Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

“I thought you only drank Glenmorangie.”

“One does not drink Glenmorangie, one worships at its feet.”

“My mistake.”

Liam's burger and fries arrived and he was not heard from again, or at least not for the next ten minutes. Bill pulled a stool opposite his and sat down with a glass of mineral water and a twist of lime. She had a map of New Orleans spread out on the bar, and was tracing the trolley route to the Garden District. “I've seen pictures of the fence around Anne Rice's house,” she said. “Wrought-iron roses. I plan to see that up close and personal when I go. And I hear tell that Jefferson Davis died just down the street, and that there's a memorial. I'd like to see that, too, if only just to spit on it. That old boy did not get half the kicking around he deserved.” She turned the map over to look at the advertisements. “The Jazz Festival, when is that, May, June? Jimmy Buffett plays at the festival sometimes. I wonder how hot it is in New Orleans in June.”

She wasn't expecting any answers, which was a good thing because Liam's mouth was full. The bar wasn't, maybe a dozen customers all told. One couple was dancing unsteadily cheek to cheek to the strains of “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” Four men in a booth loitered over the remains of their beer, paperwork exchanging hands and paragraphs disputed in muted voices. One of them was Jim Earl, Newenham's mayor. The other three were members of the town council. Two booths over four women slapped cards down in a game of Snerts. One man sat at a table, moodily nursing a beer, thinking unpleasant thoughts, if his expression was anything to go by. A table away another man was asleep, head on the tabletop between outstretched arms.

Liam surfaced eventually, his stomach straining pleasantly at his belt. “It occurs to me that I've been eating your cheeseburgers twice a day for three months.”

Bill raised her head and gave him a considering stare. “I fail to see the problem here, Liam.”

“Come to think of it, so do I,” he said, pushing his plate away and finishing his Coke. “I need a couple of arrest warrants, Bill.”

She put down the street map she'd been looking at and got up to refill his glass. “I heard,” she said, climbing back up on her stool. “You've been busy.”

His smile was smug. “Yup.”

The door opened behind him and momentarily flooded the dim room with light. A raven cawed raucously, the sound cut off abruptly when the door shut again. “Noisy bastard,” Moses muttered, and climbed up to sit beside Liam.

Bill smiled at him, the tender smile she reserved only for him. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself. Gimme a beer.”

The smile didn't waver. She got him a beer, a squat brown bottle full, and poured it in his lap.

“Hey!” Moses leapt to his feet. “Goddamn it, woman, what the hell are you doing? Jesus!”

“Teaching you some manners,” she replied sweetly. She climbed back up on her stool and said to Liam, “Warrants for whom?”

Liam, struggling to repress a grin and not succeeding very well, said, “One for Frank Petla. I need that one right away, his twenty-four hours are about up.”

“What for?”

Moses, still cursing, climbed off his stool and headed for the john.

“Two counts of felony assault, for starters.”

She raised a brow. “Not murder?”

“No.” The face of Charlene Taylor flashed before his eyes. “Not yet,” he said. Not until he'd dotted that lastiand crossed that lastt.

Bill grunted. “There's time, I guess. Long as we keep him locked up. Who's the second one for?”

“Walter Larsgaard.”

“Old or Young?”

“Young.”

“The tribal chief?”

“Yeah.”

She winced. “Ouch. That's going to come back and bite us in the ass.”

“I know.”

Moses emerged from the bathroom, his lap drier than it had been. A cell phone wentbrriiiinnnngsomewhere in the bar and his head came up like he was on point. He zeroed in on Jim Earl. Jim Earl saw him coming and tried to get the phone folded up and back in his pocket in time but it was too late; Moses snatched it from his hand. The antenna was still out and it waggled an inch in front of Jim Earl's nose as Moses gave forth.

“I hate these things. I hate anything to do with them. I ain't never getting me one, I ain't never irritating no one by talking on one in a bar, I ain't never disrupting the band when mine goes off, I ain't never trying to talk on one the same time I run into the back of the car in front of me, I ain't never having calls forwarded to one from my home phone-”

“You don't have a home phone, Moses,” Jim Earl said, but the interruption was a feeble one and was ignored with the disdain it deserved.

“-I ain't ever gonna have caller ID so I can see who's calling me on one, and”-Moses wound up for a big finish-“if someone ever calls me and I get a beep to tell me someone's waiting to talk to me on another line, I'm letting them fucking WAIT!”

He marched to the door, opened it, went into a pitcher's windup and launched the cell phone into low earth orbit. “FUCK the twenty-first century!”

There was a startled squawk and a flurry of indignant croaks and clicks before the door shut. Moses dusted his hands and climbed back up on his stool. “May I have a beer, please?”

Bill's smile was radiant. “Certainly.” She got him a beer. This time it made to Moses in the bottle. He drank it down in one long swallow. “May I have a refill, please?”

Bill had been waiting to do just that. “Certainly.” She brought another bottle to him. Moses showed no inclination to drink this one dry right away, too, so she sat down again.

The door opened and Moses looked over his shoulder. “Oh, shit.” He raised his voice. “I told you, not today!”

Malcolm Dorris came up behind him, his hat in his hands. His expression was apologetic but determined. “Uncle, I need to know now. Please.”

Moses buried his nose in his beer and didn't reply. Nobody said anything for a minute or two. Malcolm waited. He was a stocky young man, maybe eighteen, maybe nineteen, with clear skin and neat black hair. He'd laid on the aftershave a little heavy that morning, and the strong smell of English Leather interfered with the far more seductive aroma of deep-fried grease.

Liam frowned and nudged Moses with his elbow. “What's he want?”

Moses rolled his eyes and held his bottle out to Bill. “The answer.”

“What was the question?”

Moses huffed out an impatient breath. “His father wants him to stay home and fish and hunt and keep to the old ways. Malcolm wants to go away to school.”

“And the question?”

Moses drank from his new beer. “Should he go?”

“Oh.” Bill pored over her map. Malcolm waited. Moses drank beer. The smell of English Leather got stronger. “Well? Should he?”

Moses slammed down his glass. “How the hell should I know?”

“Because you always do, uncle,” Malcolm said.

“Go,” said Bill, not looking up from her map. “It doesn't take the resident shaman to figure that out. Go to school. Learn a trade for when the runs are bad. Like last summer. Like this summer. Maybe like next summer.”

Malcolm hesitated. “It's tough, uncle. I'm a Yupik in a white world.”

Moses said nothing.

“I'm a woman in a man's world,” Bill said. This time she looked up, her stare so piercing Liam saw the boy flinch away from it. “I need all the edges I can get. You're Yupik in a white man's world. You need all the edges you can get, too. Go to school.”

“Oh for crissake, go to fucking school,” Moses shouted.

It was enough. “Thank you, uncle,” Malcolm murmured, and backed out of the building.

“Don't ever be a Native,” Moses told them. “Have you ever wanted to be a Native?” he demanded of Bill.