoot as we continued across the parking lot. I said, “Tougher than you?”

“Don’t know.”

And there we were, heading into a bar probably filled with tough guys, an establishment that just might make
Shlop’s
Roadhouse look like a daycare center. That glass door, however, was way better than the tattered army blanket that indicated the way into
Shlop’s
. It gave The Tomahawk a certain panache that
Shlop’s
could not match.

Then there I was, probably the only white guy in town, starting to channel General George Armstrong Custer. I thought of the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

Moon stopped just as he put his hand on the door, turned and looked at me and said, “Why are you smiling, white eyes?”

“Adrenalin,” I said, “body fluid of champions.”

Moon just shook his head, pulled the door open, and walked inside. I followed, starting to enjoy the rush that comes with intense activity. I asked the Lord to forgive me—only later.

T
he Tomahawk was properly named. The first thing that made it edgy, at least to me, Mr. Token White Eyes, was the fact that the place went quickly but steadily silent the minute we walked in. No music, no backdrop of convivial conversations or even cursing, and no one moving around, either. No women speaking.
Human activity just falling away.
In a bar.
Just pairs of dark eyes staring at us in dim lighting.
Freeze-framed life on the
rez
.
The only thing moving was an eight-ball that had just been struck on the nearest pool table. I watched it fall into a pocket.

“Reminds me of your place, Lunatic,” I said.

“And how are you getting home?” he asked, scanning the clientele.

We moved over to the bar, tended by a young woman who was really quite pretty in the limited lighting. The closer we got, though, I could see that she’d once been stunning, but repeat trips down hard roads had eroded her beauty. Her eyes were black and suspicious. She was wearing a Timberwolves sweatshirt. Apparently more authentic in her sports
faves
than Fire Bear and his affinity for big blonde warriors with blunt instruments and horned helmets.

“Henry here?”
Lunatic asked.

She studied Moon for a moment, then pushed away from behind the bar, sighed as if she’d been assigned the weight of the world, and disappeared through a door behind the bar. The fragrance of frying steak, onion rings and beer wafted around me. My mouth watered.

“
Anin
, Lunatic Mooning,” a voice boomed out from behind us, cracking the silence like focused thunder, a deep voice with challenge in it. “So who’s the
chi-
mook
?”

I remembered Moon telling me that word was not a complimentary one for white men. I also knew it was a token insult, like any racial slur used by various cultures to start intimidating or challenging an outsider, or someone known but not liked. I had heard varieties in places like Malaysia, the Philippines, Jordan, and
Kazakstan
, among others. It did not intimidate. Or anger. Of course, if he had called me a
bingawallasala
I might have snapped, but we weren’t in Central Australia.

Moon turned, as did I, and faced a pig-tailed man in his early 30s, bodybuilder’s physique, eyes that bored into mine.
Must be that younger generation of Ojibwa or
Chalaka
who don’t respect tribal traditions and beliefs.

“
Boozhoo
,
and he’s with me, Puking Cat,” Moon said.

The man smiled sardonically. “I told you not to call me that, Lunatic. Did you not listen?”

“No one with brains listens to you, Puking Cat,” Lunatic said.

Puking Cat
?
Puking-for-real-
Cat
?
I wondered. While I wondered about the genesis for his name, the young Ojibwa hesitated, as if he were considering getting physical. If he really were a cat, his butt would be wiggling. His eyes did not show fear, but they did show respect. He turned to me.

He said, “What’s so fucking funny, chi-
mook
?”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling my old competitive juices perking, forcing the point, expediting the confrontation he wanted. I’d seen it all before, and I just don’t have patience anymore to go through all the steps. So I didn’t. “I was just thinking about how silly your tough-guy persona is. I mean, you
look
tough, but there’s
a certain
wimpiness
about your character that just doesn’t go with how
you
think you are perceived. I mean, you obviously work out, but I have just a teensy hunch that you wear white girls’ panties.”

His hand went behind him and suddenly there was a knife coming up low at me.
Predictable.
Close to boring.
Maybe he pulled it to be menacing, maybe prelude to attack.
All the same to me.
No time for a focus group to process the data. I caught his knife wrist and forced the blade low and down with the cutting edge away, grabbed Puking Cat by the back of his wool shirt, pivoted and pulled. Using his momentum, I propelled him face-first into the bar. There was a crack of bone and a cry and the knife fell to the floor. Moon bent down and picked it up, as if it were nothing more than a cigarette butt.

Puking Cat, his face a bloody mask, turned from the bar, where he had briefly slumped, and lunged at me. I had to give him credit. I had mistakenly assumed that the facial into the bar would have calmed his waters and persuaded him to smoke the pipe of peace. Every time I’d used that move before, it had always worked. There goes the flaw in that word
assumed
again.

This time, I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pulled him up to get a better grip, then spun and dragged him toward the front door, giving him a little hitch to pick up speed and then slamming him into the wall. He was supposed to slump to the floor, but he didn’t. He staggered, then got his legs under him and stood, taking a deep breath.
Uh-oh
.

Snorting and blowing a fine spray of blood, he grinned, ducked down and came at me again, cautiously this time.
Quick study
.
He adopted a boxing stance, leading with his left, shaking his head sharply to get the blood away from his eyes.
A boxer?
Heck, I could do that, too
, I thought. It was growing more intriguing by the minute as he swung wildly with a left roundhouse that I ducked. I planted my feet, and delivered a hard right to his ribs. His heavy wool shirt helped cushion the blow, but he grunted in pain and launched a right cross which caught me just above my left ear, a solid blow that hurt and set the bells to ringing in my head.

I faked a punch to his face, and when his arms came up in defense, I drove another hard right into the same ribs I had hammered before. This time he yelped, and I quickly slugged again, getting my weight into it. His arms came down to protect his ribs, and that was when I brought another right, an uppercut, to his chin.

Puking Cat’s teeth rattled, chipping against each other, and I saw something small and white fly into the darkness. He sagged, I stepped back, and when he didn’t fall, I provided a left jab to straighten up his face, followed by a hard right to his jaw. He went down as if he’d been kissed by a cobra.
Tough guy, but victim of the old one-two
.

The bells in my head had stopped as two men about the same age as my attacker came forward, gave me a look, bent down, picked up Puking Cat, and carried him out of The Tomahawk. A friend will help you move a body, especially if it’s yours.

Breathing a little too hard for my self-respect, I quickly recovered, grateful that I had been lifting and running. I noticed that the noise level in the bar had changed. Someone had put money in the jukebox and I heard Harry
Connick
singing. Surprised me, not the kind of music I expected. Muffled conversations flowed again as I turned back to Lunatic Mooning.

A big man with a nose that had been broken more than once was now leaning across the bar, grinning at me. He was not there when the fight started. His grin was not pleasant. The word that came to mind was
sinister
. His face was fleshy, and even in the dim light of The Tomahawk, I could see that the ravages of acne had left his skin pitted, as if his face had caught fire and someone put out the flames with a track shoe. The girl we had spoken to was gone.

“Henry, this is Thomas O’Shea. Thomas, Henry Drummond,” Moon said.

Henry Drummond surprised me as he reached across the bar and offered his hand. There were big rings on each of his fat fingers. I took his hand, noticing the thickness of the flesh and obvious strength. He did not try to crush my hand by way of intimidation. We shook and let go. Henry, like Puking Cat, had clearly drifted from the Ojibwa way.

“Let’s go back here to my office,” Henry said, exchanging his slumping posture for an erect carriage, turning away and beckoning for us to follow. The man was tall, maybe six-three, and built heavy going to fat. Maybe fifty years old. Something feral about the way he moved. We followed him into a large room. He shut the door.

There was a battered oak desk and matching desk chair in the middle of the room. A couple of nicked-up
Naugahyde
recliners and a rickety coffee table, a pair of gray folding metal chairs, and a floor lamp completed the furnishings. There were posters of nude, sultry women adorning the unpainted walls, a crucifix on the wall opposite the nudies, and an official-looking photograph of John F. Kennedy behind the desk. Boxes of potato chips and beef jerky were stacked everywhere, along with cases of beer, Coca-Cola, and Mountain Dew. Shelves held bottles of whiskey, gin and vodka. A flickering three-tube neon light provided most of the illumination, which was faint.
A red lava lamp slow-
mo’ed
on top of an Army-green file cabinet.

Moon looked at the shelves and said, “Didn’t know your license included hard stuff, Henry.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, going around behind his desk and sitting down. He did not offer us a seat, so we stood. “What can I do
ya
for?”

“I want to know what happened to my niece, Cindy Stalking Wolf,” Lunatic said.

“Yeah, I heard that she took off, two, three years ago.”

“What else did you hear?”

“She was mixed up in some bad shit.” Henry pushed a stack of papers around in front of him. He did not look up.

“What was it?” Moon asked.
“Anything yours?”

Henry looked up, the tone of Moon’s voice lifting Henry’s head. He looked at Lunatic. In the background I could hear the jukebox playing “You Can Do Magic.”

“You know me, man. I do drugs, life insurance, a little this, a little that. Low-level corruption and traditional fraud, you know, payoffs and bribes and such.
Most of the classics.
The American Dream.
I don’t do girls. I got a daughter.”

Moon said, “You’re a prince, Henry. Was Cindy into prostitution?”

“I heard things, here and there, but I’m not the one to ask,” Henry said.

“Who then?”
Moon asked.

Henry looked left, then right, but not at us. He seemed a little conflicted. “Ask around,” he finally muttered.

“That’s what I’m doing with you,” Lunatic said. “So you know the person who can tell me about Cindy, and yet you’re hesitating?” Moon asked, his voice rising a little. I could tell he was
,
how shall I put it? Yes, Lunatic Mooning was
vexed
. He started around the desk. Henry stood up quickly, the desk chair scooting back behind him, wobbling, turning over. I expected a cataclysm of some sort.

“If I don’t tell you,” Henry
said,
his voice low and even and unafraid, “
seein
’ as how you’re talking family, you would probably assault me, I would put you in the hospital, that would provoke questions from law enforcement, and I’d have to pay more hush money to keep my license. So, fuck you, Lunatic Mooning. Go talk to that chi-
mook
Ted
Hornung
. He’s got a club down the road from the casino.
Calls it the Pony Club.
He runs girls. Maybe he knows something about your niece. I don’t.”

“
Migwech
, Henry. I guess I can do that.” Lunatic stepped away from Henry, turned and headed for the door.

“Buy you a beer?” Henry asked, laughing.

“Next time, Henry,” Moon said.

“Always welcome, brother, but don’t bring your rowdy friend. He is not welcome. Bad for business,” Henry said.