Icepick Page 8

  ‘You know,’ he said, like he’d discovered penicillin, ‘I think you’re right! Do you think this Mr Talmascy could be a union organizer?’

  ‘When do you go back to FSU?’ I asked him. ‘When’s this alleged internship over?’

  ‘End of the month.’

  ‘How often do they send someone from your program to the Benton?’

  ‘Every semester,’ he said. ‘And I was lucky to get it. My grades aren’t very good. I failed Hospitality Leadership and Ethics twice, and made a D in International Wine and Culture, so I have to take it over again.’

  I tried to be sympathetic. ‘Too much drinking; not enough notes.’

  ‘Exactly!’ he agreed.

  ‘So, this Mr Talmascy …’

  ‘Not much more to tell.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Except that he was drunk the last time I saw him here.’

  ‘What made you think that?’

  ‘He was crying. Most big men don’t cry like that unless they’re drunk.’

  ‘I see. He was alone?’

  ‘With the cops. They looked like they were made out of wood. You know, stiff. Not happy.’

  ‘And he’s gone now.’

  ‘Haven’t seen him since that night,’ he concluded. ‘Were you really going to arrest me?’

  I shook my head. ‘You know I wasn’t.’

  ‘You–you’re a lot nicer than the cops, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I am.’

  He’d said that because of my sudden change of tune. Instead of pressing my ‘I have handcuffs’ gambit, I’d asked him about himself. Where’d he go to college; what was he studying? You never go wrong getting people to talk about themselves.

  ‘Oh!’ Tim snapped. ‘Hey! Will this help?’

  He reached under the desk and produced a small envelope.

  I stared down at the envelope. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Mr Talmascy’s American Express card. He left it at the bar in there. I was just going to hold it here until, you know, the next time he came back.’

  I picked up the envelope. ‘I don’t know if it’ll help or not, but if you let me take it away right now, I promise to bring it back to you by tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure.’ The kid shrugged. ‘I don’t think he even knows it’s gone. He hasn’t called about it or anything. You’ll bring it back, right?’

  I nodded and pocketed the envelope. ‘By the way, still no sign of the Seminole kid I was asking you about?’

  ‘Sorry.’ And he was.

  ‘You don’t mind if I look around upstairs?’

  He nodded. ‘You want a pass key?’

  Tim was my new friend. Tim held out a pass key.

  ‘I’ll bring it right back,’ I told him, taking the key.

  All I could think to myself was John Horse is really going to be impressed with me the next time I see him, considering all the answers I got.

  Unfortunately, strolling around upstairs in the Benton was a waste of time, and ended up bringing me down a little bit. The Cuban maids weren’t talkative. The pass key didn’t do me any good. What was I going to do – bust into every room? And no sign of the kid anywhere, despite twice humiliating myself by hollering, ‘Duck!’

  When I went back downstairs, Tim wasn’t at the desk. I dropped off the pass key and headed out the door. I thought about going to the hospital to check in with Sharp, but it seemed to me that finding this Talmascy character was more to the point.

  For that, all I needed was a phone and a little time; hence I took myself back to my pad, and got on the horn as soon as I walked in the door.

  ‘Hello, yes,’ I murmured to the American Express agent, glancing at the card. ‘My name is Bear Litka Talmascy and I think my card has been stolen.’

  It took three full minutes to convince her that the first name on the card was Bear, and then I had to spell Talmascy twice. I called out the number on the card, and she took a while.

  ‘Last used,’ she said, ‘at the Benton Inn in Fly’s Bay, Florida.’

  ‘Fry’s Bay,’ I corrected. ‘Yes, and before that was probably Oklahoma in the—’

  ‘New York,’ she interrupted. ‘LaBracca Pizza.’

  I couldn’t stop myself from sucking in a little breath. LaBracca Pizza was a wise-guy establishment in Manhattan, the kind that even my pals in Brooklyn were afraid of. I covered by saying, ‘Right. LaBracca’s. Look, don’t cancel the card, I’m still in Florida. I’ll just pop over to the Benton and pick it up. But I’m on the road and I don’t want you to send the newest bill to my home address. Could you forward it to where I’m staying in Florida? I want to check to see if anyone at the Benton has abused my card, you understand.’

  ‘I can send it today, if you like,’ she said with absolutely no affect.

  ‘Perfect.’ I gave her Yudda’s address. ‘Can you put a rush on it? I’m anxious.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes. When you send the regular bill, it’s to my home address in Oklahoma City, right? Not the business one? Sorry, you wouldn’t believe how long I’ve been on the road. I’m a little addled.’

  ‘The home address, sir,’ she said without a trace of sympathy for Mr Talmascy’s travails. ‘Oklahoma City.’

  ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ I assured her, and then I hung up.

  A nice bit of bluffing, I thought. I knew where the guy was from, where he’d been before he came to Fry’s Bay and just how scary he might be. Now all I had to do was suss out the exact address for the guy in Oklahoma City.

  And once again I was happy with my hunches and impressed with my luck. Life was a roller coaster, really.

  All I had to do then was figure out why a Seminole named Bear would visit LaBracca Pizza in Manhattan.

  TWELVE

  I sat in my kitchen contemplating my next move. I was torn. Duck was missing and I had to find him. Talmascy was the devil I had to catch. But my heart really wanted to find out who killed Pan Pan. I had done my best to keep Pan Pan out of my mind. I couldn’t bring myself to believe he was dead.

  Once he came over to my house for Passover Seder. My aunt insisted. She and my mother cooked for three days beforehand, and Pan Pan worried for five. He was afraid he was going to do or say something wrong. He didn’t realize that, after the religious rigmarole, my mother and my aunt were both Lenny Bruce: filthy and hilarious.

  He showed up in a new suit with a bouquet of flowers that set him back a hundred bucks. And he didn’t say a word for the first thirty minutes, just nodded or shook his head. When my aunt explained that there was an empty seat at the table just in case Elijah stopped by, he kept staring at it like there was a ghost in the chair.

  Then my aunt started talking about eating matzo and bitter herbs to remind us of slavery. Pan Pan leaned over to me and whispered, ‘When were you guys slaves?’

  My aunt stopped her little speech, looked at Pan Pan over her glasses and said, ‘You think you people had it hard after the Emancipation Proclamation? At least they didn’t ship you to Death Valley and make you wander around for forty years afterward!’

  For some reason that cracked him up and he started laughing like a maniac. Part of it was nerves. But my aunt was well pleased with herself because she’d worked the audience, and the rest of the night was smooth sailing.

  At the door, when he was leaving, he said to me, ‘Do you think I could come over to dinner again sometime? My family – I mean, I was raised by an aunt too, but she don’t cook nothing but skag and she’s usually holed up with a trick around suppertime, so. It feels good in your home.’

  He was right. It did feel good.

  A knock on my door shook me out of my memories. Given the temperature of the situation in general, I was wary.

  ‘Who is it?’ I called out, trying to sound like a tough.

  A little voice answered. ‘Foggy?’

  I got to the door quick; there stood Duck. He looked up at me. He’d been c
rying.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ I told him. ‘Where you been?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Where’s my sister?’ he asked me.

  ‘In the hospital. Somebody beat her up.’

  He took that news oddly. ‘I found my mother’s scarf. Me and my sister bought it for her one time and she never takes it off. Even when it’s too hot to wear it. I found it in the dumpster behind the hotel. I think my mother is dead.’

  He steeled himself and stared at me like a Seminole warrior. Then he held out the scarf. It was nice. Label said Hermès. It was kind of a forest scene, with lots of birds. Mostly owls.

  ‘She’s not dead,’ I told him, and I sounded a lot more certain than I felt. ‘We already decided she was taken as a part of some sort of human-trafficking ring. They don’t kill people, those guys. The whole gig is to have live people to traffic, right?’

  ‘My sister,’ he began.

  ‘She’s asleep. She found something too. John Horse said it was owl demons or something.’

  ‘Oh.’ He closed his eyes and his whole face changed. ‘Stikini. That makes me feel better. They took this off her, because they didn’t want anyone to know they were evil beings. The owls were a clue.’

  I didn’t have the heart to disagree with him, because he did seem to feel better.

  ‘So, let’s go to the hospital and see about your sister,’ I said.

  I didn’t offer my hand, he just took it. And just like that, he wasn’t a Seminole warrior any more. He was a little kid again, worried about his mother.

  At the hospital, John Horse was sleeping in a chair beside Sharp’s bed. Sharp was still out. Duck went right to her side, took her hand and started whispering something or other.

  That made John Horse’s eyes open, and when he saw me he sat up.

  ‘You found out something,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know anything about a guy who calls himself Bear Talmascy?’ I asked.

  John Horse slumped down. ‘Oh.’

  I could tell by the look on his face that Talmascy was bad news.

  ‘You’ve heard the name,’ I assumed.

  He glanced over at the unconscious kid. ‘She was right. Owl demon.’

  I tried not to sound too indulgent. ‘OK, but besides being an owl, he’s also from Oklahoma City. Where is it that your relatives always got shipped off to?’

  ‘The Seminole Tribal Jurisdiction Area is about an hour east of Oklahoma City; the Tribal Complex is in Wewoka.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me you’d been there?’

  ‘Long time ago. It’s right at the junction of US 270 and Oklahoma Highway 56.’

  His voice sounded tired.

  ‘I know it’s a sore spot, the way you were moved out of Florida.’

  He grimaced. ‘Sore spot? Treaty of Moultrie Creek in 1823, the government made us give up all our land except for a reservation in the center of Florida, where my village is now. But that wasn’t enough for these whites. They wanted us all moved out. In 1832, in the springtime, we were called to a meeting at Payne’s Landing on the Oklawaha River. It was a secret meeting, with no record, and they wanted us to move in with the Creeks. We’re not Creeks. So they told us to go to Oklahoma. Many people went there. Many stayed here. Do you know how to destroy a culture? Chop it in half. Each half might survive, but it’s broken after that. Not the same.’

  That was the longest speech John Horse had ever given, as far as I could remember. And his voice was as bitter – it occurred to me – as the herbs at a Passover Seder.

  ‘My point was,’ I said, as gently as I could, ‘that maybe we should try to summon up this Bear Talmascy and see if he can put his hand to the mother of these two kids, since I’m pretty sure he had everything to do with her disappearance.’

  ‘Where is he now, Talmascy?’

  ‘No idea,’ I admitted. ‘But get a load of this: before he came to Fry’s Bay around the time the mother got nabbed, he was in New York at a wise-guy club.’

  His eyes got big. ‘He was with the mafia?’

  ‘Please!’ I snapped. ‘We don’t like to say it out like that. But … he was probably visiting with some members of a certain family.’

  ‘We don’t like to say the name of the owl demons out loud,’ he said, smiling, ‘because it might make you turn into one. You do the same: you don’t call them what they are so that you won’t become one of their number.’

  ‘No,’ I objected. ‘It’s just rude, like belching at the dinner table or dogging a guy’s wife at his funeral.’

  John Horse shook his head. ‘White manners. I’ll never understand them.’

  ‘Fine. Could we skip the discussion of etiquette, then, and move on? I have a sincere desire to find this Talmascy character.’

  ‘You think he might be back in Oklahoma?’

  ‘The idea I have in my head is that he’s the one who convinces the Seminole women to abscond,’ I said, ‘and then the police take over and ship them off.’

  ‘Where? Why? Does it have anything to do with the Oklahoma Seminoles? And also, does it have to do with … a certain family in New York?’

  ‘Now you’re on my wavelength.’

  He stood up. ‘I don’t know what that means, but we should probably go. I’m glad you found the boy.’

  He glanced over at Duck.

  ‘Turned out to be fairly easy,’ I admitted. ‘He found his mother’s scarf in the dumpster behind the Benton.’

  John Horse nodded. ‘The one with the owls on it. You see how events conspire to tell you a story if you just pay attention? Now we know for certain that Talmascy was involved.’

  I didn’t want to fuel his whole mystical Seminole fire, so I just nodded instead of telling him how much of my instinct I had to use to put two and two together.

  ‘Duck,’ I said. ‘Stay here, and I mean it. Stay with your sister until I come back. All right?’

  ‘She’s in the other world,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘She’s trying to find our mother using her abilities to see things that can’t be seen. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ John Horse said instantly. ‘It is.’

  ‘And we’re going to wander around in this world to do the same thing,’ I added, ‘so stay here.’

  ‘I will,’ he promised.

  ‘I already spoke with Maggie Redhawk,’ I told him. ‘She’s going to watch out for you while I’m gone; fix you up with a little bed right here in this room. Will you be OK?’

  He tilted his head in my direction. ‘Not really. My mother’s missing and my sister’s in a coma.’

  What could I say?

  He returned his attention to his sister. John Horse and I headed for the door.

  When we were in the hall, John Horse said, ‘You’ve done very well in a short time. How did you find out about Talmascy?’

  ‘Like always,’ I shrugged, ‘a combination of brains, intuition and blind, stupid luck.’

  ‘It’s not stupid luck,’ he said. ‘You can always find a path, and when you do, you walk on it. That’s why I like you.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I lowered my voice. ‘But here’s what I just started thinking: what if my path takes me to Oklahoma? Or worse: back to New York?’

  He grinned. ‘Then I’m coming with you. I never been in New York. I don’t think anything I heard about it is true. And I have relatives in Oklahoma, of course. It will be a great trip. I like riding in that fancy car of yours.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Nobody’s taking the T-bird on a road trip. I was just kind of wondering out loud. And anyway, if I do go, I’ll be going alone.’

  ‘Oh.’ He sounded genuinely disappointed.

  ‘And we have plenty to do here before I go traipsing off anywhere else.’

  ‘The death of your friend,’ he said, ‘and the man who killed him.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ I told him. ‘I don’t see why Icepick would kill Pan Pan. And I certainly don’t understand why Icepick would drive a car we sold him all t
he way to Florida to dump Pan Pan’s body in our little bay. There are twenty-seven places to dump a body within walking distance of where Pan Pan lives, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a very nice neighborhood,’ John Horse observed.

  ‘It’s not, but that’s beside the point.’

  He nodded. ‘Somebody else killed your friend and Icepick wanted you to know about it.’

  ‘That’s more likely. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing you’d write a letter about. Icepick would never be so dopey as to use the phone for such a thing.’

  ‘One of your other friends wouldn’t call you, though?’ he ventured.

  ‘As I have told you on many occasions,’ I answered, a little irritated by the question, ‘no one’s supposed to know where I am. I’m sort of on the lam. And plus, now that I’m quasi-legit, the pals who could find out where I am would not care for the fact that I’m like a sort of cop.’

  He nodded again. ‘Your life is complex.’

  ‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ I agreed. ‘So, first let me deal with the things I can deal with simply, OK?’

  ‘OK. Like what?’

  I headed toward the police station. ‘Like finding out what’s really going on with the crooked cops in this town. Maybe you shouldn’t come with me. I’m going into the station full of guesses and made-up threats.’

  He picked up his pace. ‘Great! That should be fun.’

  I was in luck. Brady and Watkins were the only ones in the police station when John Horse and I barged through the front door.

  Going once again for the bold approach, I let them have it.

  ‘The thing is,’ I shouted, ‘I know that both of you are involved with Bear Talmascy in kidnapping Seminole women, and I’ve turned over my findings to the FBI. Man, are they ever going to be on your ass. I just came down to watch them take you away!’

  John Horse stepped back. He didn’t want to be anywhere near me when the counter-threats started making their way around the room.

  ‘Listen, Moscowitz …’ Brady growled.

  I interrupted. ‘I know what’s going on, jackass. I have hard evidence. I know Talmascy, see. He’s a part of my circle up in New York. Get it? My circle.’