Eagle, Kathleen (18 page)

"He
hasn't had a lot of experience."

"And?"

"And
he needs time to develop that sixth sense for trouble. In the casino business,
trouble is spelled with a capital T. Which rhymes with C, and that stands for
crime."

He
looked at her. "The organized kind?"

"Sometimes."

"So
who's protecting us from crime with a capital C? Us meaning the tribe. Us
Indians." He chuckled. "Who's protecting the savages from the
mob?"

"I
didn't say there
was
any criminal element involved, other than the usual
card cheats and scam artists. They sort of come with the territory."

"How
bad are they?"

"Bad
enough. Where there's money to be made..."

"It's
funny, isn't it? You go to a reservation, you see what you see, what most
people see—poor land, poor housing, poor people—you think, Hell, there's no
money here. But there's always been money to be made by the enterprising,
the... entrepreneur."

"The
white guy?"

"Which
you're not," he was quick to admit. "Hey, crooks come in all
colors."

"So
do entrepreneurs." She smiled. "You're an excellent example."

"Are
you grading me? Based on what? A limo ride? A visit to one of the stores?"
He did a mock double take. "Don't tell me you had your son in my
basketball camp."

She
shook her head again, this time with a soft "No."

"There
was a time when I'd've taken the benefit of the doubt or any other break you
were willing to give me, but nowadays I like to earn my E's. The ones for
effort
ain't worth much."

What
effort?
she
wanted to say. What they'd had since the beginning had surely been effortless.
Great sex wasn't work. But it was surely a gamble.

"How's
your back?" she asked.

"My
back?"

"I
noticed—I
thought
I noticed an oh-my-aching-back look when you were
showing off for the kids."

"Showing
off!" He laughed and wagged his head. "Damn. I'll take that benefit
of the doubt now, Miz Ketterling."

"And
I also noticed your brother's concern. It was a back injury that forced your
early retirement, wasn't it?"

He
looked at her as though there was more to tell, as though he might be sizing
her up as a potential confidante. Wordlessly he turned his attention back to
the road.

There
was
more to it. The possibilities started popping up in her head like
the road signs—there, gone, there again, a little bigger this time. Maybe great
sex was more of a gamble than she thought. Or maybe he was... "What was
it, Reese?"

He
shrugged, tossed off a flippant "A broken heart." And then a refrain:
"You broke my heart, 'cause I was..." He scowled. "Too young? I
can't remember the words."

"Was
it... something else?"

"You
mean like sex? Drugs? Alcohol?"

"I
didn't mean..."

"Was
the big man from Bad River a bad boy when he went to the big city?"

"Are
you all right?"
She
realized she'd turned in her seat, which was the closest she could get to
jumping out in front of him and saying,
Cut the comedy and look me in the
eye and tell me you're all right.
"I'm asking the same thing your
brother was asking. How are you now? Are you—"

"I'm
okay now." He added softly, "Honest."

They
took the long way around, through Sturgis and Spearfish, because Needles
Highway with its towering granite spires was a glorious sight when sunset
streaked the sky in pink and gold. And because there was another big casino
going up in the area. Reese wanted to get a feel for its reputed grandeur and
its proximity to the gaming operation that until recently was of little concern
to him. Suddenly Pair-a-Dice City and its smaller sister were major concerns,
personal concerns. They were important to everyone who was important—did he dare
form the thought?
Important to him.
Hell, what else was there? His
picture on a box of rice? A fleet of limousines and a bunch of stores that sold
overpriced sneakers?

He
saw for himself that the new resort was in fact under construction. Hotel, golf
course, swimming pools, family amusements surrounding the flashy jewel that
would become the largest casino in the Dakotas, close to the Hills, an easy
drive from the Rapid City airport. "Jewel" was the right word. In
travel brochures the Black Hills were billed as the Jewel of South Dakota,
complete with the largest gold mine in the country. To the Lakota,
Paha Sapa
was the heart of the earth. In the beginning, the people had emerged from
the earth through an opening in the crotch of these hills, they said.
"Your father said?"

"My
father?" He had spoken his thoughts aloud, spoken as he had been taught,
with "they say" affixed to theend. He smiled at Helen, his father's
friend. "No doubt. He told me a lot of stories, and I always figured
whoever
they
were, they were still saying through him."

"Now
it's your turn."

"Already?"
He laughed. "Jeez, that's for old men. I'm still a warrior."

"You've
made your mark as a warrior. Now you get to sit on the council wearing all your
feathers."

He
groaned. He didn't have any feathers. Carter had all the feathers. The first
thing their father had done when he'd gotten his younger son back was make him
a beautiful dance costume, which Carter had never worn. But he'd kept it. Reese
had noticed the bustle hanging on the wall in Carter's den.

"Your
All-Star ring, then," she said, obviously reading his mind, because he
knew he hadn't said anything this time. He was no pouter, no crybaby. "Do
you get rings for that?"

"You
do. Big, fat, gold mothers." He pounded the steering wheel with an open
palm as he watched the construction site slide past the window. "Jesus,
what am I thinking?
Politics,
for God's sake. I'm no politician."

"You
don't have to be. You didn't even have to run for office. You were appointed.
Anointed.
You don't owe anyone. You're your own man, which is powerful medicine, if
you ask me." She glanced away. "Which you didn't."

"I
did. I asked you about my brother, which shows how much I trust you. I'm
feeling my way along in the shadows here, and yours is a hand I know and trust.
Yours and maybe a few others. The ones I played ball with, some of them. And
I've got more family. I've got..."

He
peered into the bright path ahead. There were more Bad River people he needed
to talk to, people who had been there forever and would always be there,
casinos or no casinos. Sweeney had made a reference to playing ball that had
rubbed him wrong. His gut was telling him it wasn't his kind of ball. He was
expected to fulfill his obligation quietly, nod when they elbowed him. A silent
partner. Like he'd told Helen, he just wasn't as quiet as he used to be.

"I've
noticed," she said, and she was smiling at him. He'd spoken his thoughts
aloud again. He was used to being alone, and he talked to himself sometimes.
Talking to Helen seemed to come just as easily.

The
evening had turned to purple velvet, which dressed Deadwood up considerably, if
only for a moment. The once-infamous little town still appeared to tumble
headlong over steep mountainsides toward the trough that was Main Street, where
gambling had become king. Where once the false fronts had housed saloon after
saloon with the occasional brothel for variety, now every sign boasted of slot
machines and blackjack tables. With the lay of the land being mainly vertical,
floor space had become a valuable commodity. There was no such thing as a
simple store or restaurant. Every establishment, be it candy store or clothier,
had its slots.

A
busman's holiday for Helen, probably, but it was getting so the bus was the
only way to fly in these parts. And Reese was thinking they'd fly Deadwood
style tonight and head back to Bad River in the morning. This was a date. He'd
never had an actual date with Helen.

It
pleased him when a couple of tourists recognized him and asked for his
autograph. There was some part of him that wanted her to see this, to know that
complete strangers occasionally remembered who he was. He laughed when they
asked if he was in town for an old-timers' game. They said they had seen Rick
Marino at the Cousin Jacks Pub.

"You
see how quickly a retired athlete becomes an old-timer?" he told Helen as
he held the rough pine door to the Cousin Jacks open for her. Steel-guitar
music greeted them first. "Might as well say I passed you up in age a long
time ago."

"So
how old is this Marino? Any good years left in him?"

"Hell,
no. Over the hill and ugly to boot, that guy. I've got nothing to worry about
there."

Marino
was older than Reese, but he had retired only a couple of years ago. A
"small forward," Rick had learned to play ball in the Brooklyn school
yards, and he was a scrapper on and off the court. A white man with some jump
in him, he had been a Maverick when Reese was drafted for the team, and he had
helped Reese adjust to the strange fishbowl existence of a professional athlete.
But he hadn't come into his own until after he was traded to Seattle, when he'd
become Reese's best rival.

When
Rick saw Reese at Cousin Jacks, he immediately ditched his entourage.

"Drinks
are on you, Bad Man; you owe me for that last playoff series," he told
Reese after they commandeered a table in a pine-paneled corner. Reese barely
got Helen's name out before Rick was reliving a game, drawing her in with one
hand while he tapped Reese's chest with the other. "Four times this guy
fouls me. Four times, and he doesn't get called for it. Magoo for a ref that
night. And then he draws a foul off me. A minute and a half to go, I've got
five personals, I barely touch this guy, and Ma-goo's suddenly got his eyesight
back. So I'm out, and him and his damn Minne-apple Mules take the series away
from us. And that was supposed to be our year. I mean, we were—" He
brandished a fist. "I was ready to take you on right there, man. Right in
front of God and the rest of the fans."

"I
know you were," Reese said, laughing, remembering what a night it had
been. Win or lose, he'd always been pretty collected. That night the fans had
gone wild. The team had gone crazy. It was the only time he'd ever leaped into
another man's arms. "I nearly got a technical out of you to boot."

"Yeah,
it would've been worth it." Rick leaned back in the booth while the
jeans-clad waitress served his beer, Helen's white wine, and Reese's bottled
water. "This is the cagiest damn Indian ever walked this earth, I ain't
lyin'. You watch yourself, Helen."

"Even
if I'm not playing basketball?"

"I
wouldn't play with him at all if I was you. No, ma'am. He's, like, no holds
barred, this man, and I can tell just by looking, you're the kind of woman who
oughta be held properly."

"Which
is why she's with me," Reese said, slipping Helen a cool wink. "Not
Blue Sky the jock, but Blue Sky the coolheaded businessman. Real dull.
Tight-ass dull." He was grinning at Rick, but it was really for that cute
little choke that came out of Helen.

"So,
Helen, if you're not into basketball, what
do
you play?" Rick asked
her.

"She's
hell on wheels at blackjack."

"Is
that a fact?"

"No,
not..." She slipped Reese a look with a message in it. "It's just
that Reese isn't."

He
wasn't sure how to read the message. It sounded like
dumb ass,
but that
wasn't what he saw in her eyes. Didn't she like it when he bragged her up?
"Hell, I'm just an amateur. Helen's a dealer at Pair-a-Dice City."

"Hey."
Rick cocked a long finger in Helen's direction. "Have I got a deal for
you. You, too, Blue, as long as I don't have to worry about taking an elbow in
the gut anymore. I need another partner."

Reese
drew back, pulling his bottled water toward the edge of the table. Rick was in
on the Spearfish monstrosity, along with some movie star and a Texas cattleman.
"From what I hear, you've got plenty of deep pockets in on your deal, and
one of them holds a few state legislators."

"You're
right. I'm beginning to think I've got too many chiefs on board. And no
Indians."

"The
Indians are bound to get screwed," Reese muttered over the mouth of the
water bottle.

"No,
Blue, no. That's not what we're about. Casinos, they're like..." Rick
sipped his drink, then gestured with the glass. "Well, they're like
bookstores."

"
Book
stores!"
Reese laughed.
Good places to meet women,
Rick had once told him when
they were both tired of being on the road, seeing the same faces, the same
places with different names. They'd actually gone into a bookstore looking for
romance. Rick had left with a foxy coed. Reese had added to his Lakota history
collection.

"Yeah.
You know how they're putting up those huge bookstores all over the place?
Everywhere you go, they put one up on one corner, you look across the street,
up goes the competitor. You think one's gotta knock the other off, but they
both hang in there, and you know why? Certain people like books, and those
people are gonna cruise both stores because they're both right there. You know,
you only got so many people who like books."

Reese
looked at Helen. "So far, this makes some sense," she said.

"Sure
it does," Rick said, a little too warmly appreciative of her support.
"And it's not just the snobby places. You go looking for a bottle of
booze, you're gonna find the bars and the package stores kinda collected
together at the low end of Main Street. It makes complete sense." He
leaned in, arcing his long torso like a goose-neck lamp. "What I'm saying
is, the more casinos we put up in this area, the better all our business is
going to be. People who like to gamble will come here in packs because we'll
have plenty of gambling for them to choose from. And this is Deadwood, man.
This is the real thing, the original Wild Bill Hickok country."

"Some
of us think of this as the original Indian country," Reese said.

"And
you're the real thing. And that is so cool."

"You
know what, Rick?" Reese smiled. "My elbows are starting to
twitch."

"No,
here's all I'm saying. If you were to throw in with us, your people would see
that we're not a threat. I mean, they'd know this was a good thing for
everybody."

"How
would they know that?"

"Because
you'd show them, you'd tell them. We could go to the statehouse together and
get them to raise those betting limits."

"You
already got that."

"No,
hell, that was a pitiful compromise. That wasn't half what we wanted."
Rick peered at Reese, winding up for the punch. "You could be a very rich
man, Blue. You know what I'm sayin'? We could all be..." Rick's expansive
gesture signaled no limits.

"I
don't know about you, Rick, but I've got more money than I can spend right now."
Reese laughed at Rick's get-outta-here grimace. "Seriously."

Rick
turned to Helen. "What do you wanna bet this guy's still got the first
dollar he made, plus a ton of interest? He doesn't know how to spend money.
He'll give it away, but he won't spend it."

"Give
it to...?" she said.

"This
and that," Rick replied with a shrug. He wagged a finger at Reese.
"Hey, I'm not against Indian gaming laws. Some of those Atlantic City
boys, they'll cry foul the minute their little toe gets stepped on. I thought
about investing with them since that's where I hang out most of the time, but,
hell, that's big money and some of those guys play some pretty nasty hardball.
They cry around in the press about injustice, but they'll stab a guy in the
back for a buck and twist the knife around for a little added fun." He
poked Reese on the shoulder. "I'm saying we could open things up in this
state even more with somebody like you on our team. A homeboy, know what I
mean?"

"Yeah,
I do." But Reese wasn't interested in hearing about opening anything up
from Rick, who had no understanding of the difference between being home in
South Dakota and being home on the reservation. He pushed back from the table.
"I know how to lose money at blackjack. Let's go play a few hands. I need
to get the hang of this game."

"I
don't think so," Helen interjected, then added, "I don't think you
need to."

He
reached for her hand. "If I'm going to be surrounded by this gaming
business, I want to understand the ins and outs of the damned game."
Her
game, and he figured that offering to play was as close as he'd get to
asking her to dance.