The Road to Omaha (20 page)

“My God, did he
leave
it there?”

“Heavens, no, dimplekins. The cook called the garage and they towed it in. Why?”

“That awful man from the CIA, the one with the name I can’t pronounce, just phoned to tell me it was seen in Boston being driven by vicious criminals and when did I lend it to them. We may have image problems—”

“You’ve got to be
shitting
me!” screamed the Second Lady, bursting into the room, her hair rolled up in pink curlers.

“Some son-of-a-bitch bastard must have stolen the fucking thing!” yelled the Vice-President.

“You sure you
didn’t
lend it to one of your crumb-bum buddies, you asshole?”

“Christ no! Only
your
scumball friends would ask to borrow it, you bitch!”

“Hysterical recriminations will get us nowhere,” stated an emphatic but shaken Aaron Pinkus, as MacKenzie Hawkins straddled Sam Devereaux, the general’s knees pinning the lawyer’s shoulders to the floor while an occasional cigar ash fell on Sam’s contorted face. “I suggest we all cool it, as the young people say, and try to understand the position each of us finds himself in.”

“How about a firing squad right after my disbarment proceedings?” choked Devereaux.

“Come on, Sam,” said the Hawk reassuringly. “They don’t do that anymore. The goddamned television loused it up.”

“Oh, I forgot! You explained it once before—public relations, I remember now. You made it clear that there were other ways, such as shark-fishing trips for three and only two come back, or duck hunting in a blind where suddenly a dozen water moccasins show up when nobody knew there were any snakes around. Thanks a bunch, you psychotic maggot!”

“I was only trying to keep you in line for your own benefit, son, because I cared for you. Like Annie still does to this day.”

“I
told
you! Never mention that
name
to me!”

“You really lack understanding, boy.”

“If I may, General,” interrupted Pinkus from behind the desk, “what he lacks at the moment is a clarification of the circumstances, and he’s entitled to that.”

“Do you think he can handle it, Commander?”

“I believe he’d better try. Will you try, Samuel, or shall I call Shirley and explain that we are not at that art show because you appropriated her limousine, packed it with exuberant elderly Greeks, and forced me, as your employer, to attend to your personal difficulties—which, by extension, are not legally inseparable from my own?”

“I’d rather face a firing squad, Aaron.”

“A wise decision. So would I. I understand that Paddy has to send the velour curtains to the cleaners.… Let him up, General, and allow him to take my chair here.”

“Behave now, Sam,” said Hawkins, cautiously getting to his feet. “There’s nothing to be gained by violence.”

“That’s a fundamental contradiction to your entire existence, Mr. Exterminator.” Devereaux rose from the floor and proceeded to hobble around the desk as Pinkus gestured at his chair. Sam sat down with a resounding thump, his eyes on his employer. “What am I looking at and for, Aaron?” he asked.

“I’ll give you an overview,” answered Pinkus, walking across the room to the mirrored bar recessed in the hotel suite’s wall. “I will also bring you a decent thirty-year-old brandy, a luxury your lovely mother and I have in common, for you will need the effects of a mild depressant as, indeed, we did prior to our examination of your ‘château’s lair.’ I may even give you a very generous portion, because it could not possibly alter the sobriety your attorney’s mind will be shocked into by what you read.” Aaron filled a crystal goblet with a richly dark-brown cognac, brought it to the desk, and placed it in front of his employee. “You are about to read the incredible, and after doing so, you’re going to have to make the most important decision of your life. And may the God of Abraham—said Abraham who I sincerely believe has royally screwed up—forgive me, but I, too, shall have to make a momentous decision.”

“Cut the metaphysical stuff, Aaron. What am I looking for? What’s your overview?”

“In a matzo ball, my young friend, the United States government stole the lands of the Wopotamis through a series of conspiracies in which promises were spelled out in treaties, said treaties subsequently determined never to have existed, yet actually buried in the sealed archives of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington.”

“Who the
hell
are the
Wopotamis
?”

“An Indian tribe whose territories extended north along the Missouri River, including all lands within the flights of a thousand arrows to what is now Fort Calhoun, then west
following the Platte to Cedar Bluffs, south to Weeping Water, and east to Red Oak City in Iowa.”

“So what’s the big deal? Historical real estate was compensated by the coin-of-the-era as spelled out by the Supreme Court in—I think in 1912 or 1913.”

“Your photographic memory is, as usual, extraordinary, Sam, but you’re permitting a gap, a lapse, as it were.”

“I never do that! I’m
perfect
—legally, that is.”

“You’re referring to treaties that were part of the record.”

“What other kind
were
there?”

“Those that were buried, Sam.… That’s what’s in front of you now. Read them, my young friend, and render me your astute legal opinion in an hour or so. In the meantime, drink the brandy sparingly—your instinct may be to swill, but don’t, just sip.… There are pads and pencils in the upper-right drawer and the brief starts with the stack on your left, marked alphabetically in succeeding sheaves across the desk. You’ll want to make notes, I’m certain of that.” Aaron turned to the Hawk. “General, I think it would be a good idea if we left Sam alone. Every time he looks at you I sense that his concentration goes astray.”

“Must be the tribal outfit.”

“I’m sure there’s a connection. And regarding your appearance, what do you say we have Paddy—Sergeant Lafferty—drive us to a small restaurant I often frequent when I don’t care to run into inquisitive acquaintances.”

“Hold it, Commander Pinkus. What about Sam here? He’s had a rough day in the field and an army travels on its stomach, you know.”

“Our young friend is extremely adept where room service is concerned, General. His expense vouchers confirm his expertise.… However, at the moment he appears impervious to hunger.”

Mouth gaping and eyes wide, Devereaux leaned forward over the initial pages of the brief, a pencil gripped in his hand, poised over a yellow legal pad. He dropped the pencil, and as it clattered on the desk, he whispered, “None of us will survive. They can’t afford to let us live.”

•  •  •

Over three thousand miles due west and slightly north of Boston, Massachusetts, is the venerable city of San Francisco, California, and it is no surprise to learn that statistics indicate that the majority of East Coast migrants to the Bay City are former residents of Boston. Some demographers claim it is the glorious harbor, so reminiscent of the home of the Tall Ships, that has drawn these refugees from New England; others say it is the highly charged academic atmosphere represented by the numerous university campuses and the proliferation of debate-prone cafés indigenous to the Massachusetts capital; still others insist the magnet lies in the progressive and often obsessive tolerance of differing life-styles that appeals to the contrariness of the Boston mentality, for with what delightful frequency have the voters of Boston gone against the national tide? Regardless—or perhaps, via the dicta of numerous television and radio talk-show hosts, one should say
irregardless
—this statistic has little to do with our story except that the individual we are about to meet, as one Samuel Lansing Devereaux, was a graduate of the Harvard Law School.

Actually, she might have met Devereaux, a number of years ago, as the firm of Aaron Pinkus Associates was intensely interested in her and actively sought her interest in them. Fortunately or unfortunately, she sought other environs, as she was thoroughly fed up with her status as a member of a minority that basically bewildered the Boston professionals and academic poseurs alike. She was neither black nor Jewish, neither Oriental nor Hispanic, had neither roots in the Mediterranean nor forebears in lands of the Bengal or the Arabian Sea—and these presumably comprised the legitimate minorities within Boston’s American melting pot. There were no clubs, no societies, no panels founded to espouse the cause of her particular minority because … well, nobody actually
thought
about them as a group concerned with upward mobility, which was, of course, the key to public expression. They were just there, doing their thing, whatever it was.

She was an American Indian.

Her name was Jennifer Redwing, the “Jennifer” having supplanted “Sunrise,” which, according to her uncle, Chief Eagle Eyes, was given to her as she emerged from her
mother’s womb with the first rays of the morning sun at Omaha’s Midlands Community Hospital. During her formative years, it became apparent that she, and then later her younger brother, were among the Wopotami tribe’s more gifted offspring, so the Council of Elders raised the necessary funds to ensure educational opportunities. And once she had taken advantage of those gifts to the fullest extent of her talents, she could not wait to head back west—as far west as possible—to where people did not expect
Indians
to wear saris and have little red dots on their foreheads.

However, her migration to San Francisco was more of an accident than a plan. She had returned to Omaha, passed the Nebraska bar, and was employed by a prestigious law firm when the accident happened. A client of the firm who was a noted wildlife photographer had been commissioned by
National Geographic
to roam a modern Indian reservation and do a photographic essay on its contemporary fauna. His pictures would be juxtaposed with prints of the past, the obvious point being to show the decimation of the life-sustaining animal kingdom once known by the country’s original inhabitants. The photographer was a seasoned if somewhat libidinous professional, and he knew a downer assignment when it was presented to him; who the hell wanted to look at a dying world of wildlife next to romanticized etchings of fertile plains and forests, a hunter’s paradise? On the other hand, perhaps with a little imagination, things could be turned around—say with an authentic Indian guide in all the pictures … say with a
zaftig
female guide in various casual shots, bending this way and that.… say with “Red” Redwing, that stunner of a lawyer who had the office next to his own attorney, and for whom the photographer had a definite letch.

“Say, Red,” began the lensman one morning, poking his head into the lady-lawyer’s office and using the nickname her coworkers used, derived naturally from her surname and not her shining dark hair. “How’d you like to pick up a couple of hundred bucks?”

“If you’re suggesting what I think, I suggest you go down to Doogies,” was the ice-cold reply.

“Hey, momma, you’ve got me wrong.”

“Not from the circumstantial hearsay that abounds around this office.”

“On my honor—”

“Strike one.”

“No, honest, it’s a legit assignment from the
Geographic.
”

“They show naked Africans but I don’t recall seeing any naked white women, and I’ve had regular medical and dental checkups, so I’m familiar with the publication.”

“You’re off-base, lady. I’m merely looking for a pictorial guide in an essay that zeros in on some pretty rough circumstances about reservations. A Harvard-trained lawyer who just happens to be a member of an Indian tribe could make the difference between attention being paid and flipping over the pages.”

“
Oh
?”

So the shoot was done, and despite the fact that Red Redwing was an extremely promising young attorney, she was also extremely naïve in the world of professional photography. In her fervent desire to help her people, she acceded to the photographer’s selection of clothes, refusing only to pose in a bikini while holding up a dwarfed river trout, and not thinking to get initialed approval of the photographs aimed for publication. There was one other “only”: she caught the lensman snapping pictures of her bending over the carcass of an electrocuted squirrel, a photograph that surely would show more of her generous breasts beneath the loose peasant’s blouse than a proper attorney should permit, and threw a hefty punch into the man’s mouth. What followed unnerved her to the point that she declared the session over. Lips bleeding, the photographer fell to his knees screaming. “It’s over, babe, but please,
please
do that again!”

The article appeared, and the subscription department of
National Geographic
was swamped with a burst of new activity. It also came under the scrutiny of one Daniel Springtree, a part-Navajo senior partner of Springtree, Basl and Karpas, a law firm to be reckoned with in San Francisco. He placed a call to Jennifer “Red” Redwing in Omaha and pleaded his case, a case based on his guilt at not having done enough for his father’s side of the family.
The firm’s Rockwell jet was sent to Omaha to bring Redwing to San Francisco for an interview, and the moment Red saw that Springtree was seventy-four years old and still in love with his wife of fifty years, she knew it was time to leave Nebraska. The firm in Omaha was distraught but powerless; since the appearance of the
National Geographic
article, its client list had tripled.

On this particular morning, junior partner Redwing of Springtree, Basl and Karpas, soon many believed to become Basl, Karpas and Redwing, had legal matters on her mind light-years away from tribal concerns. That was until her intercom buzzed and her secretary announced, “Your brother’s on the line.”

“
Charlie
?”

“That’s who. He says it’s urgent, and I believe him. He didn’t even take the time to tell me that he knew I was beautiful by the sound of my voice.”

“Good Lord, I haven’t heard from him in weeks—”

“Months, Miss Red. I like his calls. Level with me, boss. Is he as handsome as you are gorgeous? I mean, is it a family thing?”