Marine Corpse (29 page)

“It’s okay, Mr. Coyne. Everybody sneaks a look the first time.”

He held his right hand up for me to see. Where the thumb and forefinger should have been was a red mound of scar tissue. He had half a middle finger. His ring finger and pinkie remained intact.

He jerked his head toward his office. “Come on. Let’s go in. Hey, Kirk,” he said to his receptionist. “Bring Mr. Coyne and me some coffee, will you?”

I followed Smith into an unprepossessing office. One wall was dominated by a window giving a view down the hill to the Portland harbor. There were the standard wall-to-wall bookshelves lined with legal tomes, a few framed diplomas, plain gray metal desk, and a small conference table. We sat opposite each other at the table.

Smith put his mangled hand on the table. Again, I had trouble not staring at it.

“Mill accident,” he said, flip-flopping his hand around on the table so that I could see all sides of it. “Happened when I was fifteen. My old man owned a sawmill in Lewiston. Did finish work—moldings, valances, door frames, mostly fancy stuff like that. I worked there after school, summers, weekends. Learning the trade, the old man called it. Started by sweeping up the offices, and when I got bigger, I helped with the heavy outside work. Learned to drive the machinery—forklifts, what have you. Summer I was fifteen, Pop figured I was big enough to do some cutting. Thing was, there was this old Frenchman who worked with me, supposed to be breaking me in. Told the damnedest stories. Dirty stories. Raunchy. Very flattering for a kid, the boss’s son, to have this old Canuck tell him dirty stories. One day he really broke me up, and when I started laughing, I ran my hand right through the saw. Didn’t even feel it. The old Frenchie stopped in the middle of his sentence and started bellowing. I looked down, saw the blood gushing out of my hand, and passed out.”

Smith rubbed his scarred right hand with the palm of his left. “I spent five days in the hospital. For a long time those fingers that weren’t there anymore hurt like hell. After that, they started itching. Still do. Damnedest thing. The itch is up where that thumb and finger ought to be. Can’t scratch it. Drives me nuts sometimes. Anyways, when I came home, the old man sat me down. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘you sure’n hell ain’t gonna be no use now. Anyone numb enough to saw his hand off belongs in college.’ So he shipped me off to a private school down in Berwick, then got me into Bowdoin. After that I went off to Stanford for the law degree, then came back and set up shop right here in Portland.”

He smiled at me. “Imagine that was some of the stuff you came to find out. Checking up on me. Tiny Wheeler wants you to corroborate his judgment, way I figure it.”

“Something like that,” I admitted.

Kirk, a dark young man in an expensive-looking suit, brought in a tray with two cups of coffee on it. He set it before us and stood back expectantly.

“That’s just fine, Kirk. Thank you,” dismissed Smith. When Kirk had left the room, Smith said, “You want someone to fetch the coffee, you sure as hell can’t hire a woman. Know what I mean?”

I grinned and nodded. “I certainly do.”

He stirred some cream and sugar into his coffee. I sipped mine black.

Smith settled back in his chair. “Portland’s a good city for lawyering lately. Getting all citified, in its own small way. Yuppieized. We got the most architects and orthodontists per capita in the state. That kind of city.”

I lit a cigarette. Behind Seelye Smith’s gap-toothed grin and country-boy chatter, I detected a shrewdness that made me cautious. Charlie McDevitt had reported that Smith was honest and able. I felt confident about the able part.

He had the habit of touching his hearing aid with his left forefinger and cocking his head sideways at me when he expected me to speak. I found myself raising my voice a notch when I talked to him.

“So what can you tell me about the offer for Raven Lake?” I said.

He scratched his scarred hand absentmindedly. “Right now, probably not any more than you already know. The offer came from an Indian law firm, acting for a partnership in Bangor. What they’re saying is they want to make some kind of retreat out of Raven Lake, a kind of memorial. Place where Indians can go to find their roots. Some damn thing like that.”

“They’re claiming it’s sacred old Indian ground, I understand.”

He nodded. “Well, there
is
a certifiable burial ground on the property. They’re right about that. But it’s way the hell across the lake and into the woods from where the lodge sits.”

“So the question is, how can they claim the whole place?” I asked.

Smith touched his hearing aid and nodded. “What they’re saying is that to the Indians the whole place was sacred. It was like a great big Mecca. They made pilgrimages there. To the lake. One of their gods resided there. They never hunted or fished there. The burial ground is all that’s physically left of it. If we go to discovery, we’ll see what sort of evidence they’ve got. In the meantime, they’re only hinting at a lawsuit. No lawsuit, of course, no discovery—and no access to their evidence. They’d rather make a straight purchase, avoid litigation.”

“Meaning they haven’t got the evidence to back up their claim,” I said.

“Maybe. Or maybe it just means they’d rather avoid the hassle.” Smith shrugged. “We call them on it, we gamble they haven’t got it. Meantime, they’ve tendered an offer. One million, seven hundred thousand for the whole operation. Shorefront, buildings, docks, the works.”

“Is that a good offer?”

He shrugged. “It’s on the low side of fair. As you’d expect. They’d assume we’d dicker around some. One point seven million is in the ballpark. It’s a serious offer.”

“My clients, the Wheeler brothers, don’t want to sell, as you know. At any price. They’re worried what happens next.”

“And they’re wondering how Seelye Smith is going to handle it,” Smith added. “Fair enough. If the Wheeler boys don’t want to sell, the Indians are saying they’ll take it to court. My job is to figure out if they can win. I understand that.”

“And that means deciding if they’ve got a case.”

“Tell you one thing,” he said, downing the last of his coffee. “Potentially, at least, they’ve got a case. The government has been very receptive to claims based on religious factors. It’s case by case, of course, but there is this burial ground up there on Raven Lake. Whether that entitles them to a claim of the entire lake is another question.”

“I thought,” I said slowly, “that they forfeited all future claims in 1980.”

Smith cocked his head at me. “What do you know about the Maine Indian land grab, Mr. Coyne?” He fingered his hearing aid.

I lifted my hands, palms up, and let them fall back onto the table. “Just the outline of it, I guess. The Indians claimed the entire state of Maine originally belonged to them and that the white man took it illegally. They filed suit, and their claim was upheld in federal court. Congress settled by buying big chunks and turning it over to the Indians, along with lots of cash. The Indians agreed to abandon future claims.”

He nodded. “All true. It was the biggest settlement the Indians ever got. The United States Congress gave them three hundred thousand acres, which we taxpayers bought from governments and corporations. Lumber companies, mainly. Uncle Sammy paid fifty-four point five million for that land. Plus, just to make sure they were happy, Congress set aside another twenty-seven million in a trust fund for them.”

“I’ve never entirely understood the legal aspects of the case,” I said. “The whole deal. Will those principles be applied to Raven Lake, or what?”

He touched the button in his ear. “I can summarize it for you. The thing is, nobody took it serious at the beginning. Except me. I visualized the whole thing. It all started when this illiterate old Passamaquoddy lady by the name of Lena Brooks came across an old treaty in a cardboard box up in the attic of an old house at the Pleasant Point Reservation. This was the 1794 treaty between the Passamaquoddies and the state of Massachusetts. Massachusetts, as you remember, included Maine back then. This treaty ceded all Indian lands to the state except for a few thousand acres and a couple islands. Some smart Indian got ahold of it and said, ‘Aha! Those acres and islands belong to us, and we ain’t got them anymore.’ An even smarter Indian remembered the Indian Non-Intercourse Act, which was about the first thing the United States Congress ever did back in 1790. This Non-Intercourse Act set up a trust relationship between the federal government and all the Indian tribes. Specifically, it said that Congress had to supervise and ratify all land transactions between the Indians and the non-Indians. The idea was to protect the ignorant heathens, you understand. White man’s burden, all that shit.”

I nodded. “Obviously,” I said, “the 1790 act of Congress superseded the 1794 treaty with the state of Massachusetts.”

Smith grinned. “Why, sure. Simple law. And on that basis, the Indians filed a relatively small claim in the Federal District Court of Maine. Claimed the 1794 treaty was null and void. Laid claim on a relatively small hunk of land.”

“That was
Passamaquoddy
v.
Morton,
right?”

“Good for you, Mr. Coyne. June 22, 1972. Very important date for the good folks in Maine.
Morton
settled for the Indians. Gave them one hundred and fifty million bucks.” Smith rubbed his scarred hand. “I worked for Morton on that one.”

“For the state,” I said.

“Right. The state’s attorney general. I told them we were going to lose. I recommended we settle. The law was against us. So was the temper of the times, if you understand me.”

“Those were good days for minorities,” I said.

“They sure as hell were. Flushed with victory, as the fella says, the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies filed another suit in 1976. This was the blockbuster. They figured, what the hell, if that 1794 treaty ain’t any good and if that was the one that cost us the state of Maine, let’s get that sucker back. Their claim was for a mere twelve point five million acres. That’s nearly sixty percent of the state, Mr. Coyne.”

He paused, and I nodded appreciatively. “As an afterthought,” continued Smith, “they claimed an additional twenty-five billion in what they called back rents and damages. And they had the backing of the United States Departments of Interior and Justice. Now, the thing was, the tribes were perfectly willing to negotiate. They expected to bargain. No dummies, those Indian lawyers. They knew how it worked. Give a little, take a little. Right, Mr. Coyne? Ain’t that the way they do law in Boston?”

I smiled. “Exactly.”

“It was my position right along,” said Smith, “that we should bargain with them. Play the damn game. Give them some respect. After all, they clearly had legal precedent in
Morton.”
He paused and cocked his head at me. “You familiar with the concept of laches, Mr. Coyne?”

I hastily flipped through the musty, dog-eared law book I kept in my head. “Long-neglected rights lose their standing, I think. Something like that.”

Smith nodded. “Close enough. Rights that have been consistently and uniformly neglected cease to be rights and cannot later be invoked. That was the position of the state. If you rest on that principle, you can’t turn around and negotiate. Fact is, even after
Morton,
folks figured the claim was just too outrageous to take seriously. So they refused to bargain. The state litigated. Congress finally settled it.”

“I see,” I said. “But the Indians did give up their prerogative for further suits.”

“Well, yes and no. They can’t litigate on the basis of the 1790 treaty, or
Morton,
anymore. But there’s nothing to stop them from finding new approaches.”

“Like the special status of sacred land.”

“Exactly.” Smith stared out the window at the deepwater harbor in the distance. There was very little maritime activity on the water that I could see except for the brightly colored sails of pleasure craft. “There are some precedents for this. Other tribes in other states have made some headway based on similar claims. That’s why it’s my job to try to find out just what kind of evidence there is that this claim falls outside the
Morton
settlement.”

“You think there’s some other agenda?” I said. “Some other reason they want Raven Lake?”

“Well, the obvious thing is they just want it and they’re gambling that the Wheeler brothers won’t risk going to court.”

“Is that likely?”

Smith shrugged. “Probably that’s the most likely. Straightforward real estate deal, with just the hint of a threat tossed in for bargaining purposes. Also likely is just what they’re saying. They want to set up some kind of shrine or park or reservation. A memorial to their heritage. The Indians aren’t all cynics, Mr. Coyne.”

“And third?”

He flapped his one-and-a-half hands in the air. “Third is one of those things I’ve got to check out. Third is they want the place for something else. I don’t know what.”

I glanced at my watch. It was eleven-thirty, and I faced close to a five-hour drive to Greenville at the foot of Moosehead Lake. I pushed myself back from the table. Seelye Smith stood up.

“I’ve got a plane that’ll be taking off at five this afternoon in Greenville,” I told him. The extra loudness in my voice by now had become habit. “I appreciate the information, Mr. Smith. We’ll keep in touch. I hope you can find out just what’s behind this thing.”

He came around the table and began to walk me toward the door. “Sorry I can’t buy you some lunch, Mr. Coyne.”

“Next time.”

We paused at the door. He looked up at me, his eyes twinkling. “Well, tell me.”

“What?” I said, frowning.

“Did I pass?”

I laughed. “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Smith, you sure as hell have fooled me. Takes a good lawyer to fool me. So I guess either way, you pass.”

He chuckled. “I fooled you on one thing, I reckon. You noticed my hearing aid.”

I nodded.

“Best damn hearing aid there is. This wire here—you probably think I got it hooked into a battery, right?”

I shrugged.

“Look.” He pulled the end of the wire out of his pocket. It wasn’t hooked into anything.