Dead Meat (3 page)

She’d remind me that she wasn’t stupid.

I’d tell her to remember that she would have the time off, too.

She’d tell me that was even more irresponsible.

I’d ask her just who the hell she thought was the boss around here.

She’d give me one of her sardonic grins.

No sweat.

When I walked into the office, Julie had the telephone tucked against her ear. With one hand she was flipping through her Rolodex file. With the other hand she was tapping on our new office computer. I decided to wait a while to tell her about the Raven Lake trip.

I kissed the top of her head, and she rewarded me by rolling her eyes and crinkling her nose at me.

I went into my inner office and called Charlie McDevitt. In addition to being golf and fishing partners, Charlie and I liked to exchange favors with each other. This was a businesslike arrangement. We paid each other off with lunches in Boston restaurants.

I swapped flirtations with Shirley, Charlie’s grandmotherly dumpling of a secretary. When Charlie came on the line, I said, “Need a favor.”

“Will this be a Burger King favor or a Locke-Ober favor?”

“Probably somewhere in between,” I said. “More like a Jake Wirth or maybe a Durgin Park favor. Depends on what you can do for me.”

“Who gets to decide?”

Charlie always did drive a hard bargain. “You decide the category, I’ll pick the place,” I told him. “Fair enough?”

“I think you better tell me what you want, first.”

“Okay. I want a rundown on an attorney by the name of Smith. First name of Seelye. He’s got an office in Portland. You guys should have something on him, because he represented some landowners in the Maine Indian cases. I seem to recall that Justice was involved in that one.”

“We were,” said Charlie. “Interior and Justice both helped to negotiate the settlement.” He paused. “This sounds to me at least like a Jimmy’s Harborside favor.”

“You must know somebody who could help.”

“I can talk with the folks in the Augusta office. Tell me what you’re after.”

“You remember Vern Wheeler? Runs Raven Lake?”

“Ah, those salmon. Of course I remember.”

“Vern’s brother, Tiny, has hired Smith. Seems that the Indians want to buy Raven Lake.”

“And Smith is doing the dickering?”

“Not exactly. Smith is advising. Tiny doesn’t want to sell. Question is, if he refuses, can the Indians win in court? They’re hinting at a suit, claiming that since the place sits on one of their sacred burial grounds, the old settlement doesn’t hold. So Tiny is depending on this Smith to handle the litigation, if necessary, or to advise him with regard to the transaction. He wants to know if Smith’s any good.”

“And,” added Charlie, “if he’s in somebody’s pocket. Sure. It’ll take me a few days, probably. I’ll get back to you.” He paused. “Did I tell you the one about the pope dying and going to heaven? See St. Peter’s there at the pearly gates talking with a guy—”

“I’m kinda busy now, Charlie,” I said.

“No, listen. St. Peter’s talking to this guy, who’s wearing a pinstripe suit, expensive worsted charcoal, pale blue button-down shirt, nice silk tie, black wing tips. St. Peter says, ‘So we’ve been saving a super place for you. Think you’ll like it. Three bedrooms, two full baths, nice balcony to catch the morning sun, view of the golf course, trout stream out back. Agreeable girls to bring your coffee in the morning, make your bed, whatever. Tennis courts, Jacuzzi, Olympic pool, exercise room. Couple nice restaurants within walking distance. How’s that sound to you?’ And Pinstripe says it sounds great. Sounds like heaven, he says. And all this time the pope is standing there next in line, listening, thinking,
Man, this sounds great. They must have something terrific for the pope.”

“Charlie, really,” I said. “I’m on a tight schedule. Gotta run.”

Charlie pressed on. “So the gates swing open, and two gorgeous angels, look like Loni Anderson and Joan Collins, they come down and take Pinstripe by the hand and lead him inside, and the gates close again. Then St. Peter turns around and sees the pope standing there, and he drops to his knees and kisses the pope’s ring and murmurs, ‘Welcome to Heaven, Your Holiness. We are honored to have you here.’ And the pope is thinking, hot diggity, this is gonna be great. So he says, ‘Rise, my son.’ So St. Peter stands up and he says, ‘We want you to be happy, Holy Father. We have a lovely efficiency apartment for you. Nice Army cot, bedside table, windup alarm clock, communal bathroom just down the hall. The hot water works most of the time, and you get an extra blanket for when the heat goes off. I think you’re going to love it.’ Now, the pope, he doesn’t want to admit it, of course, but he’s pretty disappointed. So he says to St. Peter, ‘It sounds very nice, of course. But I was wondering. That man who was in front of me, the man in the pinstripe suit. You seem to have really rolled out the red carpet for him. His accommodations sounded, er, even more luxurious than those you have set aside for me. And I was the pope. Who was that man, anyway?’ And St. Peter, says, ‘Oh, that man was a lawyer.’ And the pope frowns and says, ‘A lawyer, huh? Well, how come he got such a nice place?’ And St. Peter says, ‘Well, see, Your Eminence, we never had a lawyer up here before.’”

I snorted through my nose. “You trying to tell me something?” I said.

“Hell,” he said. “I’m a lawyer, too, you know.”

Charlie called me back the following Tuesday. “Good news,” he said. “This Seelye Smith is a straight arrow. And a very sharp one. Back in the seventies, while everyone else in the state of Maine ignored the Indians, Smith was warning them that the tribes had a helluva case. He predicted exactly what was going to happen. That they’d win
Passamaquoddy
v.
Morton,
that they’d follow up with that big lawsuit, and that Congress would settle. Nobody listened to Smith. Now everybody does. The boys in Augusta respect the hell out of him. And they like him, too. The Wheeler brothers’ve got themselves a good attorney.”

“Your sources, Charlie. You trust them?”

“Oh, yes. Absolutely.”

“Well, good, then. That’s a big help.”

“So when you taking me to Jimmy’s?”

“When I get back.”

“Back?”

“From Raven Lake. Didn’t I tell you? I gotta go up there.” I sighed elaborately. “Leaving Friday. Probably have to do a lot of fishing.”

“Jesus, Brady. That’s rough.”

“Well, you know, this isn’t an easy racket I’m in.”

W
HEN I GRASPED SEELYE
Smith’s hand to shake it, I thought for a panicky moment that I had somehow managed to grab on to his bare foot. I looked down at the thing I held in my hand before I could stop myself. Then, with what I imagined was a sickly grin, I quickly lifted my gaze to his eyes.

He had a plump woodchuck face. Two large front teeth with a space between big enough to wedge a matchstick into. Fiftyish, fat cheeks, thinning reddish-gray hair. Small, closely spaced pale blue eyes. He wore a hearing aid in his left ear, the old-fashioned kind with a wire running from a white button down into a battery pack in his shirt pocket. He was smiling broadly.

“It’s okay, Mr. Coyne. Everybody sneaks a look the first time.”

He held his right hand up for me to see. Where the thumb and forefinger should have been was a red mound of scar tissue. He had half a middle finger. His ring finger and pinkie remained intact.

He jerked his head toward his office. “Come on. Let’s go in. Hey, Kirk,” he said to his receptionist. “Bring Mr. Coyne and me some coffee, will you?”

I followed Smith into an unprepossessing office. One wall was dominated by a window giving a view down the hill to the Portland harbor. There were the standard wall-to-wall bookshelves lined with legal tomes, a few framed diplomas, plain gray metal desk, and a small conference table. We sat opposite each other at the table.

Smith put his mangled hand on the table. Again, I had trouble not staring at it.

“Mill accident,” he said, flip-flopping his hand around on the table so that I could see all sides of it. “Happened when I was fifteen. My old man owned a sawmill in Lewiston. Did finish work—moldings, valances, door frames, mostly fancy stuff like that. I worked there after school, summers, weekends. Learning the trade, the old man called it. Started by sweeping up the offices, and when I got bigger, I helped with the heavy outside work. Learned to drive the machinery—forklifts, what have you. Summer I was fifteen, Pop figured I was big enough to do some cutting. Thing was, there was this old Frenchman who worked with me, supposed to be breaking me in. Told the damnedest stories. Dirty stories. Raunchy. Very flattering for a kid, the boss’s son, to have this old Canuck tell him dirty stories. One day he really broke me up, and when I started laughing, I ran my hand right through the saw. Didn’t even feel it. The old Frenchie stopped in the middle of his sentence and started bellowing. I looked down, saw the blood gushing out of my hand, and passed out.”

Smith rubbed his scarred right hand with the palm of his left. “I spent five days in the hospital. For a long time those fingers that weren’t there anymore hurt like hell. After that, they started itching. Still do. Damnedest thing. The itch is up where that thumb and finger ought to be. Can’t scratch it. Drives me nuts sometimes. Anyways, when I came home, the old man sat me down. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘you sure’n hell ain’t gonna be no use now. Anyone numb enough to saw his hand off belongs in college.’ So he shipped me off to a private school down in Berwick, then got me into Bowdoin. After that I went off to Stanford for the law degree, then came back and set up shop right here in Portland.”

He smiled at me. “Imagine that was some of the stuff you came to find out. Checking up on me. Tiny Wheeler wants you to corroborate his judgment, way I figure it.”

“Something like that,” I admitted.

Kirk, a dark young man in an expensive-looking suit, brought in a tray with two cups of coffee on it. He set it before us and stood back expectantly.

“That’s just fine, Kirk. Thank you,” dismissed Smith. When Kirk had left the room, Smith said, “You want someone to fetch the coffee, you sure as hell can’t hire a woman. Know what I mean?”

I grinned and nodded. “I certainly do.”

He stirred some cream and sugar into his coffee. I sipped mine black.

Smith settled back in his chair. “Portland’s a good city for lawyering lately. Getting all citified, in its own small way. Yuppieized. We got the most architects and orthodontists per capita in the state. That kind of city.”

I lit a cigarette. Behind Seelye Smith’s gap-toothed grin and country-boy chatter, I detected a shrewdness that made me cautious. Charlie McDevitt had reported that Smith was honest and able. I felt confident about the able part.

He had the habit of touching his hearing aid with his left forefinger and cocking his head sideways at me when he expected me to speak. I found myself raising my voice a notch when I talked to him.

“So what can you tell me about the offer for Raven Lake?” I said.

He scratched his scarred hand absentmindedly. “Right now, probably not any more than you already know. The offer came from an Indian law firm, acting for a partnership in Bangor. What they’re saying is they want to make some kind of retreat out of Raven Lake, a kind of memorial. Place where Indians can go to find their roots. Some damn thing like that.”

“They’re claiming it’s sacred old Indian ground, I understand.”

He nodded. “Well, there
is
a certifiable burial ground on the property. They’re right about that. But it’s way the hell across the lake and into the woods from where the lodge sits.”

“So the question is, how can they claim the whole place?” I asked.

Smith touched his hearing aid and nodded. “What they’re saying is that to the Indians the whole place was sacred. It was like a great big Mecca. They made pilgrimages there. To the lake. One of their gods resided there. They never hunted or fished there. The burial ground is all that’s physically left of it. If we go to discovery, we’ll see what sort of evidence they’ve got. In the meantime, they’re only hinting at a lawsuit. No lawsuit, of course, no discovery—and no access to their evidence. They’d rather make a straight purchase, avoid litigation.”

“Meaning they haven’t got the evidence to back up their claim,” I said.

“Maybe. Or maybe it just means they’d rather avoid the hassle.” Smith shrugged. “We call them on it, we gamble they haven’t got it. Meantime, they’ve tendered an offer. One million, seven hundred thousand for the whole operation. Shorefront, buildings, docks, the works.”

“Is that a good offer?”

He shrugged. “It’s on the low side of fair. As you’d expect. They’d assume we’d dicker around some. One point seven million is in the ballpark. It’s a serious offer.”

“My clients, the Wheeler brothers, don’t want to sell, as you know. At any price. They’re worried what happens next.”

“And they’re wondering how Seelye Smith is going to handle it,” Smith added. “Fair enough. If the Wheeler boys don’t want to sell, the Indians are saying they’ll take it to court. My job is to figure out if they can win. I understand that.”

“And that means deciding if they’ve got a case.”

“Tell you one thing,” he said, downing the last of his coffee. “Potentially, at least, they’ve got a case. The government has been very receptive to claims based on religious factors. It’s case by case, of course, but there is this burial ground up there on Raven Lake. Whether that entitles them to a claim of the entire lake is another question.”

“I thought,” I said slowly, “that they forfeited all future claims in 1980.”

Smith cocked his head at me. “What do you know about the Maine Indian land grab, Mr. Coyne?” He fingered his hearing aid.

I lifted my hands, palms up, and let them fall back onto the table. “Just the outline of it, I guess. The Indians claimed the entire state of Maine originally belonged to them and that the white man took it illegally. They filed suit, and their claim was upheld in federal court. Congress settled by buying big chunks and turning it over to the Indians, along with lots of cash. The Indians agreed to abandon future claims.”