The Witch Tree, page 13
Ambrose trudged out across the lot towards The Kruller. He moved gracefully for a man so heavy and squat.
“Ambrose,” Eli said. “I wish I’d never vouched for him. I’ll regret it, I’m sure. There’s just- something- wrong with him.”
Minutes later, Ambrose strode back across the lot to the wrecker, where he made a rolling motion with his hand.
“You’re on,” Eli said. “Lucky you.”
Using the wrecker’s bulk like a club, Ambrose wove the wrecker through the morning traffic on Lake. He leaned to the side, calculating, then swerved into the left lane to pass, a tire iron clanking at his feet.
“Cut it out,” Buck said.
“Just makin’ it interesting.”
Close up, he could make out the faded tattoos across his knuckles. SEMP ERFI, they read.
Ambrose took the route by Lake Nokomis and up Cedar. More backed up traffic. “Too many turtles on a log,” he said. At 24th, he stopped for the light, then drove a distance east, to The Little Earth Projects, out front the stars and stripes flapping on the pole, the flag of the Anishinabe Nation in tatters under it.
“Gonna turn in here,” Ambrose said, and grinned, “give you a piece of this here end of the business.”
He bumped into the Little Earth lot, there a mess of ruined cars, tires, and broken glass.
Stopped behind a circle of shinobs trying to get a car door open with a length of coat hanger wire. On the bumper was a sticker, Everybody Else Here Is Just Visiting. The car was painted in camouflage, brown and green. One of the men, in an orange hunting jacket, sauntered over.
Ambrose motioned to him with his chin, cranked down his window and put his head out. “Hank, can I getcha to drive squat for us?” Ambrose winked at Buck, then turned back to Hank.
“All week I’m workin’,” Hank said in a high, nasal voice.
“Don’t gimme that cow flop. It’s Easter, everybody’s off, right?”
“No, really – geget,” he said. It’s true. “The cops are crackin’ down on us since what happened last month.”
Ambrose pointed. “How about White Hat over there? Think he’d like to make a few bucks?”
Henry turned to the shortest, a small man who regarded them warily. “Mi’nawin?” he asked. What is it?
Henry made a steering motion. There followed an angry exchange in the old language. Tell that snake to eat his own young, White Hat replied, then said, in English,
“Can’t afford to lose my license again.”
Ambrose laughed, then glanced over at Buck again, after something in him, then saw it: Comprehension.
On a field across from them, school age kids were playing stickball, their pants and jackets dark with mud. Their voices came to him like song. “Oma!” one cried. And another, “No! Mangi!” and “Ajonda!”
They darted toward yellow plastic buckets at the end of the field, and the youngest, a girl, took a swipe at the ball.
Her feet shot out from under her, and the ball bounced though the buckets, and all of them raised their arms and cheered – but for the oldest, who knelt down to lift the girl to her feet.
One of the men ran to them and, taking a stick, he expertly jockeyed the ball to the goal opposite. Scored, again to cheers.
“So, if I understand you,” Ambrose said, to Henry, “I’m not going to get any new meat here. Is that what you’re sayin’?”
“Where’s the suit?” Henry asked.
“Lester?”
“Yeah, he owes me for the last one, hey? Damn near crippled my boy, the one right out there.”
“Watch out, Nikan,” brother, White Hat said. And to Ambrose, he said, “I could get you some folks down from Bad River or over at Lac du Flambeau to sit squat, you give me the time.”
“No time to wait,” Ambrose said, “we’re runnin’ a force play and we need a driver to run Sidewinder, too. How ‘bout that?”
“Enh,” White Hat replied. Right. As if.
“Ah, come on,” Ambrose said. “Why not, it’d just be you this time. And you’re behind, Henry. You don’t want me to impound your car, do you? And, you take this on, you’d even have something left over for the missus. And no one gets hurt this time, guaranteed, see?”
“No,” Henry replied. “And you said that the last time, eh?”
“I can drop the sling right now and tow your car, cause that’s what I’ll do if I don’t hear what I want to hear.”
A boy stumbled to Henry’s side – Henry’s son, from the way Henry slung his arm over his shoulders. The boy looked up at his father. The right side of his face was bruised, purple going to yellow, one ear nearly creased in half, and it wasn’t from being hit on the field.
The kid ran the sleeve of his jacket under his nose, looked between his father and White Hat – something scared, and small, and hurt there – then at Buck, and Buck nodded.
While Ambrose yammered at Henry, he reached for the keys in the ignition and started the wrecker.
“Hey, what gives?!” Ambrose said, and spun around to face him, “I’m doin’ business’ here, can’t you see that?!”
“Ambe,” LET’S GO – Buck said. He’d set the tire iron on the dash. “If you didn’t hear, they said ‘NO.’
27
Eli
At Lindbergh Airport, Eli checked his watch again, then grimly thought on Buck, out with Ambrose.
Buck being who he was, he could only hope he wouldn’t fuck things up too badly, cause some kind of mess. When Buck set his mind on something there was no stopping him, and that was worrisome.
Only, he had his own trouble to think about, and right here. Amidst throngs of jabbering, rushing passengers, and in a seeming whirl of competing perfumes, rattling bags, and beeping carts, he perched on a chair at the end of a row of chairs, waiting for the flight to come in from St. Louis.
He shifted this way and that, unable to get comfortable.
The flight would come in, Lester’d told him, and he was to walk with the passengers to baggage, where there’d be the drop off. They’d lost things, Lester’d said, coming up the highway. Cops. FBI. They’d been cracking down on chop shops, making stops.
That, and drug mules were using the highway, now, and that had put the matter over the line. Any driving infraction was an excuse for search and seizure, and they just couldn’t have it. So they were having to do things – differently. Cleaner. And so they couldn’t be traced. Wouldn’t lose critical things. And this thing – what he was picking up – was one of them.
Lester’d made such a point of explaining it, Eli’d wondered if it were some kind of set up.
Or, was this pick up an opportunity? The very one he’d been, desperately, hoping he’d get?
To his right, a man dipped to drink from a fountain, two women chatting, a suit reading a newspaper.
Time passed at a crawl, until, finally, the St. Louis flight was in; he could see the plane at the gate, the red NW on the tail, the plane like a winged arrow. Aimed right at him, whatever it was going to be.
Outside, a plane taxied, and he went to a window to watch. Hurtling up the runway, its nose slowly rose and, as if straining, the plane thundered into the air and away.
He set his forehead against the ice cool glass, wished he were on it with Jen and Buck.
At the terminal desk, two women in blue blazers checked in passengers for an upcoming flight. One got on a microphone.
“Will passenger–” he couldn’t make out the name, the system echoed so badly “–please come to Gate E 18?”
He glanced around him. Checked his watch. Only minutes had passed, but it felt like hours.
Now, the first passenger off the St. Louis flight strode into the airport, blinking under the lights. Could this be him?
Then they all came in a rush, a woman with ratty blond hair, lugging an enormous blue purse. A tall, cadaverous man in a brown suit. A guy in jeans and a thigh-length leather jacket. A school choir of some sort, chaperones and kids, and all thirty or so in maroon blazers and navy slacks.
He set his foot on the glass behind him, then pushed off, the fluorescent lights sliding overhead. Went down an escalator, past sculptures, here cows, painted in all sorts of splashy ways, and the woman in front of him shifting her bag around to her side, guarding it.
At the baggage carousel, he stood with the others, waiting. Was bumped, back, front, his shoulder, people reaching for their bags, and in the air body odor and fusty plane smells and exhaust.
There was a tap on his shoulder and he turned. Looked up the corridor one direction, then the other.
Just Passengers, everywhere, minding their own business and having somewhere to get to.
He looked down, and at his feet was a briefcase. Thought, for a moment, to just go.
In the parking ramp, he got the Goat started, exited the airport up Highway 62, then turned onto Cedar and drove, in a cold sweat, his mind racing and the briefcase on the seat beside him.
It had to be something… critical, otherwise, they wouldn’t go to such trouble moving it.
And was he sure whoever’d left it for him had even been on the plane Lester’d had him wait for? And if not – he glanced over at the case – anything could be in it – there was no telling what.
He drove to a lake, there tall reeds and ducks circling in the water. Parked the car, then lifting the briefcase, he carefully tilted it one direction, then the other. Nothing shifted inside.
He had his tools in his trunk; he could have the locks open in no time but knew better.
“You call when you’ve got it,” Lester’d said.
What could be so important they’d move it like this? Money? No, it had to be… what? He got out of the car, set the briefcase on the hood, then took his tools from the trunk and got the clatches unlocked.
He lifted the lid the slightest, to peer inside. Sure enough, there was something in there.
With his elbow, he held the lid down, then got a crescent wrench from his tool box and slid the handle into the case. Braced his entire weight on it, something springy inside, then raised the lid.
“God, DAMMIT!” he said. There an army green grenade, set carefully in Styrofoam.
One handed, he got a spool of wire from his box, hooked the end with his teeth and fed it under the grenade, worked it back up the opposite side; cinched the wire over the wrench and briefcase handle.
Done, he was sick in the road. Eyed the case from what seemed, still, not a safe distance. Then, angry, he strode to the case and threw the lid back, half expecting an explosion. Pulled the grenade and Styrofoam out.
Looked into the case. Silver satin lining, a pattern on it like argyle. And the case empty.
He let his head drop back and bellowed–”Jesus Christ, Lester – Son of a – GOD-DAMMITALL!”
Only, just then, he realized he was holding the grenade and Styrofoam packing off to his side. Under the grenade, taped to the packaging, was a floppy disk, a five and a quarter.
He had no time; he was late already. He had to call Lester, but that would have to wait.
At a photocopier on 4th, he waited in line. He tried not to fidget, and he was glad he was wearing a suit, because he smelled. A sour smell, of fear and dread. And he was sweating again.
And it was crowded and too well-lit. Students milling about, backpacks slung over their shoulders.
When the girl in front of him turned from the counter, he lifted the disk for the clerk.
“I need what’s on here,” he said, “and right now. Think you could get to it?” he asked, hoping against hope. The clerk, in a blue smock, shrugged. “I’m at the medical center, and it’s an emergency.” And here he was convincing. “They flew it all the way out here, from St. Louis, so I could get it on time and the plane was late. We need it, and now.
“Can you?”
The clerk motioned the manager over. The manager bent closer. He bobbed his head, then nodded.
“Okay, boss,” he said, glancing up at Eli.
He fed the disk into a machine in back, then pressed a button and paper spit out of a printer.
“Give it… ten, and you’ll be good to go.”
At a booth on the corner of Lake and Hennipen, the rush hour traffic coming on, he was on the phone with Lester.
What did he mean, he’d had car trouble? “Remember?” Eli said. “I got hit recently? The wheel well – it’s sheet metal – it came loose and shredded my driver’s side rear tire?”
Lester was angry to the point of being all but speechless, but that’s the way he was. The quieter, the more dangerous. “Hey,” Eli said, “I got it, and I’ll deliver it. What’s the problem?”
Lester told him take the briefcase to a wrecking yard in St. Paul, and Eli got that sick feeling again.
And, too, he worried someone would notice the tape he’d used to re-attach the disk was different. Not much. But still, other. And he’d scratched the Styrofoam getting it back into the case.
Had there been something he hadn’t seen? Couldn’t have? he worried. A thread, or hair, or – something put there?
“You just get it to them before five, understand?” Lester told him, and banged down the phone, leaving Eli holding the receiver, a robotic woman’s voice rising from it, maddeningly, “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again. If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again–
Coming through the door of the apartment, he slung his messenger bag under the couch, then fell into Jenny’s arms. He felt a sob rise in him, but when she tried to turn his face to hers, said, “What is it?” he pulled away.
“Nothing,” he said, and thrust his hands in his pockets, so she wouldn’t see them shaking.
Only hours later, when she was fast asleep, did he swing his legs from the bed to pad up the hall to the living room, where he drew his messenger bag from under the couch.
He turned on the lamp at the end of the sofa, then sat. Held the pages in the circle of light. Page after page of bogus medical procedures, from local clinics, and as far away as Kentucky and Tennessee. In the far column were totals. Fees paid to doctors and attorneys for “services rendered” – one alone had been paid over two million dollars. And the names of patients, from up at Red Lake, Lac du Flambeau, Bad River, and White Earth, some he even knew.
He set the pages over his knees. He could blow them to kingdom come, and right now.
But none of it would get done what he needed to get done, because he still had to find the money.
That, or it would all come to nothing.
28
Buck
Jenny dodged into the apartment, her black slicker rain bespeckled, and there having been some upset. She was surprised to see him at the kitchen table. Jenny, determined to – what?
“Where’s Eli?” she asked.
He lifted his head from the book he was reading, feeling naked in his T-shirt, bare-armed.
“I thought he was with you,” he said.
She hung her slicker on the door and went to the refrigerator. Rummaged inside, then stood, as if just having thought of something, the bulb in the door casting a rectangle of light on the floor. Finally, she shut it.
“What?” he said.
They hadn’t been in the apartment together, alone, since the day they’d watched the movie. It was awkward, this terrible… something in the room and no way to address it.
“So, what are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were going to be out there with him.”
She set a hand on her hip, her mind elsewhere, and he slid his chair back from the table to stand.
“Don’t,” she said, “get up. Just… go back to–” She put her hand to her forehead. Rifled through the cupboard for the coffee. Opening the can, she spilled the contents across the counter. Shouted–”Dammit! God dammit – son of a – god damn everything.”
She was scooping the grounds back into the can, when she spun around to face him.
“He’s going to die out there,” she said, “if you don’t do something. Don’t you know that? He just – won’t – quit.”
“Quit what?”
Wrapping her arms around herself, she let her head drop back, stared, her mouth pursed, into the ceiling.
“You have to tell me what he’s really up to, Jenny,” he said, “what he’s after, or how can I help?”
She gave him a longsuffering look. She really didn’t know. But it was just like Eli to protect her that way. And, with her pained eyes on him, imploring him to do something – anything – in his T-shirt, he went to the front door and out.
He’d found Eli nowhere, so knocked on the window of Sally’s car. Slid in, then pummeled his too-cold arms. He glanced over at her. Bright, freckled Sally. She smiled, but didn’t ask what he was doing walking around in a T-shirt, when the rain was turning to sleet.
“I was promoted again,” she said, brightly. “Now I’m the official ‘Cabinet Supply Warden’.” She dug into her purse. “They even cut me my very own key,” she said, lifting it up.
“What about The Dragon Lady?”
He’d gotten sandwiches, and they ate, the heater on, which was a relief. Sally was good with figures, and – with the exception of her own life, she said – good at organizing. And The Dragon Lady, Sun now, she told him, well, Sun had given her the promotion, wasn’t that just… fantastic? She was saving money, and she’d gotten a cafeteria pass at Augsburg College; it wasn’t stealing, she’d bought it from a girl who moved in with her boyfriend and wasn’t using it. “Her parents would kill her if they found out,” she said, happily in on gossip.
And a boy – boys, really – were taking an interest in her. One of them had asked her to go to a movie.
Sally drew on the windshield, a heart with an arrow through it. And their initials. S & B. She hummed to herself, then sang, her voice high and lilting, a bright amusement in it,
“…this little light of mine….”
She turned to him and smiled, said, “You like my song?” and he grimaced, trying to smile in return.
