Icepick Page 3

  But something struck me as fishy about the number of times the kids had invoked his name in the short time I’d known them.

  I folded my arms. ‘We’re going to have to get a little bit more honest with each other,’ I said softly to them, ‘or I’ll just take you both to my office and we’ll fill out paperwork all day.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Stop it,’ I told her. ‘You know exactly what I mean. You didn’t just show up in town last night. John Horse sent you here.’

  It was a good guess. I could tell by the way they looked at each other that it was true.

  ‘So, give,’ I insisted. ‘What’s really going on?’

  Before either one of them could answer, there was a noise in the upstairs office area. Without thinking I scooped up both kids, one under each arm, and we were hidden behind one of the machines in a tight second.

  There were low voices. They were too far away and too well-insulated to hear clearly, but there was some sort of argument going on.

  ‘Two men,’ the boy said softly.

  ‘Three,’ I corrected. ‘Maybe even four. Listen to the pattern, not the pitch.’

  He listened. Then, eyes wider, he nodded. ‘Four. Good.’

  ‘Not my first time eavesdropping,’ I whispered.

  ‘Our mother really is missing,’ Wonder Girl said very close to my ear. ‘But we didn’t come here on our own. John Horse sent us. He’s in trouble, and the Panther clan needs our help.’

  I vaguely remembered something about the various Seminole clans; Panther was John Horse’s family, though the official lineage was matriarchal – like it was for my tribe.

  I turned to look at her. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’ I asked her, looking her in the eye.

  ‘You picked us up and carried us,’ she answered simply, as if it were a complete answer.

  ‘Yeah, all right.’ I turned away again. ‘You two stay put. I mean it. I’m going to get a little closer to the pageant.’

  Without waiting for them to say anything, I stood and sauntered toward the iron staircase. No point in hiding and sneaking around. When you hide, people get the idea you’re suspicious. When you’re bold, they just think you’re stupid.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted out. ‘What’s going on up there?’

  I figured if it was something truly bad, the guys who were arguing would want to be careful. And if it was nothing nefarious, they’d just be irritated.

  But when I yelled, everything went silent, which told me what I wanted to know.

  ‘I’m with the county,’ I hollered. ‘This is private property. You’re in violation of Section Seven, part D. Come on down here with some ID, right away. Do it now; I’m in a hurry. I’m busy with more important stuff.’

  In the first place, ‘Section Seven’ was completely made up, but in the second place, the overworked county employee was a good gambit. Every time I’d ever used it, some wise guy either wanted to pay me off or shoot me. Either way, I always found out what I wanted to know.

  In this case, there was another moment of silence before a vaguely familiar voice finally answered. ‘Moscowitz?’ it sang out.

  It only took me a second to register that the voice was Brady’s, the cop who liked to point his gun at little kids.

  So that didn’t bode well, because he also liked to point his gun at me. And in the next second, Brady appeared at the top of the iron staircase, pistol in hand.

  ‘Do you always have your gun out?’ I asked him calmly. ‘You’re not worried that it’s too … I don’t know … Freudian?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he snarled.

  ‘My job,’ I snapped. ‘You?’

  He started down the stairs, gun aimed right at my chest, as far as I could tell.

  ‘Clear out or get shot,’ he said, nearing the bottom of the steps. ‘I’m in the line of duty.’

  ‘Me too, as I was saying,’ I told him, actually taking a step closer to the gun, ‘and, once again, like last night, I have back-up witnesses. They wish to remain anonymous for safety reasons, but they’re here.’

  That stopped him, at least for a second.

  I kept my eyes on him but called out over my shoulder, ‘Make some noise over there, would you, so this dickweed knows I’m serious.’

  And instantly the kids banged on the conveyer belt apparatus. It was really loud. Brady almost dropped his toy.

  Still, he kept himself together.

  ‘I told you what would happen the next time I saw you,’ he snarled, ‘on account of stomping me down last night.’

  ‘You might have said something about it in your mind,’ I corrected, ‘but all you said out loud was that I’d be sorry. And on that count, you were right. I’m very sorry to see you here today.’

  ‘Then shove off,’ he snapped. ‘Get lost and stay there.’

  ‘Not really,’ I allowed. ‘Seems the tykes you menaced last night were only here looking for their mother, who’s gone missing. How’s it going to look if I say in my report that you stopped me from finding somebody’s lost mother?’

  He took another step toward me.

  ‘Who says you’re going to be in any condition to write a report?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Did you forget my witnesses?’ I asked him.

  ‘Shut up. It’s them two wampum brats. That’s who you got for witnesses.’

  Before I could deny it, the girl stepped into the open.

  ‘Right,’ she told Officer Brady. ‘I see you. I am a witness.’

  It was such a weird, bold thing to do that it caught everyone off guard.

  I recovered first. ‘What do you think, Brady? You’re going to shoot a little kid?’

  Just then somebody from up in the office hollered, ‘Brady! What’s the racket?’

  Brady stared me right in the eye.

  ‘It’s nothing; I’m taking care of it,’ he called out. ‘Everything’s OK.’

  I wasn’t over being confused by that when Brady pulled off his next unexpected trick.

  ‘Seriously, Moscowitz, take off,’ he whispered. ‘You’re blowing the deal here.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I answered, just as soft.

  ‘If you ever want to find the kids’ mother alive,’ he told me, sounding just a little bit more like a human being, ‘you’ll give me a little room. I mean it.’

  I don’t know what made me take him seriously, but I did. Could have been the look in his eye, like we were sharing a secret. Could have been that he smiled at the kids in a very sympathetic way. Could have just been the fact that he didn’t shoot me – always a good sign in any relationship.

  Whatever the reason, I had an overwhelming intuition to trust him, despite my history with the guy. And intuition has always been a better friend to me than any person I ever knew. So, I backed away in the direction of the kids.

  ‘No,’ the girl said. ‘We’re not leaving.’

  ‘I got a hunch,’ I told her. ‘We really ought to scram.’

  The boy appeared. ‘He’s right.’

  With that the boy headed toward the exit. Sighing, the girl followed.

  ‘I’m going to want to know a whole lot more about this before sundown,’ I whispered to Brady.

  He put away his gun. ‘Assuming we’re both still alive by then.’

  FOUR

  I took the kids to Yudda’s even though I knew he wasn’t open yet. His place was on the edge of town, near the docks, close to the ocean but only about a five-minute walk from the abandoned bakery. The streets were warming up nicely, even though the sky was overcast. As we got closer to the joint, the smell of wood burning and some sort of serious spice – maybe fenugreek – filled the air.

  ‘Curry,’ I said out loud.

  ‘Why did we leave?’ the girl fumed.

  ‘Listen, Wonder Girl—’ I began.

  ‘You know,’ she interrupted, ‘when white people translate our names into English, it sounds stupid. My name is Topalar
gee. What if, instead of Foggy, my people called you Wet Mist? Isn’t that what Foggy means?’

  I stopped walking. ‘You’ve got a very good point. Never thought of it like that. Sorry. But, do you have a … what they call a nickname? Because Foggy is not my actual name, you understand. It’s just what certain people call me.’

  ‘Oh,’ she considered, ‘I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right. Well, sometimes John Horse called me Sharp in English.’

  ‘Sharp?’ I repeated. ‘Because you carry around that big knife, or because your tongue is occasionally a lethal weapon.’

  ‘Both,’ her brother answered for her.

  ‘And you,’ I said, turning to the boy. ‘I apologize for calling you Little Cloud. You got a snappier moniker?’

  ‘I don’t know what those words mean,’ he confessed, ‘but sometimes she calls me Duck because I like to swim.’

  ‘No,’ she corrected, ‘I call him that because of the way he used to cry like a duck when he was a baby.’

  The boy looked at me very seriously. ‘I didn’t cry.’

  I nodded. ‘Sharp and Duck; I’m Foggy. And what an oddly named trio we are. All right?’

  They both nodded back.

  ‘Good,’ I went on, picking up the pace again, ‘now let’s go figure out what the hell just happened, and see if we can’t find your mother.’

  A few minutes later we were sitting inside Yudda’s, at the bar. Early morning light through the diner windows gave the place a romantic appearance, even though it was only the size of a railroad car. There were five booths, five tables, and five seats at the bar. Everything was wood that Yudda had salvaged a long time ago from God knows where. The smell inside was like you were in the middle of an old barbecue oven. The ceiling was only the underside of an ancient, rusted tin roof.

  The owner was standing at the grill, a cup of his famous Brunswick stew in hand, instead of coffee.

  ‘You kids hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘No matter what they say,’ I butted in, ‘they had no breakfast, so fix up something suitable, right?’

  He winked. He was the sort of person who could pull it off. They’re very rare, the sort that winks and doesn’t look stupid.

  ‘It’s got to be shrimp and grits,’ he said, his big back turned our way.

  ‘What about the skate wing?’ I asked.

  ‘For breakfast?’ he wanted to know, as if I were a dope.

  ‘Why did we leave that building?’ Sharp demanded again, only a little more gently. ‘We were about to find our mother!’

  ‘No,’ I told her in no uncertain terms, ‘we were about to get into lots and lots of trouble. There was some kind of deal going down over there, in that office. You have to realize that. I don’t know what it was, but a crooked cop with a loaded gun in an abandoned building? That doesn’t smell like trouble to you?’

  ‘Brady,’ Sharp muttered.

  ‘You think Brady’s crooked?’ Yudda asked without turning around.

  He’d loaded up the grill with unpeeled shrimp, probably about half an hour out of the sea. In the corner, there was a giant pot. He stirred it, smiled, tossed in half a stick of butter and stirred again – all of which meant grits to me.

  ‘Well, see, Brady’s over there in the old abandoned bakery on Blake Road arguing with some guys,’ I said, ‘and when I called him out, he got rid of me like I was bad news.’

  ‘He don’t like you,’ Yudda said.

  ‘I know, but there was more to it.’

  Sharp turned to me, tugged on my sleeve, and got me to look in her eyes.

  ‘OK. Foggy. We have to talk.’ She was ice cold.

  ‘Go ahead.’ I swiveled my bar stool, turned to face her.

  ‘In private,’ she said.

  ‘This is as private as it’s going to get. Yudda is a designated witness in this matter. I appointed him last night. When you’re dealing with Child Protective Services, it’s always a good idea to have someone else, a third party, to confirm what’s happened between the case worker, which is me, and the alleged child, which is you.’

  Her eyes narrowed, and I could hear the wheels turning in her head. She took a deep breath. ‘John Horse sent me and my brother into town on purpose – because we’re unusual. We’re the only ones in the Panther clan with our unique … abilities. Duck can track. And I can kill.’

  I didn’t blink. ‘Go on.’

  ‘My mother disappeared along with two other Seminole women who worked at the Benton,’ Sharp said, staring at the countertop of the bar. ‘Inquiries were made, to no avail. We’ve been sent to find these women and bring them back home. Any way we can.’

  I shook my head. ‘John Horse would not send two children on any sort of mission like that. I know his reputation—’

  ‘Duck and I have unusual abilities,’ she repeated. ‘That’s why John Horse hires us.’

  ‘Hires you?’ That’s all I could think of to say.

  ‘We get paid to do … to do all kinds of work for him. This is just one thing.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Let me get right about this. You’ve both been sent to investigate the disappearance of Seminole women, including your mother, from the Benton Inn, a high-voltage establishment for rich swells?’

  She glared. ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  I shook my head and whirled my barstool. ‘Then I’ve been going about this all wrong. It’s not a child abandonment case or a missing persons case. You stay here, eat something good, and let me have a gander over at the Benton.’

  ‘You think you’ll find something that we didn’t?’ Sharp asked me, obviously irate. ‘What, exactly, are you looking for in the only place where we know my mother is not?’

  ‘One woman missing from a place like that is difficult business,’ I told her, heading for the door. ‘More than that? It’s an industry. I’m afraid I know what happened to your mother.’

  The door shut softly behind me. I could hear Sharp talking, but she was speaking in the Seminole language and too fast for me to understand it.

  FIVE

  The Benton always reminded me of the Waldorf in the old days. You know: elegant, olde world ambience, snappy service, an air of quiet dignity. All of which I did my best to destroy in the first few seconds I was there, based on my aforementioned bias for bold action versus quiet charm.

  As soon as I hit the lobby I announced, very loudly, ‘I’m looking for a Seminole woman named Echu Matta; she’s wanted in connection with a child abandonment case I’m working on with State and Federal government.’

  The place was still as a tomb for a second, and then a tall man in a dark suit came racing my way, scowling like he was about to rain all over Pittsburgh.

  ‘Sir, I am entirely at your disposal,’ he said with a combination of ire and servitude that must have taken years to hone. ‘May I escort you to our office?’

  His hair was thinning on top, and slightly grey at the temples. He was underweight by about twenty pounds, and his hands were the cleanest set of mitts I’d ever seen, down to the clear varnish on his manicure. He wore a silver name badge that said Robert.

  We moved closer to the front desk.

  ‘Listen, Robert,’ I told him very politely, ‘I’ll close down your little playhouse and you won’t believe the amount of noise I’ll make if you don’t tell me who you’re working with.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ His face was a perfect blank.

  Before I knew what hit me, Sharp came from behind, knife in hand. She leapt up on the desk to menace Robert eye to eye.

  ‘He asked you who you’re working with,’ Sharp hissed, ‘to kidnap Seminole women!’

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ Robert said, quite alarmed.

  I hauled out my badge. ‘Tell them I’m here.’

  That stopped him. Flash a badge, any badge, and the hoi polloi will generally give pause.

  ‘Let’s see if we can’t sort all this out in an orderly fashion,’ I continued. ‘Sharp? Please p
ut your knife away. Robert? Tell me when you last saw Echu Matta.’

  ‘I–I have no idea who that is,’ he stammered.

  Sharp did not put her knife away. She put it very close to Robert’s nose. ‘Martha,’ she said to Robert.

  ‘Oh, Martha,’ he repeated, ‘the, um, that woman.’

  ‘Martha?’ I asked Sharp.

  ‘Mother told me,’ Sharp snapped in my direction, ‘that this moron couldn’t pronounce her name, and all he could get was a perversion of Matta. So.’

  ‘What – really – what,’ was all that Robert could manage.

  ‘You’ve had several Seminole women working here,’ I said, ‘and they’ve all disappeared recently. You didn’t think someone would find that interesting?’

  ‘Those women?’ Robert asked in spite of himself. ‘They were Indians?’

  I couldn’t help laughing just a little. ‘What?’

  He looked worried. ‘I thought they were … I mean, they were very … dark-skinned. You know. Black. We were told that they quit. They weren’t happy with their treatment here, though I can’t imagine why. There was even talk of … of a lawsuit.’

  I shook my head. ‘They told you they were filing a lawsuit.’

  Robert frowned and looked away. ‘Well, no. We … we were told.’

  ‘By whom?’ I asked.

  Robert looked very nervous indeed.

  ‘It was the … we have an off-duty policeman who works night security for us, you know, after I’ve gone home, and those … those women are here. He told me they were going to sue the hotel for … for discrimination. So, naturally, I thought—’

  ‘Brady,’ Sharp cursed under her breath.

  ‘Hm?’ Robert asked distractedly.