Icepick Read online

  As we rounded a corner headed toward the donut shop, he said, ‘I’m afraid that some of our own people are responsible for the missing women.’

  I waited.

  But that was all he was going to say.

  I stayed quiet until we were sitting at the counter and the new girl – Bibi from Indiana, three weeks on the job – gave us each a cruller and a cup of mud.

  When I couldn’t take it any more, I said, ‘You mean someone in the Seminole nation took the kids’ mother?’

  He nodded. ‘But not someone from our little town out in the swamp. Businessmen.’

  The way he said businessmen made me feel sick; the sound of it was so vile.

  He was talking about Seminole men who had betrayed their heritage by selling oil rights to Exxon, cutting their hair and wearing Brooks Brothers suits. I could commiserate. I’d watched a lot of Jews in my neighborhood do just about anything they could to look like the goyim. No Star of David, open on Saturday, shortening the name from Moscowitz to Moss.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, bite of cruller in my mouth. ‘I wish you’d told me that right off, but I don’t see what it would have done to affect the current situation.’

  He shrugged.

  Bibi wandered back over. Her face was a little red and she wouldn’t look either one of us in the eye.

  ‘Sorry,’ she began. ‘Sorry. Could you … would you mind paying for the donuts now?’

  I glanced up at her.

  ‘Problem?’ I asked.

  Her eyes darted left for a split second. ‘No. Um.’

  One of Fry’s Bay’s newer citizens was seated near the cash register, scrupulously avoiding my glare.

  ‘That’s Hackney, from Tampa,’ I said to Bibi. ‘He’s the new proprietor at the hardware store. He just gave you some bad advice.’

  ‘Foggy,’ John Horse warned. ‘Just pay for the donuts and let’s go.’

  I got up like I hadn’t heard him, and went to sit down next to Mr Hackney. He was a pale, skinny goofus, five-foot-five, balding pate and lips as thin as dental floss.

  ‘You just told our girl, Bibi, to get our cash up front, right?’

  He turned to me defiantly. ‘I’ve had ten or twelve of these coloreds in my shop since I got here – shoplifters and drunks. I was nice the first couple of times. Extended credit to a boy who said he was repairing the roof on his house and was about to go to work on a road crew. Ain’t seen a whisper of him since. I just told the girl if she don’t want the same kind of trouble, get the money now.’

  I nodded. ‘You’re new in town, so I’m going to give you a friendly lesson in civics. First, this entire area is owned – all the land – by the Seminole tribes of Florida. You’re only here because they agree to it. Second, you have a different concept of Time with a capital T than some other people. What I mean is, have a little patience: the kid who borrowed the roofing supplies will be back in eventually, and he’ll probably bring you a little present along with the money. So, relax, OK? And if you haven’t already paid for your donut, it’s on me.’

  I waved Bibi over before he could say anything.

  ‘What’s the damage for all three of us, Mr Hackney included?’

  ‘Oh. Um.’ Then she smiled at me. It was a face that could melt stone. ‘Mr Hackney owes a dollar and a quarter. Yours is on the house.’

  Hackney sputtered. I handed Bibi a fiver.

  ‘Keep it, kid,’ I told her. ‘And despite the difference in our ages, I’m a little in love with you.’

  She blushed, which only exacerbated my ardor.

  John Horse had already finished his donut and coffee and was standing. ‘Come on.’

  But I had a weird hunch.

  ‘Bibi,’ I said, ‘you know Officer Brady, one of our fine policemen here in town.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Was he in here night before last, by any chance? I know he usually comes in here, like, every night.’

  She thought for a second. ‘He was. Him and that nice Mr Watkins both. Late. But they got a call on the car phone and took off. Something about … it was about that body in the bay.’

  ‘Were they alone, or was there anyone with them?’ I asked.

  ‘There was another man,’ she said. ‘Rich man, nice suit. He come in here a couple minutes after the cops. Nice car. Cadillac, I think.’

  ‘You’d never seen him before?’

  She shook her head and glanced in the direction of John Horse. ‘But he was, you know, one of them.’

  ‘He was a Seminole.’ I did my best not to sound surprised.

  She lowered her voice. ‘Well, he was colored. But I think he was a Negro. Is there a difference?’

  I didn’t want to go into the whole rigmarole with her, but there were black Seminoles, descendants of freed or escaped slaves. They made it to the Florida swamps and married into the tribes there. They mostly lived apart, in separate bands. But since there’d been so much intermarriage, the lines were blurred. And when you factored the general observations of the hoi polloi – i.e. one colored face was more or less like any other – you dealt with a weird mix of racism and ignorance on a nearly constant basis. So, while I didn’t blame Bibi for her comment, and I still had feelings for her, my ardor was somewhat abated by her lack of enlightenment.

  ‘Did they say his name?’ John Horse asked.

  ‘The cops?’ She shook her head. ‘Nuh-uh. But they treated him like he was the boss. You know, called him sir and stuff.’

  Hackney finally got himself together enough to say, ‘I can pay for my own damn donut!’

  All three of us stared at him.

  ‘It’s already covered,’ Bibi said harshly, and made a big show of putting my fiver in the cash register near his elbow.

  John Horse was already out the door.

  ELEVEN

  We were halfway down the block before John Horse spoke up.

  ‘What made you ask that girl if there had been someone else with the cops that night?’ he wanted to know.

  I slowed my pace. ‘Not sure, but I started to figure it this way. The cops are involved in some kind of human trafficking scam. Watkins was nice to the women at the Benton, but their natural Seminole suspicion of the cops would have prevented them from being convinced to come away with him. And you said there were Seminoles involved. So, I started thinking that maybe someone they would trust might have lured them away from the hotel.’

  ‘You don’t think the cops could have just taken them into custody or something? Or worse: drugged them?’

  ‘My impression is that the mother of those children,’ I answered, ‘isn’t someone who’d go gently. She would have kicked up a fuss.’

  He nodded again and stopped walking. We were on the corner of a street that led down to the beach. He looked toward the ocean.

  ‘Can you smell the salt?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, I smell tacos,’ I went on, ‘but my point is that neither of the managers at the Benton mentioned any kind of brouhaha. They both said that the reason the women left was on account of their wages.’

  ‘All right, someone who was not Watkins persuaded them that they might get better pay,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘If he was a Seminole he’d have to be from the Oklahoma bands – the women would have known all the wealthy-looking Seminole men around here. And Watkins was just facilitating. So they thought. Is that about what you’re thinking?’

  ‘It is.’

  He closed his eyes. ‘That might explain the mess of feathers and bones we found in the bakery. Echu Matta made it to send a message, and Topalargee found it, or Topalargee made it herself before she passed out, to tell me something.’

  ‘Right. There’s a demon abroad in the land.’

  He turned his gaze on me. ‘You realize that sometimes your diction is ridiculous.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s colorful.’

  ‘All right.’ He sighed. ‘I’m going back to the hospital so that when the kid wakes up, I’ll be there. She can tell me what happened, withou
t the colorful language. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I think I might try to find out more about a visitor from Oklahoma.’

  The Oklahoma Seminoles were all descendants of the more than three thousand Seminoles forcibly removed from Florida by the United States Government.

  And, as I may have mentioned, they never signed a peace treaty.

  While I had a beef with the crooked cops in Brooklyn, my feelings were nothing compared to the rage John Horse felt for the American government. And, frankly, you could see why. After the tribes were separated, they developed independently of each other, significantly confusing their cultural heritage. And to make matters worse, whenever the government could do it, they would ship young men away from Florida to Oklahoma under the guise of education: ‘Better schools in Oklahoma.’ And once they were gone, the kids never came back.

  The idea that an Oklahoma Seminole had something to do with the disappearance of the kids’ mother didn’t sit very well with John Horse, because he would have figured that it somehow involved the US government. And he was probably right. He usually was.

  It was about that point, as I stood there on the street corner smelling the salt air, that I realized I was beginning to think like John Horse. An alarming prospect.

  He was nodding at me like he read my mind.

  ‘All right, then,’ he said. And without anything further, he turned in the direction of the hospital and headed off.

  Myself, I thought it was about time for a lobster taco.

  Yudda was the Einstein of culinary invention, always trying something new. For example – now this is in the exact middle of Nowhere, Florida, remember – he had recently devised a taco in which there was fresh-caught lobster, homemade slaw, home-grown peppers and some kind of sauce that was handed down to Moses from the mountain top.

  The second I walked in the door, he read my face.

  Without a word, he started working. ‘Three?’

  ‘Yes.’ I sat in the last booth. Yudda mixed up the corn flour. It was going to take a minute to complete the creation, but great art takes time.

  ‘Shot of tequila?’ he offered.

  ‘It’s, like, eleven o’clock in the morning, man.’

  He looked around for a second. ‘Oh. Coffee, then?’

  He poured without my answering.

  ‘Hey, Yudda,’ I said after the first sip, watching him flatten the taco flour, ‘you’re always prowling around at night.’

  ‘I don’t prowl,’ he interrupted. ‘I gambol. I frolic.’

  ‘Have it your way,’ I said. ‘You’re out and about after midnight.’

  He nodded. ‘I am.’

  ‘In recent such sojourns,’ I went on, ‘you haven’t seen, maybe, a Seminole swell, stranger, hanging out at the Benton, or with the cops at the donut shop?’

  ‘I have.’ He rolled his taco through the flattening part of a pasta maker, and it came out all funny shaped. But he scooped up a paring knife and made it a perfect circle in one smooth move. Then he scooped it up and slapped it on to the griddle. It puffed up instantly. Then he sang, very softly, ‘Third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous.’

  After which he flipped the taco.

  ‘What the hell are you singing?’ I asked him.

  ‘I heard it on the radio and now it’s stuck in my head,’ he complained. ‘That ever happen to you?’

  ‘Happens to everybody,’ I said. ‘It’s the job of the pop song to stick itself in your ear.’

  ‘I guess.’ He took the first taco off and put the second one on.

  ‘Are you going to tell me about the Seminole rich guy, or not?’ I pressed.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Big man. Over six foot. Nice suit. Seen him sitting with Brady and Watkins in the donut shop – oh, about once a month.’

  ‘You mean you’ve seen him before this – he’s been here more than just once recently?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Second taco dough golden, third one on the griddle.

  ‘You saw him just at the donut shop?’ I pressed.

  He sighed and flipped the third taco.

  ‘Would you let me concentrate on your dining experience?’ he complained. ‘After I assemble your tacos, I’ll give you my notes on the subject.’

  ‘You took notes?’ I asked.

  ‘I took notes.’

  There it was: Yudda’s paranoia at work for me.

  Yudda was convinced that a certain woman in New Orleans, whence he hailed, was after him. Sending investigators and paying off officials. I’d never gotten the full story out of him, but there was something about big money, small crimes and a secret identity. I’d even been told, by other denizens of Fry’s Bay, that Yudda had once been in the CIA. That I didn’t believe. He was too flamboyant – too Cajun.

  But this paranoia occasionally resulted in valuable information. He’d seen dozens of crimes, several assaults and one entire notebook’s worth of spouses cheating on spouses. A particular beef of his.

  None of which he reported to the cops. But if he was in the right mood, and a little drunk, he’d share with me.

  So, moments later, while I had a mouth full of lobster taco, he recited a page of Seminole sightings.

  He concluded with, ‘And finally, the donut shop night before last, when you asked me to come witness what happened with you and the kids and the cops.’

  He looked up.

  ‘You didn’t think to mention this to me?’ I asked.

  He set his notebook down on the bar. ‘Look. I know that half of what I write down here is goofy. I know I’m paranoid. But I believe the old saying.’

  ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.’

  ‘That saying,’ he agreed. ‘But I don’t share my troubles unless somebody asks. You asked. I’m telling you.’

  My conclusion, from the list of times and places this mysterious Seminole rich guy appeared in Fry’s Bay, was that he did indeed have something to do with the missing women. My logic worked this way: if he was present on the night that Icepick dumped Pan Pan in the bay, he was no good.

  Yes, it was a personal conclusion with absolutely no real logic, but you had to figure the guy was wrong just for hanging out with Watkins and Brady. And the timing of his visits to our little paradise was suspicious, because before the donut shop, Yudda had seen the guy at the Benton on what may have been the last night the kids’ mother was there.

  And I was also persuaded by John Horse’s thinking that a Seminole man in a nice suit could convince Seminole women to come away with him much more quickly than a crooked cop could.

  So, if the guy had been to the Benton, I thought it was best to go scare that kid, Tim, a little bit more. See if I could get him to tell me something about our mystery man.

  Tim was not happy to see me. The second I walked in the door, he started talking.

  ‘Look, sir,’ he said without the slightest tone of respect, ‘the police have told me that you’re not a law enforcement official, so I don’t have to answer any questions you ask me.’

  Well. Two things: he was defensive, and the cops had been there in the short time since the last time I had.

  ‘You’ve been misled,’ I told him, motoring up to the front desk. ‘I am an employee of the government and I am empowered to detain, arrest and incarcerate anyone I think might be endangering the life or wellbeing of a child. And currently I have my sights set on you. I have two kids under my protection whose wellbeing is seriously hindered by your attitude. So, step out from behind that desk, turn around and put your hands behind your back!’

  Idle chatter on my part. I didn’t have any handcuffs.

  ‘Christ!’ Tim yelped. ‘What is it you people want from me? I’m just trying to save up enough money to pay for my next semester at FSU!’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, my tone completely changed. ‘That can be a good school, I hear. What are you studying?’

  He blinked. ‘Hospitality management.’

  ‘Oh, so this gig h
ere at the Benton is kind of like a training program.’

  ‘Work-study internship, yes.’ He swallowed, and then lowered his voice. ‘But this place is weird.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In what way?’ He glared. ‘In the seven weeks since I’ve been here, the cleaning staff has turned over three times, the cops are in and out of here like it’s a second home, and you keep scaring the bejesus out of me!’

  ‘Well, maybe you had too much bejesus in you to begin with, so I’m doing you a favor, but I digress. All I really want to know is if you’ve seen a big guy, a well-dressed Seminole man, in this joint any time recently.’

  ‘You mean Mr Talmascy,’ he said right away.

  ‘I do?’

  He nodded. ‘Expensive suit, perfect hair and a watch that could pay for my entire education.’

  ‘And he’s been here enough so you’d know his name.’

  ‘Well, one of my electives, Special Topics in Hospitality, taught us how to spot what they call a whale.’

  ‘They teach you that in college?’ I shook my head. ‘That’s a gambling term: high roller, big spender.’

  He nodded. ‘Means the same thing in hospitality. You want to identify those guys and anticipate.’

  ‘Got it. And what needs did you anticipate as regards this Mr Talmascy?’

  Tim frowned. ‘Couldn’t quite figure him out. At first, I was afraid he was interested in getting close to the maids, if you know what I mean. I really didn’t want to have to try to entice one of those women to go to his room at night. They scared me too, those women. Plus, I didn’t really like the idea of being a …’

  ‘Pimp,’ I suggested.

  ‘Go-between,’ he corrected instantly.

  ‘But as it turned out, you didn’t have to?’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Mr Talmascy was here for some sort of business with those two policemen.’

  ‘Watkins and Brady.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And they were chummy.’

  ‘You didn’t connect Mr Talmascy’s visits with the turnover in the service staff?’

  He looked away, like it was taking every ounce of his brain power to answer my question.