Sidewalk Saint, page 5
No matter what, he always knew how to make an entrance.
The front door to Yudda’s slammed open and he stood in the doorway, backlit by streetlamps, and surveyed the place.
‘Foggy?’ he mumbled after a moment. ‘Is that a dog you got there?’
Den raised his head, sniffed, stared, and then his tail started going a million miles an hour.
‘Seems to be,’ I answered. ‘What’s new?’
‘I think I’m going to vote in the presidential election,’ he said, not moving.
‘I thought you couldn’t vote because of your outstanding warrants,’ I said.
‘I’m still registered to vote.’ He took a step inside the diner. ‘The only way they can stop me from voting is to catch me here at the polling station. Which they won’t do because the new cops in town are even stupider than the last ones we had.’
He slammed the door shut behind him; you could see his face. He was grinning like he’d just told a hilarious joke.
Haley wasn’t laughing. He turned to look at John Horse. ‘Who’s this?’ Haley asked no one in particular.
After another one of those uncomfortable silences, John Horse took a couple steps toward Haley, holding out his hand.
‘My name is John Horse,’ he said, still smiling. ‘I used to be called Young John Horse so that I wouldn’t be confused with another Seminole, but since he died in 1882, I think we’re safe.’
Haley stood up and took John Horse’s hand. That’s the effect John Horse could have. Impossible to explain.
‘He’s the leader or grandfather or something-important for the Seminoles in this part of Florida,’ I finally managed to say. ‘And the only reason he’s here now is because he knows something.’
John Horse nodded.
The dog got up and went to John Horse, who knelt and scratched the dog’s chest. ‘This dog has knowledge,’ he told me, looking up.
I agreed. ‘He speaks English, as far as I can tell. Don’t know how much Seminole he knows.’
John Horse leaned forward and whispered something in the dog’s ear. The dog sat back and, swear to God, shook his head.
‘He speaks Seminole, too,’ John Horse said, getting to his feet. ‘I asked him if he trusted these two policemen. One of them is bleeding and the other one has a pistol in his hand under your table, there.’
I nodded. ‘They’re crooked. But they admit it, so that makes them easier to deal with.’
Haley put his gun on the table top. He was still holding it.
‘You wanted to see me?’ I went on.
‘Couldn’t I just be here for a nice dinner?’ he asked.
Yudda and I both said ‘No’ at the same time.
John Horse nodded. ‘All right. I have some friends in Lake City that are trying to open a smoke shop. They can sell tribal tobacco tax free. Legally, they can do it because of the so-called Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act that just got passed last year.’
‘But the local merchants in Lake City don’t like it,’ I surmised, ‘because everyone will buy cigarettes from your guys cheaper.’
‘Better tobacco too,’ John Horse said.
‘You know they give you cancer, them things,’ Haley chimed in.
John Horse looked down. ‘If white people don’t know how to smoke tobacco, or how much tobacco to smoke, that’s not our fault.’
The thing was that John Horse was still at war. The Seminole tribe was the only one that had never signed a peace treaty with the American Government. He wasn’t suggesting that tobacco was a tribal conspiracy to wipe out white people. But his folks had been treated so badly for so long, it was hard for him to feel sorry for white people who couldn’t keep themselves from smoking too much.
‘Your point is,’ I assumed, ‘that you somehow know I just got back from Lake City, and you see some kind of connection.’
‘I do,’ he said.
I sat back. ‘I’m only interested in finding Etta, the dog’s owner.’
John Horse smiled. ‘That’s what the dog wants.’
None of my companions there in Yudda’s knew about the note on the dog’s collar. They didn’t realize that all I had to do was sit at Yudda’s and wait for Etta to come to me. Because despite what the Lamberts thought, Etta wasn’t taken by anyone. She ran away. There may have been people wanting to take her, but my thinking was that she outsmarted them.
The reason Roan had been waiting in a booth at Yudda’s was that he knew Etta was planning to show up. He’d gone to the vet’s office in Lake City; he’d been the guy who’d visited Den before me. He’d seen the note, left the dog, and come to my apartment. Why he’d done that was unclear; why he’d disappeared from my place was also hard to figure. Maybe he wanted me to know what was going on so that his business would be, in some way, legal. Or maybe he wanted me to chase myself up to Lake City to get me out of the way, for some reason.
Didn’t matter. He knew more than he’d told me when he was sitting on my bed. And one of the things he knew was that Etta was coming to Yudda’s. But for the moment, the Canadians and the Lamberts had scared her off.
All that was guesswork, of course. But I always trusted my intuition. And if I was right, it probably meant there was an eleven-year-old kid hanging out in Fry’s Bay, somewhere, trying to be invisible.
EIGHT
I helped Haley decide he ought to take his bleeding partner to the hospital. The bleeding partner, Banquer, disagreed.
‘You want me to go to the same hospital as Mordecai?’ he stammered. ‘I don’t think so.’
In the end Yudda prevailed upon the walking wounded, in the same baffling Cajun French as before. Something to the effect that bleeding to death wasn’t his best choice. So off they went, the town’s new crooked cops.
John Horse took a seat in the booth across from me. The dog joined him. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now they’re gone I can tell you why I’m really here.’
I nodded and waited.
‘You’re looking for a little girl,’ he said.
I’d given up trying to figure out how John Horse knew what he knew. But he was always right.
‘You have information about her,’ I said.
It wasn’t a question, because he wouldn’t have been there otherwise.
‘She might be in trouble because of me.’ He closed his eyes.
His story was short and clear. It was true that a few Lake City Seminoles wanted to open smoke shops owing to the new law. And that was irritating the local merchants. But that wasn’t the real problem. The Seminoles had opened a tax-free gaming casino in Lake City. That’s what had New York and Montreal upset, I figured. They wouldn’t like someone trying to muscle in on their Florida gambling income.
‘Seminoles don’t care about these games,’ John Horse concluded, ‘but white people gamble on everything. They gamble with their lives when they drive a car too fast or fly in an airplane. They wager their health on the terrible food that they eat. And they don’t even know which drugs are good for them to take.’
He shook his head.
‘It was your idea to set up the casino,’ I surmised.
‘Yes. And I’m not certain what it is, but something bad is going to happen there.’
‘The Lamberts have something to do with it.’ It was a guess. But the Lamberts were crooked, I was sure of that.
‘Mr Lambert works for the Florida DBPR,’ he said. ‘Department of Business and Professional Regulation.’
‘That’s the department that would hand out the license for the casino,’ I said. ‘Lambert works for the Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, that’s my guess.’
‘I forget how good you are at this kind of thing,’ he said.
‘I told him that,’ Yudda chimed in.
‘It’s my only advantage,’ I told them both. ‘People underestimate me.’
‘It’s because your name is Foggy,’ Yudda mumbled.
‘The point is,’ John Horse said, ‘that Lambert is crooked.’
That’s why the guy at the Child Services place in Lake City, Elvin, was suspicious of Etta’s adoption. I wondered if maybe the Lamberts knew Roan or knew about his nefarious activities. Maybe even knew about Etta’s talent. Why any of that would matter wasn’t clear yet.
‘Lambert is being paid by someone, probably in New York,’ I said, ‘so when this casino business came up to him, he alerted his connections.’
The old man sighed. ‘Is there an honest person left in this sorry world?’
‘No,’ Yudda and I both said at the same time.
‘I just want to find Etta,’ I went on. ‘You understand that her father’s in town. He was here in Yudda’s just before you came in. And I think Etta’s somewhere around here too. Yudda could be more help than he’s being, because he knows these people, and that’s Etta’s dog you’ve got beside you there. To sum up: this ought to be easier than it’s been so far. And why did I drive all the way to Lake City when everything I need to know is in Fry’s Bay? And why is everything in Fry’s Bay?’
Yudda leaned forward. ‘Are you done?’
‘I think that covers it for the moment,’ I answered.
‘Good,’ he continued, ‘because now that there’s not cops around, I can tell you where I think Roan is.’
But before he could say anything else, there was a lot of car noise outside on the street, and a lot of horn honking.
Yudda’s shotgun was out. But John Horse didn’t move, and the dog didn’t bark.
‘That’s probably my friends,’ John Horse said calmly. ‘I’m being followed. Whoever’s following me just got too close, I guess.’
I wanted to see for myself, so I headed for the door. Sure enough, two Seminoles, a guy I knew named Philip and a stranger, were honking the horn of their Jeep at a big black Cadillac Deville. It looked like John Horse was being followed by the FBI or a Manhattan mob boss. And while the difference between the two was often difficult to discern, I was more worried about the FBI. The criminals I could deal with. I’d dealt with them my whole life, they were like family. What can you do with the government – except run?
Nobody in the Caddy was honking back at Philip and his cohort, or doing anything, really. But the sinister car didn’t move.
I nudged the door open a little more. ‘Hi, Philip.’
He turned. ‘Oh, hey, Foggy. Sorry for the noise.’
‘Who’s in the limo?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know their names. White guys in suits.’
‘You met them?’
‘Sure. They were here in town, asking people for directions to the village.’
He meant a rocky place in the middle of the swamp that John Horse and his partially illegal group of friends and family called home. It was a difficult aggregation of cinderblock houses, log sheds, and chicken bones.
‘But no one would tell them,’ I assumed.
‘So, they started following John Horse around. You know how he attracts attention.’
‘He does,’ I agreed.
‘They ended up here.’ Philip turned his head toward the Caddy. ‘That’s why I started honking, to let John Horse know.’
‘I can see that.’
I looked back to the booth where I’d been sitting, and it was empty. John Horse and the dog had split out the back. And Yudda was nowhere to be seen.
I knew better than to follow John Horse. It was easy for him to be invisible. I’d never find him if he didn’t want to be found. And if Den was under his protection, I wasn’t worried about the dog either.
I was worried about me. Canada, Manhattan, crooked cops, and now maybe the FBI were all looking for the same little kid. Not to mention the Lamberts and the kid’s own father. My best move was to back away. Go sit in the sand somewhere and watch the sun go up and down for a couple of weeks. Everybody said Key West was nice.
But what did I do?
I went to the donut shop.
See, the donut shop in Fry’s Bay was something of a gathering place. It’s not just the taste of the donuts, although they are superior. The thing was, you could smell the shop from blocks away. It got into your brain before you realized it. You started thinking, I could use a donut! Then you realized it was just because the smell got into your nose. But by then it was too late.
The shop was a left and two rights up from Yudda’s place. Once you got outside the diner, all you could smell was the bay. But once you turned toward town, you could smell hot donuts.
My thinking was that if the kid had been anywhere near Yudda’s and got spooked, like by the Lamberts car or the sound of gunshots, the hot donuts would be a magnet.
I was there in no time. The red neon said Hot! Donuts! Now! But it didn’t need to. The air was filled with that information. The place was crowded. It usually was.
Bibi was at the counter, a little harried. She’d had the job for a year, but she wasn’t really built for it. The previous long-time server, Cass, had gone away under strange circumstances, unlikely to return. But Bibi made the best of her situation, and always with a smile.
‘Foggy!’ she called out when I came in.
‘Hey, kid.’ I looked around. ‘Man, you’re slammed.’
She offered a weary shrug. ‘Every time the sign comes on.’
‘Cruller and coffee?’ I asked.
She nodded and was gone.
I spotted the only empty stool at the counter. Second to the end. Sitting in the last stool there was a small person in a black sweater and a big, floppy disco hat. Face covered, head down. I had the intuition it was Etta, but I wasn’t usually that lucky.
When I got closer to the situation, I could see the reason no one was sitting next to the Disco Kid. The empty stool was taken up by a small blue backpack that said ZOOM. All caps.
I stood there for a second, but the kid didn’t move or look my way.
‘Can I move your backpack?’ I asked.
‘No.’
She was trying to make her voice sound low and tough.
‘Thing is,’ I said, ‘I’m getting a donut and the backpack hasn’t ordered anything.’
‘Maybe it’s trying to decide,’ she said.
‘It’s taking a long time,’ I told her, ‘for something that’s got a Zoom on its back.’
‘Miss!’ the kid sang out in Bibi’s direction. ‘This old man is messing with me.’
Bibi didn’t even look our way.
‘Let him sit there or take off, kid. Can’t you see how packed we are?’ Bibi sighed.
I lifted the backpack off the stool and said, ‘Excuse me, Zoom.’
The kid’s head lifted slightly.
‘It’s not named Zoom,’ she corrected. ‘I got it from a television show.’
‘Zoom on PBS?’ I set the pack on the counter next to the kid. ‘I love that show. Karen’s my favorite.’
Because I’d had the gig with Child Protective Services for a couple of years at that point, I had occasion to talk to kids about their interests. Also, I watched Zoom all on my own, because it was good.
‘I liked Bernadette Yao from the original cast,’ the kid told me.
‘She’s the one with the arm thing, right?’
The kid finally looked up. And while she still had the punim of a cherub, she looked tired. Tired and scared.
I sat down. Bibi slid my cruller and Joe across the counter in my general direction. I tore the cruller in two, ate my half, and shoved the rest of it to the kid. She stared at it.
After a second I said, ‘You don’t want it?’ and made as if to take it back.
She grabbed it off the plate and stuffed the whole thing in her mouth.
I let her finish, and then I reached into my pocket and took out the locket I’d found around Den’s neck. Set it down on the counter beside the empty place.
The kid froze.
I fished out the poem about blueberries and unfolded it.
‘I’m a fan of your work,’ I told her.
She still didn’t move. I understood. She seemed like a pretty smart kid. She wasn’t about to trust a stranger in a donut shop. So, I just kept talking.
‘I think the Lamberts are no good. I think Den is a great dog. I think your father really wants to see you. A lot of people are after you, and you’re not exactly certain why that is. Also, I really do like your poem about blueberries and Zoom doesn’t sell merchandise. You made this backpack yourself from iron-on letters. And a person your age should not be using an iron.’
‘A person my age should not be talking to old men in donut shops.’
‘You have to stop calling me an old man,’ I told her in no uncertain terms. ‘I’m younger than your father.’
‘Miss!’ she sang out again. ‘This man is still bothering me! Could you please call the police?’
Bibi made a sort of growling sound and shot over to the kid.
‘Listen, little girl,’ she snarled. ‘He’s probably trying to help you but you’re too stupid to know it. And I’m too busy to care. So, that’s it for you. Out!’
‘You’re throwing me out?’ The kid blinked.
‘Vacate the stool!’ Bibi said, louder.
‘Now you’ve done it,’ I told the kid. ‘Once you get thrown out of a donut shop, your life takes a downward spiral and you end up homeless in the gutter and addicted to drugs.’
Somebody from the other end of the bar complained about Bibi’s inattention to his lack of coffee, and Bibi explained to the customer where she was going to put his next cup.
I stood up. ‘I’m uncomfortable with this level of discourse. Let’s beat it.’
I put my hand on the backpack, but the kid grabbed it, body-blocked me like Mean Joe Greene, and shot out the door. A couple of the customers laughed. I probably would have too, if the shoe had been on the other foot. I was a ridiculous sight.
I got my balance, if not my dignity, and hustled out the door.
That time of year the sun went down around 7:45, so the streets were more shadow than light. The sky was a sinister kind of purple. Meant rain later on. And there was no sign of the kid.
