Granada Gamble

The Fisherman

I catch fish. Doesn't matter to me what species or where they swim, but my focus is usually on Micropterus salmoides, also known as a largemouth bass. Bigmouth. Mister Hawg. Old Bucket Mouth. Big damn green thang. Lots of different names, depending where they are found and, more importantly, in what state of mind the fisherman lives.

Often the bass I catch are larger and more numerous than what others catch. When that happens, I earn relatively huge sums of money. I practice a catch-and-release strategy that returns more than ninety-five percent of my fish to the water unharmed.

Millions of sportsmen and sportswomen recognize me on sight as their favorite professional tournament fisherman. They want to shake my hand, pound me on the back, buy me drinks and get my autograph. A number of the women who follow the sport aggressively indicate they want to have sex with me. As I get older, I have become less inclined to participate in that kind of behavior, although the temptation is sometimes overwhelming.

In addition to fish, I also catch individuals who have harmed or would do harm to law abiding citizens or to the governments of friendly sovereign nations. When I catch them, ninety-five percent are in no condition to be released.

The dual vocations of fishing and obstructing evildoers give me a significant amount of pleasure and a deep sense of accomplishment.

Several weeks ago I was contacted in the usual way by the usual people, and they requested I deal with a situation that had possible national security ramifications. After the sad lesson of 9-11, there had been far more false alarms than real threats, but the politics of fear invariably errs on the side of caution, so here I go again.

* * * * *

Let me tell you, it's a hot damn long and lonely road from Peltrie, Louisiana, to Granada, Illinois, in June. A miserable six hundred and forty-two miles of ragged grader ditch greenery, windblown Walmart bags, roadkill raccoons and potholed blacktop. Fresh water oases held firmly in place by the Bible Belt are requisites on the bass pro circuit for anglers like me who are used to annual earnings that reach seven figures.

As much as I'd like to fish every tournament, my schedule is much like the one faced by a pro golfer. We both choose tourneys based on two factors: the best chance of payouts and travel logistics. However, unlike a golfer whose clubs are simple luggage, the tools of my trade include a monster boat I have to drag thousands of miles on the Interstates and backroads of America.

On the same weekend I was headed to Granada, there were tournaments at Lake Casitas, California, Lake Pleasant outside Phoenix, and several others separated by impossibly long road trips. After the annual Peltrie tournament, I typically fish the one just up the highway at Lake Oakview, Arkansas. Unfortunately, a cluster of F5 tornadoes moved through central Arkansas this spring, possibly attracted by the large number of trailer parks along the lake shore, and wiped out most of the habitation as well as the tournament.

It had been a killer drive and I was about tapped out as the last glow of the street lights of East St. Louis disappeared from my rear view. A familiar road trip crisis was affecting my eyes. With nearly constant effort I was trying to keep them open, but my brain was determined to shut them down. I figured I needed some caffeine to kick me alert until the problem passed.

I pulled into a combo gas station and convenience store. The sign read, Stop 'n' Gas — Open 6 to 12, which made no sense at all, because it was one-thirty in the morning and the place was lit up like the Pentagon during Halliburton Appreciation Days.

I didn't need fuel, so I parked on the street, got a thirty-two-ounce hazelnut, the only coffee that appeared to have been brewed this week. The clerk was as friendly as I expected her to be. I hadn't noticed when I went in, but there was a guy, maybe twenty, in jeans and a NASCAR T-shirt, standing by the gas pumps holding a sign written in bright red lipstick: Need Gas Money. God Bless.

Just outside the door a thin woman, maybe eighteen, was leaning against a rust-pocked Ford Taurus with a Buy American bumper sticker. She was holding a baby whose eyes followed me like her mother's.

How old? I asked.

Eighteen months, she answered. There was an empty baby bottle in her hand.

Hungry?

She didn't answer, looked to where the man was standing.

Is he the father?

Yeh. Johnny.

Where you headed?

Cordova. Upstate. He's supposed to be at the packing plant today. This afternoon. Second shift.

Run out of gas?

She nodded. Broken fan belt, then the battery quit. No money left.

Johnny folded his sign and slowly walked toward us.

How can I help? I asked the woman.

My mom said she'd send five hundred to general delivery in Cordova, for rent and stuff, to get us started, but we can't even get there. She chewed back a sob.

How much to get you by? I reached into my pocket.

Johnny said, Don't need charity. Just a loan.

I don't make loans.

Fuck you then.

I smiled at the woman. Let's get that baby something to eat. Does she drink regular milk? Take solid food?

Yeh.

I peeled two twenties from my money clip, wrinkled my nose. Maybe some Pampers, too? The mother looked at Johnny. He frowned, nodded. She took the bills, went into the store.

Where you from, Johnny? I sipped some coffee.

Yukon, he said.

Canada?

Missouri.

I hear you got a job waiting for you.

Uh-huh.

Got a place to live there?

Found a rental in a trailer park.

How long before you get paid?

None of your goddamn business. Johnny's fists were clenched and his teeth were grinding.

Tell you what, I smiled. You be as stubborn and proud as you want, but you put a woman and child at risk when you don't have to, I'll kick your tail from here to Kansas City. I took a sip of the coffee. I didn't know if it was the coffee waking me up or the conversation with the kid.

Johnny softened some, slumped his shoulders, jammed his hands into his pockets. A classic obeisance posture, if I remember my clinical psychology correctly. I went back to my clip, selected three twenties, stuffed them behind his belt.

He flinched, but stood firm. I'll pay you back.

Not necessary. You have to accept there are people who want to help you but want nothing at all in return.

I mean it. I'll pay you back.

If it makes you feel better, if we ever run across each other again, fine. If not, pay it forward and help someone else. That a deal?

Deal. He pulled the bills from his belt, squinted, looked me in the eye. You someone famous?

Would it matter?

I appreciate this, he said. I really do.

Unasked, I helped him push the Toyota to the nearest pump, then sat at a stained concrete picnic table to finish my coffee.

I watched as the girl changed and fed the baby, the guy pumped gas. Both waved as they pulled away.

Ten minutes later I sat at a stop light in my full dress Chevy Suburban. On the ass end, connected to a stainless steel ball, was a pinstriped tandem trailer that cradled a fifty-six thousand dollar hunk of metalflake fiberglass and a two hundred and fifty horsepower outboard motor.

That time of night the sodium vapor lights of the residential sprawl churned the heavy air into a yellowish slurry. I watched as lumbering june bugs climbed recklessly toward the light. Much more flimsy millers and moths fluttered too close, and the electric heat mangled thoraxes and wings. Pieces of their short-lived carcasses spiraled down through the sticky air.

I pressed my chin to my chest to stretch the knots from my back, neck and shoulder muscles. Two A.M. I squinted bleary eyes and checked the Garmin GPS unit on the dash. The computer said my ETA was four twenty-five. An hour and a half out of East St. Louis on State Road 142 through the fast asleep town of Mt. Vernon, Illinois, and I had another two and a half to go. If the goddamn light would ever change.

In the lane next to me a Mexican dude lounged in a tricked out Impala lowrider. I noticed it was a 1967. Looked like it had been painted with a broom. No other vehicles in sight. The driver's wrist hung limply over a chrome chain steering wheel and he lip synched along with a poisonous rap track. The lyrics, such as they were, related how the excitement of having sex was only exceeded by the heady delight involved with popping a cap on the man. Of course, I am paraphrasing here.

The overhead traffic signal hung on steel cables and was shaking at six-point-five Richter on the bass notes. I imagined nearby lightning bugs shorted out and flew headlong into trees. Earthworms exploded in the loamy soil. Roadside dandelions lost their turgor. Alley cats screamed and held their paws over their ears.

Now, I'm usually an easy going guy. Just ask anyone. I like people and they tend to like me. I believe in freedom of speech, equal rights for all and I truly believe that, given a bit of encouragement, every person is capable of bettering society and the world. With that sterling philosophy in mind, I caught the rap aficionado's eye, smiled and politely motioned for him to counterclockwise the volume. His reaction was to head bob in time with the music, tighten his Mexican flag dewrag, casually raise a center digit, and lean over to the blam machine to lay on another fifty decibels.

At the next light, the lowrider jockey was still in the groove, feeling the bounce, spitting sunflower hulls out into the street. He seemed more puzzled than alarmed when I appeared at his window with my Beretta nine. I extended my shooting arm, aimed, not especially carefully, squeezed the trigger, and in two seconds there were five rounds through his dash. Gray smoke billowed from the spot the CD player used to be. Everything was suddenly quiet, except for inside the brown man's skull that I was pretty sure would howl like a Baghdad air raid siren for the next eight hours.

The punk was sitting there with bits of plastic knobs, LED displays and a nest of multicolored wires scattered across his legs and crotch, his cramping foot still on the brake pedal when I was a mile down the road turning onto US 61 north. No sir. It's not a good idea to fuck with America's top bassman.

Chapter 2

The Lobbyist

It's a damn desolate and lonely road from Santa Fe to Granada, Illinois, thought Thomas Little Bird. He turned off Interstate 25 onto I-40 east, and thought about the day before when he had been on the back road to Los Cerrillos, a mere twelve miles south of New Mexico's capital city. The sky above was as blue as the precious stones mined below.

Once known as the Turquoise Trail, the dusty dirt road wound through Los Cerrillos, named by the early Spanish settlers for the hills where they harvested turquoise since prehistoric times. The mineral rich area also yielded countless tons of galena, a high grade lead ore that contained as much as one percent silver. The large volume of galena processed for lead smeltered out enough silver as a by-product to made these otherwise barren hills a gold mine for silver as well.

This was familiar territory for Little Bird. He'd come a long way since growing up nearby, then studying his ass off to get a legitimate scholarship to UNM in Albuquerque. After a drunk and disorderly college career, in his senior year he came upon irrefutable evidence, in the form of a high-resolution color photo, that one of his married male professors made love to male students in his office while wearing fancy leather harnesses. Therefore, Little Bird got the doctored grades and the recommendation he needed to be graciously accepted at Harvard Law School.

While partying at Cambridge, he won his law degree in a poker game when a clerk in the Records Office failed to beat his straight flush with four nines. Although his ringleader position in a cheating scandal wouldn't allow him to place anywhere near the top eighty percent of his class, Little Bird did earn a law degree with honors. The honors distinction cost him the price of a Ukranian midget hooker he sent as a gift to an assistant dean one rainy Sunday afternoon. Little Bird returned triumphant to New Mexico, and was immediately hired by Johnson and Poor, Attorneys at Law, in Albuquerque.

He immersed himself in defending drunk drivers, slip-and-fallers, incestuous uncles, abusive step parents, pedophile priests and dope mongers. His success rate was stratospheric, with only four guilty convictions out of over one hundred cases brought to trial. Little Bird's techniques were mainly limited to wearing expensive suits and skillfully bribing witnesses on both sides to lie on the stand.

His reputation for successfully defending slam dunk guilty scumdog pieces of society's shit was soon recognized throughout Bernalillo and Santa Fe counties. Instead of being known as a common shyster, however, which he most certainly was, he cultivated a persona of unwavering commitment and dedication to the plight of the downtrodden and socially unfortunate bottom feeders of the great Southwest.

His most celebrated case involved a Native American juvenile accused of multiple counts of first degree murder via AK-47. It took some doing, but Little Bird won not only an acquittal, but turned around and sued the victims' families for slander, and the state for false imprisonment and violation of civil rights. The catnapping judge threw out the slander part, but Little Bird won nearly three million dollars for his client, of which he took eighty-eight percent, plus expenses that would make the project manager on the V-22 Osprey blush.

The murderer's wealthy parents had a creative idea to show their gratitude. They happened to be well placed in the Indian casino business, and offered Little Bird a new career. So he resigned from the Albuquerque law firm and reinvented himself as the nation's number one Native American casino expert.

Sadly, there was trouble in Glitter Gulch. Little Bird's love of no limit Texas Hold 'em poker had landed him deeply in debt to some Vegas-based wiseguys, and he was soon desperate to earn additional income without additional honest work.

He turned to his roots: the village of Santo Domingo Pueblo, where he was born and partly raised. For about three dollars per hour below minimum wage, he convinced five entire families to work for TLB Enterprises, Ltd., listed in the Greater Santa Fe Yellow Pages as a manufacturer, seller and distributor of Native American pots.

The pots were double walled so the decorations would not be susceptible to water damage from inside. After the pots were slipcast in clay and low fired in electric ovens, workers stenciled Authentic Native American Design on the bottom. Each family had different designs, like saguaro and prickly pear cacti or a thunderbird or kokopelli. Big-hearted Little Bird would pay a pitiful bonus to the family who made the best-sellers.

Due to his ties with Native American tribes in the Heartland casino belt, and because of his very cool name, Little Bird was able to build a massive clay pot distribution network, and the business was instantly successful. However, that hard-earned cash quickly followed his salary to the poker tables on the Strip. The notes were way past due and he was desperate to find more income.

At the annual turkey-with-trimmings and isopropyl sangria Christmas Party he threw for the subsistence workers at Santo Domingo Pueblo, he had a chance meeting with a young Mexican man who was snorting a foot-long line of coke off the hood of a stolen Mustang. The man looked familiar, and he should, as Little Bird had represented him at least twice on cocaine possession with intent to deliver charges. That the man was also a distant step-relative of a village family member was a huge stroke of luck.

Eloy Martinez was smarter than the average coke head, and only partook during religious holiday celebrations and group sex. At other times, his drug of choice was the brown bottled domestic fruit of the barley.

A lengthy conversation, punctuated with hundred dollar bills, ended with Eloy making a deal to supply Little Bird with as much blow and meth as humanly possible. It's no surprise that, simultaneously, Little Bird came up with a distribution plan.

Besides procuring the dope, Eloy had surprisingly strong management skills when sober, so Little Bird hired him to supervise the TLB workers during the day to make sure the correct number and types of pots were produced for shipment. Eloy also ordered the clay and pigments, boxes and packing materials, handled payroll, kept the books and did whatever else was necessary to make TLB a legitimate business.

During the night shift two or three times a week, Eloy filled each of those pots painted in a specific design with small, flat plastic bags containing a hundred grams of cocaine. The other pots were filled with a hundred grams of washed arroyo sand. All were then sealed with a clay plug securely epoxied in place, and sanded smooth. It was not difficult work.

Each month the cocaine pots had a different design or color variation. Buyers around the country would specify how many kokopellis, coyotes or jumping cholla cactus per order, and that would translate into how many hundred gram packages of blow would be shipped. To break the chain of delivery, the pots didn't go straight to the street dealers. During his travels, Little Bird located greedy individuals operating legitimate garden and flower shops. They took a commission for forwarding the shipments to regional dealers where the coke would be cut and streeted out. The demand was relatively constant, and Little Bird sometimes filled special orders for Mexican meth.

Everything ran smoothly for going on five years with Little Bird, Eloy and many middlemen along the way making serious money. Now there was word one of his Detroit dealers had been systematically shorted, and the last shipment had no coke in it at all. Little Bird hated to consider it, but it appeared that Eloy had managed to step all over his own dick.

An hour earlier Little Bird had spoken with Eloy's young bride, Angela, at her apartment.

Angie, I haven't seen Eloy this week. Is he sick or something?

Ay, Tommy, pense que he tole you, Angela answered in Spanglish. We vamos a move down to Florida to be closer to mi madre. I am almost todo packed. Eloy me dijo que he would talk to you about it lass week.

Maybe it slipped his mind. We've been pretty busy, Little Bird said, certain Angela knew Eloy was a rotten piece of shit, but had no clue about his shady business dealings. Do you know where he might be?

Me llamo around one o'clock from the Canyon Road Bar. Me dijo que he was going to have some cervezas con his primos, Angela said.

Thanks, Angie. Have a good time in Florida. Here's a little extra for you to spend when you get there, said concerned employer, Thomas Little Bird, peeling twenty-five hundred dollar bills off a stack he carried in a clip inside his right boot. Say hi to your mother for me.

As Little Bird left the apartment complex, he turned to see Angela hold the money in both hands and kiss the bills like they were a crucifix.

After a twenty minute drive, Little Bird spoke with the bartender at the Canyon Road Bar. Eloy had been there earlier, getting noisily blasted with several of his friends. The second time Eloy pinched a barmaid on the ass, the wild bunch was told to leave. The next bar on the strip was Tiny's, and Little Bird guessed correctly that they'd stumble there to continue the binge.

It took Little Bird's eyes thirty seconds to adjust to the cavelike interior of Tiny's Little Bar and Grill. Through the seven-dollar-a-pack Marlboro haze, he located Eloy Martinez, laughing like a syphilitic hyena, holding court at a table next to a pinball machine featuring a cartoon woman with nipples the size and shape of golf balls. The place reeked of urine, unwashed bodies and stale beer. No wonder it was so popular.

The members of Eloy's troop were young Chicano laborers, heads wrapped with red bandanas, their sleeveless T-shirts showing muscles and Bic pen jailhouse tattoos.

As the men noticed Little Bird approaching the table, their laughter and talking ceased. When Eloy turned, he saw his boss and a look of asshole tightening fear swept his face.

Jesuth Crise, Lil Bir. I was jus coming a see you, Eloy slurred.

Let's go somewhere we can talk. This place stinks.

One of the men at the table stood up slowly, a drunken menace in his eyes. Almost as an afterthought he smashed a beer bottle on the edge of the Formica table and pointed the jagged weapon at Little Bird. Who you calling stinky, you In-dian?

Little Bird was a big man. Six three, two thirty, once as solid as a pro safety, but recently turning soft. That's why he carried a piece. He smiled and slowly pulled back his jacket to reveal a Colt Python in a shoulder holster. The man backpedaled to the bar, dropped the broken bottle, and rushed through the rear door like killer bees were after him.

Sorry Lil Bir. He doan mean nuthin'. Just had too much cerveza, Eloy offered.

Let's go, Little Bird said. Eloy followed like a star graduate of puppy obedience school, except for bouncing off the pool table and knocking over a chair as he made his way to daylight.

Little Bird unlocked the Toyota 4Runner, helped Eloy fasten his seat belt, then drove down St. Francis Drive to the TLB warehouse on South Pueblo Street. The large block building was sandwiched between the perpetually odiferous Pepsi Bottling Company and the oppositely fragrant Maria's Tortilla Factory. Little Bird drove into the empty warehouse and used a remote to close the overhead door behind him.

As Eloy searched the armrest for the passenger unlock button, Little Bird whipped out the Colt, grabbed the barrel and, Tex Ritter style, pounded Eloy above the left ear. Eloy said, Nug, and slumped down in the seat.

Little Bird dumped Eloy in the truck's cargo area, used nylon cable ties to join his hands behind him and to his feet, and stuck a piece of duct tape across his mouth.

Heading out of Santa Fe, south on I-25, Little Bird was thinking how easy life would be without these annoying problems. And how, with this Detroit delivery shortage and subsequent income shortfall, he'd have to scramble not to get behind on his payments to the humorless moneyfuckers in Vegas.

He slowed and ran down the La Cienega exit ramp to the stop sign. To the right was the village of La Cienega, a rabbit warren of potters, painters, psychics, glassblowers, poets, tattooers, ironworkers and weavers. He grinned as he remembered an associate saying there were more aging and wannabe hippies per square foot in La Cienega than anywhere west of the Mississippi.

Little Bird turned left toward the ancient silver mine area called Los Cerrillos. A single lane dirt road wound and twisted many miles into the hills. He switched into four wheel drive to scale the ruts and rock slides.

He got out in front of a familiar wooden gate. Instead of dealing with the rusted padlock, Little Bird lifted the gate off its wrought iron tube pin-and-hinges and dragged it back to open the road. The 4Runner rocked harshly over parallel three inch steel pipes set into the dirt road to keep cattle out, although it had been thirty years since any had grazed on the scrub and mesquite on the dusty open range.

Little Bird replaced the gate and drove to a crumbling hill that looked like an extinct pygmy volcano. He knew it as Mount Chalchihuitl — Turquoise Mountain — or what was left of it after years of ragged, ruthless mining.

The Toyota bobbed and juked as it climbed the narrow trail into the hills. Cresting the last rise, Little Bird looked down into the small valley and the ghost town of Bonanza. Several mean shacks of weathered gray wood slouched along the east side. In the center was a scattering of angular wooden structures varnished by the dry desert winds. A random row of hoist supports and tip frames warned of open shafts. Many of the shafts were well marked but Little Bird knew some that were not. He'd visited them before.

Some years ago, after a number of dirt bike and quad riders had driven into open mines and perished, concerned citizens had attempted to identify the original mine owners and compel their heirs to seal the entrances. Mining records for the area being what they are, the danger persists. So, should a careless coyote or hiker get trapped by a slippery slope of tailings and be inhaled into a three hundred foot bone crushing abyss, that's simply an unfortunate no-fault event. The fallout was that few people came here any more, and it became an even better place to hide bodies.

The SUV bumped to a stop beside the plank-covered Lucky Star Mine. Little Bird knew that countless mines like this one were closed in the 1950s when the low price of silver made them economically impractical. His father had toiled in this very shaft, bringing up thousands of tons of galena, which made the owners rich but earned the workers a few dollars a day.

Little Bird got out and stretched, took in the stark beauty of the place. A desert breeze whispered over the surrounding low hills that were made of mine tailings. The only colors were from a scattering of scraggly blue sage and a red-tailed hawk that cruised the thermals looking for prey. The quiet was broken by muffled moaning from the back of the truck.

Little Bird opened the hatch, jerked Eloy to his feet and perp-walked him to the edge of the vertical shaft. Eloy had regained consciousness only moments before, and was both confused and frightened that his hands were tied behind his back and his mouth taped shut. Little Bird turned Eloy to face him, grabbed an end of the duct tape and yanked it off, taking a good portion of a sparse mustache with it.

Fuckeeng cabrón! Eloy screamed.

Now, Eloy, scolded Little Bird, show some respect.

Fuck you! Eloy spat.

Eloy would be easier than the others Little Bird had disposed of here. Look down. Do you see the silver in the mine?

I don' see no-no-theeng, Eloy stammered, suddenly realizing he was in deep shit, peering into the hole, its wooden plank cover mostly rotted away.

You know Eloy, Little Bird explained, I trusted you to handle some important parts of my business. I trusted you with millions of dollars worth of product. You were always up front with me. Now I hear from the Detroit franchise that the last shipment of pots was just pots. No blow in them at all. How could that be? There was over a quarter mil in coke supposed to be in those pots.

Not that much, Eloy said. I been sending some short, but...

Little Bird jabbed the barrel of his Colt automatic into Eloy's liver, the pain driving the skinny Mexican to his knees. This is not the time to be telling lies, my friend, Little Bird said.

Wait! Wait! Angie's been on my case to move to Florida, so's she can be closer to her mama! Eloy said. The woman wouldn't leave me alone. I thought a little blow wouldn't be missed and, swear to God, swear to sweet Jesus, it was just a little, never all, I never took it all. Well maybe from a few of them, just maybe a dozen, twenty maybe, and I was gonna cut it here and sell it and give you back the money. All the money. And more. I was gonna pay you back with interest, honest. I was. Honest.

That's so generous, Eloy. Tell me where the coke is now.

In the windmill box by the stock tank at my old man's ranch in Caja, Eloy said. You know it?

Yes, Eloy, I took you there once when you were too drunk to drive.

And I thank you for that, Eloy said. I really do.

But now we have a problem, Eloy. And you must be punished.

C'mon, man. I been with you almost five years. We been good for each other, man. Who else knows the game better, man? He forced a smile.

OK. Get up. He helped Eloy to his feet. It better never happen again. Little Bird put the gun away, dusted off Eloy's shirt.

Oh, patrón, I promise! Never. Never ever again.

Turn around. I'll cut you loose.

Eloy faced the hole as Little Bird pulled a jackknife out of his pocket. With a quick flick he cut the nylon cable tie binding Eloy's hands.

Thanks, Bird, man, Eloy said, as he rubbed circulation back into his wrists.

You're very welcome. Then Little Bird lifted his right foot, expensively encased in a hand-tooled, blue snakeskin boot, kicked the small of Eloy's back and shoved him across the seven-foot opening. The tippytoes of Eloy's unlaced Nikes were on one side, and his outstretched fingertips just reached the other. But the chasm was uncomfortably wide and, after a horrifyingly long three seconds, most of Eloy's fingernails ripped off and he spun into the bottomless blackness. There were numerous rock outcroppings along the way, and Eloy made a series of Homer Simpson grunts when he bounced off them.

Far below the fall abruptly stopped, and there followed an avalanche of hundreds of pounds of loose earth and small stones which effectively covered the body. Little Bird peered over the edge and said, Hope you don't get lead poisoning down there. He dropped the knife, pieces of cable ties and duct tape, and watched them sail into the hole. Then he used a microfiber cloth to wipe down his SUV's passenger seat, and plugged in a twelve-volt Dirt Devil to thoroughly vacuum out the back carpet. His cleaning tools went into the hole as well.

Minutes later, Little Bird wrestled the gate back into position, hooked it onto the hinge pins, and made plans for the next few days. Damn the bad luck, he thought. Have to get a new supplier and plant manager. But first a road trip. Take the new car. Collect the stash at Caja and give it to his Detroit customer to make up the shortage. If only Eloy hadn't been so greedy. Little Bird took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, relieved he had taken care of the matter, yet troubled by his pressing financial problems.

Little Bird checked his watch. Plenty of time to get the cocaine Eloy stashed at Caja, change vehicles, pack a few things and get on the road to Detroit. In between he'd have a meeting with tribal leaders in Granada, Illinois, and check on his local distributor.

I may as well kill two birds with one stone, he thought. Although he had always hated that expression.

Chapter 3

The Peokeenees

The goddamn government sure does work in mysterious ways. However, when Native Americans are involved, the outcome of government action is not so mysterious as it is flagrant, malicious thievery.

In 1978, the United States Army Corps of Engineers notified Old Bill Jennings, Route 4, Granada, Illinois, that he'd lose just about all of his prime river bottom farm land to the Eagle Rock Flood Control Project. Eventually, four hundred of his six hundred acres would be converted to fish motels, leaving two hundred high and dry. Corn and bean prices what they were at the time, Old Bill and his wife, Bernice, decided they couldn't work two hundred acres hard enough to eke out a decent living. So they agreed to sell it all in one parcel.

The government gave Jennings an astonishing one-point-three million dollars for his six hundred acres, much more than others were paid for equivalent condemned land in the area. Some disgruntled farmers who were paid much less said it was because Old Bill's attractive adopted daughter and only child, Mary Jane, happened