Читать книгу Drake's Treasure - charles berrard - Страница 5

Jeffery Tool and Lincoln Kennedy stopped at the Arcata post office where Lincoln picked up his monthly check. The next move was a bank stop for cash, then swing by the Café Mar and bar at the Humboldt docks, have a drink, and score.

The day had its usual overcast until the late afternoon. Before darkness set in, the clouds parted and a band of orange-ish pink spread across the evening’s western horizon, lighting up the nearby sand and water. The Café Mar buzzed with local talk and the usual infusion of tourists. Spotting his connection, Lincoln left Jeff alone at their table and disappeared into the bathroom. He returned with a telling smile.

“Jesus, Link,” Jeff said. “It must have been some good shit, ‘cause you need to wipe your nose.”

“Huh? Yeah. Good shit! Got some blow for a change.”

“Well, amigo, you gonna turn me on too?”

“Not here. Drink up and let’s get going.”

Lincoln finished off his drink and they started for the door.

Ozay and Marina had picked this same restaurant and were entering just as Lincoln and Jeff were leaving. As they passed, Ozay distinctly heard one refer to the other as Lincoln. “Lincoln?” Ozay called out. Startled, Lincoln turned. Though he didn’t recognize Ozay, he quickened his pace, urging Jeff on. He ran toward his pickup truck, thinking his cover had been blown. Ozay turned to Marina and told her to wait, and then broke into a run to try and catch Lincoln. Before he could reach them, Lincoln and Jeff accelerated out of their parking spot.

“Wait a minute!” Ozay yelled out. In the evening’s fading light, Ozay could barely determine the color and make of the pickup. Had he made a mistake? If it wasn’t Lincoln, why did he run?

Jeff and Lincoln sped out of the parking lot in Jeff’s ‘53 step-side Chevy.

“Jesus, Lincoln! What was that all about?” Jeff demanded.

“Nothing!”

“Nothing? You mean to tell me that hustling me out of the parking lot like a madman was nothing? He knew your name! Do you know this guy?”

“No! Well, yeah. I think I know him. I thought he was a guy I owed some money once.”

“How much?”

“Enough to want to run. I don’t remember exactly, but it’s more than I got now. That’s it. Hey man, it’s cool. He’s probably just passing through.”

“That shit was real weird, Link.”

“Let’s go park somewhere and get ripped.”

“Sweet, my pale-skinned brother.”

“Hey! I ain’t that pale! My mother’s cousin’s cousin was full-blooded Pottawattamie.”

“White man speaks with forked tongue.”

The car radio was barely audible, but Jeff recognized the Steve Miller tune “Fly Like an Eagle” and turned it up.

“You’ve heard this tune, haven’t you? It’s great.”

“It’s OK,” Lincoln replied, “I’m a Neil Diamond man.”

Jeff stuck his finger in his mouth as if to puke. “No fucking way!” he said. “But I won’t hold it against you. There’s no accounting for taste.”

In the parking lot, Marina approached Ozay’s shadowy figure moving toward her.

“Who was that man?” she asked.

“From the way he responded, I’m pretty damn sure it was Lincoln. Let’s get some food and sort this out.”

Next morning they called the Eagle Feather office to talk to Michael “Sawtooth” Bragg. Ozay felt that Sawtooth was someone he could trust. What a great name for a radical journalist—a name that sounded like someone who could cut through the morass and get to the heart of things.

“Michael, it’s Ozay Broussard. Can we meet somewhere? I saw Lincoln last night.”

“How about coming here to the office. It’s only five minutes from where you are. I’m working on an article right now. I could take a break when you get here.”

Marina and Ozay finished off their coffee and Danish rolls, picked up a newspaper and walked to the Eagle Feather office.

When they arrived, Sawtooth offered them a seat. “Sit please. I should have mentioned it yesterday. I’ve been watching Lincoln ever since he got here. We think he’s been buying crank and coke at the Café for at least the last six months. Our concern has been the influx of hard drugs into the Indian community—alcohol has been enough to deal with. Lately Lincoln’s been seen with a local Yurok named Jeff Tool. I don’t think Lincoln’s dealing. At least we have no evidence of it, so my only concern is his influence on Jeff, who was probably the guy you saw with him.”

“What did the Yurok look like?” asked Ozay.

“Long black hair, usually wears a hooded sweat shirt, and drives a black Chevy pickup.”

“That’s who we saw last night with the bearded white guy I think was Lincoln Kennedy. Where do we find them?”

Sawtooth looked down at his feet for a moment and said, “Ozay, Marina, I suspect this is the first time up here for both of you?”

Ozay and Marina both nodded.

“Do you know anything about the politics and economy of this area other than what I’ve told you?”

Ozay spoke first. “I know that there’s been a conflict between indigenous Indian rights and corporate interests, land use and the white farmers, lumber industry and ecologists. And I know that the pot growers have carved out a niche here that’s a viable part of the local economy.”

Michael nodded. “You’ve got a partial picture. Maybe you’ve even heard of the arms used to protect the crops. But there’s a more dangerous element—organized crime. The point I’m making is that you don’t know what you might be getting into. I know Jeff and his older brother, Christian Tool. We grew up together. Christian is the more rational of the two. We all grew up on the reservation. The Tool brothers came from a hard-working salmon-fishing family on the Klamath. They were one of the many Yuroks to give up fishing when the water was siphoned off to the White farmers. Jeff and Christian left the reservation to farm pot and made enough to buy some acreage up the Mad River valley. Ever since this Lincoln Kennedy guy and the lawsuit became an issue, they’ve been reclusive. I suspect that this Kennedy guy is up to something.”

The Eagle Feather phone rang for Ozay. Bates called confirming that Lincoln Kennedy did work for the FBI and had avoided time by becoming an informant. Ozay told everyone what he just learned.

“It’s a set-up,” he deduced. “A sting.”

Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” howled out of the pickup radio.

“This shit’s going to kill us. You know that, don’t you?” Lincoln said, scooping coke out of a vial with his extra long little fingernail, while they sat in the pickup overlooking the Eureka Channel.

“Speak for yourself,” Jeff quipped.

“I like pushing the boundaries, taking it to the limit.” Lincoln was trying to be somewhat philosophical and facetious at the same time.

“Shit! I just want to get stoned,” Jeff said, dismissively, lighting up a joint. “But you know, it’s all alchemy. The early shamans and alchemists were the first junkies, man—the first heads. They hooked the nobility on these drugs and were then hired on full time. After a while, what do you get? A dynasty of shamans, healers, and alchemists who became the real power, the new nobility.”

“Jeff!” Lincoln said, sticking his little fingernail into the coke vial for another snort. “You know, I too have noble lineage!”

Jeff turned toward him, laughing. “Noble junkie lineage? Yeah, sure bro! If I snort some more of this shit, I’ll feel like Indian nobility—Sitting Bull, Geronimo, or Crazy Horse.”

“No, seriously, I mean that my family on my mother’s side goes back to 17th- and 18th-century European royalty.”

“You shit’n’ me?”

“No! My grandmother was from the Spanish aristocracy,” Lincoln continued as he shifted his weight and got more comfortable. “She ran away and married a young Italian prince who fought and died in Libya in the Italo-Ottoman war.”

“When the fuck was that war?”

“Just before WWI. My grandmother inherited enough to come to the US and start a new life. She married a Columbia University professor who turned out to be an anarchist. He was a wobbly—Industrial Workers of the World. He felt he had ties with the working class because his parents were poor Irish immigrants.”

“You related to President Kennedy?”

“Nope. Funny, though. The family name was Mottly. I hated it.” Lincoln thought his fabrication was pretty good, but he’d better wind it up. “I changed my name after the ‘Weather’ trial, to put that part of my life behind me.”

“The left-wing politics or the bombing?” Jeff was getting confused. “Aren’t you doing both now?”

“I guess I am doing both.”

“Weird, changing your name, Link.”

“Before I changed my name, I admit, I had hair transplants. Shit, I was going bald. Can you believe I paid for expensive hair transplant treatments to make me look younger? Fifty bucks a hair it cost.”

With catlike reflexes, Jeff grabbed one of the hairs on Lincoln’s head. “Fifty bucks for one of these?”

“Ouch! Jesus, Jeff, with that one hair and all of the shit you’ve been snortin’ your tab is over $100 already.”

“My chauffeuring services are worth at least that much, paleface. Hey, let’s get back, I think we’re having company tonight.”

Lincoln remembered that the company was the Germans, and that he disliked Germans.

As Jeff started the pickup and pulled out, he turned up the radio to hear the group Redbone singing “Come And Get Your Love,” an all-Indian R&B tune that had hit the charts in ’73 and turned out to be their greatest hit. He sang right along with the radio: “Come and get yo love…come and get yo love now…come and get yo love… These guys are a trip man. They’ve played with and backed up people like the Beach Boys, Elvis, The Everly Brothers, surfer music from Fresno, man. They were Indians and Mexicans from the Fresno barrio. Of course, on stage, they all dressed as Indians.”

“Now that you mention it, I remember a poster with Indians in full paint and headdresses.”

“That’s them alright. Wild and scary looking, yeah! Jimi Hendrix is half Cherokee, and liked to hang out with them. They turned Jimi on to peyote, and Jimi turned them on to acid. Can you imagine drunk, stoned Mexicans and Indians with Jimi, on acid?” Jeff didn’t expect an answer, and a mournful foghorn from somewhere in the dark made him jerk his head toward the sound. “Christian and I used to run weed up to Seattle, and catch shows and spread a little joy around to the musicians. That’s where we met the band members.”

“The tune’s got that old R&B sound to it. I like it,” said Lincoln.

Jeff continued to sing along with the radio.

“To change the subject a bit,” Lincoln said, “it looks like you’re the only one with enough chutzpah to carry out the new plan. Lenny owes me one, so maybe I can get him to come around. With the majority, I know we can convince Christian. Then I think Robert will go along.”

“Lenny owes you?”

“Yeah, I got him out of LA before the Feds grabbed him. And they would have.”

“I hate to bring it up,” Jeff says, “but how long can we keep our plan from Sara?”

“We need to know what we can expect of her. To be honest, women are trouble,” Lincoln said. Just to confirm what Jeff’s position was, he asked, “You are still with me on the action, aren’t you? I mean, that threat of your brother’s was just talk, right?”

“He’s only my older brother, he doesn’t decide what I think.”

“Well praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!” Lincoln said slapping his knee. “You know,” he continued, “the BLA may not be planning their actions very well, but their focus on hitting the ‘pigs’ dramatized their action. Hit symbols! Hit them where it hurts! That’s why power plants are our target—they’re symbols of corporate greed and power, and it will hurt them.

“Those farmers who stole our water,” Jeff raised his voice. “They’re gonna love it without power to run their damn pumps!”

“Right on!” Lincoln pumped a fist at the dark night beyond the headlights while they speed along Maple Creek Road.

The high-pitched crackle of the wheels finding traction with the gravel and tar surface was louder than the sound of the ’53 Chevy’s overhead six engine. The road had been recently resurfaced—tar and gravel, mostly lots of loose gravel. It was done every three years or so, and for some time after, the unbanked curves often sent unsuspecting speeders skidding off the road. Jeff knew Maple Creek Road, and knew where the unbanked turns were. The coke had him feeling pumped, and as the first turn came, up he hit the gas just before the apex and slid sideways on a mound of gravel fast enough to let him think he wasn’t going to make it. The new rear tires found hard turf between the mounds of gravel. The wheels got traction, peeled out of the turn and took off again. Lincoln and Jeff let out whoops, and doubled over laughing.

Few cars traveled this remote, winding, two-lane country road, so it was something of a surprise for them to round a turn and find directly in front of them an RV moving slower than the speed limit.

“Honk or they’ll never let you by,” Lincoln warned.

Jeff honked and flashed his high beams. “There’s a turnout coming up,” he said, remembering the succession of turns. “They should pull out and let us pass.”

The turnout came and the RV didn’t pull over. They both cursed in desperation, as Jeff began to flash and honk.

“Fuck it! I’m passing this sucker.”

“It’s a blind turn, Jeff!”

“There’s nobody on this road,” Jeff stated, certain it would be OK to pass. He hit the gas and pulled out to his left, his wheels peeling and sliding in the loose gravel. Jeff knew that on a dark night all you had to do was look for headlight beams to know if another car was coming. That was usually enough warning. Suddenly, he saw one headlight, making it impossible to determine if it was a car or a motorcycle. Maybe a motorcycle, but if it was a car with one light out, which side had the bad light? It was too late to pull back behind the RV. If he made the wrong choice, Jeff realized, they were all dead.

He knew there was another unbanked curve on the oncoming left side that had a wide turnout, so he headed wide left into the turnout, hit the brakes and jerked the steering wheel just enough to do a 180-degree swing, missing the oncoming vehicle by inches, and came to a stop. There was dead silence. Jeff and Lincoln watched the car as its red taillights flickered behind the trees and disappeared around another turn. This near-death experience left them both stunned and shaken. There were no whoops this time.