‘Yes.’ I really wanted to see where he was going. ‘Yes, it is.’

  He reached into his construction boot and produced a very long hunting knife.

  ‘Tommy Ten Trees gave me this knife to hide after he killed three FBI men with it,’ he said.

  I glanced at Etta, who stifled a laugh. Tommy Ten Trees was the name that Maggie Redhawk had made up for Etta when she was hiding in the hospital. John Horse was screwing with these guys and he wanted us to know so that we’d play along.

  ‘It’s already had a taste of white blood,’ John Horse went on. ‘It’s hungry for more. Can you hear it singing?’

  He held it close to Thing One’s face. The guy lost some of his tan, and he swallowed hard.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ John Horse said to his knife. ‘Just a little blood, then.’

  Thing Two started to speak but I interrupted.

  ‘Your problem,’ I said calmly, ‘is that John Horse has spent time in a Federal prison. He’s also over two hundred years old. There really isn’t anything you can say to make him stop this. Except to tell him the truth about what you guys are doing here.’

  ‘True,’ John Horse said. ‘And also: I enjoy it.’

  He twirled the knife in his hand, like it was dancing, eager to taste blood.

  ‘Oh,’ Etta sighed in mock distress, ‘I can’t watch.’

  ‘Christ!’ Thing One exploded. ‘We heard about the kid. We came to kill Mordecai. Scarlatti tipped us off. It’s them two you want to cut up, not us. We don’t mean a thing. It’s that damned Mordecai you gotta worry about. He’s a maniac! He peeled a guy’s skin off while he was still alive! In front of the guy’s mother! It took three days! Do you understand that?’

  John Horse hesitated. ‘Interesting,’ he said, and turned my way. ‘The first time I heard that, about peeling a man’s skin off in front of his mother, was from an Apache I met in Oklahoma. He told me he was going to do that to some government agent, as soon as we all got out. I asked him where he got such a terrible idea. He said he’d heard something like it in a John Wayne movie. About Apaches, as a matter of fact. I thought that was ironic.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s something the Inquisition used to do to Jews who wouldn’t convert to Christianity. Like, in the middle ages or something.’

  ‘Actually,’ Etta chimed in, ‘it’s something that the ancient Sumerians did to their enemies. Or so they claimed. But it’s been discovered that they only circulated that as a story to scare their enemies. My dad and I read about it in this book he got me. It was called The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. We read it together. It was fun.’

  Thing One turned to Thing Two and said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’

  ‘Why would Scarlatti tip you off?’ I asked, another non sequitur.

  ‘He’s a Delany plant in the Montreal mob,’ Thing Two said, keeping an eye on John Horse’s knife.

  I took a second to reflect on the fact that Roan had told me he was a plant in the Canadian mob too, something he claimed my father had told him to do.

  ‘They know, the Delanys, that Mordecai is trying to retire,’ Thing Two went on. ‘And he ain’t been seen in almost a year. They think he’s going after this Etta Roan kid so that he’ll have something on Declan Delany. See, because the kid knows things about Declan. Nobody knows what it is she’s got on him, but it has to be something big. Because he’s worried.’

  ‘Worried and crazy,’ Thing One agreed. ‘It’s a bad combination.’

  ‘So,’ Thing Two concluded, ‘we thought we’d get rid of Mordecai, grab the kid, and end up in the catbird seat, like they say.’

  John Horse looked at me. ‘I think your cousin was right, we should just kill these two. They’re too stupid to live.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said, staring at them. ‘Man, you guys have no idea what you’re in the middle of. See, Mordecai is coming here to set things up for a big-time hit for Declan Delany. If you take Mordecai out before he does that, it won’t matter what else you do, he’ll keep sending guys after you until you’re deader than disco.’

  ‘Disco’s not dead,’ Etta objected.

  ‘What you guys have to do,’ I continued to the two thugs, ‘is back off. This is not your day. Not your win. Your best move is to try and stay alive for the rest of the week.’

  ‘Well, that’s the other part of the story,’ Thing Two volunteered. ‘We knew Mordecai was coming here for a hit. Later this morning. So, we thought, you know: if we could pop him and ice the mark, that could put us in a good place with Delany.’

  ‘We’re working a lot of angles here,’ Thing One added.

  Thing Two eyed Etta. That was clearly another one of their angles: get the girl.

  ‘Only Carter would never come here without a confirmation from me,’ John Horse assured me.

  ‘Mordecai is coming here for a hit that isn’t going to happen,’ I concluded.

  ‘Well …’ Etta piped up.

  I turned her way. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was thinking he might be coming here to get me.’ She looked down. ‘I slipped him a note in the hospital. When I jumped up on his bed to hug him. Because I knew this is where he was supposed to go, the message from the Delanys. I’m sorry. I knew it was what he wanted and, I mean, I didn’t know it was something … I didn’t realize exactly …’

  And she was done. She was a tough kid, but she was dealing with stuff way beyond her years. I should have realized it before that moment. I should have known she was on overload. The full weight of what her father was coming here to do finally hit her.

  I glared at the goons. ‘You two birds just stay put, all right? I really don’t want to shoot you, but I also am very capable of doing it.’ I put my gun away and went to Etta.

  She started crying a little. ‘My dad was acting so weird in the hospital. I was, you know, expecting him to be really glad to see me. And it didn’t look like he was. Did it?’

  I just shrugged, because I didn’t really want to tell her what I thought. Because what I thought was that Roan was a little more like the fantastic monster Mordecai than maybe he wanted to be. How many times had I heard it said: be careful what you pretend to be.

  None of that would do Etta any good. She was just an eleven-year-old kid who’d lost her mom and needed a parent of some kind in her weird world. The complexities of invented persona, contract murder, and a distant father were too much to take in.

  Or was that just me? Like a dope, I only just that moment realized how similar Etta’s childhood was to mine.

  She must have seen something on my face, because her expression changed, and she stopped crying. ‘Geez, Foggy,’ she said. ‘You look worse than I feel.’

  I thought about telling her my story. About how I never knew my father. That he was a legend, not a person. That he killed people for a living. That I hadn’t really had much choice but a life of criminal activity. That a horrible accident ran me out of New York, scared, all the way to Florida. That I was spending my life trying to make amends. And, finally, that she was one of my amends.

  But before I could get my thoughts arranged, the door flew open and there was Roan, backed by the faintest light of the rising sun, with a submachine gun in his hand.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Everyone froze for a moment.

  Etta broke the silence. ‘That was a very dramatic entrance.’

  Roan hesitated, then he cracked up. ‘Yeah, I guess it was. I saw cars, I thought maybe … I mean, I didn’t really know who was in here.’

  He stepped inside and closed the doors behind him. ‘Took me a while to get myself together after you gave me that note in the hospital,’ he went on. ‘And then I had to remember where this stupid casino was. That took a minute. Anyway, gang’s all here, I see.’

  Etta pointed at the two guys tied to chairs. ‘They were gonna kill you. Foggy tied them up.’

  ‘John Horse helped,’ I said.

  John Horse still hadn’t moved.

  Roan glanced at the overturned tables and nodded. ‘One of you guys named Carter?’ he asked.

  They didn’t answer.

  ‘Look,’ I said firmly, ‘the guy you’re supposed to pop today, he isn’t coming. He was supposed to meet John Horse, but John Horse never contacted him. These geniuses in the chairs here, they thought they could get you, get the contract, and get Etta.’

  He stared at them and nodded. ‘Climbing the ladder.’

  ‘I think I might start singing again,’ John Horse ventured.

  ‘Hold off on that for a second, OK,’ I suggested. ‘I think I can sort all of this out.’

  But Etta had other ideas. ‘Look,’ she said to her father. ‘Are you happy to see me or not?’

  ‘What?’ Roan asked, a little too distractedly for my taste.

  ‘See,’ I intervened, ‘we’ve been looking for you. Hard looking.’

  ‘Foggy knew I was in the hospital,’ Roan told Etta. ‘He saw me get clipped by the Lamberts.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were Etta’s father,’ I objected. ‘Your name was Mordecai.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked around for a second like he’d lost something. ‘Right.’

  ‘That’s Mordecai?’ Thing One asked Thing Two.

  ‘What you don’t understand,’ Roan went on, ‘is that if I don’t get this particular job done, Delany will send other guys after me. Guys a lot smarter than these two. Declan’s out of his mind, and he’s already mad that I went missing for a little while, to take care of the business in the prison. That guy.’

  ‘Declan was mad that you went on a personal vendetta instead of attending to his agenda?’ I confirmed.

  ‘He didn’t know where I was. That made him nuttier than usual. Because he was afraid maybe I’d switched loyalties or maybe even gone to the cops.’

  ‘You know he arranged for the Lamberts to get custody of Etta,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ he told me. ‘But the Lamberts were weasels.’

  ‘Can we get back to my question?’ Etta interrupted.

  ‘What question?’ Roan asked.

  Etta glanced my way, and the look on her face made me up the ante.

  ‘Declan Delany wants to get a hold of Etta because she has all his secrets locked up in her brain,’ I snapped. ‘What I want to know, on Etta’s behalf, is what the hell you’re going to do about that.’

  ‘I told you that was Etta Roan,’ Thing One whispered to Thing Two.

  ‘Jesus, man,’ Roan complained to me, ‘what can I do? Declan’s got a battalion of toads as nutty as he is. I don’t stand a chance. I can’t kill everybody.’

  ‘Don’t say kill,’ Etta interjected. ‘It’s impolite.’

  ‘The thing is,’ I said louder, ‘with Etta’s help, I’ve come up with the perfect way to get rid of Declan for good and screw up his organization for a long time. And it doesn’t even involve a gun. It involves a phone call.’

  Everyone stared.

  Thing Two broke the silence. ‘This I gotta hear about,’ he said softly.

  I declined to tell the local idiots anything about my plan. And after only another second’s thought, I determined to keep it to myself altogether. Why jinx it by saying it out loud?

  Instead I said, ‘OK, Roan. Keep an eye on things here while I go find a phone, OK? Also, you should be aware that John Horse has a battalion of his own. Seminole warriors have this place surrounded.’

  Roan blinked.

  ‘It’s true,’ Etta said. ‘I saw them.’

  He still didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t feel like waiting for him. I cast an eye about for something like an office. Didn’t take long. In the back of the large hall there was a suite of rooms with windows that looked out on the action. There had to be a phone somewhere in there.

  The doors were all locked, but it took me about seven seconds to jimmy one of the doors. A desk, a chair, and a phone. I made sure to face the congregation, because I didn’t trust Roan, and I dialed.

  The conversation with my mother started, as it always did when I called home, with a complaint that I hadn’t been calling as regularly as I should have. Then it moved on to my health, the weather in Florida, the weather in Brooklyn, and who had died since the last time I called. I knew I just had to let it all play out, because there was no rearranging my mother’s telephone etiquette.

  But as soon as there was the merest lull, I asked to speak to my Aunt Shayna. My mother thought it was nice that I would include Shayna in a long-distance call, even though I always did.

  Shayna got to the phone by complaining all the way from her room to the telephone. I could hear it: why did I call so early in the morning; how was she supposed to talk on the phone before she had coffee; why did her knees hurt so bad?

  ‘Did you hear who died?’ was her opening gambit.

  ‘I did,’ I assured her. ‘But I got bigger fish to fry. To wit: how would you like to take down a criminal empire today?’

  ‘Depends,’ she said. ‘Whose empire?’

  ‘Declan Delany.’

  ‘You mean Moira Delany,’ she corrected me. ‘Declan runs the business, but the mother runs the family.’

  ‘This is only one of a hundred reasons I love you, Shayna.’ I laughed. ‘You know everything.’

  ‘Only a hundred reasons?’ she complained.

  ‘I’ve got Declan’s number, Shayna. Something that I hope will take him out permanently.’

  ‘Good,’ she said firmly. ‘He’s crazy.’

  ‘More than you know,’ I told her. ‘He killed his older brother, Sean. Smothered him in his bed. Nobody knows.’

  ‘Then how do you know?’ she asked me.

  ‘I got a hold of his file cabinet.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means, exactly,’ she said, ‘but if it’s true, and the mother finds out? Well – Declan’s dead. Worse than dead. And the whole Delany … oh, I get it. You want me to crank up the gossip machine. God in heaven. What did Declan ever do to you?’

  ‘Me? Nothing. But there’s this kid …’

  I let her figure the rest out, which she did in short order.

  ‘Well, Declan is an equal-opportunity rat: he’d just as soon pop a kid as anybody, I guess. Especially now I know he killed his own brother. And now that I think about it, there was always a question about Sean’s death. This might not be so hard at all. His mother already doesn’t like him so much. Man-oh-man. I would not want to be in Declan’s shoes when Moira finds out that Declan killed the favorite son.’

  ‘So, you think you can make this happen?’ I pressed.

  ‘By about three this afternoon, if you’ll get off the phone and let me do my work.’

  Maybe there were more than a hundred reasons I loved her. One of them was this eagerness to get the job done. But I could also tell how much she relished being back in the game, like the old days, if only for a day.

  ‘You gotta do this very carefully, Shayna,’ I began. I was worried about somebody finding out that she was the source of the rumor.

  ‘Who do you think you’re talking to, Mr Big Shot? I been doing this stuff since before you were born.’

  ‘You know I love you, right?’

  ‘What’s not to love?’ she asked. ‘You want me to call you when it’s done?’

  ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be home. Better let me call you.’

  ‘I’m hanging up now,’ she said, ‘before your mother gets back on the phone and keeps you all morning. She’s got the sciatica again, and she won’t shut up about it.’

  And that was that. Shayna hung up the phone.

  Across the room, out of nowhere, John Horse announced, ‘I feel funny.’

  But he wasn’t laughing. I’d come to trust his feelings in general, because they were more reliable than most people’s facts. So, I wasn’t laughing either.

  I headed back across the huge room. But before I got to John Horse, the front door flew open wide. Again.

  No one appeared this time. I understood after a second and motioned to John Horse to move away from the door. Etta was still behind the bar. I crouched down a little and pulled out my Colt. Because whoever shoved the door open had done exactly what I might have: open the door and step back to see what might be flying out at me. I put my finger to my lips, hoping everyone would see.

  Seconds ticked by. No one came in.

  John Horse was a statue. ‘I think my friends just want to see what’s happening in here.’

  Etta had ducked down behind the bar, nowhere to be seen.

  The two guys tied to chairs were trying to look small and unimportant.

  Roan had ducked down behind the tables.

  ‘Where’s Etta?’ he mumbled without a hint of emotion.

  ‘Not sure,’ I answered before Etta could speak up.

  ‘Well,’ Roan went on, turning my way, ‘I really didn’t expect to see you here.’

  He seemed more than a little vague. Stoned, maybe. Or maybe he’d just let himself out of the hospital too soon. Maybe the morphine hadn’t worn off. Whatever it was, something wasn’t right.

  He turned to the guys in the chairs. ‘Who are they, again?’ he asked me.

  ‘Good.’ I straightened up slowly. ‘I’m going to put my gun away now, and introduce you to these gentlemen, OK?’

  He nodded.

  I moved, again, very slowly. ‘They came here to kill you,’ I went on. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said to the backs of the boys, ‘as you have already surmised, this is Mordecai.’

  They both twitched around and tried to see. Roan moved fast. He was standing in front of them before I could blink.

  Roan shook his head. ‘I don’t know them.’

  ‘They’re local,’ I explained. ‘Declan Delany sent them to polish you off, and they thought they might be able to get their mitts on Etta.’

  Without even taking a breath, Roan fired his Tommy gun into the floor of the casino. The floor responded by splintering up pretty good. The guys in the chairs responded by freaking out like nobody’s business. Yelling, crying, begging, bargaining, praying.

  Then it was very quiet.

  ‘I tied them up,’ I concluded, like nothing had happened. ‘So they couldn’t do that.’

  I’d always thought that the best response to mayhem was to ignore it. Like it didn’t matter. In this particular instance, it seemed to work. Roan sighed, then nodded.

 

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